Dorothy Kabagambe Ssemanda has been promoted to CEO for ATC Uganda, effective July 1, 2022, replacing Michael Magambo. She has been the Chief Finance Officer, the first Ugandan to hold the position.
ATC Uganda is a subsidiary of American Tower Corporation and the largest telecommunication infrastructure provider in Uganda
Dorothy is a Fellow of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants FCCA, holds a Master of Business Administration from Edinburgh Business School, Herriot Watt University in Scotland UK and a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from Makerere Business School.
Upon completion of her degree, Kabagambe started her career journey with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Here, she garnered experience in auditing different multinational companies, preparing financial statements, reviewing financial controls, risk assessments, and internal control reviews.
In 2009, she moved to the defunct Zain Uganda Limited, now Airtel Uganda, as the business planning and analysis manager. She was in charge of financial business support, budgeting, planning, and costing.
“It was a tough job which involved a lot of analysis, working through marketing proposals, different promotions and offering financial support to business decisions,” she recollects, adding: “We worked long hours, sometimes leaving the office in the wee hours of the morning and at some point I thought it was a wrong career move.
Looking back 10 years later, it was simply part of the journey.”
This part of her career taught her to work harder, to be resilient and learn financial control.
Four years later, Kabagambe joined ATC Uganda as the finance operations manager in charge of transactional accounting.
She has also done several roles, including supply chain management. She was part of the business startup team for ATC in Tanzania and when she returned to Uganda, she was promoted to regional treasury manager for EMEA in charge of seven countries — Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, France, and Germany.
This role exposed Kabagambe to different countries, got experience in the treasury, dealing with different currency regimes, several central bank regulations and restrictions, managing treasury systems and handling relationships with banks across different markets.
Granted 20 minutes with anyone in the world, Kabagambe would spend it with Jack Ma, the richest man in China. She needs to learn from him how to grow a business from nothing.
If she is to come back to life, Kabagambe would choose to reincarnate herself to be able to accomplish a lot she is yet to achieve in life.
Kabagambe would like to lead a global humanitarian organization, take a lead position in the World Bank, go to space and still be successful as a mother, wife, friend, and sister.