50 Faces

Lauren Jankelowitz

ByWBSComms November 21, 2018January 13, 2020

Lauren Jankelowitz

Current title
Chief Executive Officer, Southern African HIV Clinicians Society

Course at Wits Business Schoolz
Management Advancement Programme, 2004
Master of Business Administration, 2007

A defining moment in my career
I was a really good social worker. I loved working in a community, doing long-term development work with individuals and groups. However, because I was a good social worker, I quickly became a manager of peers, then teams and projects, and ultimately organisations.

A defining moment in my career was when at the first organisation I ran, while signing off a financial statement, I realised I did not understand the financial parts of my job. This resulted in me doing a series of business studies, all of which built on one another.

The Nexus programme at Gordon Institute of Business Science was quickly followed by the Management Advancement Programme (MAP) at Wits Business School, which provided basic, necessary skills for being a manager and running an organisation.

I converted my MAP to an MBA as I had developed a new appreciation for business management knowledge and skills. Doing an MBA provided the foundation for my work as a social worker.

The combination of these two disparate sets of skills has resulted in me being a well-rounded manager of non-profit organisations, able to address problems from both the social and the economic perspectives. This combination has also pushed me in the direction of social enterprise.

I consider myself a social entrepreneur and am currently doing my PhD on social enterprise. This outcome, a consistent mix of my social worker self and my business management self, has been due largely to the confidence and skills obtained at WBS so many years ago.

50 Faces

Diane Radley

ByWBSComms November 22, 2018January 13, 2020

When I was growing up I feared failure and the devastation I thought would ensue. I wanted to be perfect and felt any form of failure was letting me and other people down, particularly my mother who had made tremendous sacrifices in bringing up three children alone on a music teacher’s salary.

50 Faces

Nthabeleng Likotsi

ByWBSComms November 22, 2018January 13, 2020

The most defining moment in my life was when I realised that black women could own a bank that focuses on entrepreneurs, but most importantly it was having my own people affirming my dream by supporting it financially.

50 Faces

Faizel Mansoor

ByWBSComms November 22, 2018January 13, 2020

J.R. Morgan said, “A man always has two reasons for doing anything – a good reason and the real reason.” At the end of 2009, I found myself at a crossroad in my entrepreneurial journey.

50 Faces

Affiong Williams

ByWBSComms November 22, 2018May 18, 2019

A defining moment in my career has been the realisation that my purpose as an entrepreneur is far reaching, not just to create jobs and wealth, but also be a leading example of charting a path others can follow, especially women.

50 Faces

Thabo Mokwele

ByWBSComms November 22, 2018January 10, 2020

WB Yeats said, “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” which holds a harsh lesson for me. I took my radio broadcasting talent for granted. Because it came so easily, I began not to pay it attention and focused on what others considered important.

50 Faces

Nazli Jugbaran

ByWBSComms November 21, 2018January 13, 2020

Heraclitus said, “The only thing that is constant is change.” My entire life and career have been and continue to be defined by a series of radical changes; a series of moments, based on numerous epiphanies that have led to an amazing journey of personal transformation and an exploration of experiencing the true nature of who we are.

Lauren Jankelowitz

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