Tozama is completing her PhD in Organic
chemistry at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits). She is passionate about
science, media and leadership. She has
been in a number of leadership positions including chairperson for CSIR
(Biosciences) student forum 2012, chairperson at the 3rd BIT symposium in
China-Xi’an (2012) for emerging scientists, one of the founders of Bizana
Alumni Society (BAS), vice-chairperson for postgraduate students association
(PGSA) at the University of Cape Town 2008. She was featured in a number of
educational programmes including SA FM’s educational programmes (Science
Matters), Channel Africa radio with Dr Izak Khomo and SABC 3Talk hosted by
Noleen Maholwana-Sangqu. Tozama was awarded the Fogarty Fellowship Institute at
the International Centre for Public Health (ICPH) New Jersey medical school USA
2013 on Global Infectious Disease. She is a recipient of woman in science award
sponsored by DST and TATA Africa (2011) and CSIR Biosciences student of the
year 2011. Her work is included in 4 scientific publications.
Tozama will be
sharing twenty leadership lessons that has enhanced her life journey in all
it’s different dimension; professionally, wife, mother and mentor to young
aspiring scientists. Be inspired by her first ten fantastic life lessons;
Lesson one: Permit
yourself to live
Living is not just about being alive;
it is about embracing your all with great tenacity. It has been said that most
people die at the age of 21 and are buried at the age of 65. What happened to
the 44 years of their lives? They let life pass by and went with the flow as we
sometimes do. At a point in our lives we need to awaken our spirits and make a
conscious decision that will make us to be awake come rain come shine. This is
about our authentic self and learning from both victories and failures. Living
is about growth and continuous improvement of one’s attitude.
Lesson two: Belief
The way we operate is the
manifestation of our belief system. Our actions can be tracked down to what we
believe in and what we believe to be true about ourselves. We limit ourselves
because of what we believe to be true about us and the following have the major
influence on our belief system.
Ø Culture
Ø Childhood
Ø Education
Ø Friendships
Ø The people in our sphere.
Ø The books we read.
Lesson three: Self
Leadership
Leadership is influence and Self-leadership is the
greatest of them all. Self-leadership is leading oneself
from one point towards a continuous growth, improvement and excellence. It is
about demanding excellence from yourself before you can demand it from others.
Lesson four: Be a
student
Be the student of the area you want
to impact in. Most of us have
ideas, ideas that can make a very significant contribution in this world. This
is laudable; however, the challenge is we all want to teach without going
through the process. We found the world in existence and we can’t add value or
change that which we don’t really understand.
Lesson five: Psychological
strength and attitude
Everyone in your field is clever,
that is why you all have degrees. Note two things that will distinguish the
champions.
·
Positive attitude is very vital to keep the office
mood productive and fun to work around.
·
Psychological strength is all about interpreting what
one hears and see. When your boss says this is not good enough, it means it’s
not good enough but if you can try again and apply more of yourself it will be
better. But sometimes when we hear this we think she means I am not good enough
and never try anything again and we stay in our shells.
Lesson six: People
This is a very important point. People
are very important because we cannot survive in this world without them. We gain from other people and we must learn
to appreciate them. No one has ever made it as an island. Also it is very
important to have mentors in order to grow, we learn from people and mentors
are very crucial. However, we also learn what not to do from people. We learn
to stay away from practices that don’t yield the results we want sometimes
through people.
Lesson seven: Practice
Practice makes
IMPROVEMENT, not perfect. You become a better you and one improve by the choice she
makes daily. It is very vital to apply what we have learnt otherwise it becomes
irrelevant and a waste of time to learn just for the sake of learning.
Lesson eight: Time; a
tool and a resource
There is a time to listen to most
people, there is a time to listen to some people and there is a time to hear
the noise but not listen at all, however one has to understand the times.
For example, when one is running a
race, you take
1. Time to listen to your coach, family and friends.
2. Time to listen to the whistle
blower on the day.
3. Time to run.
While running, one can hear the
noise but can’t hear the conversations because at that significant time no
amount of talking can make him a winner if he is not well prepared. It is also
like this even in our lives and it is our responsibility to distinguish the
times in any season.
Lesson nine: Fail
forward
When you fail
that does not make you are a failure. We all sometimes are faced with failure,
what is important is to learn from one’s failures so that we are better
equipped for our next project.
Lesson
ten: ‘But’- A dream killer
We all have big dreams and what
determines if we will see them through is our internal conversation and most of
the time it is our But that kills our dreams. A ‘But’ is a dream killer; it is like an
argument for our limitations.
Let’s embrace our unique stories,
life is a journey.
 |
| Tozama Qwebani-Ogunleye |
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