By Christine Mudavanhu, AMA contributor
Sisters in Colour: When Leadership, Wellness and Sisterhood Become Oxygen
Sisters in Colour was never meant to be just a podcast or a coffee table book. It is a living archive of truth — a space where women of colour from around the world tell their own stories, in their own words, on their own terms.
Too often, our stories are framed through struggle alone. Deficit. Survival. Pain. Sisters in Colour chooses a different lens. It centres leadership, identity, purpose and growth — and, critically, it places wellness where it belongs: at the core of leadership, not as an afterthought.
Christine Mudavanhu (center) with two sisters in colour
We are three women behind this work: Dr Nora Amath, Nazia Ali, and myself, Christine Mudavanhu. Senior executives. Business owners. Women with board-level responsibility. Women whose decisions affect organisations, families and communities that depend on us.
And yet, at different moments in our lives, each of us received the same life-altering health diagnosis.
Not at the same time.
Not in the same way.
But in what can only be described as divine timing.
When one of us was in active treatment, another was in recovery. When one felt overwhelmed, another had just enough breath to hold her up. Without planning it, without naming it at first, we became oxygen for one another.
In leadership spaces, people often tell you to slow down. They offer advice. They project their own fears. They quietly question your capacity.
What they rarely see is the internal negotiation — the daily, private conversation between faith and fear, strength and surrender, responsibility and rest.
As women of colour in leadership, that negotiation is constant.
In our journeys, we leaned into faith. We leaned into science.
And just as importantly, we leaned into each other.
On the Sisters in Colour podcast, Dr Nora Amath and I speak openly about what many women carry silently. We talk about what it actually feels like to receive a diagnosis. What treatment is really like — beyond the clinical language. What no one tells you about recovery. And how you continue to show up as a leader while your body is healing.
Our story is not exceptional. It is common — just rarely spoken aloud.
Many women in leadership are navigating chronic illness quietly while still holding organisations on their shoulders. They attend board meetings between treatments. They make strategic decisions while managing pain, fatigue, and uncertainty. They are praised for resilience, while their vulnerability remains invisible.
There is a Chinese proverb that says, “Women hold up half the sky.”
In our case, we held up half the sky for each other.
This experience has reshaped how I understand leadership. Wellness in leadership is not weakness. Faith in leadership is not fragility. Community in leadership is not optional.
It is oxygen.
Sisters in Colour exists to normalise these conversations — not only in private, but at executive tables, in boardrooms, and in leadership cultures that still confuse exhaustion with excellence.
If you are a woman leading while navigating health challenges, know this: you are not alone. You do not have to perform strength in isolation. There is power in being seen, heard, and supported.
Read our stories. Share your experience.
Let’s redefine what strong leadership truly looks like.
More information about Sisters in Colour is available the following social media platforms
- Linked in page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sisters-in-colour/
- Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/sistersincolour_?igsh=ZTA1emQ1bjdiNnpl&utm_source=qr
