Bisila Bokoko (Valencia, 1974) is a Spanish businesswoman who has settled in New York for more than two decades. Of Equatoguinean origin, she was executive director of the Spain-United States Chamber of Commerce for seven years and is currently CEO of her own firm, BBES, a consultancy that helps position brands in international markets, a task that is compatible with the project that most He is excited, the African Literacy Project, to build libraries in Africa, and with the conferences he gives around the world.
-Bisila Bokoko is defined as a businesswoman, entrepreneur, philanthropist, lecturer. How do you define yourself?
-I define myself as a woman in constant evolution, as a daughter, wife, sister, friend, more than all those labels. I like to see myself more as the person that I am. And she is a person who wants to be in the business of doing good.
-And how does a businesswoman like you do good? With philanthropy, another of its facets?
-I think that many times when we think about how to do good, we always think of philanthropy, which is not a word with which I specifically feel identified, although many times I am defined that way. Doing good is a way of being in the world, it is a way of exercising leadership and when I speak of leadership I am not referring only to positions of responsibility.
-What is leadership for you?
– Well, for me, leadership is a way of being and sharing your purpose with other people. Many times leadership is understood as having positions of responsibility or being a boss, but I think that it is simply committing yourself to your purpose and that the people around you understand that commitment and want to be part of that commitment. And I also believe that the leader has to be a humanist. We speak of a company as something that is outside, as an entity that is outside of us and for me the company is us, they are the people who make up the company. For me, humanist leadership is the leadership of the 21st century. I believe in leadership of people with people for people.
–Looking at his trajectory, his has been a successful career. What is the password?
-I think that in the end, it has been more of an obstacle course. And I have been very aware of all the falls. And I have also taken responsibility for the falls because many times I have caused them by my own ego, my own arrogance. Sometimes when you are successful, so to speak, at a very young age, you get carried away by that ego and in my case, in the end, what I have realized is that success for me is freedom. I come from a business culture where it was super important to get numbers, to achieve goals, where 30 years ago there were very few women (in the international arena), which I really needed to prove. And that perfectionism made me make a lot of mistakes. And that was not success because he did not really experience it as success either. Success is freedom, not the money or the ‘hit’ you have, or the people you meet, but the freedom to do what you really like.
–She says that success came to her young but it did not have to be easy for a black woman who grew up in Valencia in the 70s.
– Logically, growing up in a Spain where there wasn’t much diversity has been very difficult. She already had the weight of being a woman and on top of that… she was black. I would go to many meetings and people would jump twice when they saw me. If before I had spoken on the phone or had communicated by letter in my perfect Spanish, many people’s facial expressions would change when they met me because they did not imagine that I was black. So, of course, this has had a weight, but I did not want this to make me a victim of circumstances. Rather, I wanted to transform this situation into a competitive advantage. So, instead of going to meetings thinking, well, look, I’m black and I’m a woman, well, I was thinking that this could be an advantage, because I’m multicultural and because I’m a woman I have intuition and abilities that I can put at the service of the company. I always say that you have two options in life: you can choose to be the creator of your life and change history a little or be a victim of circumstances. That is to say, I cannot change the social situation in Spain in relation to different people, but I can change how I see myself.
What role has education played in your career?
-Absolutely everything to see. I have had the great advantage of having parents who are very committed to education, which also comes from several generations. My parents were already born in an environment where education was important. Both came to Spain in order to study and both went to university. On the other hand, my parents also made my education useless, because they knew that what they showed me at school was not enough for the education that I needed as a multicultural staff, with which they also made me read a lot about understand slavery, colonization, pan-Africanism, blackness. I had a very open upbringing. It has not been a normal education but it has had everything to do with my path.
-Is that why you promoted a literacy project in Africa?
– I was a decaffeinated African. I knew Africa from books but it was not until I was 35 that I set foot on the continent. And on that trip I was meeting many people who did not have any kind of access to education. On that trip certain things happened that determined that if I had known Africa through books, they could also know the world. And that was where the library project began. I had had a privileged upbringing and when you see that other people haven’t touched a book with their hands, you can’t believe it.
How has this project evolved?
-The project is still small. The truth is that it has had much more visibility in recent years, but it has been going on since 2010 and started with a library in Ghana. It then went on to Uganda, Zimbabwe and Kenya. We have our own libraries there. In Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Cameroon and other countries we have collaborated. We sent 20,000 books to Equatorial Guinea last year thanks to Spain. All the Spanish universities got involved and donated books to us because the students of the University of Equatorial Guinea did not have their own books. It has been vital for us that there is this transfer of knowledge from one country to another with which we have so many ties but from which we are also so far apart.
–What is your vision of Africa?
-I define myself as an ‘afroptimist’. If Africa was previously defined as the forgotten continent, without hope, what I see is a very dynamic, very creative young population, with a great desire to do things. There is an immense entrepreneurial spirit. Of course, Africa has 54 countries, you can’t talk about Africa like that in general. But I do believe that there are countries that have very good news, that they are developing very well and that there is progress.
-And being so, how do you assess the approach that is made from Europe to the issue of immigration?
-We always see Africa as a threat, they come here to ‘invade’. And this would not happen if she was seen more collaboratively. Seeing a bit about the geopolitical situation that exists today in Europe and how resources make us dependent on other countries, I think we have to have a much more collaborative culture and perhaps Africa, which is next door, can be the partner we are looking for and that we have not looked. I think it would be very interesting if Europe looked at Africa in a different way, more as a partner instead of a threat.
-And this is the responsibility of the political class, of the economic class, of society?
I think it’s everyone’s responsibility. Many people have a completely distorted vision of Africa, they have been left with images of Ethiopia from 30 years ago. However, there is another Africa that is much more dynamic and I think it is a matter of corporate responsibility that businessmen also look there to be able to look for the economic potential that may exist.
-She was in charge of the United States-Spain Chamber of Commerce for several years and now as a consultant she helps Spanish companies to position themselves in international markets. How is the Spain brand?
-The Spain brand has always had a problem, which is not believing that it is a good brand. When I was in the Chamber, many people came with that complex. The Spain brand continues to have great potential. And I think it is very important that we believe it and feel that we can go out into the world and have a leading position in international markets.
-Is there an entrepreneurial spirit in Spain?
-Well, I would say that there is no shortage because I have seen Spanish businessmen go to remote places to sell without speaking the language or having any idea of the country. In other words, I do not think that we are missing it, but what I believe is that we have not yet understood that word well. But I believe that there have always been entrepreneurs who have opened many doors. What happens is that we have not come to be at peace with that term, we still see the entrepreneur as brave, daring. I even believe that the issue of the entrepreneur also comes from the fear of failure, what will they say. That fear slows us down a lot in Spain and the entrepreneur is going to fail because it is part of the path, it is learning.
–So do you have to lose your fear and start and fail?
-I think so. You have to make friends with fear because undertaking is scary. But when your dreams are bigger than your fears, you will.