Right mentors will unlock your potential: Pendo

Journalist

Mwananchi Communications Limited

What you need to know:

Pendo, a network analyst, at Vodacom Tanzania rose to her current position after weathering many challenges from the predominantly male dominated field, but she calls on women not to be scared

Dar es Salaam. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) data shows that only 24 percent of women in Tanzania are enrolled in science subjects and nearly 40 percent of those in higher learning institutions. This calls for the government and Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) to ensure that more girls like science.
Pendo Boshe, who is currently a senior Network Performance analyst at Vodacom Tanzania, is exemplary. She has a 19-year experience across different functions in network generations from 2G, 3G and now 4G.
Ms Pendo graduated with a Master’s degree in engineering management specialising in projects management and a Bachelor in electrical engineering at the University of Dar es Salaam.
She is skilled in data analysis, project monitoring and evaluation, report writing and presentation, which are part of her daily life.
Despite graduating in the field of engineering and having a well paying job, , Ms Pendo was always scared to come out and show what she is good at. Lots of skilled women face the same challenge unless they meet good mentors.
She, however, found her way to the top after meeting a mentor who helped her show her skills.
“My mentor always told me that, I am a diamond that is hidden in the closet, so she exposed by assigning me to handle different roles that led me to achieve a lot of things that made me who I am today,” said Ms Pendo.
Nina, the legal director, was the best mentor of Pendo and a friend as well, all this because whatever, Pendo felt something was wrong, she got assistance from her.
She is always positive despite criticisms that usually hinder her, especially when it comes to the field of technology, which is predominantly led by men.
“I always know what I want to do because I usually keep myself updated to keep up with the rapidly changing technology,” said Ms Pendo.
She says she is very passionate about electro engineering because it is something that challenges her in what she does, always believing in using technology and big data analysis for sustainable operation.
In 2002, she joined Vodacom as a fresh graduate as a Network controller, responsible for monitoring the entire network, ensuring disruptions are minimal. Later on she was promoted to a team leader role representing women in tech as the only female engineer from Vodacom.
Everyone usually knows what they want to be, but for the part of Pendo, it was a different story. She wanted to be a pilot, but backtracked on her ambition because of fear of heights to pursue engineering courses.
“I always wanted to be a pilot, but as I went, the fear of heights changed my direction, but that didn’t change the passion, because I am still an engineer.”
Adding, because she wanted to serve and find solutions, she began falling in love with networking, which keeps her alive till today and becoming one of the first female engineers at Vodacom.
According to Pendo, she faced challenges galore before being able to be the leader, those challenges started from college and all the way to her work place.
Her college class had fewer women compared to men, from that point on, other students used to point fingers that they would not be able to achieve their dreams in the engineering field. “Because I was not that kind of person who can’t always speak what I am going through, the background noise challenged me a lot, the same here in the work office, the environment was a bit challenging for me”, said Ms Pendo.
But, slowly she began to gain the momentum and get used to the environment, despite her fear and how people were talking behind her back at that time.
When talking about memorable experiences, Ms Pendo always goes back to 2016 whereby she was in the project of creating an App called ‘Net Performance’.
“There is a project for creating an app that will enable customers to know their spending and air their complaint, on that project I was the leader”, she said. Apart from that, she explained that she was part of the team that created the website for the University of Dar es salaam, which was intended to showcase student’s results.
Later, the website was updated so as to be able to hide student registration numbers, because students know each other’s numbers. There are a lot of benefits of having a woman in a leadership position, but for Ms Pendo, she always looks at men as hardware and women as software because they need each other.
“For a system to go well, we need to have both men and women, a touch of women is very important in every department, because women can bring something in the team building,” said.
She further explained, women always bring time for relaxation in the project of hard work, men usually do not think about break time, so it will help enhance the ability to think during team work.
Ms Pendo always believes that having a woman in leadership does not mean to compete with men rather than to compete with what has been done with the man. “It’s a compliment to each other and not a competition”, said Ms Pendo.
On addressing gender inequality in the country, she says what is needed is support because nowadays women have power to do something but they fail because of poor support.
“Support is crucial in addressing gender inequality, our country has lots of powerful women, these women just need support because they already believe in themselves,” she said.
Apart from support, she said women need to believe in themselves, because believing is achieving, women need to stay positive and grab the opportunities.
“In social media there are many programmes that women can apply and do away with the mind-set that men should do more, so women should not be scared because you can learn while in their jobs” said Ms Pendo. “Before becoming a wife and mother, there was you, women need to stay in lane and have a good supportive system,” she added explaining that a supportive system is all about having the right people at home.
“Having a supportive system means you will be able to do your work in a good way without being distracted by family issues,”
According to her, she shared with us about how women can develop leadership skills, which means that women need passion, and you have to grab the opportunities.
“If you want something, you need to learn how something has been done, it’s very important to focus on what you do. What you need to do is to have job training so as to improve the skills to grab more opportunities”, she said.
Women always need to keep themselves updated in every sectors they earn their living, they can learn skills anywhere, but that passion is all that matters.
To change the situation that hinders women from reaching the top, Ms Pendo said there is a need to have a system that will help people who failed to do something, they should have special programmes.
“We need to have special programs that will help to support girls to join university and make them have a different position to acquire job opportunities”.
Pendo shared her three pieces of advice to younger women who want to reach the top and become leaders, first they should believe what they do, they should have passion and not be lazy.