Episode Notes:

In this episode, we journey to Johannesburg to speak with Nwabisa Mayema, a dynamic social entrepreneur and fierce advocate for women’s leadership across Africa. Nwabisa brings a bold and grounded presence to every space she enters. Her path—from accounting student to self-made entrepreneur, partnership strategist, and global convener—has been shaped by a deep belief in purpose, community, and the radical power of relationships. With roots in South Africa’s Eastern Cape and a lineage of what she calls “wild women,” Nwabisa shares how social capital, collective wisdom, and vulnerability can transform both businesses and societies. In this conversation, she explores what it means to lead with integrity, build community instead of networks, and embrace entrepreneurship not as hustle, but as healing and legacy-making.

Episode Transcript:

Darren Isom:

Welcome to Dreaming In Color, a space for social change leaders of color to reflect on how their unique life experiences, personal and professional, have prepared them to lead and drive the impact we all seek. I'm your host, Darren Isom. This season we're traveling to the continent to highlight African leaders and the continent's role as a key driver of global innovation and leadership. So join us as we travel across the continent from South Africa to Tunisia, with stops in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Senegal along the way, celebrating the diaspora in all of its complexity and beautiful possibility. This is Dreaming In Color: Africa.

Today we're in South Africa talking to Nwabisa Mayema, a global citizen who leads with purpose and has a zest for life. Whether building a venture studio from the ground up or designing an ethical lending solution for funding partners, Nwabisa always connects with doers and dreamers. Her work is a reflection of relief that the future is happening right now. As an ecosystem enabler, Nwabisa remains insatiably, curious and open-minded. Nwabisa, welcome to Dreaming in Color. Nwabisa, it's wonderful to have you here. As you know, we like to start with handing the floor to you. So what you got for us. Invocation.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Thank you, Darren.

Darren Isom:

Of course.

Nwabisa Mayema:

It's such a pleasure to be here. So mine is just a simple sentence, which is an invitation, which is ukuhamba ukubona. It's a Xhosa saying, which really is an invitation that says, "To journey is to see." What it means is it's inviting us to travel, whether it's in our minds or physically, or to change geographic zones and places, but most importantly, to go look for new ideas. To see. And in that seeing, we either are believing or we're interrogating, or we are actually starting to see ourselves in other people. And therefore, ukuhamba ukubona.

Darren Isom:

What a beautiful way to start this journey as we go and see right now. I want to start with, I mean, you have such an incredible, incredibly impressive background. You've done quite a bit. South Africa, global stages all over the place. You've been there, but of course all good stories start with an origin. And so I would love to start with your origin. I know you were born in the Eastern Cape. You describe yourself as coming from a lineage of wild women. Having grown up as the only daughter of a single mom, a nurse, while also having a grandmother in the home, extended family of aunts and others who are around you at all times. I would love for you just to talk a little bit more about that background, how that shaped you and what does it mean to be a wild woman?

Nwabisa Mayema:

So for me to be a wild woman is to have a sense of, it's not fearlessness, it's understanding that there are things out there in the world that are quite scary. But to actually try and move through the world in spite of those things. To have some sense of responsibility, but at the same time, an audaciousness. And so for me, I think so much of my story and my life is about being in places that I have no business being in. And so I have no business being the daughter of a nurse, a single mother who in herself is a daughter of a domestic worker in South Africa who was born in the depths of colonialism, then into apartheid and myself being born in terms of the last chapters of apartheid in South Africa. So seeing myself on global stages, being in conversation with you, being in so many different rooms, different environments, I have no business being there, and that for me is in itself is a wildness.

And so the origins of being from the Eastern Cape, which is one of the nine provinces in South Africa, one of the poorer provinces in South Africa, and yet honestly the most beautiful part of this country. Of course everyone will tell you that, but truly it is this incredibly magical part of the country, both in terms of having a very ancient culture and deep memories of both culture in terms of people remembering who they come from, where they come from, who they are. Of course, a history and a memory of their interactions with let's say European settlers coming into South Africa. And therefore there's an interesting lineage around education and also even the documentation of who we are. And then of course, a very interesting history and lineage of people moving. And so this migration, whether it was people moving from rural villages in the Eastern Cape to come work in the mines of Johannesburg or people moving from the Eastern Cape to go work in the fruit farms of the Western Cape around Cape Town, and at the same time having the sense of ekaya, which is home.

So something that's very particular to us as those who come from the Eastern Cape in South Africa is that we all go home, [foreign language 00:04:38]. Meaning that we are those who go home. And so once a year round about December, festive season time, you'll see this amazing migration of very urbane people from the Eastern Cape or people who come from very modest backgrounds or work in modest careers. But we all go back to the Eastern Cape. And so there's this movement as well, which goes back to this invocation of ukuhamba ukubona, and I tie that into this idea of being wild because you never really are attached to anything, and yet you're deeply attached and embedded into something. So that kind of gives a sense of the origin without maybe going too much into my family story, but-

Darren Isom:

No, no, I love that. You can go as far to your family story as you like. It's a beautiful story to go into. I think what it makes me think of as well, we see all the time in the States that some of us are never really at home anywhere, so we're at home everywhere.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Yes.

Darren Isom:

But you talk specifically about this idea of both going back home, but carrying a bit of home with you everywhere you go, and how that cultural grounding gives you in some ways agency and perspective to do so many things. I know that so much of your career has been about uplifting women and really thinking of uplifting women as part of your calling in life and what you offer to the world. As the founding director, executive director of Infinity, you were deeply committed to supporting women entrepreneurs as key drivers solving poverty in Africa. I would love to just talk a little bit more about that background and how that home in some ways gave you that as a way to go from a work perspective. But more importantly, as you think about that path and you think about entrepreneurship, how are you encouraging others or have you encouraged others to carry that home with them as they carry out the work as well and really understand the value of entrepreneurship?

Nwabisa Mayema:

I think the focus on women starts from the fact that I am a woman and so it's important to look after the thing that makes sense to me. I have also been an entrepreneur myself, and therefore the challenges, and of course the opportunities that lie within the world of entrepreneurship are so many. And yet when you're a woman, there's so many things that are so specific to your existence as a woman, whether it is the physical challenges, the expectation on the girl child, the expectation on as you enter adulthood and you find yourself perhaps with the responsibility of taking care of aging parents, that responsibility tends to fall far greatly on women. Then you move into this idea of when you look at the history of the Eastern Cape, and I alluded to this idea of migrant labor, South Africa being an economy that's very much supported by the mining industry, it meant that the men left their places of home and went to go work in these mines pretty much around Johannesburg, but north of the country.

It meant that the women stayed behind and therefore they literally kept the home fires burning. So it also means that when certain vulnerabilities exist, it then tends to be the girl child or the woman who bears the brunt of that. So by the time you're thinking about entrepreneurship, it moves away from saying, "Oh, I just want to start a business because that's maybe a cool thing to do, or I want to be the next fill in the blank in terms of next billionaire or next inventor of a thing." But really it is about I'm interested in creating a livelihood. I'm interested in creating a livelihood that also has legacy, which means that through this, those who come after me, perhaps my children or my siblings, have the opportunity to perhaps climb some sort of ladder, whether it's social or economic. And then the third thing is, how can I also be able to create livelihoods for others?

And therefore, you start thinking about entrepreneurship then with impact. So how can I make sure that as an entrepreneur, particularly as a woman entrepreneur, am I creating a business that is going to encourage a thriving society, meaning that people are healthy? So are we making sure that people are eating well, people have access to clean air and to water, people have democratized access to information, to knowledge, to creativity, to imagination? Am I creating a business that's going to make sure that we may be starting to think about a regenerative planet? So are we creating businesses that are good for the environment, not because it's again sustainable or because it's a nice thing to report about, but genuinely if there is no land, we do not exist.

And thirdly, am I creating a business that actually promotes an inclusive economy because I need to be able to participate in this economy through my business, and therefore can I make sure that those who benefit from our business are included in this economy? And so you start thinking about then entrepreneurship as this thing that actually is a vector of development, a vector of growth and a vector towards being thriving as a society. And so that's been something that's really been important to me when I think about being an entrepreneur myself, but most importantly enabling others to become entrepreneurs.

Darren Isom:

Now I want to come back to your path to entrepreneurship because it's a powerful story that we really want to all hear. But before I head there, I want to come back to this concept of women as entrepreneurs, because you talked about what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, and I feel in many ways you've really teed up women as the perfect entrepreneur. And so I would love to have you talk a little bit more about, as you think about all the things that are really necessary for someone to be really successful in entrepreneurship, how are women perfectly placed to really excel at that role and that position?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Sure. I mean, I think women are perfectly placed to be in many, many roles and many positions. I just don't know if the world is ready for that. And so there's also that understanding that I could extol all the virtues and then at the same time say, "But in the real world..." However, that being said, I think the first thing is to understand that entrepreneurship is not this sort of singular island of an endeavor. To be an entrepreneur and to be a successful entrepreneur, actually you obviously need actual financial capital. You need intellectual capital of course, and you need human capital in terms of people in your business.

But most importantly you need social capital. So the understanding of your place in society and of course society's understanding and in fact affirmation of the role that you play in making society a little bit better, either adding convenience or adding efficiencies or improving certain things in that society. And I think women are really quite good at being able to cultivate and nurture social capital by virtue of being able to exchange stories, by being able to connect the dots and create relationships and to really focus on the power of relationships.

I always say to an entrepreneur, "You can start as many businesses as you want and as you need to, and you can shatter them as often as you need to, but make sure that you keep your relationships intact. Because it's that social capital that will then be able to bring through either then the endorsement that you need or the resources that you need, and most importantly the market that you need to either what you've got going on or importantly to pay for what you actually are providing as an entrepreneur." I think women are also really good because we tend to be a little bit more collaborative. So whether it's being collaborative, the management structures that you put together as an entrepreneur or collaborative then with other businesses. So often I think we as...

Those of us who enable entrepreneurship or work within the world of supporting entrepreneurs, we tend to get quite caught up in this idea of creating unicorns, which is very much a Silicon Valley concept. And so I'm part of a movement of people who start talking about zebras. So what does it look like if we are creating businesses that are not going to grow at 10X speed, not creating businesses that are going to be valued at a billion dollars, however, medium-sized businesses that will endure for a long time, but most importantly businesses that will be able to work with other businesses.

And so when you think about zebras in the savanna, these are animals that actually graze with the wildebeest because then there's a collaboration between the one animal that sees better than the other one and the other one that has a better sense of smell. But most importantly, when zebras are done grazing, they leave the felt or the savanna better than it was before. So how can we actually do that and then work as a herd? And I think the most delightful part of that is that knowing that the collective noun of zebras is a dazzle. So what does it look like if women can create businesses that dazzle really?

Darren Isom:

That's beautiful. And you know what, funny enough, and we can cut this at some point if we choose to, but I use the expression all the time, we want to go with zebras and not unicorns. And I think I learned that from you, from a conversation some years back. So it's good to know where the expression I've been using comes from.

Nwabisa Mayema:

It has been my ministry for some time.

Darren Isom:

Yeah, totally. It's a great one. I mean, you talk about this idea of the social capital piece, this idea of leaving a place better, it speaks to a very important role that entrepreneurship can play in social change. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what that looks like and the important role that can play?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Absolutely. I think we also need to be very careful in terms of what change are we trying to drive. So I think we are assuming that change is something that's positive. So perhaps it's the idea of driving positive social change, whatever that looks like. And then of course, this idea that when you exist in economies where there are some gaps, whether because there are limitations and resources, whether they're coming from the state or even from society itself, that's a brilliant place for which entrepreneurship can thrive because it means that there is opportunities for individuals, groups of individuals to create these entities to solve, to provide solutions to challenges. These challenges can be as mundane or as deep, but as simple sounding as equal access to clean water or then something around some technological advancement.

So actually entrepreneurship then becomes this very interesting vehicle that we use to then drive change because we actually initially were solving a problem that exists on the everyday. And by solving that problem, you then leapfrog maybe existing solutions or you find yourself in a solution that you didn't even know existed. And I think that's what I find exciting about entrepreneurship, particularly on the African continent, is that it starts off solving everyday challenges, but then out of that, the outcome you start seeing is a whole movement of other consequences that actually then drive us to towards an advancement or an innovation or then social change.

Darren Isom:

Consequences and opportunities as well.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Yeah.

Darren Isom:

I wanted to come back to your path to entrepreneurship. I know that was not necessarily the path that you intended on. Tell us how you got there.

Nwabisa Mayema:

So I grew up at a time, so I'm not quite what you would call the rainbow children, so the children who were born after 1994 in sort of the lovely blush and the glow of the first few days of South Africa's democracy, but I'm very much a strange transition kid. Born in the eighties, starting to come of age during sort of a little bit of the instability in South Africa and then going into a sense of you now are part of a nation-building project. Which meant that when I was at school and going into university, the career path that was suggested to me was to go into one of the noble professions, I.e. accounting, law, medicine, engineering.

Darren Isom:

Very noble.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Very noble. So my very creative self went into accounting, and there I was sitting and studying for Bachelor of Commerce towards becoming a chartered accountant.

Darren Isom:

Oh, wow.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Which two years into my studies, I got very sad. And when I started thinking that this was possibly something that I would need to be doing until I was in my sixties, it became a reckoning. And very, very clearly it came through to me that actually I'm a connector. I'm actually somebody who's very social. So I went back, started again at university and studied a Bachelor of Social Science with a major in political science and public administration. Again, that's not the degree where you finish, you come out of it and you say, "I'm now a politician," or a public-

Darren Isom:

Political scientist. Exactly.

Nwabisa Mayema:

... public administrator. There's not much of an actual job that comes out of that. Also, in my final year of university, I was following, like most of my friends who had moved away from, but they were still in the commerce faculty. Everybody was being approached for those lovely graduate recruitment programs.

And think of Blue Chip Company X, Blue Chip Company Y coming through to this top university in Cape Town and interviewing all of us and saying, "If you join us, we'll give you the world. And this is what it looks like when you work for us." Now we know a bit better. But of course I was a part of this conversation. And I would get these very polite rejections from a lot of these companies, even though I knew I was doing well in the interviews. But it turns out I wasn't doing so well in the psychometric testing. And some very, very kind person actually decided to give me some insight into why I wasn't doing well in the psychometric testing. And it turns out, and I don't know if I can prove this, but this is what I was told, that the psychometric testing was starting to show that I was not good with authority and therefore not necessarily viewed as a team player, not great when you're sort of 22, 23, assumed to go into junior role, nobody wants you to have a sense of independence.

And so this woman said to me, "And so I think you're actually unemployable." Which I think is possibly one of the most significant sort of edicts that was ever offered to me. And so I thought, well, I guess I need to create a job for myself if I'm unemployable. I didn't start with this virtue of, "Oh, I want to become an entrepreneur and I want to have positive change in society." It was, I need to create a job for myself. So partnered up with a friend and we created a small little consultancy where we started approaching large Johannesburg stock exchange listed companies saying that, "You need young people to help you think about young people," effectively, there's a little bit of a cheekiness because you starting a business with no capital, you don't have a product that you can develop.

I can't tinker an parent's garage to come up with some sort of invention. So all I have is selling my time. And so what I realized is that I'm very good at connecting the dots and getting relationships going between ideas and people and resources. And at the same time, through that, magic can happen. And so I'm a really good consultant in that way. And so I was able to grow this business into a relatively large organization. For me, the greatest pride about that business was that we were then able to employ young people. And so at any given point had about 80 different young people from the different universities across South Africa implementing projects across about 150,000 high schools in South Africa and really doing good work because you were starting to now make a difference and move the needle for young people.

I think in creating my first business, on one level, it was an act of defiance because I also grew up in a family where even in the years when I was starting to make good money in the business, starting to grow a profile, I still would have my mother say to me, "Oh, I'm so proud that you were able to get that client. I wonder if you can ask them for a job."

Because it almost felt like this thing of being a business owner was an, in the meantime thing of, "Shame, she maybe can't quite get a job. So maybe once she gets that right client, they'll then eventually employ her." So there's also this narrative of being an entrepreneur, especially at that time it was seen as you maybe a hustler. You weren't really a serious person and what a pity. She's putting a good degree to waste when she could actually be working at XYZ institution. And especially when you're a woman. This is so insecure. Are you sure you're doing this because you remember at some point we look to you to look after your parents at a certain age and so are you sure this is not too risky? When I left that business 10 years in, negotiated my own exit, got my own payout, did all of this without a mentor really, I then started a second business with another woman.

And at that point what we thought was interesting was to start a business where we were actually trying to figure out if you could commoditize this idea of social capital. Could you bring value to this idea of if someone is able to bring financial capital into a business or bring you the right people into your business, they get paid for that. What does it look like if I bring network into your business? Of course, learn the hard lesson. You cannot commoditize relationships, you cannot make money from networks. But it was an important endeavor and an attempt at then really interrogating this idea of actually when you start bringing women entrepreneurs together and you bring them into the same room to either discuss opportunities, to figure out room for collaboration or to just share, even unload a little bit, there's a certain kind of magic that happens in that room that is vital to the survival of that entrepreneur. Never mind even thriving, but her survival is really dependent on her ability to see other people who look like her, who are also trying their hand at this entrepreneurship game.

Darren Isom:

I want to go back to this concept of, I mean, you mentioned earlier this unemployable and as a result you went out and did your own thing. And I don't want you to caveat that necessarily, but I think it's important when we talk with younger folks who are trying to figure out their space in the world, it's very easy for them to hear that and be like, "Okay, I'm going to go do my own thing. I don't have to think about how I calibrate my space in the world." I would love to think about how you or have you talk about how you in some ways manage the chaos that was you're going out on your own, how you learned through your career and how you were able to in many ways shape something that spoke to your skills, but also gave you a space and a place in the world that was meaningful and important. And I say that because those young folks, they're like, "I'm going to do this. It didn't work. I'm about to go do it." It's like, "Okay, what you about to go do?"

Nwabisa Mayema:

Yeah. I think there are, first of all, there are the character traits. On one hand, there has to be a huge dose of sense of humor here. You need to be able to laugh at yourself when you are trying and you actually are watching yourself and you're going, "This is some tomfoolery. What am I doing?" I think it's important to not take yourself that seriously, and I know that that grates a little bit, but it is important so that you can hold the endeavor lightly. There are so many instances where you watch entrepreneurs actually get ill or get to their demise because they also held onto the idea, the concept of the endeavor so tightly that they got wound up in terms of the entire identity, their entire sense of self got tied up in this entity.

I think it's important to get to a place of whether it's through support of friends and family where you have perspective where you can hold it quite lightly, and that normally comes with a sense of humor. The second thing is to work out, you have to really carefully work out what your risk profile is. We cannot imitate Johnny who came from X, Y, Z suburb, who went to the school that his father went to, his grandfather went to, and then we know that actually a lot of the decisions are happening at a dinner table because somebody else's uncle came for dinner. I cannot be playing the same game as that person. And so I need to work out how much risk can I absorb as I go through my journey of entrepreneurship because it's going to come with ups and downs and lots of squiggles and sometimes just moments of nothingness. And so can I afford to be living in that place of risk? I'm not going to lie, the first 18 months of being a business person or owning my own business, I was sleeping on couches.

Darren Isom:

Yeah. See, I don't know.

Nwabisa Mayema:

See, no, that's not cool, but I could do that. And also I was much younger, so I was also probably smaller and more agile, a little bit more flexible, so that's fine. So I could absorb that risk in that moment. Today I can't absorb that risk. There's a lot more at stake in terms of what's going on in my life, and so I'm not trying to sleep on couches in whatever endeavor that I'm starting in my life, so that's important. The third thing is can you listen? Can you hear? Can you receive feedback?

Whether it is from your market, so you can create a new product or a new service. If you take it to market and no one is willing to pay you for that thing. It's not that people don't understand what you're doing, they simply don't want the thing that you're producing. So can you hear that feedback and actually work with it? Can you hear the feedback from then mentors? So can you find yourself a mentor and can you mentor as well? Meaning that you actually have this sort of cross-directional form of feedback that's coming through from different people who care for you. I think that's also important. And even on the full idea of mentoring, counter-intuitively, I tend to look for mentors who are the exact opposite of who I am.

So candidly speaking, I will go look for a white man who has been in corporate for 40 years and ask them to be my mentor because they carry then some other form of gravitas, some other form of social capital that I will never have access to. And therefore, every now and again they will be able to open the door for me and make way for me to step into that room. That's also important. Oftentimes we are tempted to look for mentors who look like us and sound like us. Sometimes what that does is it creates an echo chamber and is not necessarily that generative in terms of what you're trying to do to leap forward in your business endeavor. So that's an idea that I kind of throw out there. It can be challenged and I'm open to that, but I think that's important. And then in terms of the other-

Darren Isom:

Can I jump in there though?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Yes.

Darren Isom:

I think it raises a great point. You talked about this idea of finding mentors but also being a mentor and how does that balancing act play for you and being a mentor for others? Who do you look to mentor?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Yeah, so in terms of... Again, the paradox is that when I look for a mentor, I look for somebody who's the opposite of who I am. When I look for a mentee, I look for somebody who is a version of what I might have been before. So it is actually this exquisite tension because said mentee is also looking for the opposite of who they are. And so it's quite a lovely moment, but that's exactly what's going on. And so when I'm looking for a mentee, I ask myself, "How can I be the person I wish I had 15 years ago in front of me?" And so maybe it's not that much based on looking for somebody who's similar to me, but how can I be the thing that I wish I had when I first started out?

So whether it's somebody who's going to ask me the questions about my physical, mental, emotional health, somebody who's going to ask me about am I eating enough, am I sleeping enough? Somebody who might sponsor me a device because these are the things that become these inhibitors as you start moving through a business. I remember keeping quiet because for the first six months of my business, I didn't actually have a laptop until my mentor actually cottoned onto this idea and he immediately took me to one of the shops and bought me a laptop and said, "Now, go home with us." And that changed everything about my business because up until then I was, of course giving away my age, I was going to internet cafes.

Darren Isom:

Oh, wow.

Nwabisa Mayema:

So that's important, is finding that that tribe of mentors gone before you and mentees who are coming after you. And then in terms of the brass tacks of what it needs to start a business, it is a little bit of money, not a lot, but a little bit so that you can eat and pay your rent.

You cannot be even the beginning of a good entrepreneur if you are not sure where you're going to be sleeping and what you're going to be eating every day. So whether it is sleeping on a friend's couch or sharing meals with friends, but it is important that you are at least physically secure in all that you're doing. Having some form of relationships, being able to put yourself out there, even if it's every now and again saying, "Hi, my name is Nwabisa and this is what I'm trying to do. Would you have five minutes for a cup of tea with me?" The third thing though is that can you mean what you say and say what you mean?

It's very easy for us as entrepreneurs to obviously over promise and perhaps under deliver a little bit. It's part of fake it till you make it, but I think the real test of somebody being able to build a relationship of trust, therefore they'll be able to advocate for you, possibly support you, is to mean what you say and say what you mean. If you say to someone you're going to send them a proposal at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, best you make sure that at eight o'clock in the morning that proposal is in their inbox. If you say to someone you're going to show up at an event, best you show up at that event.

Darren Isom:

Can you talk a little bit more about the emotional tenacity it takes to be an entrepreneur? I mean, you've mentioned this can be a tough journey. You've mentioned the importance of finding joy and a sense of humor and doing the work itself. Share a little bit more about what does it take to make that happen and to live into that. Particularly this joy piece, this humor piece, this really finding some degree of happiness and satisfaction and taking care of yourself.

Nwabisa Mayema:

I think, and this is maybe going to sound a little bit woo-woo, some of it actually starts from-

Darren Isom:

You're talking to a Californian. There's no such thing as too woo-woo.

Nwabisa Mayema:

There we go. There we go.

Darren Isom:

Exactly.

Nwabisa Mayema:

It actually starts at purpose. If you can get to a point of understanding why it is that you do what you do, you are then better positioned to be able to make decisions either when things are really hard, you can then make the decision that helps you eliminate stress or when you have a crisis of opportunity where maybe too many opportunities are coming your way, because there sometimes is that moment of lift in the business owner's life. And so instead of grabbing everything like a magpie, but how can you then choose the thing that is really true to what you want to do?

It's going back to what do I do why I do? Or why do I do what I do? Once you're able to start, and of course articulating your purpose is not a destination, that's almost your life's work. However, once you start going into that, it then liberates you as well from a few things because it means you're not necessarily tied up in specific personas or activities or even actual businesses because you'd rather go back to I am really focused on why I do what I do as opposed to what it is that I'm doing.

And therefore that's when the joy can actually start sneaking into your life and a little bit of finding some happiness because it is very lonely, it is isolating, it is alienating. Especially those of us who don't necessarily come from entrepreneurial families or societies. Let me reverse that. Our societies are entrepreneurial, but not sort of in this classically defined and traditional sense of entrepreneurship. So you end up feeling rather misunderstood and sometimes you actually feel like you are defiant and you're defying expectations, and therefore that in itself is an emotional burden that you probably should not carry, but you already carry. There are times where you maybe feel a little bit left behind, whether it's with friends because you either can't afford something or you don't have the time to go to certain things because you are building a business. So that can feel quite lonely. However, the highs are exhilarating.

When you crack that moment of finding a customer, a client that believes in you, that is willing to pay you. When you get that first invoice paid, that is an incredible moment. When you employ that first person in your business. That's amazing. When you start being able to run into partnerships, when you start developing a brand, when you rebrand, these are such exciting moments in an entrepreneur's life. And so I encourage entrepreneurs to remember that effectively takes about a thousand days and a thousand cups of coffee to get to a point where it starts feeling like it's cooking in the kitchen.

Darren Isom:

And you talked earlier about this idea of the importance of finding purpose and it's an ongoing life journey, but I feel at some point you've also found that sense of purpose as well and live into it and constantly finding it. Share a little bit more about, as you think about purpose, how did you find this sense of purpose? When did it come to you? How does it continue to evolve?

Nwabisa Mayema:

So I think for me, it's been coming from a place of curiosity, so being curious about myself as self-involved as that sounds, I own it. And so it's constantly asking, I have passions, but also what are my patterns? And one thing that I've always noticed socially, professionally is that I'm a convener. I'm a gatherer of people. I love it when people eventually almost a spark ignites and something comes out of bringing people together. Effectively, I'm a connector. And so the more I think about it, I've got a place where today, in a neatly sort of summed up way, my purpose is to connect people to each other and to opportunities. That really gives me so much joy. And so whether I do that in the form of being a partnership specialist or being an entrepreneur or a teacher or a friend, that really is what drives me, is to connect people to each other and to opportunities.

Darren Isom:

And I have all these notes on you, so I could do this all day, right? But one of the things that came up was that you talked about how your experience during your Rotary Exchange in Belgium, really you defined it as a pivotal moment for you from identifying your purposes. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what you got from that experience?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Absolutely.

Darren Isom:

Do you remember that? How long ago was that?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Darren, now you're just trolling me.

Darren Isom:

No, no, no. Okay, sorry. Sorry.

Nwabisa Mayema:

No, it's my silver jubilee. So 25 years ago I was selected to be a Rotary International Exchange student. If you can cast your mind back to what 25 years ago was like, this is really not quite as digital as we are now. And so you arrive as this Black South African person from the Eastern Cape who's learned about three phrases of French. Je m’appelle…  Je viens d'Afrique du Sud et j’ai faim. It's very important for me to express...

Darren Isom:

Ton français est meilleur maintenant.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Tres bien. So it was very important for me to be able to express that I'm hungry because that's not a layer of sadness needed in your life. Imagine, I arrive in January, the sunniest time in South Africa and the bleakest time to arrive in the low countries of Belgium. To also arrive at a time, this is now the year 2000. We are still quite fresh into our young democracy in South Africa. And I'm feeling quite proud being South African because your passport to any form of conversation abroad was to just say Mandela and people understand this. You arrive in a place like Belgium where the history with the African continent is not with Southern Africa.

And so when I arrived, it was interesting that most people assumed that I was a refugee coming in from the Great Lakes region in Central and sort of West Africa. And being South African and actually being quite disconnected from much of the continent as a consequence of our own history, it was quite shocking to me because I thought everybody would kind of celebrate that this young Black woman from South Africa, from the land of Mandela has arrived here, and so let's just celebrate and ask her all the questions that was not interesting to the people of Belgium. So effectively meant to kind of be interesting, I needed to be interested.

Which means that I had to ask questions. I had to also very quickly learn the language. And so actually to learn that language, I had to sit with children. And so that's a different kind of connection because when you're sitting with an 8-year-old and you're kind of a very arrogant, know-it-all 18-year-old. You get humbled a little bit. But there's a sense of this joyful, innocent connection that comes through from sitting with a child that then transports you into going back into adult conversations. I think the most important part of that was that I then acquired siblings. I'm an only child and I arrived in Belgium. I lived across three families. I acquired 10 brothers and sisters.

So to go from that to being also the eldest of these 10 brothers and sisters, three sets of parents, having come from a single mom, and I'm happy to report that 25 years later we're all still in touch, we all visit each other. They've come to South Africa a number of times. I've gone that way. And so that idea of connection has been important. The other part of that was meeting the other exchange students. To come from the southernmost tip of Africa and to find yourself in the middle of the low countries in Belgium and there are 400 exchange students from Papua New Guinea, Australia, the United States of America, India, Japan. It's shocking but exhilarating. And so for me, it activated this idea of I forever want to live in a world and live my life in a way where I'm connected to the global village, as it were.

Darren Isom:

And can you talk a little bit more about as well, I remember the first time I studied abroad many years ago in France, and it was the first time I felt American. As a Black American you navigate the world as a Black person in the States. And you get to France and you're like, "Oh, maybe I am an American." You have the sense of self-awareness in being abroad that really drives who you are and makes you understand who you are in a very clear way as you learn others. It sounds like this gave you a very clear sense of self-awareness and pride as well. Talk a little bit of how that was shaped in that moment as well.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Absolutely. And especially, so when you grow up... Well, growing up as a Xhosa-speaking person from the Eastern Cape, for us, even growing, up when we referred to another Black person, you wouldn't ask, "Oh, is that another Black person?" You'd ask, "N'gum Xhosa?" Is that person a Xhosa person? Because we just assumed all Black people were Xhosa. So we already had quite a sheltered way of looking at ourselves.

And so even being shocked amongst the other South Africans who traveled, we were a group of six who went to Belgium, but as a cohort I think we're about 120 exchange students all on this one airplane from Johannesburg, dumped into Frankfurt and then dispersing to the different countries across Europe. And so meeting, and not that I was that unaware, but the sense of being like, "Oh, hang on. My story of being Xhosa is actually not the main story here. My story of being South African, it turns out is the story." So already that was this little jolt. And then arriving, getting into that space of actually being so aware of what it means to be South African, because I walked into society that actually knew very little, even the story of our celebrated Mandela, was actually quite limited because...

And I still remember moments where one of my host parents presented me to her father, so effectively at my host grandfather. And he was very excited because he thought this was a moment in which he could speak Lingala, which he hadn't spoken in a long time because he'd spent a lot of time in Zaire and he had also cooked a very specific fish and this massive sort of disconnect and disappointment because I, one, did not recognize this fish and also kind of wasn't keen on it. And then as he was speaking to me in Lingala, I was like, "Can someone tell me what he's saying?" And recognizing that, oh, actually I'm going to have to do some work to actually surface who I am here. And part of that is tied very much with that I am South African. [French 00:40:58] South African.

Darren Isom:

And you talked earlier about this, I mean this even in Belgium and throughout your life, professionally and otherwise, how the emphasis of not just building networks but building family and communities, can you elaborate on the distinction between communities and networks and how that plays out in your work?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Sure. I think networks, first of all, I hate networking. Let's just have that out there. So anytime people invite me to networking events, I often turn around and decline those invitations and it's interesting because the response to that, people say, "But Nwabisa, you're one of the most networked people. How do you do this?" And I say, "No, it's not that I'm networked, it's because I have relationships. I've created connections." For me, networks and networking is something that feels quite transactional. What do you have for me? This is what I have for you. And it can also be quite once-off. Whereas this idea of building community based on relationships, actually starts from being curious.

I'm interested in finding out a little bit more about who you are, where you come from and where you hope to be. For me, I think that actually also sums up the human experience. It's a lot more humane. Every human being, regardless of what occupies them, is actually curious about who they are, where they come from and where they will land up. And so if you can start expressing that curiosity around someone else, immediately you're activating something that is warmer and also a lot more enduring because it's a relationship. And therefore by the time we need that relationship to be generative and perhaps become a professional thing, I'm now at a point where I can just pop you one message and things happen.

Whereas if you didn't spend that time getting to know someone, I think you're starting to miss out on some magic. At the same time, this idea of community means by definition you're optimistic and generous. I think networks sometimes end up being cynical and also a little bit more around this idea it's zero sum. Whereas when you are in community, even if it's not obvious in terms of what I stand to gain by being in relationship with you or be having an encounter with you, I'm listening and I'm optimistic that something will happen between the two of us.

And I'm also willing to therefore connect you to someone else. And chances are that someone else is willing to connect me to someone else. And so the community grows. So that's a bit of a joy piece as well.

Darren Isom:

I consider myself the last of the optimists. So this piece around the optimism piece is really powerful. And I would love to just talk a little bit more around how do you live instead optimism, particularly from a partnership perspective, building effective partnerships. And what advice do you offer entrepreneurs in South Africa seeking to forge meaningful collaborations, relationships that are in many ways forged in optimism and grounded and anchored in that?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Well, some of it goes back to purpose, knowing why you do what you do, and the best feedback around figuring out if you've actually landed on beginning to articulate your purpose is if it energizes you because it should inspire you and actually ignite you to do something in a way that's optimistic. So once you're able to understand your purpose and begin articulating it, chances are, you'll then be curious about the next person's purpose and therefore get them to even be inspired and ignited just by being in conversation with you. Now of course, I'm not saying that everybody must walk around going, "Hello, what's your purpose?" But there are ways in which you can draw on that because what you're actually getting to a point of is you're trying to understand what keeps you up at night and what gets you out of bed. Whether it's yourself or the other person that you're engaging with.

Once you can get to that point, you're starting to be on a path towards partnerships, where partnerships in a business are different to business development. Business development obviously is about a sales pipeline, making sure you're capturing those customers and of course closing those sales. Partnerships is about how do you surround yourself with other entities, organizations, businesses, or individuals who will exist to either endorse you, to talk about you when you're not in the room, to advocate for you, to vouch for you, and then at the same time in which you can then become better by virtue of being in their orbit and they perhaps become better by virtue of being in your orbit.

There's a very distinct way of doing that in a business because that's where you actually find you're probably more likely to find the next investor for your business, you're more likely to find your next customer or client for your business, is through your partnerships versus the business development. Again, business development almost then aligns with networking. It's kind of once off, it's kind of adversarial. It's very sort of if you don't do this, then that. Whereas in a partnership, it's how might we, as we go through our conversation.

Darren Isom:

I want to spend a little time talking about the idea of leadership and particularly in African opportunity. You've talked about the concept of think global and act locally as it pertains to your work with the goal of bringing South Africa to the world while at the same time also bringing the world to South Africa. What does this look like in practice?

Nwabisa Mayema:

In practice, it means that we are open to conversation, first of all. We are also open to hearing each other out. I think we are also in a moment in the world where listening and hearing each other-

Darren Isom:

We're in a moment. That's for sure.

Nwabisa Mayema:

We're in a moment. And we're in a moment where hearing each other out and listening to each other is hard because you want to be right.

You want to feel justified for either the sense of outrage that you're feeling or you want to be justified for feeling despondent. You want to be justified for wanting to give up. Yet if you can just be open to hearing and listening, there is something, there is a nugget that can come through that can spur you onto some sort of action and therefore be able to exchange with one another. So part of that curiosity is how often do we think about going to just visit the other? And of course it comes from a place of, I have access to plane tickets, I have access to visas, I have access to a passport. I acknowledge all of that. But how often and how curious am I about picking up then and perhaps going back to ukuhamba ukubona.

So how curious am I about picking up a book about another place? How curious am I about listening to a podcast created by someone else from another place? May not necessarily agree with it, but just going there is part of that practicality. How many of us know about South Africa beyond meat, sunshine, rugby, Nelson Mandela? Can we go deeper? Are we interested in if we hear about a musician, do we go and Google a little bit more about them and the meaning behind the music or the language and that kind of thing? So it starts feeling a bit esoteric, but it actually is so available to us from even a now moment.

Darren Isom:

You speak of this, and I was in a conversation just earlier yesterday, the importance of digging in at a personal level, digging in locally to create connections globally.

Nwabisa Mayema:

And part of that is therefore also being curious even about yourself. And I keep repeating this, but self as in where do I come from? Actually perhaps do I have a full grasp of my history? Whether it's within my family, and I know a lot of us come from complicated families where you start asking questions, and that in itself is subversive and perhaps dangerous. But am I curious about how did my village come to be, this town that I'm in? Beyond what I was taught at school, because that in itself means that it then sparks other questions, but it also means by the time you are inviting others to join you in that conversation, you're starting to share a little bit more than just what sits at the surface. Because you've taken the time to dig in a little bit more even about yourself, and therefore you have a sense of self, a sense of place, and a sense of occasion.

Darren Isom:

And you've spoken quite a bit about the incredible potential within Africa and the importance of African voices being heard in global conversations. From your perspective, what are some of the most exciting innovations and examples of the entrepreneurial spirit that you've witnessed on the continent right now?

Nwabisa Mayema:

I think before we even talk about those innovations and the entrepreneurial spirit, let's just talk about the actual picture of that opportunity. And these are not my words, but it's something that I love to bring up, again, is that this idea of as the world grays, particularly Europe, Africa blooms. So when we think about the median age around the world, I think in Europe it's 44. In Africa it's 19. You've got a population of very young people, young people who are connected in ways that young people have never been connected before. Young people who are interested and who are incredibly interesting. Young people who are taste makers.

When you think about what music the world is listening to right now, the fashions that we are seeing, a lot of them come from what's going on in African suburbs, African villages, African cities. So if you are not going to be paying attention to what's going on in the African continent, you're about to lose out not in the next five years, literally in the next two years and of course, within a generation. We're also talking about moments where because there've been gaps through limitations and resource inequalities and unequal access to said resources, people are figuring out ways in which to leapfrog existing technologies, existing innovations. And so you get to a point where it's even difficult for me, for example, to say, "This is the thing to look out for today," because in about six months time, there's a whole new thing.

Darren Isom:

Completely different. Yeah.

Nwabisa Mayema:

So for me, it's not necessarily about-

Darren Isom:

It's coming from a totally different path.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Exactly. So it's not about naming the sectors and the industries because that in itself is quite an old school way of working out where opportunity lies, but it's actually working out this fertile ground of saying, "You've got young people who are ready and who are feeling empowered and enabled to actually get on with what needs to be getting on with." Young people in Africa are also tired of looking at our gray-haired leaders leading us, and therefore, young people are also ready to do things themselves and sometimes to do things in spite of those who lead us. And so there's even a sense of agency that comes through from young people on the continent. Of course, my big disclaimer is that I'm sitting in South Africa. It's very, very rude of me to think that I'm speaking on behalf of an entire continent, but that's the sense that I have from the bits and pieces of interactions that I have on the continent.

Darren Isom:

I was talking with a friend in this space some months ago, and he talked about the importance of a big shift. This is something that's true across the continent, also within the United States as well, amongst Black folks, amongst women. Of this shifting from thinking of populations as consumers and thinking of them as creators.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Absolutely. Creators and curators. So we are also custodians of our own ideas. So we are not just creating so that our things and ideas can be consumed, we are creating so that we can hold them and actually find meaning in them and find value and imbue them with value so that there's also a legacy that continues from what we create.

Darren Isom:

You mentioned this idea of the importance of thinking about the ground and the soil and this fertile soil, and it's something that's been on the mind recently with all the changes that are happening in the States right now. There was this beautiful piece written by Sherrilyn Ifill, a Black thinker, and she compared this moment that we're into now, she talked about it as almost like a post-Reconstruction period. And so Reconstruction in the States is when Blacks, after the Civil War, Black Americans got so many new rights and ways of thinking about all these things and positions. And then it was violently stripped away in a 10, 15 year period and replaced by probably one of the most violent periods in American history for Black Americans.

But she reminded us that it was during that period that the NAACP was created, that the Harlem Renaissance came about, that all these institutions that would then go on to create the Civil Rights Movement were started from a generational perspective. And it really made me to start thinking about, as someone who, in many ways, so much of my life and my career has been as inheritor of so many gifts and talents and perspectives, what now am I planting from a seed perspective that I may not even see bloom or blossom or grow? And so I want to throw that question to you. I'm not trying to shift us into ancestor mode or elder mode. But as we think about...

Because we are shifting our careers, we're thinking about what creating that will come long after us that we may not even see. I would love to get your thoughts on what does that look like for you, particularly as it relates to entrepreneurship in Africa?

Nwabisa Mayema:

Yeah. I actually get excited about the fact that for a very long time, and it's counterintuitive, for a very long time, Africa's been ignored when it comes to opportunity, innovation. People don't even... They don't even see us coming.

And so I'm excited about this one day, there being almost this shockwave of this critical mass of creativity that is actually exploding onto the scene, coming from the African continent. People are not even paying attention to the fact that it's happening now, the influence that the African continent has, and I think particularly when it comes to the creative entrepreneurship side of things, because that's the stuff that actually becomes quite enduring. That's the stuff that feeds even into what happens at, let's say, the world of luxury. Because once you can influence what happens in the world of luxury, it then has this trickle-down effect and suddenly you see that on the main street. And so even things like, everyone's talking sustainability, for example, the continent has been practicing not just sustainability but regeneration for the longest time. And people thought that was just a way of making ends meet and now people are realizing, but that's ancient wisdom. That makes sense. That means we're integrated with ourselves, the land, and also our ability to then produce.

So I'm excited about that. I'm excited to see what it looks like when you start seeing more collaborative business practices. I'm excited to see businesses and entrepreneurs who are able to work in spite of so much of the traditional financial sectors. I think we've seen so much in terms of FinTech on African continent, financial inclusion endeavors around that. I think things around language. So by the time you're talking about AI and language models, you've got a richness of languages that sits in this continent that is able to propel people into being able to access then information, knowledge and connect with the rest of the world. If we can get that right, I think you'll see a whole unlocking of new things that are coming from the continent. Some of these things feel a bit sort of Space Age-y, but I think they're coming quicker than we think because of this moment that we're in. There's now an urgency, but there's also maybe a devil-may-care attitude that's going, it doesn't matter, let's just try it anyway. Also, they're not really paying attention to us right now, so let's do this ourselves.

Darren Isom:

There's this wonderful Octavia Butler quote, "There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns." And so much of our work is about casting new suns for us to all live under. Going back to where we started, I would love for you to just talk a little bit more about that wild woman that lives in you. How, in many ways, that's given you everything you need to live into the world and where do you see yourself taking that?

Nwabisa Mayema:

So the wild woman today, so wild woman in a previous iteration was a little bit of a battering ram kind of marching into rooms, making myself heard all the time, must be heard, must have something to say. The wild woman today is actually a little bit more subversive and it's not about that. I'm quieter, but it's just going, there is now a potency and an impact that I have because of experience, because of connections and also being able to be quite wily with different things. Whether you're able to use the shield of certain connections to be able to then stand behind that, but actually do the work. The ability to go into the belly of the beast and effectively rip it from inside of you must.

The ability to sound like you should, but actually what you're saying is actually quite crazy. That's the version of the wild woman that exists in me. The other version of the wild woman that exists in me is she's incredibly vulnerable now. Very happy to or very comfortable to express where there are fears, very comfortable to express where there insecurities, very comfortable to express when I'm tired because that in itself is a strength because that's what protects me from myself, but also from the world. And so the wild woman today is, she's softer, gentler, but she rests more, and she's incredibly vulnerable and probably stronger and at her most dangerous.

Darren Isom:

And that's a beautiful place to act from. And so I remember when we were first introduced to each other, it was through an email through our friend Ashindi, she heard that I was through South Africa and she was like, you have to talk with Nwabisa. And so we set up a wonderful time. We had a wonderful lunch. We've been friends and connected ever since. But I remember leaving that conversation feeling just joyful, completely heard, appreciated, and excited about you and where you're going. And I leave this conversation the exact same place. Thank you so much for your time.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Thank you for your time and for allowing for me to be heard and for hearing me. And I see you and I hear you. And we dream in color.

Darren Isom:

Yes, we do. Thank you.

Nwabisa Mayema:

Thank you.

Darren Isom:

My cousin Teresa died in March of 2020 in the earliest days of the pandemic, when COVID was still largely unknown to most of the US but was already ravaging the city of New Orleans. She was a big woman with a warm and gentle spirit. When we were children, she managed a McKinsey's Baker on the corner of Oakland and Dublin streets in Carrollton. Sometimes she would call us in from the sidewalk as we passed on our way home from school, offering us sweets. A strawberry jelly doughnut for my brother, pecan and caramel turtles for me, in exchange for a recap of the school day. In the great New Orleans Black bar room tradition, her father, Monko Lewis, owned a bar at 2nd and Dryad's. She took it over when he passed, some years after I had left New Orleans. I would stopped by when I was in town to say hello.

The bar was always open and she was always there. I share stories from my life across the lake as old New Orleanians call anywhere beyond Southern Louisiana, from Monroe to Marrakesh. And she would keep the Cokes coming, not because she minded my drinking after all, New Orleans didn't invent the word Cocktail, but because she didn't want me drinking and driving and she knew my visit was just a friendly pit stop on the way to somewhere else, though she never commented on my social media posts, cousin Teresa followed everything I did. She would call my mother directly to congratulate her on any news I shared online, to ask about my travels or to laugh about whatever politician I was trashing that week. During one particularly bad fire season here in California, she messaged me, "If those fires come close, grab your husband and your pets and go, dear. Don't bother with those material things," she wrote.

"The good Lord bless you once, he'll bless you twice." In the whirlwind of life post-COVID, filled with grief and distraction, I never really processed her death. I'd almost forgotten she was gone until a later trip home when I drove past the bar on 2nd and Dryad's, I remembered that she would no longer be there to greet me if I made a pit stop to say hello before heading somewhere else. I thought of her again sitting there with Nwabisa in the upper room of a bustling coffee shop in Joe Berg's fiber Maboneng neighborhood. The coffee shop was next to a very busy car wash and we had to pause recording our conversation a few times as the chatter from the car wash was winning over the mics. Still, there was a kind of sacred warmth in that room, a feeling not unlike the one I remember from Uncle Lewis's bar in Central City.

Nwabisa and I had first met years earlier in Cape Town, introduced over WhatsApp by our mutual friend, Ashindi Maxson, a guest in our first season of Dreaming in Color. We met for drinks at a posh hotel in the Bantry neighborhood, just blocks from her home. I don't remember the conversation, but I do remember feeling as if we were old friends, after just a few minutes of talking. Like cousins who spent our childhoods playing together in grandma's front yard after Sunday dinner, meeting up some 30 years later to catch up quickly over cocktails before heading somewhere else. Though small and stature, Nwabisa takes us space in the world the way my cousin Teresa did, with presence, warmth, and a grounded kind of joy. One held court behind a bar in New Orleans, the other across the lake in a sunlit coffee shop in Joburg, but both made you feel seen, heard and cared for.

Both knew how to gather people close, how to listen with their whole selves, how to leave a space brighter than they found it. Just as she did in today's episode, somewhere in that first conversation with Nwabisa in Cape Town, she shared the image of a group of zebras, known beautifully as a dazzle, moving together across the savanna. And in these chaotic times, maybe the best we can do is move to the world like Nwabisa and cousin Teresa with joy and purpose and surrounded by our dazzle. And wherever you're headed next, may you carry a little of Nwabisa's clarity and cousin Teresa's warmth and go so that you may see. Ukuhamba ukubona.

Once again, we put some music with the magic, collecting the theme songs from our season's guests and collaborators to create a Spotify playlist for our listeners to enjoy. Find it on Spotify under Dreaming in Color: The Continent.

Thanks for listening to Dreaming in Color. A special shout out to all the folks who make the magic happen. From Africa Insight Communications, our wonderful producers, Mudzithe Phiri, and Tom Kirkwood. Production coordinator, Goddec Orimba. Audiovisual editor, Omamo Gikho. Graphic designer, Ernest Chikuni and amazing production crews on the ground in each country. A huge shout-out to my Bridgespan production colleagues, Cora Daniels, my ever brilliant partner in good trouble, and Elisabeth Makumbi, my Joburg-based season co-host. And of course, our fabulous creative director, Ami Diané. What a squad, y'all. Be sure to rate, subscribe, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Catch you next time.