In this weeks episode we speak to Leila Toplic, Head of Technologies Initiative, NetHope and Julienne Lusenge, Directrice du Fond, Les femmes Congolaises and they give us a number of tips and insights on how to lead a fight. Covering everything from the self-care necessary to leading in the fight and dealing with raw anger.

[00:00:43] Welcome, welcome, welcome. Julie Middleton here, expedition Leader. This episode is about leading fights. I think it is fascinating that it is slightly different like all leadership, but, there's some very strong messages and I've spoken to two women that I find very compelling on the subject. Leila Toplic and Julienne Lusenge. Leila, whose story um, started as a desperate refugee from a war torn country and who became a fighter for refugees, uh, and and spent her whole life so far, and no doubt continuing to fight on many, many fronts at the moment. Uh, very much as on the uses of AI, and, and, and, and how that will influence and affect the world.

[00:02:12] And she, she's brought justice to, I mean, hundreds of perpetrators of violent war crimes over the years. She is, again, a remarkable fighter. So they both have so much to say, but I, I tried to pull it to, at least to start with, two of the really, really strong messages. Leila first on, I think there's no other way to summarize this, but the word hope, that as a leader in a fight, you need to remember that you cannot lead with despair. You have to lead with hope. And then Julienne who must over the years, have been tempted to give up so many, many times to walk away and, and to leave the fire burning because she must have felt that it was burning her up. But Julienne's message is so much that you must never lose touch with the people that you are whom you are fighting for, and, and it's when you do lose touch that you begin to run out of energy.

[00:03:44] Leila: One of the key things for me has been that to lead a fight in this case is to be optimistic about the future. And this is also in the context of really some thorny and oftentimes personal problems. So, for example, refugees. Having been a refugee myself. So the, the kind of, the first thing for me has been to choose what problem to focus on, uh, what problem to me is worth fighting for. Um, then to really be clear about what energy I want to bring to this fight. And I think, energy for me has become synonymous with hope, with instilling hope, being for sure angry about inequality and, and devastation, but really channeling that into determination and optimism. The future could be better if we all, if I try and the people that I work with, if we all try. And choosing intentionally not to despair, instilling hope and trust that change is possible is to me synonymous to leading a fight worth fighting.

[00:05:33] Leila: That's right. Having, um, grown up pretty much during a, a war, um, been a refugee, and then also, um, very quickly transitioned or transformed that despair and anger into helping others as a, as a 18 year old teacher of refugees and really realizing that despair is, and, and, um, absence of hope can lead to apathy and at the same time is a luxury because people who are facing these struggles, whether it's displacement, um, loss of loved ones, uh, poverty, um, natural disasters, they can't afford to lose hope. Neither should we. And that is also, I mean, one, one thing that is also important is when you're leading a fight, when you're working a problem, um, the starting point is to believe is not, not, not necessarily to know what is needed to lead that fight or what the outcome should look like, but to believe that you will figure it out along the way.

[00:07:07] Leila: More time, more, more often than not, yes. It is about potentially as a leader, um, being hopeful even when you are not. And I think there are also the degrees of hope because I don't think you're ever a hundred percent hopeful, especially when you're fighting a really... working on a very challenging problem, fighting a very difficult fight.

[00:09:28] Sometimes also that infusion of hope comes from others because it to lead a fight is not to be the only person that has optimism and hope. It is to, through the process, to instill hope in others so they can continue fueling whatever is being worked on together. And that's the part where it's not a, a lone and lonely journey. It is something that you do with others.

[00:10:08] Leila: I learned that the hard way because there were a couple of times in my past when I was, I took. care for myself as optional as, you know, secondary to the other priorities, and that didn't end really well.

[00:11:53] Julia: And when you do it, do you not feel guilty or self-indulgent or?

[00:12:52] Julia: I remember, um, my colleagues once did a skit of me as a leader, and , there was this, they would laugh about the fact that they would look up at me and I would have my feet up on my desk and I would be dreaming. And I always used to think that the skit was an insult. And then I realized it was a compliment.

[00:13:29] Julia: But also to see wood from the trees because if you don't your only legitimacy as a leader is that you can see the whole picture and if you get too tired you can't see it.

[00:13:45] Thank you so, so much, Leila. Now we, we move to Julienne whose story well, really her point is illustrated by a really beautiful story she told me. I've asked her to tell you this story. See what you think.

[00:15:12] And when we got, uh, on our run, uh, our road. I see women with police. The police, uh, is uh, I dunno how I can say ... And I ask my driver to say, can you stop, please? And he stop. And my husband asked me what has happened? And I said to him, can you see outside the police is, uh, uh, is uh, agresse les femmes.

[00:16:02] Julienne: Yep. Yes. And, uh, we stop and, uh, I go outside and ask women what is happened and they explained to me that these police arrest the husband because the pygmy rape women when they go to the field and he, he, he didn't, uh, arrest the pygmy, but he, he arrest uh, husband of the victim, and they ask why he, he do that. Now, he ask, he say them, he ask them money, and I say, you, commander of the police, can you explain to me what is the, uh, what the law has said? You know, that you cannot do that. You need to stop the preparators and send him to the judge. You cannot arrest the husband. And I called the, uh, prosecutor who was in Benny in Bunya and tell him the story and he asked the police to send immediately the pygmy, the do the case in Bunya and to to leave the husband from the, the, the prison and, uh, let women go. And when I come back to the car, in the car, my husband say, huh, you start again because you say, uh, last day that you stop, you cannot continue to fight. And I say, hmm, can you think that I can just leave this situation and go, when I saw women in this situation, I need to stop and ask and do what I can , and he just, he just, uh, uh, say, okay. Okay, let's continue now. Can we continue? I say oui, yes, we continue. We can continue now. I, I have the solution, and we continue

[00:18:43] And if you don't spend enough time with the people you are fighting for, you sort of forget and you begin to get tired. But you don't get tired if you spend enough time with them.

[00:19:55] Julia: Thank you, Julienne. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Uh, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go back a bit. I'm gonna go back again now to Leila, because as you can imagine, there's so much advice that she could give us about leading a fight. But, um, what I wanted to go back to her and talk about is, is, is, is this journey of leading a fight.

[00:21:02] And I was really interested in whether that Layla had ever felt this. And I asked her about when you can and when you can't, and whether it's ever possible to walk away from a fight. So basically this is about the dead ends.

[00:22:32] Julia: Oh, don't you... have, you never found the thing that you wanted to step away, but actually you simply could not because of the people around you who would then lose hope?

[00:23:51] Julia: I suppose the other dead end is that you get caught up in your own anger.

[00:24:32] Julia: Have you ever found yourself, I dunno, I have... where you, you think you are leading something, but actually mostly you are raising money?

[00:25:40] Julia: and where your legitimacy lies.

[00:26:28] Julia: Leila, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Now I wanna get back to Julienne as well, and I know it's, I'm going back with a slightly weird question, but to me, you know, Julienne did share that story and I dunno if you felt it, but that story has lots of people mentioned in it, but one of the really key people mentioned in it is her husband.

[00:27:40] If you are going to be a fighter, you need to choose the right man to marry, don't you?

[00:28:50] Julia: When you're sad.

[00:29:19] Julia: Yeah, you said it. Yeah. It's my fault. It's my fault. It's my fault.

[00:30:51] Julia: How do you choose the right, how do you choose the right husband?

[00:31:09] And he said to me, oh, I think you are chance to have to, to to have me.

[00:31:24] Julienne: Yes. Yes, yes.

[00:31:33] Maybe I'm just gonna carry on with this nipping backwards and forwards to, um, Julienne and Leila, because they agree on so many things and, and, and not on everything, but on so many, so many, many things. But I thought maybe the last word on this episode needed to be back with them. And, um, so I went back to Leila and asked her, asked her the question that certainly was in my head. And, and maybe indeed in your heads.

[00:32:17] Leila: I, I haven't thought of that. But now that you put it in that way, I would, I, I would agree with that.

[00:32:37] Leila: Now that I think about it, I think it was really before, before the war when that was... up until the age of 14 or 15 where I might have been fighting, but I didn't have that intentionality about it, where the intentionality, uh, really appeared was during a hardship. And then my first intentionality or my first fight was related to education and learning and the right to learn.

[00:33:33] Julia: The final word has to go to Julienne.

[00:34:02] Julia: I have nothing to add to what they have said. Just to remind myself, I've got it up. Both Leila and Julienne have made it onto my fridge, my increasingly cluttered fridge because I've been doing... what this is Podcast 36. My, my, my fridge is absolutely covered in these quotes. Little magnets holding them together. But, um, both Leila and Julienne have made it onto my fridge. Leila with that big word, hope and Julienne, with those great words, just remember who you're fighting for.

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