In the Listen To Your Footsteps podcast, I have in-depth conversations with Africans operating across various fields such as the arts, design, advertising, media, entertainment, communications, technology and business about their life’s journey and the lessons they have learned along the way. It is a space for reflection, introspection, acknowledgement and celebration.
The most foundational theme across all episodes is the idea that how someone got to where they are matters more than where they arrived. Conversations are grounded in backstory, childhood, and the conditions that shaped each guest, not to romanticise origin stories, but to surface the craft of becoming.
We never rush to the destination. Guests are frequently prompted to return to inflection points – the moments a career collapsed, a direction shifted, a decision was made against the grain. This patient, longitudinal approach to storytelling generates one of the show’s most consistent insights: the pivot is rarely accidental; it is usually the accumulation of many smaller acts of listening to oneself.
Recurrent themes include: identity, belonging, and the question of home; reinvention and the courage of the pivot; fatherhood, parenting, and redefining manhood; craft, mastery, and the work behind visible success; quiet leadership; mental health, wellness, and the permission to heal; African creativity; ubuntu, community, and collective responsibility; storytelling and the archive as act of justice; and much more.
Listen To Your Footsteps podcast is available on multiple podcasting platforms including: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Afripods, YouTube, Amazon Music, Castbox, Podcast Addict, and Pocket Casts.
Kojo Baffoe is a South Africa based storyteller, writer, author & content strategist, driven by curiosity & a fascination with how people got to where they are and how they do what they do. In the Listen To Your Footsteps podcast, he has in-depth conversations with Africans operating across various fields like the arts, design, advertising, media, entertainment, technology and business about their life’s journey and the lessons they have learned along the way. It is a space for reflection, introspection, acknowledgement and celebration.
Lebo Madiba is the founder and managing director of PR Powerhouse, one of South Africa's most respected strategic communications firms. She has spent her career at the intersection of stories, brands, culture, and trust — navigating white boardrooms as a young Black woman, building a business from a bedroom and a Vodacom dongle, managing reputations for the likes of South African Airways, Nedbank, Cricket South Africa, and Maersk, and advising at the highest levels of business and government during some of the country's most turbulent years.
But behind the external power was a woman who nearly worked herself into medical collapse, who had to learn the difference between herself and her work, and who eventually chose to rebuild everything — slower, quieter, and on her own terms.
In this conversation, Lebo and Kojo Baffoe discuss:
- Growing up in Pretoria and the grandmother who made her read newspapers
- Climbing through some of the biggest PR agencies in the country
- Starting PR Powerhouse with one client, one dongle, and no safety net
- Managing crisis communications during the Zuma presidency and SAA's most difficult years
- The doctor's appointment that revealed how close to the edge she had come
- Divorce, therapy, and learning to separate the person from the professional
- Why the rebuilt PR Powerhouse is deliberately smaller, slower, and more selective
- What it means to finally have nothing left to prove
This is a conversation about what happens after the climb — and why the view from there looks nothing like you expected.
Follow Lebo Madiba and PR Powerhouse for more on strategic communications, reputation management, and leading with intention across South Africa and beyond.
Subscribe to Listen to Your Footsteps wherever you get your podcasts.
#PRPowerhouse #LeboMadiba #ListenToYourFootsteps #ReputationManagement #SouthAfricaBusiness #BlackWomenInBusiness #StrategicCommunications #AfricanEntrepreneurs #PRAgency #CrisisComms #WomenInBusiness #AfricanPodcast #BusinessPodcast #KojoBaffoe #PublicRelationsSA