Thoveni Govender, CEO, Centracom

With a career beginning in the auditing industry, when she joined Centracom, Govender’s value was steadily recognised and she climbed up the Centracom ladder, along the way being a financial manager, the financial director and now the company’s CEO. A leader with an open, empathetic, collaborative and adaptive approach, Govender encourages these qualities in her executive and company teams. She says that through team roundtables, ideas are heard and there has been a significant shift in culture and change, with an increased level of innovation and a desire to be more innovative and develop new solutions.

“Women add different dynamics to any company. I don’t believe in investment in women as a matter of playing the equity card, but it should be for strategic advantage,” says Govender. “Any desire to invest should be in developing the soft skills that make women into good leaders, offering mentorship, and providing platforms that enable women to speak freely and share their experiences to help inspire other women and to motivate each other. We need to nurture talent and encourage soft and technical skills development.”

Govender has an open approach to innovation and transformational ICT projects, saying that it is an imperative to constantly evolve and that what applied five or 10 years ago is not necessarily relevant today. “There’s real opportunity around the emerging technologies in my industry segment and my priorities and focus are on how to apply AI and use technology to remove the time wasted on mundane tasks, freeing our humans for much more interesting and meaningful work. Plus, AI and the automation we have already adopted have enabled us to provide increasingly better customer service and it’s the customer that makes the business.”

Centracom has an active and collaborative relationship with MTN. “MTN is always willing to assist and to go above and beyond,” she says. “They provide us with voice services and our business is voice. MTN helps facilitate providing customised solutions to our clients, which are both direct endusers or wholesalers and their direct end-users.

“We strive to provide our customers with ongoing value-add, stability as a top priority and cybersecurity as a focus. We also constantly look at ways to reduce costs and use ICT service providers that give us both better rates and service quality – which go handin- hand. Savings can then be passed down to our wholesale customers to help them grow their businesses, especially the small guys.

“My advice to other women is that with the landscape of ICT constantly changing, leverage evolving opportunities and build a network that includes both sponsors and mentors. This is an incredibly exciting time and field.

“What gets me up in the morning is knowing that I – and indeed all women – have the ability to make significant differences within our companies and outside in the community. The sky is the limit. Conversely, the concern that we are not making enough of a difference keeps me vigilant and persistent in striving for greater impact and sustainable success,” concludes Govender.

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