Goeie Nag!

Guest entry by Alejandro Salcedo

Our group was assigned to work with a medical devices company based in Pretoria. It is one of the many companies that have been formed thanks to the Black Economic Empowerment policy. The company was established in 2002 as a black female managed and controlled company, it has 11 employees and they help a European company to sell their products to government hospitals. The first day we spent getting to know the company, its people and the way they operate, it was a very interesting process where we learned a lot about their dreams and their challenges.

Our meetings with the company’s team was a mixture of questions asked by us about how they work and questions asked by the girls on how we suggest to do things, it was a very interesting day where our team tried to squeeze as much information as possible and at the same time gave some advice on particular issues. I believe our team is a very complete one for the challenges we are facing: Chia Chia Lim (Singaporean) who has a background in finance and operation improvement, Valeria Pavlyukovskaya (Russian) has a background in sales and marketing, Ilya Syshchikov (Russian) has a background in sales, marketing and business development and myself (Mexican) with a background in sales and project management.

Today we visited a couple of public hospitals where this company sells and we interviewed a few people whom they deal with on a regular basis in order to get a feeling of what is the real situation on the battle front, it was of course a very enriching experience in all aspects, not only in relation with our project, it was very interesting to walk around the aisles of a public hospital in and talk to the people who work there, know about their day-to-day life and the challenges they face on their workplace, and the relationship that all that keeps with the company we are working with.

To close the day we had dinner at the IDC and we had the privilege to have Prof. Shirley Zinn as our guest speaker. Prof. Zinn is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Nedbank, a financial institution originated in The Netherlands. She has built up a very strong curriculum and has broad experience in several public and private institutions. She has been given a number of awards and she shared with us her passion for learning and education and for her land and the people who have made South Africa a more equal place. At the same time she also addressed the challenges that in her opinion, the country is facing. It was a learning and inspiring session.

Lala Kahle! Goeie Nag! Good Night!

Alejandro