Hanlie de Bod-Leaf never planned a career in technology. But as CIO at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, she's combining her love of problem-solving and innovation to build digital solutions that connect millions of young South Africans with much-needed work opportunities.
At 18, an IT career wasn’t on Hanlie’s radar. She wanted to teach, but her dad – an educator himself – advised she should study something else, then do a teaching diploma. So, she completed BCom in Law with accounting as a major at the University of Johannesburg – and ended up being an accounting teacher for five years.
“I love teaching, but I wanted to do something different. I landed an end-user education opportunity at SAP and became a SAP consultant – that's how I got into IT,” says Hanlie.
“I like people and managing them, so I quickly moved into project management and ran a team.” She adds she always thought she’d return to teaching, but she hasn’t. “It’s been a winding career path, but I ended up at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator as the CIO. Here I am, and I love what I do!”
Why IT is about people, not just code
Hanlie feels society has narrow ideas about what a typical IT person should be; they’re reduced to “devs and data people”, but technology is more than that.
“There's a range of people in the tech industry, from business analysts to hardcore techies. What's great about the work I do is I can bridge the gap between business and IT because I can speak to both; that's what I most love about my job. I love people and solving their problems, and that's how I ended up where I am today.”
Career highlights, says Hanlie, have always been the unexpected developments. “When I joined Harambee I was hired as head of IT enablement,” she says. “I had to figure things out and put processes in place, and I really enjoyed the challenge because I hate being bored!” She adds that being asked to take on the CIO role was a huge highlight. “Working for an organisation like Harambee is a privilege, and then being able to lead a purpose-driven team is gold.”
For Hanlie, the biggest challenge as CIO is how fast technology changes – and how to keep up with it. She acknowledges this is something anyone in tech faces, and as CIOs, the rapid rate of change can make decision-making difficult.
“The challenge is when do you stick to a decision and possibly fail forward or when do you take a wait-and-see approach? We sometimes get it right, and sometimes we’re wrong. Whatever you decide, it’s important to take your team with you on the journey. And to remember that not everyone adapts to change quickly, but you can help them be resilient through it.”
Building a platform with national impact
Harambee has a large tech team that builds, tests, and maintains their main product, the SA Youth platform, a digital youth recruitment platform that allows job seekers to find work and employers to fill entry-level roles. She highlights that the two biggest parts of the business comprise tech and operations.
“Our platform is part of most of our organisation's day, and we’re consistently building and improving it. We also use our data to measure impact and gain insights into the youth labour market. In the last two years, we’ve undergone a data transformation which gives the organisation better line-of-sight to the data. We're not where we want to be yet it is always a work in progress.”
Hanlie adds that Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) is extremely important because it measures youth unemployment, which is unfortunately on a consistent upwards trend.
“We don't just want to look at our numbers; we want to see our impact on the QLFS. We, along with our partners and similar organisations, are actively working to solve this problem. About nine million young people are not in education or training and 4.6 percent of those young people – just under five million youth between 18 and 35 – are registered on our platform. We serve a large part of unemployed youth by bringing job opportunities to them through employers, government employment programmes, and content on job seeking and self-employment.”
Hanlie notes the platform is zero-rated for employers and young people. “All we ask of employers is that they tell us who they hired, because we want to know if the programmes are effective, as we sometimes see young people going in and out of employment until they find a space that works. We use this data to identify trends, and which sectors we need to get involved in.”
Closing the digital divide; creating opportunities, one job at a time
Hanlie says there are many digital jobs not being filled because the talent can't be found. Yet Harambee continually sees an influx of young people with digital qualifications not getting jobs.
“There's a skills gap in what they can offer to the market, but they also apply for jobs that want experience they simply don’t have. CIOs need to look at their mentorship programmes because often they will hire graduates but then they’re left to their own devices for a year. Give young people a chance, reskill them to match the business's needs, mentor them, and get them involved with organisations that are trying to address the digital divide like Collective X.”
Considering South African youth aged between 18 and 35 years continue to have the highest unemployment rates at 55.3 percent, it’s easy to get discouraged. But Hanlie maintains it’s the small wins that matter.
“We often get young people coming back to us, telling us how they got their first job on the platform and now they're a teaching assistant for the Department of Education. They had that experience on their CV, so they were hired. Or they used the SA Youth CV, which they can download off our platform, to apply for a job. Just one young person getting a job has a net-positive effect on their whole family,” Hanlie concludes.
