Woman of the Month

Name: Queen Ndlovu
Designation: CEO
Company: QP Drone

• What do you do every day?
Usually I wake up with a little prayer, study for my PHD degree between 5 and 7am and then take a 30min walk. I then prepare to go to the office until 6 to 7pm and then study for 2 to 3 hours and go back home. 

• How did you get into the tech space?
I studied the future market and read books on successful start-up stories such as Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and thereafter decided to go to the Business School  for Masters in Entrepreneurship in which one module was about technology and the other one was about Global Entrepreneurship. As a result I  chose Drone Technology and subsequently went to Shenzhen, China for 6 months to learn more about the technology.

• What was the best advice anyone ever gave you?
“Just Start” (from my late grandmother) anything you envisage to do. What she meant just do it because if you start, you get motivated to finish unlike procrastination.

• What advise would you give to someone wanting to get into tech?
It is important to choose what you are passionate about and see what solutions you can create should you introduce your tech accordingly. Research, research and research and how are you going to solve the pain of the customers using the chosen tech

• What motivates you to get out of bed every day?
Making a significant difference to the world and young people in my own little way.

• What do you want to be when you grow up one day?
Save the planet and its people by making it sustainable and creating some wealth for my generation. 

Name: Tania Joffe
Designation: CEO & Principal
Company: Unu Health

1. What do you do every day?
   I am in touch with sales on a daily basis and celebrate all new client acquisitions – the drive for confirmation of product market fit in the first year of a start up’s life is a big focus, as is the establishment of predictable and scalable growth. Additionally, connecting with each member of our leadership team throughout the week, so effectively daily meets, is also key – we draw on each other for stamina and support through the many cortisol baths.

2. How did you get into the tech space?
   I love tech when it works, when it is effectively invisible and just enables a user to achieve a goal, an outcome …. when it’s so intuitive, that there’s almost no awareness of it. Tech in service of us owning our wellbeing can be so powerful, if curated and orchestrated in that intuitive and invisible way… So while I lead a health-tech, my focus is on how we transform healthcare. Much of my career has been in financial services, which has seen so much tech enabled change, with big adoption of mobile banking, automation etc. It’s striking that healthcare is not delivered at scale via our mobile devices. My background is not tech. I’ve run large scale financial services operations, where we’ve leveraged tech to introduce new channels and customer facing capabilities.

3. What was the best advice anyone ever gave you?
   Take the shot, always… ‘The man in the arena’…

4. What advise would you give to someone wanting to get into tech?
   We are all in tech, as users and consumers. You are in tech, and there are so many facets to the ‘tech space’ which is evolving so quickly, with careers emerging constantly. Increasingly, all roles touch tech, whether in terms of design, user experience, actual dev work/ coding, or more broadly in terms of ethics and legal frameworks etc. I am not sure that there is ‘a way’, as I think my own journey demonstrates.

5. What motivates you to get out of bed every day?
   I am absolutely driven, even possessed, by the thought that we have the opportunity to transform healthcare, and in doing that, improve the lives of so many people in Africa by reducing the disease burden that’s disproportionately carried by those with  less means – and that among those, who we may impact, there may be the person that helps us solve the impact of climate change, or is a force for greater gender equality  and so forth. A virtuous spiral of positive impact for good.

Name: Shanaaz Trethewey
Designation: Chief Operating Officer
Company: Comcorp South Africa

Shanaaz Trethewey is an inspiration, not only for her leadership and organisational capabilities but also her role as a woman in the tech space.

She is passionate about the role businesses play to service society through technology especially as the reliance on technology is embedded in our thinking, behaviours, and society. She shares her thoughts on women in the tech space.

How did you get into the tech space?

I got into the tech space incidentally and also married a software engineer. I had a realisation that everything we do is in some way or form digitally enabled which made her believe the distinction between commercial and technical is not a useful one.

We have these differentiated skills within our organisations, but tech is part of our everyday DNA – meaning that to make an impact going forward, it was to immerse myself in understanding this.

Why do you love your work and the tech sector? 
I love my work and tech sector because it isn’t about coding – it’s about how something as dynamic as human challenges are solved. Something that is colourful, and dynamic is converted to a solution and into binary. And that binary could become complex – but it’s empowering to introduce the nugget of value to the world.

To think we have the power to translate what we need into products – by combining what appears to be two ends of the scale is incredibly fascinating.

I love solving problems and taking complexity and making things look simple or at least feel simple.  It’s a triumph of our collective intellect.

What is you take on the gender gap in the tech sector?
I have never let this define my own progress.  I can see from the stats that there is a divide and a gap…one that is slowly being reduced. The growth and pervasive nature of tech will help reduce this. If we think it’s about sitting in a corner and spitting out zeros and ones, then I think it’s going to be a niche skill set and extract very specific people – gender aside.

However, the social, and interactive dynamic that tech represents today, offers everyone an opportunity- across gender, across skillsets and across socio-economic categories to play a role in defining what it looks like in the future.

What are your views and own way of doing the groundwork that future generations of women will benefit from?
Being authentic and unapologetically me. By modelling this and remaining resilient I can deliver what I can in the best way possible. There is a great deal of emphasis on what others say and what people do; a sense of social pressures that make us believe that we should look or act a certain way.  And although I fundamentally believe we should conform to certain etiquettes to enable us to work together – being anything other than yourself could mean we are enabling future generations to be a “canned” society.  Creativity and problem solving comes from being authentic and learning how to make the differences between us count positively.  And that includes gender.

How should young females view the tech sector as? 
An opportunity to express problem solving, innovation towards solving some real human challenges. It’s exciting to know that something that has come from a mere idea can make an impact at scale – it’s incredible. It’s about being a part of something bigger, and understanding that the limit is oneself as opposed to physical strength or what you look like. In a knowledge world, there are no limits.  And for this reason, it’s a place with the most opportunity to flourish.

What is your best advice to other women – and also tips on how to get into the sector?
Or tips on how to grow and find their own niche?
Conformity gets you only so far, whilst authenticity takes you all the way. Listen more and be clear on how what you have to say translates to another person. In respecting others, you are respecting yourself.  If faced with criticism or difficulty, I remind myself that what we do today will make tomorrow easier.  And what I learn today will strengthen my tolerance and perspective tomorrow.