Kenyan fashion entrepreneur Ruth Abade uses upcycled materials to create vibrant clothes and accessories with sustainability sewn into them.



&#8220;It was something I’ve never seen. I was like, ‘maybe this is what they mean by the end of the world?’ The sky looked orange. And then it just went really, really dark.”



In June, the New York skies were flooded with apocalyptic color, as Canadian wildfires moved south and the smoke transformed the global center of fashion into a burned sienna hellscape.



Kenyan fashion entrepreneur Ruth Abade is in the city for trade shows, describing by video call this ominous reminder of the consequences of unfettered consumption: the world’s most charismatic metropolis reduced in minutes to incandescent shadows.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1024x768.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-59362" style="width:388px;height:291px" width="388" height="291" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photos by Lars Johansson</figcaption></figure></div>


She is the owner of Blackfly Designs, an apparel, jewelry and textile company with practical sustainability embedded in its seams.



Abade and her dozen-strong team, based in Kibera’s Toi Market in Nairobi, use upcycled materials to create one-of-a-kind clothes and accessories buzzing with quirky innovation.



Blackfly’s bomber jackets pop with the vibrancy of re-purposed Indian saris; its shoulder bags are clever, jazzy patchworks of African fabric off-cuts, finished with expertly curated scraps of leather and salvaged metal fittings. The jewelry pieces are geometric alignments of the rough and the smooth, metallic juxtapositions of the polished and the well-traveled.



An industrial designer by training, Abade spent a year in Florence learning leather bag design before her skills coalesced into a business in 2012.



“So I took my industrial know-how into fashion, because I needed to survive! And then when your clientele grows, you harness all these scrap pieces as off-cuts, so I needed to develop another prototype. You have to embody the whole thing as one 



item. So we decided that if you’re going to use scrap pieces, you’re going to use them all the way. You have to always be diverse when it comes to creation, because it never stops.”



The brand grew so fast that the company began buying off-cuts from other tailors, generating a business model that initially presented challenges in how it would grow and become accessible to a wider market.



“When you’re doing one-offs, it’s difficult to sell to big retailers,” Abade says. “It’s also very difficult to sell to small stores, because they need to make a mark-up. And I wanted to create a product anybody can afford. So I had to make a decision. Either I build my own store – or people just come to the workshop.”



The brand now sells directly to its Nairobi base and from its website; it eschews the influencer and social- media-driven demand for the latest must-have, a wasteful production cycle which floods the market with cheap copycats that often end their short lives in African landfill.



“It doesn’t matter to me whether the business expands tremendously or not,” she says. “You have to stay true to the reason why you do it. We started this because of the overflow we had, but it’s also the joy of working with the suppliers who have always had our back, where the person is willing to sacrifice anything for you – because you’ve been with them for 10 years, and never gone away.”


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1024x768.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-59363" style="width:534px;height:401px" width="534" height="401" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 534px) 100vw, 534px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photos by Lars Johansson</figcaption></figure></div>


Abade has also been careful to shun the economic thirst-trap of the easy business loan, and has instead instituted a solidarity fund within the company to allow employees to contribute to a monthly kitty accessible when any of the team need to borrow without risk. Staff are able to access these contributions when they leave, a structure that encourages an understanding of fiscal responsibility based on mutuality and trust.



“You have to sit down with your people and be candid,” she says. “I run my business like a family, so they see the struggles.



When you have a conversation like that with people, they understand where you’re coming from.”



Mindful of the steady international growth in upcycling, and the resultant price increase in scrap material and off-cuts, Abade is now gradually shifting her focus towards printed textile production, using quality cotton fabric made by women and sourced from Tanzania. She believes her prints will open up a new niche demand for a local twist on an African fashion stalwart, with Blackfly aiming to become the leading Kenyan producer of the traditional Indonesian batik prints embraced with such joyful ubiquity in the west of the continent.



“I have a big responsibility to produce a technique that when seen anywhere in the world, people will say, ‘This is Kenyan batik, without a doubt’. Because you can’t train people if you don’t have a specific technique,” she explains.



“I’m experimenting in order to find something uniquely Kenyan – painting more than stamping; using pastel and muted colors, but in very strong combinations. I think the market is hungry for something new. And big brands are starting to really think about organic cottons, so everybody’s giving themselves a timeline to work with. We have to be ready for that timeline.”



As the North American skies clear, Abade looks ahead with hope, the creative fire still burning in her belly. “I have to remember that regardless, I’m an artist, before a businessperson. And working with artists, I think, is a nightmare,” she laughs. “But as long as it feels good – that’s what we’re going to do.”

P1000559 Photo credit Lars Johansson

Upcycling On The Fly: Fashion Forward In Kenya

Time is money for London-based luxury watchmaker William Adoasi, and he is now using it to support quality education in sub-Saharan Africa.



William Adoasi grew up in one of the roughest council estates in London and for as long as he could remember, wanted to get out. His parents emigrated from Ghana to the United Kingdom (UK) before Adoasi was born and, being the first of seven children, he saw first-hand the chaos that surrounded his estate in Peckham, South London.



A social housing project built by local authorities to provide shelter and other amenities like schools and shops, council estates in the UK have become notorious as breeding grounds for various social problems over the years.



This prompted two former prime ministers, David Cameron and Tony Blair, to advocate for the redevelopment of these estates citing their propensity to entrench poverty as well as create an environment for criminality to thrive, as the core reasons.



To shield Adoasi from the negative elements of the estate, his parents encouraged his education. Adoasi did well enough in school to secure a scholarship and move into a private boarding school in the midlands, and finally, out of the council estate.



“One day a fight broke out in a rugby game between my team and another team and I heard some of my teammates calling the other team ‘council estate scam’, not knowing that I grew up on a council estate myself. It really shaped the way I am in terms of my drive because there is always a part of me that wants to disprove the myth of a council estate boy who does not amount to anything in life,” says Adoasi.



Initially the drive was simply motivated by his need to create a luxury life far away from the tentacles of poverty that always gripped his childhood. His determination to succeed led him to drop out of university to start a sports academy, with which he made a six-figure income by the age of 19.



“I [ran] that for two years until the government pulled the funding, which meant that it wasn’t viable anymore,” says Adoasi.



After that stint, he worked in London as an insurance broker and recruiter. During this time, he went back to school and finished his education and, very soon, began to think outside the confines of his nine-to-five job for a way to make more money.



He was always interested in watches and by the time he was in the city, Adoasi was making enough money to upgrade his taste to the high-end brands, the likes of Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet. That was when his light bulb moment happened.



“I wanted to find a middle ground of a watch that was super premium and has a high-end aesthetic, made with high-end materials but with a price point that wasn’t wild… I started speaking to multiple factories and haggling prices down between the factories until I perfected my sample batch,” says Adoasi.



At the age of 26, he quit his job and became the founder and lead designer of Vitae London.



“I felt that working in the city was a drain on me and that I had to do something with a bigger purpose where I wake up everyday and my motivation was not just money. Vitae means ‘lives’ in Latin. Our mantra from the get-go was to be the watch brand changing lives,” says Adoasi.



After launching the brand, Vitae London got shortlisted by Richard Branson to receive a startup loan of £20,000



(approximately $25,000 today) out of 10,000 applicants. To date, the brand has raised a total of $190,000 from the likes of US-based venture capital firm, Backstage Capital and, with that, total sales revenue to date is around £1.3 million ($1.6 million).



Adoasi has also kept his promise – 10% of everything the company makes goes back to empower children in sub-Saharan Africa to receive quality education. Through a partnership with charity organization, House of Wells, he has supported over 10,000 children with school uniforms and finance.



Vitae London is also currently stocked in leading US retailers, Macy’s and Nordstrom. The partnership with billionaire mogul Branson also helped attract other celebrities to the brand.



As Adoasi reflects, two things stand out for him.



“Firstly, entrepreneurship is about creating something much bigger than yourself… Secondly, money is a great motivator but if it is the only reason you get out of bed, then you have an unfulfilled life.”<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="15" height="14" src="">His next milestone is to be able to go to his parents and tell them they no longer need to work, and from the looks of things, time is on his side

peace11

Time To Tell: The London-Based Watchmaker Supporting Education In Africa

Recruiters, leadership experts and board directors say the path to the top job, and the skills needed to succeed in it, has changed.



The mission of a CEO used to be fairly straightforward. Set the vision and strategy of your company and make sure the right people are in the right roles. Be sensitive to the needs of employees, customers, suppliers and others in your orbit but make shareholders your top priority. Above all else, grow as fast and as big as you can.&nbsp;



But as the world has changed, so have the demands of the CEO job— and the skills needed to succeed in it. Between the pandemic and polarization, climate change and cancel culture, the role has evolved in ways that few would have imagined a few years ago. CEO contenders lack a clear grasp on how the jobs they’re pursuing will change while those at the helm can offer only limited guidance.&nbsp;



What many CEOs increasingly realize is that the change has to start from within. Dick Patton, who co-leads the global CEO practice for recruitment firm Egon Zehnder, detected a mood of deep reflection among the 972 global CEOs they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.egonzehnder.com/it-starts-with-the-ceo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">surveyed in a study</a>last year. Nearly 80% of CEO participants said they needed to transform themselves as well as their organizations, and be more adaptive and self-aware.



Part of what’s fueling a new mindset is the recognition that trust and transparency have become vital to business success. Stephen Miles, an executive coach and founder of the Miles Group, argues that the CEO has gone from being the leader who runs the company to the person who must also promote the company’s purpose, impact and credentials as an employer of choice. In short, they must defend the company’s license to operate. That requires “more influence-building, team-building, people-related skills,” says Miles, not to mention the courage to initiate change on weak signals and be open about their own struggles to connect with people.&nbsp;



Emotional intelligence becomes more critical as the demands for CEOs to engage in political hot-button topics mount. “You have to anticipate whether someone will have the instincts and the intestinal fortitude,” says Jane Stevenson, a vice chair at Korn Ferry who leads its global CEO succession practice. “The expectation of CEOs to take a stand—and to know when to take the stand and when to be quiet—is huge. It&#8217;s always been about who the person is. Now it’s who the person is, squared.”&nbsp;



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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-need-for-bolder-boards">A Need For Bolder Boards&nbsp;</h3>



Boards are starting—slowly—to think more broadly about the skills and profile needed to succeed as a CEO in this environment. Experience in operating and running a business is still essential—but a wider range of resumes and roles is under consideration. Diversity candidates are in higher demand, as are traits such as agility, resilience and political judgment.&nbsp;



“Boards are bucking conventional wisdom a bit more,” says Tim Conti, managing partner of executive search firm ON Partners. “The best boards recognize a CEO is just one member of an executive team, and if complemented properly, can come from a lot of new backgrounds.”&nbsp;



That doesn’t mean directors are rushing to take risks. CEO turnover dropped during the pandemic, as many boards put a premium on stability and familiarity to get through the crisis. While CEO openings among Fortune 500 and S&amp;P 500 companies have picked up, most of those slots are filled through internal promotions, according to the latest Crist Kolder Volatility Report of America’s Leading Companies. Only 18.9% of new CEO hires through July were external candidates, versus 30.7% in 2019.&nbsp;That could indicate more robust succession planning and leadership development—or a lack of imagination at a time when companies need it most.



Jim Citrin, who leads Spencer Stuart’s CEO practice, argues that many boards are being too conservative at a time when they need the courage to make bold choices. “Some of the best-performing CEOs were not the obvious choices,” says Citrin. “Boards basically define success as an internal promotion; failure as having to go outside. In this moment of change and dramatic stakes, all of us need to be creative and courageous.”



While the usual route to the CEO’s office is through the president’s or COO’s job, that is not always the best path. A recent report from Spencer Stuart found that over the past 20 years, 85 percent of S&amp;P 500 CEOs have come from one of four “last mile” roles: chief operating officer, a division-level CEO role, chief financial officer and “leapfrog” leaders who held executive jobs another rung or two from the top. The most successful CEOs were those promoted from a few levels down; the least were CEOs who came from the CFO function. While the latter group knew how to turn a profit, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/the-cfos-last-mile-building-towards-success-as-ceo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;found they weren’t as strong at driving top-line growth.&nbsp;



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“Some of the best-performing CEOs were not the obvious choices &#8230; In this moment of change and dramatic stakes, all of us need to be creative and courageous.”Jim Citrin, Spencer Stuart



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The message is not to discount the value of leading the finance function but rather to supplement it with other responsibilities and C-suite roles. Bonnie Gwin, co-managing partner of the global CEO and board practice at Heidrick &amp; Struggles, says there is demand “for CFOs who are strategic and have played really strategic thought partner roles with their CEO.”&nbsp;



There’s a growing appreciation for experience in other C-suite roles, too. A stint as a chief marketing officer or chief customer officer can be essential for running consumer-facing companies. The chief product officer is also gaining ground as a stepping stone to the CEO job, according to Mark Oppenheimer, CEO of Modern Executive Solutions, as it often “brings together sales, product, strategy and operational responsibilities.” Jeff Christian, who leads the search firm Christian &amp; Timbers, agrees, adding that “product people are becoming the next generation CEOs.”&nbsp;



Perhaps the most common resume builder that indicates a CEO could be destined for the corner office is experience on a high-profile public board of directors. “Getting on some of these major boards is a very interesting corollary to someone getting CEO calls,” says Jana Rich, founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based Rich Talent Group. “You’re networked in a different way. You’re getting incredible exposure to people in the boardroom.”&nbsp;



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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-premium-but-limited-progress-on-diversity">A Premium—But Limited Progress—On Diversity</h3>



Whatever their background, one promising sign is that new CEOs are more likely to be women or people of color. Of the 682 CEOs tracked in the Crist Kolder report, 7.3% were women as of July 31 – up from 6.9% last year and 1.9% in 2010. Heidrick &amp; Struggles took an even broader look at 1,095 CEOs in 24 countries and found women accounted for 13% of new CEOs during the first half of last year, about double from six months earlier. Racial diversity is a slower climb, although Indian-born leaders continue to ascend to CEO roles, most recently at companies like Starbucks and FedEx.&nbsp;



When it comes to the skills in demand for CEOs, some measures of potential remain constant. After studying data from thousands of CEO assessments, Elena Botelho, a partner at leadership advisory ghSMART, distilled the core behaviors for success to the acronym DARE – decisive, adaptable, reliable and engaging for impact. While the framework is unchanged, Botelho says “adaptability became really paramount” amid the pandemic, which is less about the ability to spot a shift than to immediately respond to it.



Resilience is critical. For current CEOs, the exhaustion of the last two years is real, despite it being a job where the median pay was a record-high $14.5 million last year for S&amp;P 500 CEOs, according to an Equilar/Associated Press study. The rinse-and-repeat series of crises and the dizzying rate of technological change is shifting how CEOs lead, how quickly they’re ready to pass the baton, and what their ambitions may be.&nbsp;



While the current generation of CEO-ready leaders has arguably lived through more booms, busts and industry-shattering innovations than the people who came before them, many still feel unprepared. Faced with the prospect of added stress and scrutiny, some recruiters say a lot of candidates also want the job less and less. They can earn millions through other C-suite roles without the constant scrutiny and stress.



Still, for as long as there have been ambitious people, there have been people ambitious to lead. Increasingly, the brass ring is likely to go to those who are ambitious to learn. As Matthew Smith, an executive coach and former chief learning officer at McKinsey puts it: “Leaders who adapt and pivot with speed in the face of opportunities will outperform those who are over-reliant on the skills and habits that got them to the top.”



By Diane Brady and Jena McGregor, Forbes Staff

Black businessman working in new office

The CEO’s Role Is Changing. What It Takes To Get The Top Job Now

The intimate apparel industry got a lift this week when Rihanna and Kim Kardashian announced hefty funding rounds for their respective fashion ventures.&nbsp;



Rihanna’s lingerie brand,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/2022/01/26/rihanna-savage-x-fenty-lingerie-brand-raises-125-million-in-series-c-funding-after-opening-first-retail-store/?sh=763613ab7605">Savage X Fenty, secured $125 million</a>&nbsp;in Series C. The following day,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-27/kim-kardashian-s-skim-underwear-brand-doubles-valuation-to-3-2-billion" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a>&nbsp;reported that Kardashian’s shapewear line, Skims, had doubled its valuation to $3.2 billion after raising&nbsp;$240 million in new capital.&nbsp;



Both&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;billionaires thanks to their businesses, Rihanna and Kardashian are quick to gush about company growth on social media and elsewhere, but, like many celebrity entrepreneurs, they are heavily guarded when it comes to disclosing crucial financial information.



Generally, celebrity entrepreneurs tend to decline to reveal how much they have personally invested and almost all are tight-lipped about sales figures.&nbsp;



“All these private companies are on a PR tear and it’s even easier when a big name is involved,” says Sucharita Kodali, retail analyst at Forrester. She adds that when it comes to valuations, most startups lie, typically by a factor of 2x to 10x. “Who knows,” she adds, “because no one has seen the term sheets.”&nbsp;



Still, celebrities continue to use their fame as a sword and a shield for garnering startup recognition.



Early examples include Gwyneth Paltrow, who launched her lifestyle brand, Goop, in 2008. By the time she raised $50 million in Series C funding a decade later,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2018/03/28/exclusive-gwyneth-paltrows-lifestyle-company-goop-raises-50-million-series-c/?sh=5e55926f6880">various sources estimated Goop’s revenue at $15 million to $20 million</a>, but the company declined to confirm the number.



These days, Goop relies on selling provocative items–such as its Jade Egg (which claims to boost sexual energy when inserted in one’s vagina) and the “Keep Your Hands Off My Vagina” candle–more than her acting career to generate buzz. But when it comes to reporting annual sales figures, the company is far more reserved than its product lineup.&nbsp;



Country singer Blake Shelton, who ranks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/blake-shelton/?sh=206b1df61ea9">No. 70 in the&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;Celebrity 100 list</a>, earns a majority of his income as coach on NBC’s&nbsp;The Voice.&nbsp;Last year&nbsp;Rolling Stone&nbsp;reported he quietly sold his music catalog for $50 million. But when asked about the deal recently, the famously loquacious Shelton was reticent. He is now looking to a new revenue stream,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jilliandara/2021/03/31/blake-shelton-just-launched-his-own-line-of-hard-seltzers-heres-what-we-know/?sh=62d0cab11ea2">his own line of hard seltzers</a>, but has yet to reveal how much he has invested in the launch of Smithworks.



And soon after stepping away from their royal duties in the U.K.,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2021/02/26/how-much-are-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-worth-surprisingly-not-that-much/?sh=1fba6cedc417">Prince Harry and Meghan Markle</a>&nbsp;went on an all-American publicity spree, announcing content partnerships with Netflix and Spotify. They also signed with the Harry Walker Agency to cash in on potential speaking engagements. But when it came to disclosing the value of those deals, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2021/02/26/how-much-are-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-worth-surprisingly-not-that-much/?sh=21363347c417">former royal couple remained as secretive</a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2021/03/10/inside-the-firm-how-the-royal-familys-28-billion-money-machine-really-works/?sh=21f07002bccf">The Firm they fled</a>.&nbsp;



Some just lie.



Kardashian’s half-sister,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2020/05/29/inside-kylie-jennerss-web-of-lies-and-why-shes-no-longer-a-billionaire/?sh=7621eab25f7b">Kylie Jenner, is a prime example</a>. The reality star and Kylie Cosmetics founder boasted revenues of $360 million in 2019, making her the youngest self-made billionaire at the time. The following year, publicly traded Coty bought 51% of the business at a $1.2 billion valuation. Soon after,&nbsp;Coty’s filings revealed that Kylie Cosmetics was half the size that Jenner had told&nbsp;Forbes,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/04/06/kylie-jenner-west-virginia-governor-jim-justice-and-59-others-who-lost-their-billionaire-status-this-year/?sh=1a448b713eee">knocking her off the Billionaires list</a>.&nbsp;



So, why lie or withhold information? “The SEC does not regulate what private companies say and there’s no governing body,” says Kodali. “The venture capital community plays a huge part in propagating these lies, and nobody questions them.”&nbsp;



Kodali, who specializes in e-commerce and consumer behavior, says until a celebrity-driven company goes public, there’s no real way to quantitatively assess whether the brand has strong fundamentals. “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jessica-alba/?sh=343048a3159e">Jessica Alba’s early days at The Honest Co</a>. seemed respectable,” but it took&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2021/05/04/inside-jessica-albas-long-and-turbulent-road-to-taking-the-honest-company-public/?sh=77d0a1d16be1">going public</a>&nbsp;to confirm her books were indeed honest, says Kodali.



More recently, Kodali points to Roger Federer’s $50 million investment in sneaker company On Running as an example of a celebrity-backed venture with solid footing. The company, founded in 2010, went public in September 2021 with an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/federer-backed-shoemaker-valued-over-11-bln-nyse-debut-2021-09-15/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$11.3 billion valuation</a>. “Its growth doesn’t seem to be based on hype,” Kodali says. “I didn’t hear about it from a headline, I heard about it from running enthusiasts, then investors. It was barely mentioned in the media until it went public.”&nbsp;



Meanwhile, it remains how much of a dent Savage X Fenty or Skims will make in the traditional intimate apparel market in the long term. Simeon Siegel, a retail analyst at BMO Capital Markets, acknowledges that many brands are trying to capitalize on Victoria’s Secret perceived vulnerability in market share. But a lingerie company like Rihanna’s–even with its funding to date at $310 million–is still “not even in the same ballpark as Victoria’s Secret,” which reported revenue of more than $5 billion in 2021.&nbsp;&nbsp;



However, with Rihanna and Kardashian’s massive social media followings—nearly 300 million each—both women have already used their fame as an express elevator to wealth.



“I bucket them all into startups that overstate their business, and it happens in waves as the sector becomes hot all at once,” says Kodali. “But you can’t hide once you’re public.”Follow me on <a href="https://www.twitter.com/tanyaklich" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Twitter</a>. Check out some of my other work <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/#32b2e15e795d" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">here</a>. 



By Tanya Klich, Forbes Staff

SKIMS Celebrates Launch At Nordstrom NYC With Personal Appearance By Kim Kardashian West

How Celebrities Use Fame To Fuel Their Startups—And Then Hide Behind It

East African techpreneur Neema Iyer works at the intersection of data, design and digital to eventually enable products, policies and programs that take into account the needs of African women.



ARE GENDER DIFFERENCES AS RIFE on the world wide web as in the real world? When technologist Neema Iyer returned home to Africa after graduating from Emory University in the United States with a degree in epidemiology and statistics, she was bent on addressing gender from a technology perspective. 



Born to Tanzanian and Indian parents and raised in Nigeria, 34-year-old Iyer is today running Pollicy, a firm she founded in Kampala, Uganda, as a civic technology organization that works at the intersection of data design and technology and understanding how data can be used most effectively for improving service delivery through research, digital literacy, digital security and products. 



When she first touched down, she took up a job in Uganda where she worked in the ICT sector, but under predominantly white, male founders from the West. There was also a lack of touch points in governments with the African context. So Iyer decided she needed a fresh perspective using a gender lens.



“When you really look at it like a lot of technology, a lot of data, the systems are developed in Silicon Valley and I don’t feel that African women are particularly the end users when they design different technology,” says Iyer. 



Pollicy, funded mostly by grants from big tech like Facebook and Mozilla, more broadly focuses on gendered data and feminist data, that takes into account power dynamics and the person researching. 



“If you don’t have this kind of data, then it would be very difficult to make platforms or policies of programs that really take into account the needs of African women and what are the challenges and what are the gaps,” she says. 



For instance, field research or product development would usually involve talking to the head of the household or people in authority, which would usually be men. There are many other situations where women may not be allowed to take part in research, and Iyer thinks challenging this status quo is more important now more than ever. 



“Women in Africa are least likely to be connected to the internet, so there’s a very big digital gender gap. And they tend to have lower digital literacy, they tend to have lower ownership of mobile devices, they tend to have lower access to information. So, when you take all of these things into account, you can’t just have a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone.” Iyer notes cultural differences in even who can answer a phone call or who can own a phone. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Afrofeminist-Data-Futures-7-914x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-51400" width="315" height="353" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Afrofeminist-Data-Futures-7-914x1024.png 914w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Afrofeminist-Data-Futures-7-268x300.png 268w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Afrofeminist-Data-Futures-7-768x860.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Afrofeminist-Data-Futures-7-1371x1536.png 1371w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Afrofeminist-Data-Futures-7-1829x2048.png 1829w" sizes="(max-width: 315px) 100vw, 315px" /></figure></div>



These restrict women’s voices and participation. And even those can be online, as substantiated by online violence and gender disinformation. “It basically leads to the censorship of women, it leads to them leaving online spaces…if you don’t really think about these issues from the gender nuance, then you can replicate a lot of the discrimination that already exists in the physical world.” 



For her, these aspects need attention to meet the different needs of people, and to build products accordingly. Iyer is also interested in combining art and data. 



“So, moving beyond just spreadsheets and trying to make data more accessible to people.” 



For example, her team worked on a project in Uganda called ‘Create Your Kampala’, where they collected data from local communities on different social services, and then worked with them to create wall murals as a way to share back their data and get people involved in the conversation. 



“[We wanted to say] ‘you own this data; this is your data; how are you going to use it to improve your situation’?” 



But the challenge is that a number of African countries are not moving as quickly as they should in using, supporting and protecting data. Data collection is expensive, there are many administrative hurdles, and it needs a lot of trustbuilding. Pollicy is about four years old and Iyer had hoped it would have made more headway in this time, thinking there would have been be so many competitors in the space by now. 



“When I look back, I don’t feel like so much has changed, like we’re still very much lagging in the conversations. A lot of the artificial intelligence conversations are dominated way more by other countries, and even though funders are trying to do more in the African context, there is just not enough happening. So, I would love to see more organizations coming out and doing much, much more work on everything from collecting data, to analyzing it, to processing it, to getting value from it… with a feminist lens.” 



Iyer asserts that data will really help drive innovation and improve services, because if people know where the gaps are, then they can improve business, creativity and products. There is, of course, the fear that governments could use these systems to oppress dissenting voices. 



“Everything we do is grounded in ethics and equity and inclusiveness, so that when you do build technology, it’s not used to harm marginalized people… we need to come together now to think about that and to come up with solutions… I feel like there’s this urgency that we need to come up with better laws that work for everyone.”



Another challenge Iyer notes is the need to make data as intersectional as possible. 



“You don’t want power to be concentrated… so really thinking about power dynamics when you use data, I think it’s that intersectionality of gender and class and tribe and ethnicity, so that you can really make equitable products from the data.” 



Iyer also hopes to expand beyond Africa’s borders and continue working with government and civil society to create a better world. “You know, crafting our futures together in a way that works for everyone; that’s equitable and that’s inclusive and we want to make our own decisions for ourselves; so I really want to push that narrative.”



BY INAARA GANGJI

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Driving Feminist Data For Change

27 years of South African democracy and 27 years of Wiphold, which broke barriers and brought black South African women into the mainstream. FORBES AFRICA spoke to its co-founder and corporate leader Louisa Mojela, also about her new doctorate degree and what’s limiting female entrepreneurs.



Just as South Africa is set to observe Freedom Day on April 27, we look at Wiphold or the Women Investment Portfolio Holdings, one of the country’s best-known first generation empowerment companies owned and led by women.



Founded just weeks before a free South Africa was emerging from the dark shadows of the apartheid in 1994, it gave financial power to grassroots black South African women, driving broad-based economic empowerment, and among other milestones, it also became the first women-only empowerment company to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1999.



One of South Africa&#8217;s most accomplished leaders in business, Louisa Mojela, the Group CEO and co-founder of Wiphold, was recently awarded a doctorate degree by the faculty of economic and management sciences at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town for her leadership in establishing platforms to empower women in Africa.



In this interview with FORBES AFRICA, she shares some “transformative and impactful” anecdotes on the beginnings of Wiphold, which she started as part of the ‘Wip Four’ including Gloria Serobe, Wendy Luhabe and Nomhle Canca – and how it has stayed the course.



One of the main focus areas for the company currently is agriculture.



“We have incorporated that sector into our strategy and encourage our women shareholders that we support them in attaining the dream of food security,” says Mojela, who also graced the cover of FORBES WOMAN AFRICA in 2014.



Mojela also founded Bophelo BioScience &amp; Wellness in 2018 in Lesotho (focusing on medicinal cannabis), and is now creating new social and transformational development opportunities in the growing cannabis sector.



In this interview, she also speaks about the future of women’s entrepreneurship on the African continent. “To the women, I say, turn obstacles into opportunities. Success is never easy, it’s a long road.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Lessons From Wiphold’s Louisa Mojela On Turning Obstacles Into Opportunities" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5HgFXekUWVs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div><figcaption>Edited by Chanel Retief</figcaption></figure>

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Lessons From Wiphold’s Louisa Mojela On Turning Obstacles Into Opportunities

Two African entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom. One tale of grit and gumption in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. 



IN 2019, WHEN BERNICIA BOATENG OPENED HER namesake makeup studio, Bernicia Boateng Studios, in London’s high street, it made her the first Ghanaian to do so. Her makeup business had grown considerably over the years, as she cultivated some big names as her clientele including, as she says, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and models Leomie Anderson and Jourdan Dunn.



She was beginning to be recognized for her work with features in publications such as Vogue and collaborations with beauty and fashion houses such as Estée Lauder and Yves Saint Laurent. When the BBC and Evening Standard were looking for a voice representing excellence in the makeup industry, Boateng was the go-to name. But then came the pandemic, the lockdowns, the second wave, and a twist in the fairy tale. 



“When I realized that face-to-face contact wasn’t something we can rely on anymore, I kind of moved the brand towards education,” says Boateng, on her decision to strategize to survive. But how did she end up in the beauty business in the United Kingdom (UK)? 



“I have always wanted to be a makeup artist because my mum loved makeup and it was something I always found desirable. I wanted to be just like my mum who was a very glamorous woman. I remember she would take us to Selfridges (high-end department store) on the weekends after drama school and she would make us sit down and watch as she got her makeup done and that is where I got interested,” says Boateng. 



Those were the days before YouTube and social media makeup tutorials when the only way one could hone the craft was by rolling up the sleeves and learning on the job or from a professional on the shop floor. And that is exactly what Boateng did. 



After graduating with a business management degree from the University of Leicester in the UK, Boateng got her first job with Mac Cosmetics as a makeup artist, before branching out to become her own professional. 



“2011 and 2012 [were the years] makeup took over and it was all over social media with videos on how to recreate makeup and I just realized that there was a gap in the market in terms of doing a luxury makeup look for dark-skinned girls and I wanted to fill that void,” she says of the early years. 



But now, in order to fill the void created by the pandemic, she has had to give her business an even bigger digital persona. 



“When it first hit, the first thing I thought of was taking my work online. A lot of people still want to look good at home and we don’t have a lot of control about where we can go or where we can eat but one thing we do have control over is how we look, how we make ourselves feel, and how we make other people feel. So, it was imperative to show people how to look and feel good,” says Boateng. 



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:26% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="927" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-927x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50782 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-927x1024.jpg 927w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-272x300.jpg 272w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-768x848.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng-1391x1536.jpg 1391w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Boateng.jpg 1476w" sizes="(max-width: 927px) 100vw, 927px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">We don’t have a lot of control about where we can go or where we can eat but one thing we do have control over is how we look. – Bernicia Boateng</blockquote>
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She began with online tutorials that did so well that they were covered by the BBC. She also began creating more content establishing a more personal rapport with her 115,000-strong Instagram audience, taking them on a journey to enhancing their self-esteem. The result of these initiatives means Boateng has now found a new revenue stream to stay afloat. 



But who knows for how long until the pandemic ebbs away? With the UK experiencing harsh restrictions, startups have all either had to fold up, pivot or start all over. 



Take for example, Brimms Bottles Limited, founded by P.Y. Adjei, which had to adapt almost immediately to the new economic climate. After graduating from the University of Greenwich, Adjei worked in the banking sector for about five years before listening to his inner entrepreneurial voice. 



He began by creating content for a number of magazines before launching his own publication, which he ran for a few years. With Brexit gaining momentum, Adjei had his eureka moment during a chance encounter with a friend that led him all the way to China in search of greener pastures. 



“My time there influenced what I am doing today because I got a chance to meet a number of manufacturers and from there, I came across what I thought was a brilliant product,” says Adjei. 



That product was a stainless-steel bottle that kept a drink warm for 12 hours or cold for a whole day. 



“It looked beautiful to me and the only thing missing was the product packaging. It was mainly boring colors and that is where my creative direction kicked in. I wanted the bottles to have a better design and style and from there I started working on the idea and trying to see what I could do, design-wise, to improve it and build the product and here I am today.” 



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:38% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50781 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Adjei-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
I remember going to see my manufacturer in Germany and they were holding a conference in Frankfurt and we got there and realized that the place was completely empty and that is where I saw how serious [Covid-19] was and how it would impact business. – P.Y. Adjei We
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But nobody could have foreseen the body blows of Covid-19.



&#8220;Brimms Bottles kicked off right at the beginning of the pandemic and I remember going to see my manufacturer in Germany and they were holding a conference in Frankfurt and we got there and realized that the place was completely empty and that is where I saw how serious this was and how it would impact business,” says Adjei. 



His problems were just about to begin. He experienced undue delays for the samples he had ordered of Brimms Bottles due to lockdowns implemented all over the world. 



“But we managed to work through that during the sample stage but finally when we got the final order in, that got delayed as well, taking about three to four months from China because of the pandemic,” says Adjei. 



Initially, the idea was to have his products at a few outlets such as cafes and were also meant for outdoor activities and travels, all of which were unduly affected by the pandemic. Now, he is leaning more towards the e-commerce aspect of the business. 



“I used my unique skills in terms of content creation and web design to make sure that my website works perfectly and to make sure I am working to get my products out there. “I am also branching into co-branding which allows a company or individual to create their bottles and co-brand along with mine so I am diversifying to give the bottles other avenues to survive,” says Adjei. 



Going digital is the only way forward for Adjei, Boateng, and many other startup entrepreneurs in the diaspora who had just begun on their journey in business, and have had to script their own rulebooks of survival. Their story is no different from their counterparts across the world. It’s one of grit, gumption and the fortitude to stay the course, no matter what.

Close-Up Of Small Shopping Boxes With Credit Card On Laptop

Survivors And Thrivers In Business

After more than a decade of trying to persuade authorities of the value of teaching entrepreneurship in schools, Lydia Zingoni, founder of the Teen Entrepreneur concept, is starting to make some headway.



By Nick Said



South Africa has targeted the creation of one million new entrepreneurs by 2030, but a schooling system, says Lydia Zingoni, weighed down by a lack of resources, infrastructure and a curriculum that focuses on traditional subject matter makes that seemingly a pipe dream.



Zingoni, founder of the Teen Entrepreneur concept, is hoping to change that and after more than a decade of trying to persuade authorities of the value of teaching entrepreneurship in schools, is starting to make some headway.



“The person you want in 2030 to be creating a business is likely in school at this time somewhere in South Africa,” Zingoni tells FORBES AFRICA. “You need to reach them now in order to create that mindset and begin to build the support structure around them.”&nbsp;



Zingoni, who was born in Zimbabwe but has lived and worked in London and now Cape Town for almost three decades, is hoping to revolutionize this space in South Africa and beyond its borders to across the African continent. &nbsp;



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lydia4.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50758" width="414" height="276" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lydia4.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lydia4-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Lydia4-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 414px) 100vw, 414px" /></figure></div>



“I came to realize this need when I was working for CPUT [Cape Peninsula University of Technology] as the director of information and libraries, and four young people came to my office and said, ‘look, we know we are not going to get jobs, we want information [on opening their own business].



“This was back in 2006 when internet resources and opportunities [for online learning] were obviously far less developed.”



Zingoni recognized a growing desire among young people to cut their own path in business, but there was little practical support from institutions.&nbsp;



She also believed these learnings should start much earlier, before tertiary education, and that schools would be an essential breeding ground for entrepreneurs.



She stepped up her plans in 2009 to form Teen Entrepreneur, a non-profit organization, and went to the Department of Education to push for a program in schools that would expose learners to the idea of entrepreneurship and help them develop their concepts.



“They were not really interested, they said, ‘science and maths is really what is important, entrepreneurship is not what we are focussing on’. So I decided to go it alone and left CPUT to create Teen Entrepreneur, which has involved advocating and creating programs to support young people in developing business ideas and skills.”



The plan is to create entrepreneur ‘societies’ in schools where learners can develop their own ideas and get the support they need to turn them into practical businesses.



“It is easier said than done,” Zingoni admits. “You can go to a school and talk to the kids for 10 minutes in assembly, but then what? You are not going to convince them that way.”



Zingoni instead approached schools to create a lesson outside of normal hours with up to 50 learners taking part. But it has been painstaking work.&nbsp;



“We have a program that has 11 modules, but the core is how do you come up with a business idea. If you are in Khayelitsha [a township in South Africa’s Western Cape province] or wherever, it is not just in major centers where entrepreneurship is an option.&nbsp;



“Look within your local community, use your passion and talent to see how you can solve your own community’s problems. Obviously, there is a social element to it, but it must have a financial gain to convince young people that entrepreneurship is an option.”



Teen Entrepreneur also hosts weekend programs, monthly indabas and conferences that are in addition to the work they do in schools.



“It has been a slow process. Very slow in fact. The hardest thing has been convincing policy-makers that we need to expose young people to an entrepreneurial mindset and culture.



But we are getting to where we want to be, although obviously the Covid-19 pandemic has set us back this past year,” Zingoni says.



“We are now working with the Eastern Cape government, who love our program. The Department of Education is also now finally running what they call the E3 program [Entrepreneurship, Education, Employability] and they have partnered with us on this. That has given us access to all South African [government] schools. If there was no Covid, we would have already rolled out that program.”



But the reach into schools across the country presents a massive logistical challenge, and that is where Teen Entrepreneur has turned to technology.



“If we went into every school, it would mean I am in charge of 27,000 teachers who will present the program,” Zingoni says. “Then multiply that by may be 50 learners in each program… it is a massive reach.



“In 2016, we decided to create a digital platform for the program, where we could refer the teachers to the portal [to get the information they need]. It took until 2019 to find a partner to assist us, and that was the University of Cape Town’s computer department.



“Schools can now get all the information they need online and create their own entrepreneurship societies in that environment.”



Zingoni says the program grapples with topics very much relevant to the world of today. &nbsp;&nbsp;



“Sustainability, the environment and climate change are factors we delve into, and it is about creating businesses that are cognizant of these issues.”



She adds they have already received interest from outside of South Africa in their program, and the decision to go digital has opened other doors.



“This is not just a South African issue, it is an African problem,” she says. “We have had interest from Tanzania, Kenya, Togo… now you can learn online, it is possible to have the program in these countries and it costs nothing to take part.”

Lydia3

How To Become A CEO At 16

Chika Madubuko is using technology to connect the at-home elderly to trained care-givers in Nigeria.



THE GLOBAL DIGITAL HEALTH MARKET IS growing by leaps and bounds and billions, and Chika Madubuko, the CEO and Founder of Greymate Care, is wanting to make the most of it whilst creating impact. With money not the only objective, it was the opportunity to serve those who needed quality healthcare the most that guided her.



Born in the northern region of Nigeria, Madubuko attended the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Anambra State, where she studied microbiology, before progressing to biotechnology and bioengineering at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom (UK). 



“All I wanted to do at the time is solve problems with bio-tech, with everyday biological systems, creating drugs and industrial solutions,” says Madubuko.



After graduating, the third-born child in a family of five children, decided to take a leaf out of her entrepreneurial parents’ handbook and venture into business development and sales in the UK before relocating to Nigeria to continue as a business development manager at Novus Agro, a multisided platform that organizes smallholder farmers into accessible groups for all those who want to transact with them.



By that stage, Madubuko had already caught the entrepreneurial bug and was looking for new direction. 



“When I was about to leave the UK, I toyed with the idea of creating a homecare startup and I was a certified care-giver but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. Given my success in business development, I decided to give it a try and some people told me this was a real problem Nigerians were facing.”



The cultural norm in Nigeria is that when a loved one is sick, other members of the family take care of the person. Traditionally, this role was reserved for wives or mothers who stayed at home. However, with the significant gender shift in recent years and more women employed or entrepreneurial and no longer staying at home 24&#215;7, this has led to challenges for the elderly who need round-the-clock home care.



This is where Greymate Care comes in. Born out of the personal pain Madubuko faced when looking for a care-giver for her grandmother in the village, she based her service offering around providing trained professionals to care for vulnerable family members.



“Greymate Care is an online platform that connects the elderly to vetted care-givers right [in] the comfort of their homes… In Nigeria, there is no database where you can simply go and find a care-giver or someone who has been trained and background-checked. Greymate Care solves that problem by training people who want to become care givers and making sure they have guarantors and they are available to be deployed to your home. We reduce the turnaround time of finding a care-giver from about two months to let’s say an hour or maximum 48 hours.”



Each care-giver on the platform has to provide two references who act as guarantors for the individual and those references have to be in senior positions in credible organizations to qualify. That extra check has made Greymate Care a trusted provider in Nigeria, says Madubuko.



A recent article by Deloitte estimates that sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to become the fastest-growing region in the world in the area of e-health.



The proliferation of these services is mainly driven by rapid adaptation of mobile technology as well as the internet.



Deloitte estimates the mobile penetration rate for the continent is close to exceeding 80% with a large number of the population utilizing mobile phones for not only communication but also integrating business services.



Greymate Care is hoping to tap into this growing trend to provide access to health information and curb the shortage of good healthcare professionals especially in remote areas.



Greymate Care is hoping to tap into this growing trend to provide access to health information and curb the shortage of good healthcare professionals especially in remote areas.



For Madubuko, a major impetus for her new healthcare company is to provide employment through working with global agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme to train youth to become care-givers, an initiative that has created over 1,000 jobs on the e-health platform thus far.

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Meet The Entrepreneur Who Is Changing the Game In Geriatrics

London-based Ghanaian entrepreneur and computer science specialist Patrick Adom is inducting children into the fascinating world of jigsaw puzzles while teaching them about African culture.



AS COUNTRIES begin to grapple with the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, rapid adoption of activities outside the traditional content- streaming platforms is now beginning to gain traction.



The puzzles market is one such. Focusing on jigsaw and 3D puzzles as well as board games, it was estimated to be worth a staggering $11.88 billion globally in 2019 and on track to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18.6% from 2020 to 2027, according to Grand View Research.



The lockdowns implemented the world over spelled disaster for many who lost their jobs and livelihoods.



But Patrick Adom, a computer science specialist, saw a silver lining. Inspired by his daughter, the IT professional decided to see it as an opportunity and take a chunk of the lucrative puzzles market with his African-inspired creation, Very Puzzled.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“Africans are patriotic and want to pass down their heritage to their family. So, our sales have grown..”</blockquote>



Known for its success in improved visual and enhanced cognitive skills, Adom wanted to create a jigsaw concept that not only helped people learn more about Africa and the African diaspora, but also something that was fun and engaging for the whole family.



“I wanted children to be able to also learn without realizing that they are learning anything, and [offer] something the family can do together and start a conversation and use that to do further exploration on their own,” says Adom.



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Very-Puzzled_9-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50050" width="357" height="237" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Very-Puzzled_9-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Very-Puzzled_9-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Very-Puzzled_9-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Very-Puzzled_9-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Very-Puzzled_9-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Very-Puzzled_9-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 357px) 100vw, 357px" /><figcaption>Photo supplied </figcaption></figure></div>



After graduating from Kingston University in the United Kingdom (UK), where he studied Computer and Information Systems in 2000, Adom continued his further education with an MBA in general management from Liverpool University before working in various roles within the IT industry.



But throughout his career, the entrepreneurial bug which bit him when in secondary school, where he would buy and sell hip-hop posters to his fellow classmates, was always looking for an awakening.



“I saw that there were not a lot of things around my daughter that focused on her cultural heritage and I thought jigsaw puzzles were an innovative route that nobody was doing. I found an illustrator and it so happened that the illustrator had a map of Africa that was very bright and colorful that resonated with me and so I reached out and asked if it could be customized for me.



“They agreed and I paid them and they delivered the customization I wanted. I then looked on a platform called Alibaba and from there, I was able to secure a manufacturer in China. I made 100 pieces to test the market and reached out to black-owned shops in London to generate buzz about the products and also using Instagram and social media to let people know about the product,” says Adom.



His hard work paid off. Very soon, the products were out and people were buying it.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large">“I made 100 pieces to test the market and reached out to black-owned shops in London.”</blockquote>



Now, Adom has his eyes set on raising further investment and funding to expand the company’s unique offering. He began drilling down and creating puzzles for other countries like his hometown Ghana, South Africa, and Jamaica. 



“Africans are patriotic and want to pass down their heritage to their family. So, our sales have grown and we continue to add more stockists to our list and that helps grow the business as well. We reached the bold decision to approach a number of premiership clubs to make their own jigsaw puzzles for them featuring their intellectual property and we got licensing agreements with four premiership clubs so that was a huge success for us,&#8221; says Adom. 



The move comes at a cost as Adom has to pay licensing fee to the clubs, a risky move but one he needs to make to help broaden the appeal to a wider pool of consumers, the key to draw in the ever-elusive tranche of investors who will eventually help his business scale, and he can make his own indelible mark on the map of Africa.

Patrick Adom

The Entrepreneur Who is Piecing Africa Together One Puzzle At a Time

To improve Africa’s chances and ensure the safe storage of Covid-19 vaccines, Zeynep Harezi, and Karpowership based in Istanbul are working on innovative power generation solutions.



There is still a strong debate about Africa’s chances of receiving the Covid-19 vaccines when they become available in 2021: how will the continent store it?



Although organizations like GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, are closely working with global pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and AstraZeneca to ensure that Africa does not get left behind, there are other important considerations the continent needs to consider when it comes to receiving inoculation.



One such factor is the availability of consistent power to keep the vaccines refrigerated in order to remain potent and safe. According to a Reuters report, most vaccines require cooling of between two and eight degrees Celsius with the Phase 1 trials of the Covid-19 vaccine requiring storage in an environment as low as -80 degrees Celsius.



According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 50% of all vaccines are destroyed due to issues like temperature control. To improve Africa’s chances and ensure the safe storage and implementation of the vaccines, Zeynep Harezi and her Karpowership organization is hoping to introduce innovative power generation solutions that will enable Africa to succeed in not only the fight against Covid-19 but also power infrastructure development.



The 32-year-old Turkish-born managing director of Karpowership has a background in philosophy and economics, having graduated with a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. Harezi once dreamed of becoming the president of Turkey when she was a child, a choice that was greatly influenced by the country’s first female prime minister at the time. But it was her uncle who would set her sights on helping Africa improve its power infrastructure.



“When I was six years old, my uncle would tell me that he was going to build power plants inside ships and send them to countries all over the world. But he would also tell me about the mermaids in Atlantis so I was never sure where the line of reality was and where it was just story-telling,” recalls Harezi.



But her uncle’s stories were not tall tales after all. In 1996, the family-owned business entered the energy sector in Turkey when there was privatization of it. At the time, Karpowership was the first company to have an export licence and began exporting electricity from Turkey to Iraq.



“Then, many mining companies in Africa approached us and said ‘can we please build land-based power plants for them’ because they could not get reliable electricity and we told them instead of building land-based power plants in remote locations, we could build them inside ships or on barges much faster and with a better design to have increased efficiency and we can deliver them much faster than land-based power plants,” avers Harezi.



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:36% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49312" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ZH-2020-New-Fave-1-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“The long-term vision is to eradicate non-access to electricity. Everyone in the world should have access to electricity; it is a basic human right and we have the technology to deliver it.”</blockquote>
</div></div>



So, the organization began building floating power plants for mining projects in Africa. But before they could sell them to the continent, the Iraqi minister of energy requested an energy power plant for their southern city that had access to the sea. Harezi had just the right floating power ship to send. The next two power ships were subsequently supplied to Lebanon before finally their first supply was delivered to Ghana in 2014.



“The long-term vision is to eradicate non-access to electricity. Everyone in the world should have access to electricity; it is a basic human right and we have the technology to deliver it. As Karpowership, we can deliver baseload utility scale floating power plants to the remotest countries in the world with the highest risk of execution and construction, and we can deliver in less than 30 days. So, there is no excuse for anyone in the world to have no access to electricity and we can do it at a very low cost,” says Harezi.



Africa’s population growth is higher than other regions, hence the demand for electricity surpasses the planned increase of power supply. This means there is always a gap between supply and demand. This is a natural fit for Karpowership. Harezi says it can deliver between 25% to 80% of a country’s total electricity on one ship in less than 30 days. And there are “other advantages too” of this model.



“The regular infrastructure-related challenges of Africa are usually to do with project finance, construction risks, execution risks and the timeline. So, a project is usually promised to be operational in three years where as the project finance only lasts for two years and the actual construction takes another three to five years. So, the project that was promised for three years ends up not being finished for another eight years,” says Harezi.



Such solutions could give Africa a fighting chance in the Covid-19 vaccine race. With the company currently providing most of the national electricity in Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Senegal, it seems poised to disrupt the African energy sector in a pandemic era.

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Floating Power: ‘No Excuse To Not Have Electricity’

Tennis champion and Olympic gold medalist Venus Williams has some advice for the more than 30 million small business owners and entrepreneurs across the U.S. struggling to find their footing in the new normal: Don’t let fear take over. It’s a lesson she learned at the age of 19 while competing with sister Serena, then 17, at the 1999 U.S. Open. Williams only made it to the semi-finals—her sister went on to win the tournament.



“I let fear take over, and that&#8217;s where I should have just let go and would have been my best,” she says. “You want more, and you work very hard for more, so less than that is just&nbsp;not&nbsp;acceptable. That was my biggest loss.”&nbsp;



Speaking to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;ahead of the American Express “<a href="https://about.americanexpress.com/all-news/news-details/2020/American-Express-to-Host-Ninth-Annual-Business-Class-LIVE-Summit-for-Success-for-Small-Businesses/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Business Class Live: Summit for Success</a>” on October 20, Williams drew parallels between her experience playing tennis and running various businesses during the pandemic. “Even though it’s a very challenging time it’s an opportunity to really refine your business and make it something that is a service or a product that is really needed and not just wanted,” says Williams, the founder of full-service commercial and residential design firm V Starr and activewear brand EleVen by Venus Williams. “This year showed all of us that we need to be a product or service that you can’t say no to.”



All entrepreneurs can benefit from that guidance right now. As of August 31, more than 163,000 businesses have closed as a result of the pandemic, according to Yelp’s September&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yelpeconomicaverage.com/business-closures-update-sep-2020" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Local Economic Impact report</a>. This represents a 23% increase from July 10. Even more alarming: 60% of closed businesses have permanently shuttered due to Covid-19 and the resulting restrictions in many states. The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yelpeconomicaverage.com/yea-q3-2020.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Q3 Yelp Economic Average Report</a>&nbsp;released on October 22, however, points to a hopeful rebound: More than 210,000 businesses have now reopened amid a significant increase in consumer interest for outdoor related services and activities.&nbsp;



For those businesses that have managed to stay afloat, the path forward will require the will to adapt in an ever-changing environment. In fact, about 76% of small and medium-sized businesses have had to pivot their business models to maintain revenue, according to the latest Business Resilience Survey of 1,000 business owners by American Express. Of those surveyed, 73% expect to pivot again in the next year. More than 80% still believe the benefits of owning their own businesses outweigh the challenges.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“It’s okay to be afraid, but it’s not okay to let it ruin your decision-making process. There’s always a reason to be afraid. But should you let that take over? Hell, no.” </blockquote>



When it comes to overcoming obstacles, small business owners can’t afford to doubt themselves. Williams learned this, and the importance of mental preparation, long ago. “It’s okay to be afraid, but it’s not okay to let it ruin your decision-making process,” she says. “There’s always a reason to be afraid. But should you let that take over?,” she says. “Hell, no.”&nbsp;



The hard-earned lessons from the court have translated to the boardroom as she’s set out to become a multi-venture entrepreneur. Inspired by her father, who ran his own security company, and her mother, who encouraged her creativity as a child, Williams found her second calling in fashion and interior design. In 2002, she founded V Starr, which recently collaborated with Airbnb partner Niido to design its first-ever apartment complex. In 2009, Williams and her sister became the first African American women to buy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/news/story?id=4422313" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a stake in a NFL franchise</a>&nbsp;when they joined the ownership group of the Miami Dolphins. Three years later, she launched EleVen by Venus Williams and earned her associate degree in fashion design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. Earlier this year, she partnered with Credo Beauty to launch a line of clean, mineral-based SPF products for EleVen by Venus.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Williams says running her businesses in the current environment has been one of the greatest challenges she’s ever faced, but she still appreciates the silver linings. “The world of business is really lending a hand to African Americans and women and minorities during this time. And that has also been unprecedented—so opportunity comes out of this really crazy hardship as well. You have to look at that as a challenge—you need to accept it and run with it. There’s no time to waste.”  



-By Maneet Ahuja,Forbes Staff

Empire State Building Hosts Venus Williams and American Express In Support Of Small Business Saturday

Venus Williams’ Advice For Entrepreneurs: Don’t Let Fear Take Over—Just Push Through It

Ada Osakwe’s business growth in Nigeria was fraught with struggle, but she is now fighting the injustice meted out to her as a female entrepreneur in the early days.



Most democratic societies consider themselves – on the surface at least – to be gender equal. But while legislation may not discriminate against women outright, real equality is still a long way off. The answer to greater empowerment and more profitable leadership may lie within women themselves.



Ada Osakwe, founder of Nuli Juice, a healthy ‘fast food’ company based in Lagos, Nigeria, believes the time for women to act is now. Osakwe catapulted Nuli Juice from a single-brand organization to a multi-category, multi-brand beverage giant. But that story almost didn’t materialize.



On September 1, 2016, Osakwe was celebrating the highlight of what was a journey that had taken almost four years in the making. Her juice company had just opened its first flagship shop in the cosmopolitan hub of Ikoyi, Lagos, and the young female agripreneur was the talk of town for her innovative approach to empowering local farmers by sourcing raw materials locally.



The next day, disaster struck.



“I was lying in bed and I get a call from one of my guys who said there are people here at the shop with bulldozers and I need to come. I got in my car and the streets were blocked off. There were police officers with guns all over the place,” recalls Osakwe.



Her shop was part of a group of four female-owned businesses being ransacked by the Nigerian police over the landlord’s alleged failure to pay taxes due to the Lagos State government.



“This was like 8AM and I said to them ‘we are tenants’ and they didn’t listen to us. We couldn’t reach out to the landlord. I made some calls to the relevant people in Lagos State and nothing happened. I said ‘don’t do this’. We are employing people, even squatters have rights and I pleaded with them to stop.”



Her cries for help went unheard and in that one morning, all her hard work came crashing down.



Ironically, a week before the demolishing of her shop, Facebook founder and American internet billionaire Mark Zuckerberg was in Lagos with the government celebrating the trip as a testament to their support for the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Lagos.



“It was really tough. A woman-owned business in agriculture, which was the focus of the government for youth job creation with over 15 youths employed in the store, was destroyed that morning,” says Osakwe.



For her, the experience was a bitter pill to swallow. She had turned down a lucrative position to follow her mentor, Akinwumi Adesina, as he made the transition from agriculture minister to the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), in pursuit of making her mark on the world.



After graduating with a first-class honors degree in economics from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom (UK), Osakwe began her career by working in investment banking in London. After two years on the trading floor, she was introduced to the AfDB where she secured an opportunity in France at the age of 24.



“I think I was the youngest person to be ever employed by a development institution and it was such a transformational path and it really set me on the path for who I am today. I worked hard, took minutes and people began to notice the effort I put in.”



Osakwe was right in the heart of what she felt was her calling at the time, driving Africa’s development, but she started to question whether there was more she could do.



Her goal was on making more of a direct impact on the African continent and the people she knew.



“It’s so easy to be in these institutions and you are traveling business class meeting different ministers in different countries and it is tempting to stay in that position but I had this burning feeling to do more,” recalls Osakwe.



After working in the infrastructure team where she was a part of the financing of the Lekki Toll Gate project, a multibillion-naira infrastructure project in the heart of Lagos, Osakwe decided to do an MBA in the United States (US) and transitioned into the private equity space.



“At that time, the African government was investing into private equity because I felt it was a way to truly support entrepreneurs. I worked with a company called Actis which was the biggest private equity firm for emerging private equity funds and ended up in New York with an African-focused fund.”



Osakwe was beginning to feel more at home making an impact with local entrepreneurs. A chance encounter with the team from the Tony Elumelu Foundation, a nonprofit organization pushing the advancement of youth entrepreneurship in Nigeria, brought her attention to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.



“I met with the minister of agriculture at the time, Dr. Adesina and I took a flight to New York and what was supposed to be a 30-minute conversation, lasted three hours. We talked about plans for the youth in agriculture and it was a fun conversation. I was like ‘this is a minister’ and he was talking about the private sector and funds for the agriculture sector and when I left, I knew I would be working with the firm,” says Osakwe.



That was a lifetime ago. After working with the AfDB for four years, she knew it was time to venture out on her own. That eureka moment was sparked by two startling statistics Osakwe came across.



Firstly, Africa was spending about $40 billion on food imports that could be grown locally. Furthermore, Nigeria’s total importation amounted to about $11 billion on fish and tomatoes.



“I was like what is happening to our farmers? So, the wheat farmers in the US are getting richer and our farmers are only small-scale farmers and struggling. Something had to be done,” she says.



After making a series of small investments in two startups as an angel investor, Nuli Juice was born. Today, the company has 10 stores across Nigeria with a further expansion in its product portfolio to include homegrown coffee. Her brand is also stocked in all major retail outlets including Spar and Shoprite.



“The food industry is a $3 trillion industry and Africa is not on the map. You don’t go to Tesco in the UK and pick up a spaghetti that says ‘made in Nigeria’ or ‘made in Togo’; you see ‘made in Spain’. We have to change this.”



Osakwe is deliberate about changing the narrative of how agriculture is seen in Nigeria. Her goal is to use her platform to fight the injustice she suffered as a female entrepreneur in the early days of her business.



“It has been a struggle. The gender issue is a real thing for a woman in Nigeria and I see it when I am raising money. Women have to be resilient. As an entrepreneur, you will get the nos and sometimes your store will be demolished and you will get the police threatening to shut you down because they want a bribe, but you have to believe in that bigger plan and vision for where you want to see yourself,” says Osakwe.



And for her, that vision is to see Nuly Juice, an indigenous Nigerian brand, on the shelves of all major international retailers across the world.&nbsp;

Ada red 3

A Demolished Shop That Built A Success Story

The small-towner started off as a model, then ventured into fashion, constructing Afro-urban clothing the unconventional way. Lebogang Makgale is a creative on a mission.



In Johannesburg’s cultural and creative nerve center that is Newtown, a chic district in the inner city with bustling clubs, cafés and art galleries, Lebogang Makgale’s fashion studio is an apt adornment.



The curious, vibrant young passers-by outside his door often stop to inspect his garments but to the 27-year-old fashionista, the uncontested center-piece in his bright blue studio is a hard-working sewing machine he bought for $34. It stands as a symbol of hope that gave fresh impetus to his life – and continues to be his career’s biggest investment, carefully-positioned in a corner enveloped by photographs from his first fashion collection. 



The space is otherwise strewn with clothes, fabric and accounting books. He is at ease with each of these objects. After all, his journey started studying accountancy at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), a venerable higher learning institution located close to where he is today.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Long before that, in high school, the Soweto-born creative artiste called himself ‘MacGale’, a play on his surname, which he artfully inscribed on classroom desks. The name stuck.



It must have been ordained. Today, that’s also the name of his fashion brand.



“A bookworm, shy and not very social” in school, fortunately, his interest in sport and athletics ensured he always had a coterie of friends and followers. But he also had another quality that endeared him to them – his interest in fashion and his distinct sartorial sense.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



&nbsp;He wanted to be a sports star, and his parents wanted him to become a chartered accountant, but this was the only talent – like his self-styled sobriquet – that stuck, and carried him through his growing years.



&nbsp;He pursued an extended diploma in accounting, but Makgale felt out of place; accounting was dull and gloomy in comparison with the myriad colors of the fashion world.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47849" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-scaled-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-scaled-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /></figure>



“About seven months into the course, a classmate told me that I am tall and had style and advised me to take on modeling. I took it seriously and joined an agency. They [the agencies] told me I am not tall enough, not masculine enough, but I persisted despite everything being shut out,” recalls Makgale when we meet him one warm January afternoon in Johennesburg.



Floyd Manotoano, known in South Africa’s emancipated fashion circuit as Floyd Avenue and winner of the GQ Scouting Menswear Competition in 2017, gave Makgale the modeling platform, and he didn’t look back.



His trips to designers’ studios for fittings and fashion shows only grew his innate love for couture.



“I was still enrolled at UJ but not going to class, I was going to studio. My transport fare and lunch money were used to buy fabric. We always had a plan showcasing across Johannesburg and always buying fabric. A friend also taught me how to thread a sewing machine. I was also introduced to styling and started consulting to make outfits for matric dances,” says Makgale.&nbsp;



The networking and mingling in the fashion world helped. He thereby met a tailor who sold him his sewing machine for $34. Now, all he needed was to perfect his craft.&nbsp;



He turned to technology, and characteristically for a youngster in the digital age, sought the help of online tutorials to learn to sew. He debuted with an ethnic Ndebele print collection.



In 2013, reality kicked in. His father asked for his varsity results. He had to break the news to him. That he was not keen on accounting, and he had been bunking classes. His concerned father asked him: “There are a lot of designers, how are you going to make money?”



He had enrolled at a fashion school with little knowledge and experience of the industry. But he was beginning to make an impression with his clothes.



Two years in, Makgale dropped out to focus on the business side of fashion. Being blogged about and being known on the streets wasn’t paying the bills; he had to make ends meet.



“I disappeared and disconnected from the street to focus on the brand, MacGale. I had to start from scratch. I had to create a client base, a target market. I slowly established myself as a professional fashion designer. That’s when the true identity of the brand evolved, in 2015,” he says.



During his off-grid period, he worked on a collection for BackToTheCity, South Africa’s biggest annual hip-hop and street culture festival. 2015 was a definitive year for him; he tailored an African-inspired street wear collection and incorporated it with plastic.



Soon after, fashion photographer Chris Saunders approached him. He was shooting for an international magazine profiling the coolest kids in Johannesburg. Saunders selected Makgale and that became part of a showcase at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.



&nbsp;Business started trickling in; Makgale was making matric dance suits, whilst polishing his designing skills.



“There was a time when that was the only kind of work I would be getting. It wasn’t fun, but it made business sense because the matric boys would refer everyone to me,” he recalls.



In 2015, he was also introduced to cycling by a long-time friend and athlete. His original love for sport was stoked. But there again, his love for fashion prevailed.



“Cycling equipment and kits are expensive. The color combinations didn’t make sense to me, so I made [comfortable clothes] I could cycle in that would also look cool. I started with jackets with pockets at the back, then shorts with tights that go underneath. I then decided to make a fashionable active wear collection,” he says.



About a year later, this got the attention of Moja Nation, an advertising agency working on the ‘Let Wonder Out’ campaign for Oreo cookies. This was going to be Makgale’s first corporate gig.



Despite the challenges he faced, Oreo loved his work and asked him to work on their second campaign. This time, he was more experienced and able to execute the whole order by himself.



He worked on it whilst helping Floyd Avenue with his 2017 South Africa Fashion Week collection.



“I worked with Lebo when I won the GQ award. I’ve known him for a long time; I even made his matric dance suit that was inspired by Kanye West. I’ve seen his growth; he has invested in his craft. I knew him as a student at UJ. Years later, we started meeting at fashion events and started working together,” says Floyd Avenue.



In 2017, Makgale was also part of a TV show, 100 Percent Youth, on SABC1, which documented his sourcing and creation processes.



“I came across striped fabric and fell in love with it. I made a striped jacket live on camera. Little did I know that was the beginning of an era, I started my stripe journey,” he recalls.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The stripes inspired his tailored suits, not of the traditional kind, but also motivated by waistcoats, and women’s wear like corsets and dungarees. This was his third official collection.&nbsp;



After 100 Percent Youth was aired, he started receiving more orders for his suits and he was soon appearing in season two of SABC’s fashion reality TV show Raw Silk. He made it to the top five and that too got him traction and customers.



By this point, he had developed working relationships with hip and happening local celebrities such as Khetsiwe Morgan, also known as DJ Doowap. Most of the women’s garments that Makgale creates are for her. He had never seen himself crafting womenswear until Raw Silk happened.



“I don’t like shopping at the mall; I’m about creating things that no one wears, so I was trying to find a tailor for the longest time. My boyfriend told me about Lebo’s collection, I met him and he is super-easy to work with. He is super-honest and tells me when something isn’t going to work. The first garment he made for me was for the Metro FM Awards in 2017, he made a three-piece garment using Swati fabric,” says DJ Doowap.



Makgale has expanded his business since and is working on costume design for local and international advertising campaigns. His journey started in an accounting classroom. But today, he is a passionate fashion entrepreneur on his way up. He may not be balancing books, but he is certainly on the money.

IMG_1130

The $34 Investment That Fashioned A Career

Edith Cooper, who spent more than 20 years as an executive at Goldman Sachs, knows what it’s like to stand out in a workplace. Being one of few people of color in a sea of white faces over the course of her career hasn’t been easy. But rather than dwell on this reality, Cooper, who now sits on the boards of Etsy and Slack, has championed her differences. That’s what helped her rise through the ranks at the bank to eventually head its human resources department, an accomplishment she says was a result of her ability to connect with people of all backgrounds.



That quality would continue to work to her advantage: As Goldman Sachs evolved, so did its staff. Diversity was reflected not only in employees’ skin colors and genders, but also in their ages and geographical origins. Cooper was awakened to the fact that if the company was going to thrive, it would need to create an environment wherein its multifaceted staff could feel comfortable embracing their differences and, in turn, learn from them.&nbsp;



“If you can figure out an environment where people can thrive together, it’s powerful,” Cooper says. But it’s a process that takes time, especially if newer, more inexperienced employees aren’t equipped with the proper skills to navigate this balance between professionalism and open expression. 



That is in part what inspired Cooper’s new startup,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.withmedley.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Medley</a>, which she launched with her daughter Jordan Taylor, a former chief of staff at Mic and Harvard Business School Baker Scholar, to provide a community in which young professionals can gain the skills they need to bring their most authentic selves to work without fear. In light of the heightened tension surrounding ongoing racial injustice that’s inevitably seeping into workplace communication, it’s an ideal time to learn this skill.



Taylor has also had her fair share of experiences being the “only one in the room,” but as an emerging leader, rather than an established executive like her mother. Graduating in the top 5% of her class and being one the first 20 Black students to be named a Baker Scholar meant she was constantly figuring out how to relate to peers in predominantly white spaces. She figured it out, but Medley is a platform she wishes had been around when she was finding her voice among people whose backgrounds were much different than hers.



Medley groups young professionals in their 20s and 30s with other like-minded members whose workplace values, concerns and priorities align. The professionals that make up these eight-person groups differ, however, in terms of gender and ethnic background, which Cooper and Taylor hope will translate to increased empathy that members can apply within their respective workplaces.



“This idea of people being able to bring their true selves to work and to be able to talk through what that looks like is at the core of what Medley is offering,” says Cooper.



In addition to full access to workshops, panels and conversations led by experts across industries, members commit to a 90-minute virtual meeting each month, facilitated by a Medley-certified coach and focused on addressing and reflecting on ongoing experiences in their personal and professional lives. Cooper credits Medley’s robust network of coaches to the guidance she gained from Merche Del Valle, former global head of coaching at Goldman Sachs and a certified lifestyle, nutrition and wellness coach.



Merging personal wellness and professional development in group discussions is a priority. “You can’t just look at your career in a vacuum,” says Taylor. “In order to meet your potential, the ability to have a more holistic approach is incredibly important.”



To ensure that people of all socioeconomic backgrounds have the ability to join the community, Medley offers a sliding scale fee ranging from $50 to $250, depending on the financial situation of prospective members. Cooper and Taylor are also in conversations with companies interested in partnering with Medley to give their staff reimbursement for membership.&nbsp;



With the help of investors including Away cofounder Jen Rubio, dtx company founder and CEO Tim Armstrong and MIC cofounder and former CEO Chris Altchek, who contributed more than $1 million to the project, Medley was ready to launch in May 2020 as an in-person membership hub in New York City. Shelter-in-place mandates halted the launch, but also presented an opportunity for Medley to instead be virtual and incorporate international members. The more springing corporate workers that can benefit from the community’s aim to build the next generation of confident, communicative professionals the better, the mother-daughter team notes.



“Medley gives people an opportunity to be a better human in relation to the people they work with and quite frankly in society,” Taylor says.



&#8211; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/briannegarrett/">Brianne Garrett</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/leadership">Leadership</a>

Tag: Entrepreneur

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