I was really tired of student’s life brokenness and that frustration compelled me to look for a job, so I went on a very aggressive search to find part-time employment while studying full time.
I remember walking distances to attend interviews at recruitment agencies located in lofty suburbs. Eventually I received a good placement. When I graduated, I rewarded myself with a self-paid trip to the United Kingdom (UK), from savings accumulated from this particular job. It was my first time out of the African continent. These is how Daisry Ndeshihala Mathias, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Team Namibia recalls her drive looking for a job for the first time while attending university.
Born in Oniipa,Ondangwa, Mathias attended her primary school at the Holy Cross Convent and High School at the St. Pauls College. She studied Marketing with specialization in Brand Management, before obtaining a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration (PDBA) from the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. She is currently studying towards her Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Pretoria Gordon’s Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in Johannesburg, South Africa. As a teen Mathias was reserved yet confident and focused. “I would dream then sit for hours with butterflies of excitement in my tummy, planning how to make it happen. I would write lists for everything I needed to get done and set deadlines against them. Nothing gave me greater satisfaction then crossing things off my to-do list. I enjoyed exercise activities and might add that I was not an academic over achiever in high school,” she says.
Mathias got her first job during her third year of tertiary education in Cape Town when she received a part-time receptionist job at one of the more prominent advertising agencies in Cape Town at the time, Berry Bush BBDO. She would work from two until seven O’ clock, three days a week and that opportunity was as valuable for her as it was preparing her for professionally and job readiness. She was later promoted to the position of Executive Assistant to the Managing Director and Creative Director of the same agency.
“I have found myself in a few tight corners but God has always made a way for me where there seemed to be no way. He has also given me many helpers and a loving support system. It would be impossible and unfair to list only a few names because in so many different ways, I have been granted opportunities for empowerment, received resources, benefitted from sacrificial acts of assistance and support. People have taken risk for me, prayed for me and invested in the woman that I am today,” she appreciates.
In July 2014, Mathias was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Team Namibia; a multi-sectorial business support, non-profit organisation, mandated to grow consumer markets locally and abroad through the active promotion of Namibia as a country of origin of competitive goods and services. Her professional experience ranges from advertising, digital marketing, social marketing and export promotion. She has been exposed to a cross-section of Namibian businesses and to the domestic/international trade dynamics; gaining her insight on factors affecting Namibia’s business climate and sensitising her to the opportunities. She is also currently a part-time Marketing lecturer and Consumer Behaviour Tutor at the Polytechnic of Namibia as well as the Editor of a leading business, finance and economics publication, Namibia Business Journal.
Mathias is a young and dynamic leader with a burning passion for branding and for her country Namibia. “I was a bit of a control freak growing up, I had my entire life planned and inked to the final detail. I feel a lesser need to control destiny now. What I can share is that I see myself serving my fellow countrymen and women without reservation, putting to work the passion, gifts and talents in my possession, in the available amount of time,” she says.
She encourages fellow youth to make use of every opportunity to work, learn and develop themselves in early years of preparation. “When the promotion opportunity comes, you will be ready and able to rise up and deliver. I assure you, no experience you have been through will be wasted.”