COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA
Ziyanda Nqebelele is a Chartered Accountant by profession with experience in corporate finance and auditing. Her experience in corporate has cultivated her ability to analyse problems both within and outside of the organizational and business environment.
She has also learnt about patience and the importance of cultivating an environment where people from various backgrounds can be free to think critically and question the information being presented to them without taking everything at face value. Her interests lie in mentorship, education, and finding sustainable solutions that will improve the lives of the marginalized. To this end, she founded a company, Au Pair Express (Pty) Ltd, an on-demand marketplace that connects families with reliable, background screened, and experienced childcare professionals. The platform connects and negotiates fair wages for unskilled women who had struggled obtaining employment, with families in need of such services.
She is also a Senior Lecturer at Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, a university that predominantly caters for a disadvantaged student profile, and offers much-needed guidance and support to students who come from very unstable homes.
Ziyanda plans to open early childhood centres in the Eastern Cape in the near future, with a primary target of rural and poor communities. She hopes these centres will have a positive contribution to the dire school-leaving results produced by the province.
The Fellowship has broadened my thinking around feminism and impact work and what contribution feminists can have in making the world easier for those less fortunate than us.