Musonda Veronica Malama – Person Of The Year 2025

When Musonda Veronica Malama walks into a boardroom to rescue a failing multi- million-pound programme, she doesn’t arrive with textbook theories. She arrives with something more powerful; lived experience.

Born in Zambia. Raised in the UK after losing her father at a young age. First in her family to attend university. First to build a seven-figure property portfolio. The woman who moved to Indonesia straight out of university for a job she had no experience doing. The leader who said yes to Qatar before she even knew where it was on a map.

This is a Person of the Year who didn’t study transformation, she embodied it.

From Disruption to Decisive Leadership

Musonda’s childhood was marked by disruption. After her father’s death, she found herself navigating two worlds – her Zambian heritage and her new life in the UK – learning to adapt to systems she wasn’t born into.

“I learned early that you either let disruption define you, or you use it to refine you,” she reflects.

That lesson became the foundation for everything that followed. When she became the first in her family to attend university, it wasn’t just a personal win – it was a generational breakthrough. Her older siblings followed. Then her relatives. A family ceiling that had stood for generations shattered because one person decided it could be done.

She went on to become the first in her family to build a seven-figure property portfolio, an achievement rooted in discipline, strategic thinking, and unwavering vision. These weren’t just milestones – they were proof that limitations are often illusions.

Breaking Barriers – A Generational Trailblazer

Most graduates play it safe. Musonda did the opposite.

Fresh out of university, she accepted a high-pressure sales job in Indonesia, a country she’d never visited, an industry she knew nothing about. Most would have declined. She didn’t. She adapted, learned fast, and delivered results that proved her instincts right.

Her next move was equally bold. When a financial services opportunity emerged in Qatar, she’d never even heard of the country. But she said yes anyway. Again, she thrived.

“I learned that unfamiliar spaces aren’t barriers,” she explains. “They’re accelerators.”

Those experiences taught her something most consultants never learn: how to operate with zero safety net. How to build trust in unfamiliar cultures. How to deliver results when nothing is guaranteed.

Today, those skills make her the leader organisations call when everything is falling apart.

Change Maker

Musonda specialises in the impossible. Failing programmes. Dysfunctional teams. Budgets spiralling out of control. The projects everyone else has given up on.

She steps in, diagnoses the real problem – often buried under surface-level issues – and rebuilds from there. She’s saved organisations millions by restructuring governance, realigning delivery teams, and restoring stakeholder confidence when it seemed beyond repair.

One executive describes her this way: “She brings calm to chaos. She sees what everyone else missed. And she fixes it.”

Her track record speaks for itself through the transformations she has rescued across technology, finance, and operations, where she has consistently stabilized budgets that were on the brink of collapse and rebuilt governance structures that had completely broken down. She has restored delivery confidence in teams that had lost all momentum, bringing order to chaos through her systematic approach. But what truly sets her apart is this – she understands that transformation is fundamentally human. It’s about people, their fears, their resistance, and their untapped potential.

Storyteller and Story Maker

Beyond boardrooms, Musonda has become one of the most compelling voices on personal transformation and leadership. As a highly sought-after motivational speaker, she delivers talks that don’t just inform, they ignite action.

Her signature talks include the “Say Yes Strategy,” which challenges people to embrace opportunities that terrify them, and “Different by Design: Building Teams That Win Because They Don’t Match” – where she makes the compelling case that the best teams aren’t built on similarity, but on strategic difference. She shows leaders how to harness diverse perspectives as a competitive advantage, turning what many see as complexity into their greatest strength. 

Whether speaking to Fortune 500 companies, women’s networks, or global conferences, she uses her own story as living proof that transformation begins with expanding what you believe is possible. Her TEDx Talk on the boundaries of impossibilities has been viewed over 200,000 times, inspiring people worldwide to rethink the limits they’ve placed on themselves.

Audiences consistently describe her as “electrifying, deeply grounding, and impossible to forget.”

She’s also the creator of “The Corporate Climb,” a resource Black women navigating corporate systems that weren’t built with them in mind. It’s been shared across professional networks and described by one user as “the guide I wish I’d had years ago.”

Champion for the Future of Work

Musonda has mentored dozens of professionals from minority backgrounds into tech leadership roles, helping build an industry that better reflects the world it serves.

“She doesn’t just tell you it’s possible,” one mentee explains. “She shows you the roadmap. She believes in you when you’re still learning to believe in yourself.”

Her influence extends beyond individual careers. She’s reshaping workplace cultures, challenging hiring practices, and proving that inclusive leadership isn’t about quotas – it’s about unlocking overlooked talent that’s been there all along. She dismantles the myth that homogeneous teams are more efficient and replaces it with evidence: diverse teams make better decisions, spot risks faster, and innovate more effectively.

Her peers describe her as “a transformational coach whose influence extends far beyond career progression – she changes how people see themselves.”

Future Focus

As 2026 unfolds, Musonda’s vision extends beyond transforming organisations to transforming the lives of women navigating corporate advancement.

She’s launching a membership community called ‘The Corporate Climb’, designed specifically for women rising in corporate leadership – a space where career transformation meets personal empowerment. It combines mentorship from leaders who’ve walked the path, masterclasses on navigating complex workplace dynamics, peer networks for real support, and personalised coaching to accelerate progression.

This isn’t another networking group, it’s infrastructure. A support system for women advancing in environments that weren’t designed with them in mind.

Her message remains consistent: Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for systems to change. Start building the path yourself – and bring others with you.

At a moment when inclusive leadership is being questioned, when DEI initiatives face backlash, and when progress feels fragile, Musonda’s voice matters more than ever.

She doesn’t argue from ideology, she argues from results.

She doesn’t ask for accommodation,  she demonstrates value. 

She doesn’t wait for systems to change, she builds alternatives.

Her lived experience gives her a vantage point many leaders lack. She understands cultural complexity because she’s navigated it her entire life. She understands diversity not as theory, but as identity. She understands global leadership because she’s built her career across continents – and thrived in every one.

From a young girl who learned resilience through loss, to a global leader reshaping how organisations think about change – Musonda Veronica Malama is living proof that transformation isn’t something you study. It’s something you live.

And in 2025, that lived experience, combined with measurable impact, authentic leadership, and an unwavering commitment to lifting others – makes her not just Person of the Year, but a blueprint for what leadership looks like when it’s forged through courage, not credentials.

Visit Website : https://musondaveronica.co.uk