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Home / Popya with Emilia Imene...Losing loved ones never stop her from succeeding
Popya with Emilia Imene...Losing loved ones never stop her from succeeding
2018-06-06Staff Report 2 Pinehas Nakaziko WINDHOEK - Emilia Imene has a passion for developing and adding value to everybody she meets on her earthly journey. “Apart from my talkative self, I am always eager to listen more and talk less as I continue learning as much as I can from different individuals. I have both the extrovert and introvert version and I am very welcoming.” Imene is currently the CEO of both Imene Team Building and Imene Travels, specialising in hosting and facilitating corporate team building events, management retreats, leadership development, mentorship and transformation as well as social events. Under Imene Travels, she organises different customised trips. “After embarking on the self-discovery journey, I discovered that I was a born leader and my calling was to help develop others in all aspects of their lives and create as many leaders as possible. Since then, my drive has been to invest in creating more great leaders than more followers,” says Imene. Imene grew up with her parents and siblings in the village of Oshitayi, few kilometers from Ondangwa in the northern part of the country. “We had an amazing home with the most loving and caring parents in the whole world, unfortunately, this changed when we lost our mother in 2003,” said Imene. Life without their mother became scary for them as well as for their father. “Despite all that, our home continued to be amazing and my father provided us with the love and care we needed from him and my mother.” In 2005, it was another bad year for her again losing her father. “I was in Grade 8 by the time and that was the worst year of my life. Everything changed in my life and that of my siblings. Not only did we have to grow up without our parents but I had to grow up separated from my siblings as well. We each had to be under the care of guardians in different homes,” she said. Her grandparents passed on as well, leaving her with her two sisters and two brothers. Days became tough and depression kicked in from time to time. There were times she could no longer bear it. But with the help of her best friends, for the sake of her family she soldiered on. In 2017, Imene again lost her older brother. “I have since been broken into pieces that nobody can ever put together. I felt my life was over and there was no reason to continue living. My better half was taken from me. It was the most devastating moment in my life. I, however, knew that I had to continue moving forward and upward only as it was what my parents and my brother needed to see from up there,” says Imene. Her biggest motive has always been the promise she made at her father’s grave in 2005 to build a legacy for him. “Everything I have done was inspired by his amazing strength that he showed me from the day I was born to the day he took his last breath. His name, my memories and our dream, will always be my motive to push for excellence.” After Grade 12, she enrolled at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) studying Accounting and Finance. Imene started her first job as a Call Centre Consultant at the First National Bank in 2012. She then moved to Old Mutual Namibia in 2015 and worked there for a year and a half. In 2016 she got a first line managerial offer at FNB. At the end of 2016, she began to build her father’s legacy founding Imene Team Building. “It was not an easy start having a full time job and running my business at the same time. Mid 2017, I made the decision to be fully committed to my business and I then resigned with 24 hours-notice.” She says the most defining moment for her was when she embarked on her self-discovery journey. “I took three months away from everything and everyone to really evaluate my life and determine the steps I had to take to live the life that was created by my creator, but with my own ingredients,” says Imene, adding that she stopped living her life to satisfy society’s expectations, cultural beliefs, family and friends, and started living her life according to how she wanted each area of her life to be. Her most desirable goal is to get a strong clientele and develop as many people as possible and build a great legacy for her father. 2018-06-06Staff Report 2
