Jennifer Musisi, former Executive Director of Kampala, Uganda

[Archive Interview from Jun 17, 2021]Jennifer Musisi has been threatened by men with machetes and once found a grenade under her car.  Both encounters occurred while she was serving as the Executive Director of Kampala, Uganda, a position similar to a big city mayor.  “It was scary, some of us were attacked, some of my staff were physically beaten up,”  Jennifer Musisi tells Dana Born, HOW Institute Distinguished Fellow, on the latest episode of HOW Conversations.  Jennifer was given a mandate to clean up corruption in Kampala and when she started modernizing the tax collection system she made some people very upset, “but it made me realize that if they're willing to put up a fight this big, that means what they're losing is also very big. So that even gave us more determination and made us resolute to fight for the benefit of the citizens.”  Despite the dangers, Jennifer says she never thought of quitting, “when we're entrusted with leadership, we're entrusted with responsibility to make change where change needs to be made.”  Jennifer and Dana also discussed frameworks for making change and building systems of accountability, the moral imperative of upholding ethical standards and elevating others.  Jennifer served as the Kampala Executive Director for eight years and is now the City Leader in Residence at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative at the Ash Center.   READY TO START YOUR MORAL LEADERSHIP JOURNEY? Moral leadership is more imperative today than ever before. The HOW Institute for Society was founded on the belief that those in positions of formal authority should also have moral authority.  We are creating the tools leaders need to make principled, ethical and values-based decisions.  We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a world rooted in deep human values and trust in our social fabric. The Institute channels philosophical reasoning to address modern problems. Today, HOW we do what we do matters more than ever and in ways it never has before.  Learn more at https://thehowinstitute.org/