Stella Olivia Namakula Kikoyo, founder of Stellar Woman, has been named Gold winner in Gender Empowerment at the 2026 Women Changing the World Global Awards in Paris, France. The 2026 awards attracted more than 1,500 nominations from 97 countries, highlighting the extraordinary global contribution of women leading change across industries, communities and societies.
The Women Changing the World Awards celebrate and recognise women achieving outstanding impact across areas including sustainability, humanitarian work, leadership, advocacy, education, health, business and innovation.
The awards seek to recognise women helping to create a better future while inspiring and empowering others to make a difference. For Kikoyo, the Gold award represents more than personal recognition.
It provides a larger platform for a mission she has been building across education, media, leadership, entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment for more than two decades.
“Women’s empowerment is not simply about giving women more opportunities; it is about giving women access to knowledge that changes what they can see, what they believe is possible and what they are prepared to act upon,” says Kikoyo.
“Knowledge becomes powerful when it is acted upon, and transformational when it is shared. When a woman receives that knowledge and acts upon it, she rises. When she shares what she knows, she shines, moving light from one woman to another. And when that light keeps moving, we don’t just transform individual women; we transform families, communities and generations.”
A Ugandan-born, UK-based global empowerment leader, Chartered Marketer, academic, author and international speaker, Kikoyo has more than 25 years of experience in Marketing and Business Management education spanning Uganda and the United Kingdom.
She is the founder of Stellar Woman, a global empowerment, education and media ecosystem created to elevate women’s voices, move knowledge across communities and empower women to rise into their potential, live purposefully and create meaningful legacies.
At the heart of Kikoyo’s work is what she describes as Moving light from one woman to another in the form of knowledge.
For Kikoyo, knowledge is more than information. It is capable of changing perspective, revealing possibilities and, when acted upon, changing lives.
As Founder, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Stellar Woman Magazine, Kikoyo has developed a global digital and print publication focused on women’s empowerment, leadership, business, career transformation, storytelling and personal andprofessional growth.
Through the magazine, women’s stories are not simply celebrated; they become vehicles through which knowledge, experience and possibility can reach another woman.
As Editor-in-Chief of the Stellar Woman magazine and host of The Stellar Woman Show, Stella has interviewed internationally recognised leaders and authors including Kim Kiyosaki, Sharon Lechter, Dr. Maggie Kigozi, Susan Nsibirwa and more bringing conversations around wealth, entrepreneurship, leadership, personal development and transformation to women across the world.
Through Stellar Woman Academy, she delivers coaching, masterclasses, visioning experiences, leadership development and business and brand programmes designed to help women reconnect with purpose, pursue purposeful dreams, develop self-leadership, build meaningful careers and businesses, and create legacies that extend beyond themselves.
Her work brings together expertise in marketing, brand positioning, neuromarketing, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, coaching and mindfulness and operates at the intersection of identity, purpose, leadership, brand and legacy.
A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Kikoyo’s work also extends into executive education and corporate learning, including delivering specialist masterclasses to Executive MBA participants.
Across these different audiences and platforms, one principle remains consistent:
Knowledge becomes powerful when it is acted upon, and transformational when it is shared.
For Kikoyo, the real power of knowledge lies not only in what it changes within the person who receives it, but in what becomes possible when that knowledge is shared – moving light from one person to another and extending its impact across families, organisations, communities and generations.
The Paris award marks the latest stage in growing international recognition of Kikoyo’s work in empowerment, education and leadership. In April 2025, she received Bronze in Gender Empowerment at the Women Changing the World Awards in London.
In November 2025, at the Women Changing the World European Awards, she received three European honours:
Gold — Gender Equality & Empowerment
Silver — Women in Education
Bronze — Women in Leadership
In April 2026, her work received further recognition on the global stage in Paris, where she was awarded Gold in Gender Empowerment at the Women Changing the World Global Awards.
Kikoyo has also been selected to contribute to the Women Changing the World community as a judge, extending her role from being recognised for her own impact to helping recognise and elevate the work of other women.
For Kikoyo, however, the awards are not the destination. “Winning this award has stretched the horizon of what I see is possible,” she says. “For me, recognition is not the destination; it is an opportunity to take this work further, reach more women and keep the light moving.”
The Global Gold comes as Kikoyo continues to expand the reach of Stellar Woman and its wider empowerment work. Her initiatives include collaboration with Street Business School, supporting its mission to equip women with entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to create pathways from generational poverty towards generational wealth.
Her longstanding commitment to developing girls is also being extended through Stellar Teen, an emerging media platform and magazine designed to amplify teenage girls’ voices and support the development of identity, confidence, self-awareness and leadership.
In September 2026, Kikoyo and longtime collaborator Divya Parekh will also release Unstoppable, the first Stellar Woman international anthology, creating another platform through which women can transform their stories, expertise and lived experiences into greater visibility, authority and impact.
These initiatives reflect Kikoyo’s belief that when a woman changes, she does not change alone.