Women city leaders on navigating complex public governance

The panelists discussed barriers to organizational trust, power distribution, and the narrow margin for error afforded to public leaders, and especially women and people of color. 

Tumusiime, who shut down Kampala’s biggest factory after discovering extensive water pollution, talked about her decision to stand firm against pressure from elements of the national government, other politicians, and business leaders who, she argued, were prioritizing financial gain over public health and safety. “The institutions that were supposed to be managing the pollution failed because of political interference,” she said. For Tumusiime, the experience was a lesson on moral leadership. “When you’re doing the right thing, you’re not scared,” she said. Her decisions are explored in the teaching case “A Difficult Lady.” 

De La Isla, who was elected as Topeka’s first Latina mayor in 2018, recalled how the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 murder of George Floyd eroded public trust in local government and sowed division among community members with polarizing views on interventions to end police brutality. “There was a lot of scar tissue created in the community,” she told the audience. “In situations like this there are no winners. We talk about George Floyd and his death like ‘Oh my God, that happened’ but it has been happening in Black communities in this country always.” 

As an alumna of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, as well as of HKS’s mid-career program, De La Isla recalled how she incorporated training on cross-boundary collaboration and lessons from her early career in community organizing to promote unity among groups. “The greatest act of leadership is the selflessness of understanding that you don’t have to be the star.  You have to be willing to give people the power and the tools in order for them to shine. Your job is to be earnest enough to know what you don’t know, lean on the people that do, and let them go. Then magic happens in your community.”   

She also noted the pressures of leading as a person of color and the fragility of advancements in representation. “As women of color we carry an understanding that if I mess up, I mess up for women who look like me because everyone is judging the rest of us by the first of us,” De La Isla said. 

Cruz negotiated response and recovery efforts to lead San Juan through two hurricanes—Maria and Irma—in 2017, as well as two earthquakes in 2020. The teaching case “The Center of the Storm”  allows students to examine her decisions.  

Reflecting on the importance of engaging community members in her rescue agenda, Cruz shared, “You have to trust people because you can’t be everywhere at once. I had to learn the humbling lesson that I wasn’t ‘it.’ I was in service of the people that were it.”