When Leadership Tastes Like Home

A Book Launch, a Coffee Tasting, and the Women Writing Congo's Future

There's a moment that happens when you taste something made by hands you know.

The cup warms your palm. The aroma rises. And suddenly, coffee stops being a commodity and becomes a story—her story, their story, a story that begins in soil and ends in hope.

That's what happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo when IFCCA—our IWCA chapter—gathered to celebrate more than words on a page.

They gathered to celebrate Ghislaine Kahambu Kambesa and her new book, Being a Leader of Unity Today. But this wasn't your typical book launch with folding chairs and polite applause. This was something richer.

This was coffee. And cacao. And women.

Women who grow it. Women who process it. Women who lead with it.

The tasting featured locally produced coffee and cacao—not imported, not branded by someone else's name, but theirs. Made by women in their own communities, from their own land, with their own vision of what leadership looks like when it's rooted in unity.

Leadership You Can Taste

Ghislaine's book asks a question the world desperately needs answered: What does it mean to lead with unity in a fractured world?

And IFCCA's answer?

You taste it.

You taste it in every sip of coffee that represents a woman's decision to stay, to build, to invest in her community when leaving might have been easier.

You taste it in cacao that carries the hands of mothers who are rewriting what's possible for their daughters.

You taste it in a gathering that says: We don't just talk about women's empowerment. We drink it. We live it. We celebrate it together.

A Chapter That Leads by Example

Our DR Congo chapter isn't just in the coffee industry. They're shaping it—one harvest, one cooperative, one book launch at a time.

They're proving that leadership isn't about waiting for someone else to tell your story. It's about growing it yourself. Processing it yourself. Serving it yourself. And inviting the world to pull up a chair.

That's what unity tastes like.

And thanks to leaders like Ghislaine and the women of IFCCA, the world is starting to get a taste.

Want to support chapters like IFCCA in DR Congo? Learn how you can connect with women coffee leaders around the world.