Latest / Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh / The Role of a Pracademic in Africa's Development

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The Role of a Pracademic in Africa's Development · Chatting with The Experts with Paula Okonneh

• 0:02
  Well, hello everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of Chatting
• 0:06
  with the Experts with me, Paula Okonneh, the host, where I speak
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  with dynamic women from Africa, from the Caribbean, and in the diaspora.
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  These women are professionals and successful entrepreneurs, and they share
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  the mission with me, which is to educate, empower, and inspire women globally.
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  Today, it's very interesting.
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  We are gonna be talking about being a Pracademic.
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  And what we'll do is, or what I'll do is speak to my guest about her
• 0:42
  entrepreneurial work, which is at the intersection of practice and academia.
• 0:50
  Well, we would need to do that, would be Dr. Memuna Williams.
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  Let me tell you a little bit about her.
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  She is a doctoral practitioner who bridges academia and practice to strengthen
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  people, to strengthen small and medium sized entrepreneurs, also known as SMEs
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  and their communities in order to foster personal growth and economic development.
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  She completed a doctoral thesis titled Forms of Corporate Social
• 1:26
  Responsibilities, also known as CSR in Small and Medium Enterprises while
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  practicing in youth entrepreneurial leadership training and having lived
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  in nine countries, she is a subject matter expert in social responsibility,
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  SMEs, nonprofits, entrepreneurship and strategy, leadership, cultural
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  competency, and qualitative research.
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  Oh my word.
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  Isn't that impressive?
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  And so that I welcome Dr Memuna Williams to the show.
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  Hi, Paula.
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  It's great to be with you.
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  Thanks for having me.
• 2:19
  Absolutely.
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  Every week I have amazing women, dynamic women.
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  Women that inspire, inspire me and others, and you are no exception.
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  Your bio is phenomenal.
• 2:32
  Woo!
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  Thank you very much.
• 2:35
  Thank you very much.
• 2:36
  Yeah.
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  So tell us about being a Pracademic.
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  What does that mean?
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  I mean, I saw it, you mentioned it, and I'm like, okay, we need
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  to find out more about this.
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  Tell us how you got to that description of yourself.
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  Yeah.
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  So, when you were reading my biography just now, I think you used
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  the term, doctoral practitioner.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And recently I had the opportunity to give a keynote speech for women in
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  leadership promo for a course at WITS university which here in South Africa
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  is famous for being the university where Nelson Mandela went to law school.
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  And the administrator, when she was introducing me, she said that
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  you, Dr. Williams is a pracademic.
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  So I think that's what you are referring to.
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  And I thought, wow, I'd like that better than doctoral practitioner.
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  I'm gonna start using that as a way to describe myself.
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  Absolutely love it.
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  So we have to give credit to her.
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  Absolutely.
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  Yeah.
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  So, yeah.
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  Yeah, she's a fantastic person and she exemplifies, you know, that support that
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  women give each other that I learned in Charlotte where you and I first met.
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  You know, where there was an amazing community of women business owners
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  at NAWBO that showed me how they can support me and who taught me
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  to support women business owners.
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  So fast forward so many years, it's really nice to see that still
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  happening in different contexts and, you know, that support being given.
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  I couldn't be happier to be her colleague at the moment.
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  Oh yes, absolutely.
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  Absolutely.
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  So, tell us about your journey.
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  How did you become the pracademic?
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  I don't want it to say doctoral academic, but, we are not using that word anymore.
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  We use the new word pracademic.
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  So, pr academic so usually when people do a doctorate, it's a
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  PhD. And my doctorate is a DBA, a Doctor of Business Administration.
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  And partly what that means is that it encourages you the DBA to remain more
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  practice leaning than academic leaning.
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  But at the doctoral level, there's also an expectation that you would
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  do something in academics, whether it's teaching or continuing to do
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  research or things along those lines.
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  And so kind of getting more closely connected to places like WITS.
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  And other business schools here in South Africa, that allows me to live
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  into that personality of doctoral practitioner meaning that I stay
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  more in practice than in academia.
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  Absolutely love that because, you know, academia is great and
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  sometimes you have to now take it and apply it and be with the people.
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  And I can see in talking with you earlier on off camera, that
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  you have a heart for the people.
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  You know, we have wanted to give back or even in addition to giving back
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  to strengthen and build people up.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  No, absolutely.
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  And as you know, from having known me for so many years, I started
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  out my career as a linguist.
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  I'm a trained French-English translator and worked many years in that profession.
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  But when I searched my heart you know, I realized that, you know,
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  the example that my parents had given me of community service, like
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  always almost adopting children.
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  There were always many children in our home, always paying school
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  fees for cousins and other people around us, and all of those kinds
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  of things, both my mom and my dad.
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  I realized that I wanted, you know, to be in that space more.
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  And, having done my MBA already, I decided okay, like let me use
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  my business knowledge to do that work and to support people\ as
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  they want to grow through specific subjects that I love as a manager.
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  So leadership and strategy and entrepreneurship and also, you know,
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  just support them in a different way than my parents had, but still
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  do that community service as well.
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  Yeah.
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  Yes.
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  I love the part about community service and, you know, helping cousins and
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  relative, because, you know our culture is one of, I say extended family.
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  Nuclear family, great but then you realize that every nuclear family
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  comes from a family that was a nuclear family prior to that, you know, or
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  mm-hmm.
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  And so, you know, it's just that we just, it's exponential.
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  And so you many times you realize that we got here because somebody else was
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  there to support us or support our parents or support our grandparents.
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  And I tell that to my children all the time that we didn't
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  get here by just being here.
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  Others carried us.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Absolutely.
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  And, you know, that's kind of what I tried to carry for today.
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  I think some of the best examples of how I've been able to do that in practice
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  recently is through the work that I was doing at an NGO that focuses on
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  entrepreneurship and financial literacy and workplace readiness training and
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  having the opportunity to work with young people in different communities across
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  different countries in Africa seven up to the time that I was leaving and even
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  into nine, which was like our total field that we were going to be working on.
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  Just seeing everybody working together, the community centers who brought
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  together the young people that we worked with and the young people.
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  You know, my particular focus was on underserved young people who maybe
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  had dropped out of high school or didn't quite know what to do when they
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  finished with college and bringing them these hands-on training in business
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  using the business model canvas.
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  But, and just seeing, you know, what comes up for them, you know, because of their
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  particular experiences in South Africa, when I was doing this program, we had
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  what they called load shedding, which was.
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  You know, rolling blackouts.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And so you sort saw a lot of amazing ideas coming out coming from the young people
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  around how you can do things differently.
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  A young person in Soweto came up with kinectically charged cell phone.
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  You know, like you it, yeah, it charges as you are moving you know, to be, you
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  know, if you don't have electricity at home, you can do it that way.
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  And just so many amazing ideas.
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  I think as of last year, the end of the second year of the program.
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  We counted about 4,000 new ideas that people had come up with,
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  the young people had come up with across the seven countries that
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  we had been in up to that point.
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  And so there's no shortage of need, of you know, support that can be given.
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  And that can then in turn, really make a difference in the communities because now.
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  Some of these ideas are turned into actual businesses and like they're
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  supporting people with jobs, supporting households better and things like that.
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  So it was really, really gratifying and I'm happy to be able to do that.
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  Hmm.
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  Oh my gosh.
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  It blesses me beyond measure just to hear about that, you know, the
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  innovation, especially among the youth, you know, many times people
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  forget that the youth are the future.
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  They are our future.
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  They are the tomorrows.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  In that position, you know, and as I mentioned earlier, many a times
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  we get to where we are today or because of, you know, someone seeing
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  something in us or our parents or our grandparents, or however we may go.
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  So, you know, your passion for youth, especially on underserved
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  areas is really heartwarming.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Yeah.
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  Absolutely.
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  And I think, what I see part of what I do now in across the work that we've been
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  talking about is mentor people, both when I'm at home in the US and when I am here.
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  And I think that a trend that I see is a bit of a lack of confidence.
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  You know, I don't have the education, I don't have this, that,
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  or the other, or what it might be.
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  And I think that when I, you know, the examples that I just gave about the
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  particular program, often what you see is people have a lot of what they need in
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  order to be able to address a circumstance to be able to do that next thing
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  that they think that they don't need.
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  They just need a little bit of support.
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  They just need it to be teased out for somebody to hold up a mirror to them and
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  say, can you see that you actually have this, this is what I see when I see you.
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  And that little bit of encouragement can make all of the difference of
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  changing trepidation to excitement and to maybe even a little bit of a memory
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  around, this is what this person said to me that gave me that sentiment.
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  And whenever I go back to that place, I might just remind myself
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  of that so that I can keep on going.
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  Yes.
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  So you mentioned that you've done this in like seven, not like,
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  but in seven countries in Africa.
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  Would you mind mentioning which countries those are?
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  Yeah, no, absolutely.
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  Yeah, the program was in South Africa where I live.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Uganda, Cote d'Ivoire There's always one that escapes me now, but I'll keep going.
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  Burkina Faso, Togo, Tanzania, I think that's six.
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  And there was one more.
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  You know, if I look in my records I'll be able to find it, but we were also gonna
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  be going to Sierra Leone and Liberia and those were the eighth and ninth countries.
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  And I went there and laid the groundwork for the program as well.
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  But it was nice.
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  It would cover a lot of the Sub-Sahara in East Africa and West Africa,
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  and then also here in South Africa.
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  Wow.
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  I know this Sub-Sahara Africa 'cause we tend to get on overlooked.
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  Yes.
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  And that's actually one of the things that I liked about that program
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  was that it was very intentional about going to underserved places.
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  So you didn't hear me say Ghana or Nigeria or Kenya.
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  You heard me say a few different places in East Africa and West
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  Africa, including some French speaking countries you know, Togo, Burkina Faso.
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  Often these programs don't go to these places.
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  So that was one way in which underserved populations were served on this program
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  but also within the country, making sure that you went beyond the capital.
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  So, you know, yes, we went to Wagadugu but we also went to a place called
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  Koudougou which is a few hours drive outside of the capital city.
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  So I also was on a journey of discovery in many of these countries.
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  In Tanzania, actually, our main place where we did the program was
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  in Arusha and not in Dar es Salaam, and so it was a very interesting
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  program from that standpoint as well.
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  And we really were able to reach quite a few people who otherwise in regular
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  programs like this, wouldn't have had the opportunity to have this kind of training.
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  Absolutely.
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  So, because I know that you're subject expert on, social responsibility,
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  SME and nonprofits are included in that amongst many others,
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  entrepreneurship and strategy.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  How do you get funding for this?
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  Is that something you can talk about?
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  Debt funded for the work that I do.
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  Yes.
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  Yeah.
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  So like what I've been describing is salaried work.
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  So that's probably my third vertical where when I go deep.
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  So you and I have talked recently about work that I've been
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  doing with Champs for Change.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And that's advisory.
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  It's become an entrepreneurial venture that I'm deeply involved with,
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  but in that vertical, so my other verticals are the academics and then
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  like kind of information sharing.
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  That's new for me.
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  And we'll see how that gets funded.
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  But on this third vertical over here, it's often salaried work or paid
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  consulting or stuff along those lines.
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  So it's new and exciting.
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  I can see that in your facial expression.
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  New, yeah.
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  Exciting.
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  Yeah.
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  Absolutely.
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  Yeah, no, I mean, it's what I want to be doing.
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  As we've talked about a little bit already supporting people towards doing the best
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  that they can do so that they can improve their communities and have better lives.
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  It's my thought that when people do better than all of the other things
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  that we worry about today, planet is a big thing that we worry about.
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  If you have people who have concern for the planet, then
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  the planet will do better.
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  And so can we focus on the things that we need to do to support people so that
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  everything else can then be taken care of?
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  So I know that I think you're the executive director of
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  Empowering Sustainable Change.
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  Yeah.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Let's talk a bit about that.
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  I mean, is that thing, the work you've talked about so far, does it come under
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  that vertical or is this something.
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  Yeah.
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  So the three verticals that I just described are the three verticals that
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  fall under empowering sustainable change.
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  And yeah, on the information side there, what I like to focus on
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  is attributes and behaviors and characteristics of you know, that help
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  people to do better in their lives, you know, what does the characteristic
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  of perseverance mean, for example?
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  That's one.
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  And then on a more academic side, related to my research on social
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  responsibility, what does it look like to, for small businesses to develop
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  social responsibility programs from end to end, from a small business perspective
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  and not from a corporate perspective?
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  So I spend a lot of time thinking about that and talking about that
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  as part of my information sharing.
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  And I think that's important because I think that having small businesses that
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  are strong in many areas, including areas that governments or large businesses
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  that they supply to demand just helps strengthen them further in other ways.
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  Like people talk about a lot of different things, strategy, leadership, all of
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  these other management subjects, and I talk about some of those things as well.
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  But the social responsibility, I think, is perhaps not spoken about as much.
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  And so that's an area where I want them to get additional support.
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  So that's some of the information sharing that I do.
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  And I might also do writing.
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  You've seen perhaps some of the work that I do at Lionesses of Africa.
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  So I do some contributions in that way.
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  And then my work gets shared in that way as well.
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  And the academics supporting students graduate student supervision as
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  young people are getting their education, that allows me to reach
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  young people in an academic way.
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  You know, doing executive education specifically for women or just in a
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  general executive education course, that's part of the work as well.
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  And then the deep advisory.
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  Increasingly external, but internal as well as I just described at length.
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  Oh wow.
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  Lionesses of Africa.
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  That's a publication that you contribute to.
• 19:52
  Yes.
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  Say more about that, but maybe for another time.
• 19:55
  Okay.
• 19:57
  So I had on a guest recently and we were talking about resources
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  and one of the things I know that you are involved with is SMEs
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  small and medium sized enterprises.
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  How have you found that limited resources have been, you know, like
• 20:18
  a catalyst for them in some ways.
• 20:21
  Yeah, that's a really good question.
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  In my research one of my findings was, so when you look at the existing
• 20:32
  literature, often what you find is this idea that small and medium sized
• 20:39
  businesses are resource constrained, and often this is seen as a weakness
• 20:46
  of small and medium businesses.
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  But when I looked at how do small and medium businesses develop social
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  responsibility programs for beginning to end, what I found about this idea
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  of resource constraint was that it's actually something that forces them to
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  think differently, to be creative, and to come up with novel ways of doing things.
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  That kind of set aside this idea that resource constraint for a small business
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  is necessarily a bad thing and that it can actually help them and kind of push
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  them forward and allow them to think differently and do good things you
• 21:30
  know, as a positive, as opposed to the negative that it's always portrayed as.
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  Absolutely love that, especially within the African countries, especially those
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  that, as you say, are less represented because I know, I mean, we all know them.
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  Necessity is the mother of invention.
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  And the times when you're pushed to the wall, I mean, or you know, as you say,
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  we have limited access to resources.
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  That's when you can look within yourself or look within the community
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  and see that what we do have actually, you know, innovate with that.
• 22:06
  Yeah, absolutely.
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  That's definitely what the research said.
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  And then you know, partly, you know, what I've learned as well from talking
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  to business owners is that the business itself serves a different purpose in this
• 22:22
  Sub-Sahara depending on where you are.
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  Of course, in a country like South Africa where I sit, that
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  has a little bit more wealth and a little bit more systems in place.
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  You know, you have government programs and those provide support to people.
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  But in a place like I'm from in Sierra Leone that has weaknesses across those
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  areas, it's really the business or the place of work that kind of substitutes
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  for a lot of the things that people need.
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  And so, you know, your healthcare, you are looking to your employer you know, and the
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  employer, you know, might have their own different ideas about where they come in
• 23:01
  a person's life that's working for them.
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  But eventually they come to realize that they're playing an important
• 23:07
  social role in this person's life.
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  And that's also a part of that innovation that we've just been talking about.
• 23:16
  Wow.
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  I could talk forever with you
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  . As we say here in Johannesburg.
• 23:26
  Oh, well, before we wrap up, I wanna, ask you a bit about your advisory work.
• 23:31
  I know you talk so much about the, not talk so much in the sense that too
• 23:36
  much, but you know, you have mentioned the three verticals, but I know you
• 23:40
  have some ongoing cycle of teaching and learning within in depth advisory work.
• 23:50
  Hmm.
• 23:50
  See your face is lighted up.
• 23:52
  It's lighting up.
• 23:55
  Yeah.
• 23:56
  Yeah.
• 23:56
  I do have a particularly interesting project right now
• 24:00
  the Champs for Change project has just taken on a life of its own.
• 24:04
  And so that's been a lot of fun.
• 24:07
  You know, I never know where these asks are gonna take me.
• 24:11
  And they've been happening, from, you know, 12, 13 years ago since I moved into
• 24:17
  this line of work where somebody will just approach me and say, me, you look
• 24:22
  like somebody who could help me with this.
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  And I think that one of my like this term that people use nowadays,
• 24:31
  superpowers is kind of being able to, and maybe that's why I did the kind of
• 24:37
  research that I did, like interviews.
• 24:39
  You end up with a lot of information and then you have to whittle it down
• 24:42
  to a little is not being afraid of looking at the pictures and looking
• 24:48
  at the unknowns and figuring it out.
• 24:51
  And I'm able to do that for myself and I'm able to do that for people.
• 24:56
  And that's how I came to be involved with Champs for Change because my
• 25:01
  business partner one of my business partners, Clarisse Machanguana, she
• 25:06
  and I met you know, in doing social work, community service, and she said,
• 25:14
  Memuna, can you help me with this?
• 25:16
  We've seen this problem of, you know, young people wanting more mentorship,
• 25:21
  can we develop something together?
• 25:23
  And two years later, we've just launched a book together and gone into
• 25:27
  business together, which was completely unexpected, but it's been a lot of fun.
• 25:32
  I'm talking about the book.
• 25:34
  I happen to have it right here.
• 25:37
  Yay.
• 25:40
  I got it today and I'm going to be reading it.
• 25:44
  That's fantastic.
• 25:47
  It's thrilling to me to hear that, you know, Champs for Change
• 25:54
  is something that, you know, is really going to bring about the change because
• 25:59
  people within the... I know it's geared towards encouraging African kids and kids
• 26:06
  of African descent to go into sports, but at the same time, knowing that there's so
• 26:11
  many other opportunities that are linked to sports, did I summarize it, right?
• 26:16
  Exactly right.
• 26:17
  Yes.
• 26:17
  So it's not just being an athlete and caring about athletes.
• 26:22
  Those are important.
• 26:23
  They're core to sports, but the whole ecosystem surrounding
• 26:27
  sports, sports medicine wellness events, entertainment around sports
• 26:34
  and all these marketing media.
• 26:36
  Those are all important careers that support the sports ecosystem.
• 26:42
  Sports is growing in Africa.
• 26:44
  The sports business is growing in Africa.
• 26:47
  We have a lot of young people.
• 26:48
  We have a lot of young people with different interests from,
• 26:52
  you know, the previous generation.
• 26:54
  And so this is just an interesting time for the idea of Champs
• 26:58
  for Change to have come around.
• 27:01
  And we couldn't be more pleased with how it's starting out.
• 27:05
  And it's much needed because, you know, you
• 27:09
  of African heritage being of Nigerian, I know that my parents' generation did
• 27:17
  not encourage any of the children or any young person to go into sports.
• 27:22
  So seeing it from that angle, people like you and Clarisse and Randy, I
• 27:28
  know who else are called or etched in the book, you know, many times
• 27:33
  we can't be what we can't see.
• 27:35
  When we see someone or someone else who are enabling us to see
• 27:41
  beyond the limitations and see the opportunities that are there.
• 27:45
  Yeah.
• 27:46
  That make the difference, and we need those voices.
• 27:50
  So I wanna thank you.
• 27:52
  Wanna thank Clarisse who I haven't met, Randy, who I also haven't
• 27:56
  met for championing that change.
• 28:00
  Absolutely.
• 28:01
  It's our pleasure.
• 28:02
  And it's part of the larger work you know, that we've been talking about today the
• 28:07
  larger practice, the larger academics.
• 28:11
  Yeah.
• 28:12
  So thank you very much for bringing that out.
• 28:15
  Hmm.
• 28:15
  Yes, absolutely.
• 28:16
  So as I mentioned a few minutes ago, Memuna and I can talk for
• 28:20
  hours, but we have limited time.
• 28:24
  So for those of you who are viewing this or who are in the audience, and
• 28:28
  would like to continue the conversation.
• 28:31
  Memuna, how can you be found online or offline?
• 28:34
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:35
  Online, I'm at LinkedIn also on Facebook and Instagram and Threads.
• 28:41
  So I can be found there.
• 28:43
  And my website is sustainable-change.org is where I can be found.
• 28:51
  Awesome.
• 28:52
  And just as Dr. Memuna Williams has been a guest on my show, I'd love to
• 28:58
  encourage other women, women from Africa, the Caribbean, and in the diaspora
• 29:06
  to reach out to me on my website.
• 29:09
  If you'd like to be a guest, my website is chattingwiththeexperts.com.
• 29:13
  I'm also on LinkedIn as Paula Okonneh.
• 29:17
  I'm on Instagram at... my handle is at chat_experts_podcast.
• 29:25
  I'm on Facebook.
• 29:26
  I have a business page there, but do more interaction on my personal
• 29:30
  page, which is Paula Okonneh.
• 29:33
  And I have a YouTube channel Chatting with the Experts that
• 29:39
  you can also reach out to me on.
• 29:41
  Drop us a comment, drop comments, and like, and
• 29:45
  subscribe to our YouTube channel.
• 29:49
  Woo.
• 29:50
  I can't believe how fast time has gone, but there's an old saying that says
• 29:55
  time flies when you're having fun.
• 29:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:58
  I've really enjoyed talking with you.
• 30:00
  So what we are gonna do now is open up the floor to those who have joined
• 30:03
  us, so that any questions that I might have left out, they'll have an
• 30:08
  opportunity to talk with you or ask you or comment on what they heard.
• 30:13
  So thank you again, Dr. Memuna Williams for being a guest.
• 30:18
  Such an awesome guest on Chatting with the Experts.
• 30:21
  Okay.
• 30:22
  Thank you so much, Paula.