Name: Nomathemba Magagula
Role/Occupation: Consultant in Aftermarket Solutions Division at Caterpillar
Country: South Africa
I had the privilege of interviewing Nomathemba Magagula, a metallurgical and materials engineer and one of Engineers without Borders - South Africa's (EWB-SA’s) new board members.
Magagula’s interest in engineering began quite early, while in high school, with her passion for wanting to solve African issues particularly in the mining sector. Her superb performance in her matric finals, resulted in her tertiary education being funded by United Manganese of the Khalahari, “I signed up for Metallurgical & Materials Engineering course with the grand idea of helping accelerate the talent pool refining African minerals on African soil,” she recalls.
Her academic performance at the University of Witwatersrand was no less illustrious from becoming a member of the Golden Key society to having her final year research project published by the South African Institute of Mining & Metallurgy (SAIMM). After graduation, she joined a 2 year rotational graduate program (joint partnership between Caterpillar & Barloworld Equipment). After which she joined Caterpillar officially in their Aftermarket Solutions Division as a Sales Support Consultant working for the EAME-CIS-CIND, “Caterpillar has been exciting in that there’s a lot of travel involved so I get to see the world whilst doing challenging work I love,” she explains.
Magagula has a strong NGO background with her grandfather being her biggest influence for the NGO work he did for the disabled community of building two disability centers in Mpumalanga. This instilled the desire in her to uplift the community, “I always knew if I were to work in engineering, it would have to be a platform for me to empower others,” Magagula elaborates.
Throughout her degree, she held various positions at Engineers without Borders - Witwatersrand (EWB-Wits), such as Project manager, Public Relations Officer and Vice Chair. Caring for the community comes naturally to Magagula, she was already volunteering at “soup kitchen” programs & collecting the dining halls packs to give to the poor before joining EWB-SA, “I just needed a concreate platform to start doing this in a sustainable way within my chosen sector,” she explains. In her second year, she did some work with EWB-SA & Hatch Goba, conducting a literature review on the condition of Juskei river. That was her first project, “it felt like an extension of his [her grandfather’s] work but in the engineering sector,” she recalls.
At EWB-SA, Magagula started the professional chapter, ‘Mining for Shared Value’ which focused on the challenges arising within mining communities, “I learnt that the word ‘community’ is subjective.” She soon discovered that the best way for people to benefit from the mines in their communities is to become suppliers of skills or products to these local mines. Her focus then shifted to, “ensuring students can start to understand their power as engineers in the context of entrepreneurship.” This resulted in the Entrepreneurship in Engineering workshops coming about for the EWB-SA student chapters in partnership with Umnandi, as an annual ongoing course. Magagula also led the planning and implementation of very successful national student retreat earlier this year, “so the community I have been able to empower is that of engineering students as they transition into young professionals using lessons I learned when I was in that phase of their lives,” she emphasises.
As a new board member of EWB-SA and the head of the Youth Leadership Portfolio, her main focus will be improving the Annual National Leadership Retreat & Entrepreneurship in Engineering course, “we want to ensure that the summit’s impact on chapter success is improved, that chapters heads are empowered with tools to position themselves as resilient, resourceful & results driven leaders , measure their on – campus impact better & maintain increased synergies with EWB-SA,” Magagula elaborates.
As a creative leader, EWB-SA has helped Magagula harness her passions into tangible actions. She has learnt how to “collaborate with small groups and large groups of people… how to navigate diversity within these large groups.” She feels that she has modelled her career from the mentoring that she has received both formally and informally from EWB-SA throughout the years. Career wise, she believes that “being a part of EWB-SA has led to various types recognition at work… Essentially, I am able to identify a gap within my work place culture and I always have tangible and actionable concepts and exercises that I can pull in from my experiences working within EWB-SA to share,” she explains. Most importantly, Magagula feels that EWB-SA has taught her the importance of open feed-back loops, “there’s critical power in reflection as it can improve an idea, event or concept you are working with… I now actively reflect to improve on myself in my work and personal environment too.”
With regards to being a woman in the engineering space, she feels that “there are differences between us that we ought to tackle head on so we can be authentic in our experiences with each other in the work place. I do not pretend to be ‘one of the guys’. I’m Noma, an individual… Once people begin to handle me as a person , we get along just fine.”
Her advice to young aspiring engineers is to “finish your degree. It gets so tough trying to cope with getting an education & getting exposure as you work on different sides of your character… take care of your mental & physical health. I always look at the happiest years of my life and I try maintain the elements that I had then… build a strong network during your years at varsity, knowing the right people is absolutely key as you come up in your journey because they can unlock doors you didn’t even know about.”
Magagula is not only an engineer but also an enthusiastic gardener and often refers to her work using gardening metaphors, “I always manage my big rocks of the week, submit those and then move on to the filler tasks in between.”
Read more about this ambitious, hardworking and perceptive young engineer in the insightful interview below which is nothing short of a healthy green garden blooming with colourful knowledge flowers.
Nomathemba Magagula was interviewed by Dhruti Dheda, the founder of the African Steminist on behalf of Engineers without Borders- South Africa. The full interview can be found here.
Commentaires