Junior Associate
Jane is an experienced communications professional. Over the span of her career, she has worked with a number organisations in providing corporate communications and knowledge management services. Jane will be optimising her years of experience and passion in helping young people find the right resources for growth at The Early Career Place.
Rahmat is an experienced agribusiness and food systems development professional. Over the past eight years, Rahmat has launched, supported, and led high-impact start-ups and projects that empowered and supported 5,000+ African youth, women, and agriSMEs to build profitable and sustainable businesses, drive growth in local communities, and catalyze global impact. Through her digital platform and non-profit, The Early Career Place, Rahmat is also documenting and transferring her career learnings to support other young professionals.
“If you can see it, you can be it”.
The power of seeing exactly what you wish to be is grossly underestimated. This sight comes in many shapes and forms; someone who models the goals you want to attain, opportunities that that provide unimaginable access, resources that let you accomplish specific tasks, networks that open the doors of success for you. In the end, these are lifelines that allow us to be who we want to be, because we could see just a little bit more clearly.
The Early Career Place was born from my career journey. Fresh out of the university, all I had was an incredible amount of guts and extracurricular/volunteering activities in my portfolio. Eight years later, I have worked with the brightest minds in my industry, helped launch two companies, led/managed/supported multi-millions dollar projects, engaged diverse stakeholders in the private, public sectors and international development community, and supported hundreds of entrepreneurs to grow. The biggest part of these milestones was that I did not do it alone.
It was all thanks to the right people, opportunities, and resources.
From the university alumni who shared a job opening with me (landed my first full-time job), to the employer who showed me how to use Excel because I was never taught in the university, the colleague who walked me through a crash course in problem solving, the client who was impressed enough to refer me to other opportunities, the boss who trusted me to launch not one but two organizations, the colleague who nominated me for opportunities, the mentor who opened up a new world of possibilities, and friends who shared their experiences with me – it took a village to come to this point in my career.
Throughout this journey, I encountered quite a few eureka confounding moments.
These moments made me realize one thing – I have been incredibly privileged through empowerment. The next realization was, I need to empower others.
I started a small research project to understand the labour demand and supply gap, especially in the early-stage career space. The answer that emerged was profoundly simple: the real problem was in the QUALITY of the supply. Of the 34.2% of the population that are young and available for work in Africa’s markets, only a pitiful fragment is adequately equipped to carry out actual productive activities across industries. This is how I came to establish The Early Career Place.