Vuyisile Zondi

I was a second-year Bachelor student of economics, working as the public relations manager of the largest world student-run organisation for youth leadership development and international mobility, AIESEC.

Every day is a great opportunity to claw one back for the ordinary person in a corruption-infested South Africa that is making every one of us poorer.

The defining moment of my career was when I left a successful career in the corporate world to join a few ex-colleagues and friends in starting a new bank. This was a daunting move after having spent most of my career in a world where complex challenges were sheltered by the relative security of size, then moving to another world of complex challenges with no security.

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.

Independent from a very young age, I had one life plan, ‘to own my own knives and forks’ and never to rely financially on anyone else. After two years of pursuing a business degree at university, I dropped out.

There are many moments that felt important in my career, such as when I conducted my first leadership development course for the Chief Justices of the Southern African Development Community countries.