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Cynthia Hakutangwi

Ruth Butaumocho Gender profile
Even great writers like John Keats and George Orwell have endured that austere patch where publishers reject works, critics savage them and readers take years to read them.

However, that has not discouraged Cynthia Hakutangwi from authoring several works that touch on personal development and her undying passion for Pan-Africanism.

Her passion for writing, in addition to many other hats she puts on, emanates for her passion to communicate and positively influence communities to bring out the best in themselves.

“I want to influence positive change among communities.

“I want allow people to believe in themselves and unleash their potential so that they can create better communities around themselves,” she recently said.

Cynthia, who is a communications and personal development consultant, a pastor and an author, was in December crowned the Northern Region 2015 Female Entrepreneur of the Year by Megafast in recognition of her efforts in connecting community needs with resources for empowerment at various levels.

“I consider myself as a strategic broker who is able to identify and link resources and areas where they are needed most,” she said.

While she has already earned credit for her strategies in resources broking, Cynthia is equally versatile as a writer.

“Intelligent Conversations,” one of her more ambitious works, deals with how Africans secure the future by asking the right questions, aligning their beliefs, thoughts, perceptions and actions to greatness.

“There are so many resources in Africa that we can use to better our situation and take us to another level. However, for us to maximise on those resources, we would need to engage in intelligent conversations, build synergies and strategise so that we can achieve our mission,” she said.

Her passion to engage people in conversations related to their personal development has also seen her produce several films and documentaries whose messages provoke people and institutions to move out of their comfort zones and create trans-generational solutions.

“The tragedy of Africa is lack of documentation. My heart bleeds when I realise valuable information lying around that has not been documented,” Cynthia said.

“In every generation there is wealth of information that is being destroyed or being lost our without passing it on to the next generation, when we should be employing the baton technique to preserve our narratives.”

Cynthia says she chose to become a writer and a personal development trainer after realising her that she utilise her public speaking skills to impart knowledge to the largest audience possible.

“I developed good public speaking skills during my school days, as a mechanism to deal with self-low esteem, having had a very difficult childhood.

Conscious of her strong rural background and limited exposure, Cynthia would spend most of her time reading different books and make up for her deficiency on issues that her peers well familiar with.

“With no exposure to city life, having grown up in Chivhu, reading was my only passport to attain knowledge on issues that I was not familiar with.

“I would read everything and that shaped and fine-tuned my knowledge on a number of issues. Through reading, I could travel to places I had never been, and still attain the same satisfaction.

It was also during that time that Cynthia realised that she wanted to be an influential person, so she started working on her public speaking skills, to strengthen her communication skills.

That decision meant that she had to be actively involved in different public speaking forums and writing clubs, to further consolidate her resolution.

With her siblings cheering her on in her newly found passion, Cynthia’s passion in becoming an influential figure was further strengthened and by the then Queen Elizabeth School headgirl, Lindiwe Sileya’s unrelenting leadership skills.

“I was so inspired by her powerful presence whenever she stood up to address the girls, or read out the riot act. I vowed that one day I would be like her,” said Cynthia.

After finishing school, she enrolled for a course in marketing while working for a corporate organisation.

After finishing her course and equipped with corporate experience, Cynthia registered her company Traincor Business Consultants in 2004.

The company offered marketing consultancy services, organizational strategy design and human capital solutions.

That decision laid the foundation for her career in personal development training and writing. Starting her own company also gave birth to her passion on motivational speaking, where she focuses on creating tarns-generational solutions among other issues.

“Intelligent conversations are critical in laying the foundation for our future,” said Cynthia.

“Solutions that we need for our problems as individuals, nations and communities are not far away from us, but might be with the next person seating to you,” said Cynthia who also serves as a pastor at New Life Covenant church under Bishop Tudor and Pastor Chichi Bismark.

A firm believer in women’s empowerment, Cynthia says women need to brand themselves to ensure that they are strategically positioned for leadership positions.

“From the time that I was in primary school up to this day, I have met awesome and intelligent women who should be holding powerful positions in the country, sadly that has not been the case.

“They are competent, intelligent, powerful and hardworking, but they don’t get the recognition they deserve. It is simply because leadership in women has not been cultivated.

“That can only happen through training,” she said.

With perseverance and hardwork, women are unstoppable, says Cynthia.

Cynthia is married and has four children.