Growing up in Eldorado Park in Johannesburg, Stafford Masie,
was exposed to the harsh realities of gangsterism and violence. All around him
the guys in the nice cars were the gangsters and the community thought that the
only way to make an honest living was to become a bank clerk, a teacher or a
security guard.
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Masie however, wanted more out of life. His father, a
political activist at the time, decided to provide his son with the necessary
opportunities by sending him to Tel Aviv University in Israel where he studied
computer science.
When he came back from Israel, Stafford began his career as
a technology analyst for Telkom, working hard to make his way to the top. He has
an impressive CV working as the national software strategist for Dimension Data, the Co-CEO and
strategist for Redstar
Networks, the product marketing director for Novell SA, the global business
strategist for Novell Inc (based in the USA), a managing director for Novell SA,
and head of Google South Africa. He currently is a non executive board member at
ADvTECH and runs a company called thumbzup.
The company offers innovative business mobility solutions, that allow acquirers
and processors to offer merchants a comprehensive suite of technologies and
services to their customers.
To get the job as the head of Google South Africa, Stafford
had to go through 18 interviews with Google representatives around the world
and if one person had submitted a negative report, he would have been out of
the running. Everybody thought Masie was the most competent person for the job
and the founder of Google,
Larry Page, personally signed his employment contract.
Through thumbzup, he’s raised R80 million and spent two and
a half years inventing the ‘Payment Pebble smartphone payment device’, which
allows merchants and ordinary people to make easy online card payments.
Stafford says that the best advice came from his father. While he was working for Telkom, he came across a lot of discrimination where people wanted to stereotype him according to what they thought brown people should be like.
The advice that his father gave was, “You can choose one of
two things: you can either choose to become the victim, or you can choose to
stand up in front of that crowd of people and be the best. If you do that, not
only will you personally overcome, you will also help to break the stereotype”.
Source: colouredkleurling
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