TRANSCRIPT
Magashe Ngoepe:
My purpose in life is to increase access to meaningful opportunities that allow people to have upward social mobility in society, and to have greater quality of life, specifically geared towards South Africa and then Africa broadly.
When I was young growing up, my parents were educators. I grew up in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, and they placed a high value and premium on having a solid and strong education. But I wasn't always first in my class, I wasn't always the hardest working. I wasn't even the most entrepreneurial or creative person.
And the misfortune is that a lot of those people who were all of those things are sitting as unemployed youth in South Africa. And I think I want to dedicate my life to finding ways to solve that those kind of problems, and to ensure that those people are able to be better off and have more meaningful opportunities.
Every day, when I walk through the corridors here at Harvard Business School, or whenever a lecturer says my name, Magashe, which is my grandfather's name, I hear the echo of somebody who would have never in his wildest dreams imagine being at a place like this and think, oh my gosh. Imagine if we could have just shown him or shown other people how accessible something like this is.
I don't have it figured out. Far from it. I don't know if I want to work in fintech, in edtech, web 4.0 or 5.0, I don't know which one we're on now. But I do know that I'm dedicated to South Africa, and I know that in the remainder of my time here at HBS, I'll continually try to figure out what exactly I'm supposed to be doing on this planet.
Read more about Magashe here and view other student video profiles here.