Noëlla Coursaris Musunka
Purpose statements are easy. Building something that actually works in a place where almost nothing else does is not. Senior leaders increasingly need a credible model for what values-based leadership looks like when resources are constrained, stakeholders are sceptical, and the operating environment is genuinely hostile.
Noëlla Coursaris Musunka is the founder and CEO of Malaika, a grassroots nonprofit in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a Global Fund ambassador who speaks to corporate and policy audiences on values-based leadership, girls’ education and building institutions in fragile environments.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Noëlla Coursaris Musunka
- She has built and run an institution from scratch in eastern Congo for nearly two decades. The leadership lessons she draws on are operational, not theoretical.
- Her platform sits across philanthropy, fashion and global health. She is a Global Fund ambassador alongside Bono, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Charlize Theron, which gives corporate audiences a peer-level voice on global development.
- She translates a five-pillar community model (education, health, water, food, livelihoods) into a frame senior teams can apply to their own ESG and impact strategies.
- She brings a personal arc, from being separated from her mother at five to founding a school in her birth country, that audiences hear as testimony rather than corporate narrative.
- Her recognition by the BBC’s 100 Women, ELLE, the Muhammad Ali Center and the United Nations gives buyers external validation that does not depend on bureau marketing.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO of Malaika, a free school and community ecosystem in Kalebuka, DRC, founded 2007.
- Ambassador of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, appointed 2017.
- Named one of the BBC’s 100 Women (2017) and one of ELLE’s 50 African women shaping the continent (2016).
- Speaker at the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, UNICEF, the UK Parliament, the Clinton Global Initiative, Concordia and the Milken Institute Global Conference.
- Honoured by the Muhammad Ali Center as a “Daughter of Greatness” and recognised at the Nelson Mandela centenary by the House of Mandela.
- International model with campaigns including Agent Provocateur and editorial coverage in Vogue and Vanity Fair.
Biography
The DRC is one of the hardest places on earth to build an institution. Malaika has been operating there since 2007, running a free girls’ school, a community centre, vocational training, an agriculture programme and clean water and sanitation services in the village of Kalebuka. It was founded by Noella Coursaris Musunka, who is still its CEO.
Her route to that work is unusual. Born in the DRC to a Cypriot father and a Congolese mother, she was sent to relatives in Europe at five after her father died and her mother could no longer support her. She returned at eighteen, met her mother again, and saw what girls in her birth country were facing. The school followed.
The substance of her leadership argument is operational. Malaika is not a single-issue charity. It is a five-pillar model built on the recognition that girls cannot stay in school if their families cannot eat, drink clean water or earn a living, and that change has to be made with the community, not delivered to it. That logic, applied in a fragile-state context, is what corporate audiences book her to translate into their own strategy and impact work.
The platform that funds and amplifies it is global. She is a Global Fund ambassador alongside Bono, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Charlize Theron, has been recognised by the BBC’s 100 Women, ELLE and the Muhammad Ali Center, and has spoken at Davos, the United Nations, UK Parliament, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and MIT.
Key speaking topics
- Values-based and purpose-driven leadership
- Girls’ education and gender equality
- Building institutions in fragile environments
- Global health and the Global Fund agenda
- Founder leadership and social entrepreneurship
- Inclusion and the African leadership voice
- Corporate philanthropy and ESG impact
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams setting purpose, ESG and corporate philanthropy strategy
- CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusive leadership and values programmes
- Foundation, family office and impact investing audiences
- Annual meetings and leadership conferences seeking a credible founder voice on global development
Audience outcomes
- A working model for translating purpose statements into operating institutions, drawn from a fragile-state context.
- A clearer view of how girls’ education and global health intersect with corporate ESG agendas.
- A founder’s account of building, funding and sustaining an organisation across nearly two decades.
- A reframing of values-based leadership through lived experience rather than corporate vocabulary.