This reflection is drawn from a conversation with Minah Koela, Director of Beautiful Gate, as part of the DGMT Innovation Fellowship’s ongoing learning about how leadership and innovation take shape within organisations working in complex community contexts. It reflects on Beautiful Gate’s journey through the Fellowship, and what became visible about leadership, community, and organisational practice along the way.
Beautiful Gate did not enter the Fellowship with a neat or clearly defined question. Their work was already shaped by layers of complexity and, like many organisations working closely within community, the challenges they were facing did not sit neatly within programme boundaries. When Minah stepped into leadership, this complexity was already present. Within months, COVID-19 arrived, and the organisation found itself navigating a crisis that required immediate response. The work shifted quickly. Priorities changed. The organisation had to rethink how to support children and families in a context where safety, access, and stability could not be assumed.
But even as the pandemic began to ease, the sense of uncertainty did not disappear. It shifted.
Rising violence, gang activity, and increasing instability in the community began to shape the realities that children and families were living with. Young people were being recruited into gangs. Schools were disrupted. Families were navigating fear on a daily basis.
Within this context, the organisation began to sit with a more difficult question. Not one that could be solved through a single intervention, but one that required engaging the broader system around them.
“There is no street that gives birth to a child,” Minah reflected, a philosophy that affirms that children are not born of the street, but of families and communities that hold both responsibility and influence over their upbringing. This shifts the work away from seeing children in isolation, toward engaging the wider ecosystems that influence their lives. It is within this understanding that Beautiful Gate entered the DGMT Innovation Fellowship.
Entering the Fellowship with a lived question
The question Beautiful Gate brought into the Fellowship was not theoretical. It was shaped by what they were seeing and experiencing in their work. There was no clear solution at the time and, perhaps more importantly, no expectation that there would be one. There was hope that the Fellowship would not offer an answer, but rather a process.
Through this process, the organisation began to unpack their challenge and refine their innovation question more intentionally. Tools such as the problem tree created a way to slow down and examine what sat beneath the surface, identify emerging patterns, and question assumptions about their community. The complexity of the situation became clearer rather than simpler, and this was not always comfortable. Many Fellows and organisations who have walked this path would likely recognise this experience.
“I realised you need to be a student,” Minah said. “Otherwise, you are not going to make it.”
This highlights something important for leaders supporting fellows, that their role is not only to offer expertise, but also to learn from fellows. Fellows become mirrors of practice, surfacing grounded insights about communities, implementation, and organisational realities that can challenge and sharpen leadership itself over time. In this sense, organisational leaders are also invited into a posture of learning, where engagement with fellows becomes an opportunity to reflect on and strengthen their own leadership practice.
What becomes visible here is that the Fellowship did not remove the complexity of the work. It created space for the organisation to engage with it differently, and more collectively, rather than leaving it only with those who had initially identified the challenge.
The Fellows and the organisation
When Beautiful Gate nominated Fellows, the choice was intentional. Thabo and Khanyisa were not selected because they fit a conventional image of leadership, where leaders are often expected to be the loudest voice in the room, the most visibly confident speakers, or the individuals who consistently steer conversations and produce polished solutions. Instead, their leadership shows up in more relational and grounded ways, shaped by listening, shared ownership, and a deep connection to the communities they work with. They were chosen because of how they were already showing up in the work. Their leadership was visible in practice.
Khanyisa worked closely with children who required more care, holding them with a patience that was recognised not only within the organisation, but by families. Parents would reach out to her directly, trusting the way she supported their children. She created spaces where families remained connected, not out of obligation, but because they felt part of something. She also supported her team in ways that could easily go unnoticed but were recognised by Minah.
Thabo’s leadership showed up differently, but just as strongly. He had a way of gathering young people and parents, organising activities, and creating spaces that others wanted to be part of. There was initiative in the way he worked, but also a sense of alignment with the community itself.
Both had grown within the organisation. They understood the context not from the outside, but from within it.
There is also a reality that sits behind this. In many organisations like Beautiful Gate, development does not happen through structured programmes or formal pathways. People often step into roles and learn as they go, holding responsibility before they feel fully ready. This is not always by design, but it is a reality many organisations operate within.
Through the Fellowship, that reality was held gently, allowing something else to take shape as the Fellows deepened their thinking, reflected on their practice, and brought new ways of working into their teams.
What is clear from this conversation is that the Fellowship did not introduce leadership into the organisation. It met something that was already there and gave it space to grow.
Shifts within the organisation
The impact of the Fellowship was not only individual; it began to show up within the organisation itself. After every immersion as Khanyisa and Thabo would bring in their learnings to the organisations, conversations became more intentional, and teams started to ask different questions. There was more space to reflect on the root causes of the challenges they were facing, rather than only responding to immediate needs.
The innovation question did not disappear. It evolved, helping the team see new ways to support children and respond to the impact of crime in the community.
Rather than moving quickly to solutions, the organisation began to engage more deeply with the systems shaping their work. This included thinking about how families, communities, and broader structures were interconnected, and how these structures could begin working together to build more resilient responses.
A different way of leading within community
Something that became visible through this journey is a different way of understanding leadership.
Thabo and Khanyisa did not position themselves as experts arriving with answers. Their leadership was rooted in relationship. They listened. They created spaces for others to participate. They moved with the community, rather than ahead of it.
In many ways, this reflects a different kind of leadership, one that does not sit outside the system, but within it. This is what it looks like to be an animator.
An animator is someone who does not carry the work alone but brings others into it. Someone who can sit between the organisation, the community, and broader systems, allowing something more collective to emerge. This is a way of working that the Innovation Fellowship actively holds and encourages.
A reflection for organisational leaders
Minah’s reflections also offer something to other organisational leaders, particularly those working within similarly complex systems and considering joining the Fellowship.
Her journey was not shaped by having clear answers. It was shaped by responding to what was in front of her, often in moments of uncertainty.
“Sometimes I really didn’t know what to do… I needed to figure out a solution.”
There is an honesty in this that matters.
Stepping into something like the Fellowship is not about arriving with a perfect question. It is about being willing to sit with what is difficult, to remain open, and to engage the work as it is.
Closing reflection
Beautiful Gate’s journey through the Fellowship does not present a neat story of resolution, instead, it offers something more grounded. Leadership does not require perfect conditions or certainty. It requires a willingness to engage, to learn, and to stay close to what is unfolding.
Close to people. Close to context. Close to the work itself.
Because sometimes, that is where meaningful innovation begins.