Picture a six-year-old in front of a television, watching a reporter deliver a piece to camera. Behind the reporter, a bomb goes off. She goes down. The dust settles, and she gets up and carries on with the story.

The reporter was Christiane Amanpour, covering the Iraq war for CNN. The child was Leah Nassaka, who says she has had a photographic memory since childhood, and who has never lost that scene. “I was like, wooow,” she says. Journalism was the first career she chose. Communications is where it took her, and she has not looked back.

Ask Leah what she does today and she smiles and calls herself “Leah of all trades.” It is not modesty, and it is not a joke.

Across marketing, creative and communications, there is hardly a seat at the table she has not sat in.

She has been the strategist shaping the big idea and the creative director guarding its craft. She has held the client relationship as account lead, stretched every shilling of a media budget as a planner, and kept a team on time as its leader.

Few people move between those roles so easily. Fewer still keep the work human while doing it.A belief, and a Brand Manager’s desk

At the heart of it is one conviction: the best brands do not just speak to people, they make people feel seen.

That belief has run through her work with multinational consumer brands, diplomatic missions, development partners and national institutions across East Africa.

Today she is Brand Manager at Next Media Group, one of East Africa’s leading multimedia companies, with 26 brands across television, radio, digital and events.

She leads three of them: NextCom, the group’s creative and communications agency, Next Events, and Next Productions.

On any given day she might be refining the positioning of an agency brand, shaping the commercial story of an events business, or building a go-to-market plan for a production house.

She also sits on the group’s Strategy Desk, a small team that conceives and executes integrated campaigns for clients across the whole ecosystem.

This is where “Leah of all trades” is most at home. One week can bring a national conference, a public-interest movement, a product launch and a piece of diplomatic communications, each needing a different voice and a different plan.

Within her first three months she was named NextCom Transformer of the Month (June 2026), a sign of how quickly she makes her mark.

The recent work shows the range. She helped deliver the third edition of the State of the Digital Economy summit, which brought the Ministry of ICT, regulators and 11 sponsors and partners together under the theme “Beyond Connectivity: Turning Access into Opportunity.” She reimagined Taasa Obutonde (“Save the Environment”) as a citizen-owned movement tied to Uganda’s monthly National Cleaning Day.

She manages digital communications for a foreign embassy in Uganda, from creative production to live coverage and crisis escalation. And she built a joint positioning, content and activation strategy for Next Productions and Next Events, two of the group’s growth brands.

Before Next Media, Leah was Head of Digital & Media at CINAT Advertising, one of Uganda’s established independent agencies. In four years she created and delivered more than 20 integrated campaigns across FMCG, media, the public sector and the development space, leading cross-functional teams of up to 20 people.

The results were measurable: sales growth of as much as 30%, brand reach up 35%, media costs cut by a fifth.

The list includes PZ Cussons’ Share the Joy (Season 3), a national digital and on-ground launch built to global brand standards, and Rancher’s Finest, which she moved from commodity to premium. It includes Newman’s Snacks, turned from a shelf product into an everyday companion through localised content, and the Kenyan launch of Imperial Leather Oud.

She led digital commercialisation for Capital Radio Group’s three stations, Capital FM, Beat FM and KIIS FM, including The Big Wedding Season 8.

There was also work with a different weight. She led communications and stakeholder coordination for the Private Sector Foundation Uganda’s National Export Logistics Dialogue, which convened more than 500 leaders from government and industry.

She directed strategy for Tofiira Ku Kubbo, a youth road safety campaign that put multiple partners behind one message. And she ran Build 4 KSPH, a fundraising drive toward a UGX 100 million target for the Kampala School for the Physically Handicapped, alongside Mandela Washington Fellowship alumni, the U.S. Mission and corporate partners.

Her path also ran through the International Association of Women in Radio and Television, where she supported communications and programmes for a global network of women in media. It deepened a commitment she still carries: giving women’s voices room to lead.

What sets her apart, colleagues say, is not only what she builds but who she builds it with.

She pulls young talent into the work, trusts them with real responsibility and stays in their corner. They named her CINAT RAVE Mentor of the Year 2024.

She is now pursuing a postgraduate qualification in Strategic Brand Communications, “sharpening the theory behind a decade of instinct.”

THE INTERVIEW

In her own words

We asked Leah to answer as she would over coffee. Here is what she said.

You call yourself “a Firebrand.” When did you first hear the phrase, and was it a compliment or a warning?

A compliment, and a real confidence booster.

Take us back to the moment you knew communications was your world.

Funny enough, I started off as a journalist. I was inspired by Christiane Amanpour reporting on the Iraq war in the 2000s. There is a scene I still carry.

She was doing a piece to camera when a bomb exploded behind her. She went down, and after the dust settled she continued reporting. I was like, wooow. That has been in my mind since I was about six years old.

You have been a strategist, creative director, account lead, planner and team leader. Which seat was hardest, and which felt like home?

Account lead has been the hardest. Creative brand strategy feels like home.

Tell us about a campaign where “making people feel seen” really happened. How did you know it had landed?

Share the Joy. Motherhood is a mix of emotions: joy, exhaustion, fear, pride, pain. We built the Cussons Baby campaign to make Ugandan and Kenyan mothers feel seen and heard, through a brand that shows up and makes motherhood a little easier. I knew it had landed when the numbers came in.

What does it take to reposition a brand people have already filed away in their minds?

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Find where you lost people in your communication. That is the jackpot.

Describe an idea that didn’t work. What did it teach you?

Mostly, ideas fail because of execution constraints, or because the brief got lost in translation. I can’t name a campaign, unfortunately.

When a client falls in love with an idea you know is wrong, what do you do?

I tell them honestly. I show them why, with evidence. If they still want it, I make it work as well as it possibly can, and I put my view on record.

Twenty-six brands under one roof is a lot of noise. How do you keep NextCom, Next Events and Next Productions sounding like themselves?

By positioning each brand and standing on business at all times.

What does the Strategy Desk do that a traditional agency couldn’t?

A traditional agency has to buy attention. At Next Media, we already have it. The hardest part is passing on the brief and making sure it is not lost in translation.

How do you switch voices without losing your own?

I understand my brands’ voices to the dot first. Then research and insight, and using each project to echo my brands.

What do you look for in young talent, and what is the riskiest responsibility you have handed to someone new?

The will to learn anything in the field. As Alvin Toffler put it, the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. The riskiest thing I did was give a junior a very delicate account to run for two weeks, because I wanted them to experience it.

What do you want to change for women in marketing and media in Uganda?

To start with, intelligence has no gender. That is the sentiment I want to change, especially in marketing and creative.

Who mentored you, and what do you still carry from them?

A very strong-willed lady in my early days, Nankwanga Eunice Kasirye. On my 21st birthday she told me I am a Firebrand, and every day I wake up to be just that.

What is Uganda’s marketing industry getting right, and what is it too comfortable about?

It is getting better at using insight. It is too comfortable with culture as the way to connect with audiences, even though it is the most profound way to get into people’s minds, in a good way.

What has your postgraduate study told you about your instincts?

That theory has simply aligned with them and justified them. When you are very observant in this field, you start to live it, and everything about you changes. My friends are always wowed by how much joy I find in consuming marketing content.

Where do you want to be in five years?

At the top table, building African brands that live in people’s muscle memory, the way Red Bull does, while building a team of young creatives who are better than me. That is how I will know I have done it right.

RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS

A brand you admire, and wh?.

Red Bull. They understood culture. They make drinks, and everything else grew beyond that in a good way.

The most overused word in marketing decks. “360°.” Everyone promises it, but very few campaigns go all the way round.

The first thing you do when a brief lands. Research.

A book, podcast or person shaping your thinking. Legacy by James Kerr, my best read of 2026. The podcast Legally Clueless, for Mannerless Women. And a person, one of my closest friends right now, whom I can’t name. When they read this, they will know.

One piece of advice for a young marketer.

The first important thing you will ever sell is yourself. Have grit. You need thick skin out here.

“A brand is at its best when…” People have it in their muscle memory.

The takeaway

Listen to Leah for long enough and a pattern shows. The scene that hooked her at six, a woman who gets up from the dust and finishes the report, is the same instinct that sits behind her advice to young marketers: have grit, grow thick skin, keep going. The Firebrand label she was handed at 21 has become a daily discipline rather than a title.

Her answer to what makes a brand great is the same one she gives about her own career.

It is about being remembered in the muscle, not just the mind. She wants to build African brands that live there, from a seat at the top table, with a bench of young creatives behind her who are better than she is.

For Women in Marketing, an Evolve Africa property, that is the kind of voice worth amplifying. Her case is simple and hard to argue with: intelligence has no gender, and the work proves it.