One Woman, Two Crises: The Ripple Effect of Women’s Leadership in the DRC

When I first met Marie Bulieni in June 2024, at the opening session of the first NYOTA cohort, I saw someone who was friendly and engaging. It wasn’t until three months later that I learned Marie struggled with low self-esteem.

As a capable child protection officer with ten years of experience, she was confined to administrative work in the United Nation’s child protection office in Beni. She wanted to be out in the field, working directly with children and their families. But she had been afraid to ask for a different assignment.

Then NYOTA changed that.

“I Broke Silence”

Something shifted for Marie during the first few weeks of NYOTA. “I broke silence,” Marie says. “I saw that communication is a powerful tool for me to influence my professional environment.”

Communication wasn’t just a skill. It was a way of moving through the world with influence.

Marie began to apply what she was learning. She told her supervisor she wanted to be out from behind a desk and out in the field. To her surprise, her supervisor agreed.

Before long, Marie found herself face-to-face with leaders of armed groups active in the region. She interviewed children they were holding captive. And then she facilitated the children’s release.

“I considered all the knowledge acquired from NYOTA as my weapon,” she explains.

Cohort 2 and Nyota Co-director.

The Same Weapon, a New Fight

Today, Marie carries that same weapon of communication into a different fight: the fight against Ebola.

The Ebola outbreak that began in Ituri Province in May 2026 has since spread into North Kivu — the province where Beni is located and where NYOTA women live and work. According to the CDC, this is the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded in the DRC, caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment. As of August 12, more than 2,000 people have died — including more than 300 children.

As the disease spreads, so do fear and misinformation. Rumors travel faster than facts. Citizens ignore instruction from health workers and sometimes attack them.

Marie refuses to let misinformation win. With confidence in her communication skills, she educates her neighbors and convinces them to follow public health guidance. “This is the time the community needs women leaders who are able to advocate for the cause of the whole community.”

The skills she built in NYOTA — her confidence, her advocacy tools, her willingness to speak up — are the same skills she is using now to help protect her community in the middle of a public health emergency that has no easy answers.

One woman. Two crises. “NYOTA has impacted me personally and professionally,” Marie recently noted. “NYOTA taught me to be resilient.”

The Pattern Behind the Story

I share Marie’s story because it’s not an outlier. It’s the pattern.

The research supports this. Evidence shows that elevating women creates a ripple effect that benefits families, communities, and countries—a finding documented across global health, governance, and economic development. Investment in women’s leadership doesn’t stay with the individual woman. It multiplies outward.

NYOTA has observed exactly this pattern across two graduating cohorts. Forty-nine women have completed the program in 2024 and 2025. Together, they have made a measurable positive impact on more than 9,000 children, women, and men.

That number—9,000—doesn’t represent women who attended NYOTA. It represents the secondary beneficiaries: the children, neighbors, colleagues, and families living better lives because someone in their orbit completed a leadership development program.

The People Standing Just Outside the Classroom

I write and talk about the women who sit in the NYOTA classroom. I write and talk less about the secondary beneficiaries outside the classroom — the children Marie has helped free, the neighbors she’s steering away from misinformation, the families who never applied to a leadership program but are living better lives because someone in their orbit did.

The children Marie helped free from captivity never applied to a leadership program. Marie’s neighbors learning to protect themselves from Ebola didn’t sit through a module on communication and advocacy. The families whose lives are steadier because a NYOTA graduate leads their organization with greater skill — they didn’t know the program existed.

They are the ripple effect. And according to research on women’s leadership and community development in Africa, women leaders are particularly effective at creating exactly this kind of expansive, community-directed impact — because they invest in equitable practices, prioritize grassroots outreach, and activate collective community involvement.

NYOTA doesn’t just develop individual leaders. It seeds community change.

The Ripple Keeps Expanding

On August 14, 22 more women cross the stage as the 2026 NYOTA cohort graduates.

That will be 22 more circles of impact beginning to move outward. Twenty-two more households and organizations will be influenced by confident, equipped leadership. We don’t yet know how far these women will reach, but if the pattern holds, it will be thousands more lives.

This is the part of the story that never finishes. Learn more about the full NYOTA curriculum and the six modules that build these leaders at impactnowleadership.org.

These are the ripples that multiply.

CAPTION FOR FEATRUED IMAGE AT TOP: Marie and Jeanette at NYOTA gift exchange.