Once broken, Paulina Lanco now breaks glass ceilings

It's hardly surprising that Paulina Nzisa Lanco now serves as an elected Rugby Africa exco member and chairs the Women's Rugby Advisory Committee. Her influence extends to the World Rugby Council and the World Rugby women's committee.

Until 2017, she directed the Kenya Rugby Union's community and women's rugby initiatives. As co-chairperson of the Women Sport Africa Network and founder of Kenya's Ruckit Girls Rugby programme, her impact resonates continent-wide.

"When I was elected in 2013, shattering the glass ceiling as the first woman in that position in the Kenya Rugby Union, I made a promise to myself that by the time I turned 50, there would be at least 50 women in leadership positions in the Kenya Rugby Union," she says. "I turn 50 in November. There are close to 110 women in leadership positions."

When did the sports bug bite you?

I was a sporty child growing up. I was called a 'rebellious' child for playing football with the boys, climbing trees with them, and getting expelled from primary school. I was that child everybody would have written off.

My father took me to the YMCA and enrolled me in swimming. Then I discovered I was pretty good at it. I then discovered basketball while continuing to play football, though it actually wasn't allowed for girls.

At 13, I joined a karate class. I had found a place to redirect my energy, a place where I could lose myself. All this while still engaging in my first love: dancing. To date, I still continue to run—I do one long-distance run a week—and I go to the gym four times a week. I also swim.

Where was your sense of 'rebellion' coming from as a child?

I come from a very humble background. I grew up in a 10 by 10 house in the heart of Dagoretti. My mother struggled with alcohol for many years, and there were many times she came home, and I had to defend my siblings from being beaten.

My father was also absent, but before that, he was violent, which led to the end of his marriage with my mother. He left when we were very young and was later replaced by an amazing gentleman for a stepfather, Lanco, whose name I bear with a lot of pride.

It took years before she eventually found herself, found faith, became a deaconess of a church, and turned her life around. But before then, I knew what it meant to be in an environment with no hope, no future, and condemned to a life and a cycle of poverty.

You mentioned courage earlier on; courage to overcome all the things you had to overcome in childhood to be this person now. Do you still feel courageous about life currently?

In many ways, I do, but there will be moments when I don't think I have it. Steve Jobs said, "You can only connect the dots looking backwards." I draw my courage from looking backwards. I'm still that girl to date, sitting in the roles that I'm currently occupying.

I went through my years in the banking sector with no academic excellence and no Master's degree. My highest education was high school.

In my first interview in financial services, I sat before a gentleman called Jim Dry from Dry Associates, which does commercial paper investment and Treasury Bills investment, and he asked me about my academic qualifications. I said I only have a high school education.

He said, "What did you get in math?" I said I got an E. But, I added, "If you hire me, you will get dedication and drive, but if after a month you aren't convinced, fire me." He took a chance on me and hired me. So, I think I've dressed myself in that courage most of my life in very unideal circumstances.

What rooms make you insecure?

I recently enrolled in an ESG [Environmental, social and governance] class through an organisation called the Boardroom Africa.

The group of individuals who have come through this programme are highly accomplished: chairmen and women of large entities across the globe with the right academic qualifications, and exposure, and who are very wealthy in many ways.

I can get intimidated in such rooms, and I feel my courage seeping away. That’s the child in me, one who believes that certain things are not meant for them. Even now, when I drive into a Country Club where I am a member, I still get overwhelmed at times by the people I share rooms with.

I suppose you didn’t have a chance for therapy back in those childhood days. How did you heal from all those childhood wounds: a violent father and a mother who abused substances?

Biko, you're never fully healed. The memories of the evenings when my mother came home drunk, met physical violence and disrupted our nights stay with me.

My therapy, to use that word loosely, was dancing and sports. After a game scrapping with the boys on the pitch, I'd have nothing left in me to stay up at night thinking; I'd crash out because my energy was completely sucked. My mother took us to catechism classes when we were very young. I still say the Lord's prayer to this day. It helps.

How does the past show up in the present?

[Laughs] Good question. Poverty breeds a scarcity mentality. That shows up even though I'm comfortable now. I have a few rules in my household, and one of them is we never waste food.

If you serve food, you've got to make sure you will finish it. [Laughs] Oh yes, serve what you will finish. Another thing is the accumulation of little things because I think things will run out.

I have a triple of everything I own, as my son says, because in my mind, things might run out, and so you need to make sure that you have enough of everything.

When we go for World Rugby, I'm probably the one person who walks out with more complimentary pens than anybody. I will not let that pen be thrown away. [Laughs]. That’s my past showing up.

What new habits have you built in this season of your life?

Staying grounded. I've always approached everything that's happened to me and that is happening to me with a certain level of grace and humility.

And I do recognise that truly all glory and honour be to Him for the fact that I've come this far, because I wouldn't be here sitting, having this interview if it really wasn't for Him.

I have to remind myself where I have come from when I feel pride and arrogance coming. I’m not supposed to be here, a woman being elected to World Rugby, shattering the glass ceiling. I had to recognise that I was given a privilege to pave the way for other women.

I promised myself that by the time I turned 50, which by the way is in November, I would have more than 50 women in leadership positions in the Kenya Rugby Union. Now, we have 110-plus women in leadership in rugby.

Women are now more recognised in sports, including the just-ended Awisi Africa Women in Sport, where the majority of the awards went to women from a rugby background.

I've got a chapter called Racket Rugby where we are involved in a children's rehabilitation centre called Hidden Talent, where we have been journeying with them for the last eight years.

We also buy second-hand bras to make sure these girls play rugby, and we've seen girls come out of that chapter and go on to represent the national team.

This is a three-pronged question: did you ever reconnect with your biological father, and what do you think was the impact of his absence and a mother who was struggling with alcoholism?

Those are heavy questions. When I was 13, we had a head-on collision. My mother was driving, I was sitting in the front, and my youngest brother was sitting in the middle. When the accident happened, I moved forward to protect my brother, and my head hit the glass, shattering it.

In that moment, they say your life flashes past you; for me, memories of my childhood that I had forgotten, that I didn’t know I had, flashed before my eyes. I told my mom, “We had another father.” She looked at me completely dumbstruck. She reacted in a very interesting way; she actually slapped me and said, "That is never to be spoken again."

The thing is, when my biological father left, he threw us out of the house, and I hit a stump of a tree. I was five. If you meet me, you'll notice my left eye—I'm short-sighted. My mother tells me I should have lost that eye; instead, the trauma made me lose all memories of that event.

In fact, the only thing I could recall for a very long time was our life in the rural area, not of my father and the drama. All memory wiped, until that accident when everything came flooding back.

That’s wild. What did you do?

I promised myself I was going to find him one day. So when I started working in corporate, I got a private detective to look for him, it took him months of going all over the country before he found him and a whole side of our family that we didn't know about, which is a Kikuyu side.

He was a Starehe Boys alumnus, a brilliant man, well sought-after in his career, but a severe alcoholic, as most of these brilliant men tend to be. He succumbed to cancer. You will see my email address is 0615; it’s symbolic—that’s when he died.

I only got to know him for a year, and it was a very tough year between us, with me trying to make peace and reconcile why he walked away and why he was the way he was.

Was it cathartic for you?

Yes. I think finding him allowed me to find myself. There are a lot of aspects of my personality that I'd never understood. I can understand the effects of absentee fathers.

I've sat on boards of children's homes, and I see what it means not to have a father present. It’s difficult for the child, especially a young man, because he grows without the understanding of what it means to lead as a man, to be a man, you know, and just to show up as a man for a lady.

Fathers are our first love. Without that, then you position us for the possibility of abuse because we are short of love. We don't know what it means to be loved. We don't know what it means to be handled with respect as a woman.

So, we entertain and take all kinds of rubbish from men. And that's why you see so many cases of gender-based violence. I honestly believe it is an attribute of the absence of men in our lives because there's that confidence and courage that comes from having a father who says to you, "You are beautiful, you are worth it, you can do it."

You know, Lanco did that for me. He was a stepfather sent from heaven. The day he discovered I loved to dance, I'll never forget, he took me to Carnivore, sat at the bar, and said, "Go dance, I will be here." He's the reason I believe I am what I am today because of who he was and his presence in my life, giving me that permission to be. What was the second one…

Your mom…

Yes, her struggles never allowed her to be there to encourage and motivate us to move forward. It was a struggle. I'm a mother of three—25, 27, and 30—and I'll tell you, to date I still wonder if I'm a good enough mother.

My imposter syndrome shows up more when I think about myself in the space of motherhood. And a lot of it is because I never quite got to know or understand what it meant to show up fully as a woman who's a mother because of the kind of relationship we had with my mother, which was in many ways traumatic for most of my life.

Maybe to close this, we should talk about rugby. You have ventured into a territory that has been predominantly male—board member of World Rugby and served as the director of Kenya Rugby Union. What have you learned in the office?

It can be an intimidating space when you begin like I did, with no female presence. I have learned by working with men that men are not very emotional beings compared to us women. We take things more personally than men do.

Men will disagree in the boardroom, and later you see them in the bar slapping each other on the back and laughing. I had to adapt quickly in this regard. I have learned to stay under the radar and focus on delivering.

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