Women to Watch: Hermence Matsotsa

Founder/Principal Consultant, UbuntuSpeaks, LLC

From the government sphere to owning her own business, Hermence Matsotsa’s passionate motivation to positively impact the world and her talent in connecting people has driven her global business success. Hermence Matsotsa, MPH. Ed. is the Founder/Principal Consultant of UbuntuSpeaks, LLC – a leading U.S.- based firm that specializes in global health workforce development, cross/intercultural communication, team building, and employee engagement training consulting. As a trilingual entrepreneur (French, Spanish, and English), Ms. Matsotsa has proven expertise in disease prevention, treatment, care programming, cultural awareness, communication, capacity building, health systems, strengthening training, community mobilization, and quantitative and qualitative social/behavioral operational research within diverse cultural and multilingual populations.  

Ms. Matsotsa has more than 15 years of professional experience in global health, infectious disease prevention, and treatment and outbreak response (HIV/AIDS, TB, Polio, sexually transmitted infections, Ebola, Malaria, and Cholera). She is also experienced in women and gender development, family planning, reproductive health, and public health policy.  

Ms. Matsotsa has led global health and US-based community development projects with organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization, Fulbright Scholar Program, and the United States Peace Corps. These innovative projects focused on workforce development and training, strategic and intercultural communication, team building, employee engagement, program management, and supervision of multicultural staff and specialists. Her workplace keynotes challenge corporate and organizational leaders to create diverse, inclusive, and empowering spaces. She encourages them to enable a culture of genuine respect, understanding, and collaboration for personal and organizational growth.

Hermence’s motivations to start UbuntuSpeaks were her need to make an impact on the world, her desire for freedom, and her strong belief in cultural intelligence and global health. After trying to accomplish her goals in the government sector, she realized that politics stifled her value and how much she could give and that she would be much more effective in operating her own business.

Her special skills that make her business successful are cross-cultural communication and networking. Her biggest compliment has been about her energy – while working in Italy she was told “we wanted to be next to you to feel your positive energy and be part of that.” Hermence truly enjoys connecting with people and making them feel good about who they are and what they are doing. 

The biggest parts of her business that keep Hermence up at night are probably relatable to most entrepreneurs: social marketing and time management – doing everything all at once. Some of her major challenges also include accessing capital for her business expenses and competition in the Diversity and Inclusion space. Hermence has had to find a way to break through this saturated industry, while at the same time learning to pivot into virtual environments during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The pandemic taught her to change her mindset. She stopped giving away her talent and started understanding her value. She has had to learn to let go of people who bring down her self-worth and surround herself with people who lift her up. “You need the people who believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself, the people that will push you to your high frequency.” Her business advice: to surround yourself with people who will cheer you on and elevate you to your highest potential. 

She credits her business success in part to her WEOP membership, which has presented her with possibilities, mentors, coaches, and supportive relationships with other women.  WEOP members are not just a box on a checklist – they build personal relationships with and within the organization. “WEOP is the type of organization that supports the growth of women owned businesses with resources to achieve business success.” She has found the Prime Time Contract Ready program especially invaluable in opening her eyes to the opportunities of the federal contracting market. She did not need to jump through hoops or prove herself to access resources at WEOP. Instead, she came as she was, and she easily found meaningful conversations, connections, personal support, and confidence through her WEOP membership. “I personally feel that if it was not for WEOP, I would not be where I am today.”

In the next five years, she sees her business as becoming truly global, with multiple offices in different parts of the world staffed by diverse employees willing to fulfill her mission of connecting people. She has no desire to sell her business. In fact, she wants to grow and create strong partnerships and teams so that she no longer needs to perform the daily tasks that sustain UbuntuSpeaks. She also wants to use her cross-cultural communication talent to engage in more public speaking opportunities.

Her “aha” moment last year: she can and deserves to be paid the way she wants to in her business. When she started pursuing contracts, she realized she did not have to take every single opportunity presented to her if it did not fit her needs and her purpose. Her favorite quote that she wanted to share for other women in business was:

“You have to have the tenacity and faith to keep going when times are tough. The road to success is far from easy. It is a journey.”