There is a question at the heart of everything Bukelwa Monqo builds and it is not the one most people in her industry are asking.
Most people in communications are asking how to get into the room. Bukelwa is asking what you build once you are there.
That distinction is not accidental. It is the philosophy that gave birth to Old Boys Club PR, a name deliberately chosen to reference the informal networks and established systems that have historically concentrated access, influence, and opportunity in the hands of a few. By naming her agency after the very structure she was working against, Bukelwa made a statement before she said a single word: she was not here to quietly join the system. She was here to build something better.
With more than 15 years of experience in communications, Bukelwa Monqo is the Founder and Managing Director of Old Boys Club PR, a communications agency whose work sits at the intersection of business, visibility, access, and impact. Through the agency and through initiatives like The Hot Seat, she is focused on one thing above all else, turning access into opportunity and turning individual success into something that creates pathways for the women who come after her.
She is not interested in building a legacy that stops with her. She is interested in building one that keeps going after she leaves the room.
In this conversation, Bukelwa opens up about the thinking behind Old Boys Club PR, what 15 years in communications has taught her about who gets visibility and who does not, what The Hot Seat is and why she felt compelled to build it, and what she wants every woman who has finally made it into the room to understand about what her responsibility is now that she is there.
You built an agency, a philosophy, and a community programme, all from the same conviction. Before any of it, who is Bukelwa, and what made her?
Before I was a founder, I learned very early that opportunity can change the trajectory of a person’s life.
I grew up in a family where education, hard work and ambition were deeply valued. My mother was a teacher and my father, who was always business minded, fostered a high drive for excellence, so I was exposed to both the importance of knowledge and the world of business from a young age.
But I also became very aware of who gets seen, who gets heard and who gets access. I think that awareness has followed me throughout my career.
I’ve always been curious about people and their stories. I’m interested in what makes someone believe they can become something before they have any evidence that they can. And I think that is ultimately what sits underneath everything I’ve built, whether it’s Old Boys Club PR, The Hot Seat, or the work I do with young people.
At my core, I’m a builder. I like taking an idea that doesn’t exist yet and asking, “What would happen if we actually created it?”
And I think I’ve always had a very strong belief that your success should not end with you. If you have access, you have a responsibility to create more access.
You’ve spent more than 15 years in communications. What made you decide it was time to stop building within other people’s structures and build something of your own?
For a long time, I was very comfortable being successful within someone else’s structure. I had built a career, worked with incredible brands and learned from some very smart people.
But eventually I realised that I had accumulated enough experience, relationships and conviction to build something that reflected my own philosophy.
There was also a question I kept coming back to: if I know how to build brands, reputations and platforms for other people, why couldn’t I build one of my own?
Starting Old Boys Club PR wasn’t about rejecting everything I had learned. It was actually about taking everything I had learned and giving myself permission to build differently.
I wanted a business where I could be more intentional about the kind of work we take on, the relationships we build, the people we develop and the culture we create.
There is a particular moment in entrepreneurship when you stop asking, “What is the opportunity available to me?” and start asking, “What opportunity can I create?”
That shift was important for me.
Old Boys Club PR is deliberately named after the informal networks that have historically controlled access to influence and opportunity. What did you want to challenge when you chose that name, and what did you want to build in its place?
The name was intentionally provocative. And at times you have to be comfortable with being the contradiction when you are creating something unconventional.
The “old boys’ club” has historically represented a system where access is often determined by who you know, where you come from and whether you already belong in the room.
I wanted to take that language and turn it on its head.
Old Boys Club PR is about saying: if networks are powerful, then let’s build networks that are more open. If access creates opportunity, then let’s create more access.
For me, it is not about pretending networks don’t matter. They absolutely do. Relationships are currency in business.
The question is: who gets to participate in those networks?
So I wanted Old Boys Club to become its own kind of club, one built around relationships, ideas, collaboration and opening doors. A place where young people can learn, where women can build influence, where talent can be discovered and where your background doesn’t determine whether you belong.
The irony of the name is intentional. We took a phrase associated with exclusion and built a philosophy around expanding the room.
What has building Old Boys Club PR taught you about entrepreneurship that no career or corporate role could have prepared you for?
Entrepreneurship teaches you that there is nowhere to hide.
In a corporate environment, there are structures around you: departments, budgets, processes, teams and ultimately someone else carrying the responsibility for the business.
When it’s your business, the buck really does stop with you.
I’ve learned that being good at what you do isn’t enough. You have to learn sales, finance, leadership, hiring, difficult conversations, strategy, resilience and sometimes simply how to keep going when the numbers don’t look the way you want them to.
I’ve also learned that growth is uncomfortable.
You have to constantly become a bigger version of yourself to lead the business you’re trying to build. The skills that got you to one level aren’t necessarily the skills that will take you to the next.
And perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned that entrepreneurship is not about having all the answers. It’s about being willing to make decisions with imperfect information, learn quickly and take responsibility for the outcome.
You speak about visibility, relationships and networks as forms of access. How have you seen these things shape who gets opportunities in business, and what do you think women especially need to understand about building their own networks?
I think we sometimes underestimate how much business happens through relationships.
People tend to talk about merit as though opportunities simply arrive because you’re good enough. But being good at what you do and being known for what you do are two different things.
Visibility creates awareness. Relationships create trust. Networks create access.
Women need to understand that networking isn’t about collecting contacts or attending every event in the room. It’s about building genuine relationships before you need something from someone.
And I think women also need to become more comfortable being visible.
We are often taught to let our work speak for itself. Of course the work matters, but someone has to know the work exists. You have to be willing to talk about your expertise, put your ideas into the world, introduce yourself, ask for the meeting and sometimes make the first move.
I also believe women need to stop thinking about networks only in terms of what they can receive. Build relationships where you can also open doors for other women.
Because the most powerful network isn’t one where everyone is trying to get through the same door. It’s one where people are holding doors open for one another.
The Hot Seat gives young people their first opportunity to step into professional spaces and imagine themselves belonging there. Where did your own sense of possibility come from when you were starting out, and how does that influence the opportunities you create for others today?
My sense of possibility came from seeing people around me work hard and create lives for themselves. My parents were both very hardworking people, and that gave me an early understanding that your circumstances don’t have to define the size of your ambition.
But I also know what it feels like not to have all the answers about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.
That’s why The Hot Seat matters to me.
Sometimes young people don’t need another motivational speech. They need proximity. They need to sit across from someone who is already doing something they aspire to do and realise, “Actually, this is a person. This is a career. This is a world I can enter.”
I’ve always believed that exposure can change someone’s imagination.
So when we create these opportunities for the seven year old bright spark or the teenager who had to drop out of school due to hard circumstances, we’re not simply giving young people a seat at an event. We’re giving them a reference point for what might be possible in their own lives.
And hopefully, one day, they become the person sitting in that chair making the next young person believe they belong too.
Building a business while creating opportunities for other people can come with competing demands. How have you learned to balance growth, profitability and the kind of impact you want the business to have?
I’ve learned that impact without sustainability is difficult to maintain.
As founders, we can become so focused on creating impact that we forget that the business itself needs to be healthy. Profitability isn’t the enemy of purpose. In many ways, profitability gives you the resources to make your purpose sustainable.
So I’ve become much more intentional about understanding the commercial side of the business, our revenue, our costs, our people, our margins and where we are actually creating value.
At the same time, I ask myself whether the business is creating value beyond the invoice.
Are we developing people? Are we creating opportunities? Are we bringing different voices into rooms they may not previously have had access to?
I don’t think every commercial decision has to be an impact initiative. Sometimes you simply need to run a good business.
But I do believe that if you have a clear philosophy, it should show up in how you build the business, not just in the things you say about it.
What has entrepreneurship forced you to unlearn about success, particularly as you’ve moved from building a career to building an institution?
I’ve had to unlearn the idea that success is about how much you can personally achieve.
When you’re building a career, there can be a lot of validation in being the person who knows the answer, wins the pitch, gets the client or delivers the work.
But when you’re building an institution, that mindset can actually become a limitation.
The goal has to shift from “How much can I do?” to “What can I build that can exist beyond me?”
That means learning to delegate. It means trusting other people. It means developing leaders rather than creating dependence on you.
I’ve also had to unlearn the idea that success always looks polished.
Entrepreneurship can be messy. There are seasons where you’re growing, seasons where you’re rebuilding and seasons where you’re simply figuring things out.
I think success now means something different to me. It’s less about proving that I can do something and more about building something that creates value long after I’ve done it.
You’ve asked what remains when we leave the room. For you, what would a meaningful legacy look like when the room is no longer yours to occupy?
I would like my legacy to be measured by the people who no longer need me to open the door because they learned how to open doors themselves.
If Old Boys Club PR is successful, it shouldn’t only be remembered as an agency I founded. I want it to have created people, communicators, entrepreneurs, creatives, leaders, who went on to build things of their own.
The same applies to the community work.
I want a young woman who sat in The Hot Seat years ago to eventually become the woman in the Hot Seat. I want someone who once wondered whether they belonged in the room to eventually be the person inviting someone else into it.
Ultimately, I don’t want my legacy to be a monument to me.
I want it to be a network of people who are better equipped, more confident and more willing to create opportunities for others because they crossed paths with something I built.
For me, that is the real measure of leaving the room: not whether people remember that you were there, but whether the room is different because you were.
