Mashudu Mbhele is a transformation life coach, credit repair coach and social entrepreneur based in Richards Bay in South Africa’s Kwazulu-Natal province. She’s a Professional Engineering Technologist too, having been a Metallurgical Engineer for over two decades, making her an expert at process improvement and lean methods. With her name meaning ‘gift’ in Tshivenda, Mashudu loves transforming mindsets, hosting people, healing, empowering and guiding others. As she describes, her portfolio career has had its ups and downs, and she writes authentically about her own struggles, what she’s learnt, and the power of a growth mindset. Here is her story: 

​​“Looking back now, my first introduction to the mining industry, extraction metallurgy and physical metallurgy, was when I was part of the Mintek Aurora Programme in South Africa in 1995. That programme was designed to develop our mathematics and science skills as scholars – I discovered I had an affinity for extraction metallurgy and decided I wanted to study it at university. 

After passing Mathematics, Physical Science and English at school, I was offered a bursary to study extraction metallurgy. As Extraction Metallurgists, we control and design process improvements to optimise the recovery of metals and minerals from ore. 

Iain Allan is now in his 70s, and shows no interest in retirement. He qualified as an actuary and spent his career in investments and banking. He took a strategic approach to his career, actively managing it to create and capitalise on opportunities at key points over the decades. Most recently, he has been encouraging more actuaries globally to consider career opportunities in banking, promoting this through the International Actuarial Association. 

In the investments domain, a financial option is an instrument which allows you to adjust the downside or upside potential of a given investment. One example of this is reducing or removing the chance of loss while retaining or enhancing the chance of gain. This ‘optionality’ allows you to benefit if things move in your favour. And, options are more valuable in uncertain situations (with ‘volatility’), when the path ahead is not clear – adapting as things evolve. 

A related concept in the world of bond (or fixed interest) investments is ‘convexity’, which involves rates of change. Simplistically speaking, convexity allows you to benefit whichever direction interest rates move – the best of everything! So, if you’re able to proactively steer your situation to give you optionality or even convexity, that’s incredibly helpful. 

Iain and John Young (one of his proteges) have written about the importance of creating strategic options, using examples from warfare and business. In their words: “Success comes from exploring many options and following up those that work best”. Read more for Iain’s career experiences and reflections, including his application of optionality in practice. 

Boniswa Dladla is a transformation coach who lives out her own purpose every day. She studied metallurgical engineering, and worked as a process engineer in the mining industry, in both coal and diamond processing, extracting value and beauty from raw materials. With excitement and passion, she shares her discovery of her own purpose: helping others to evolve. She’s a firm believer in personal development, and is currently in the midst of her MBA through Regenesys Business School. Boniswa helps her global coaching clients (including in Namibia, Botswana, Ghana and South Africa) to explore their values and beliefs, transform their mindsets and find the sweet spot of how they show up in their relationships. This is her story:

​​“My career journey started out with my 17 year-old self seeking an opportunity to study a critical skill which would guarantee me a job after university. The first time I heard of my soon-to-be-chosen degree was during a bursary interview organised by my career guidance teacher. The bursary company were clear they were looking for candidates with good mathematics and science marks who were willing to study engineering. I chose a field of engineering that I had never heard of or ever knew existed prior to that interview! I chose it because it looked hard as well as exciting and I wanted to see how it could challenge me to grow. That is how I found myself doing Metallurgical Engineering. The company sponsoring my studies was a coal mining company.

Mining Commitments
The bursary was my gateway to the mining industry. Entering it also seemed very hard as the mining industry was and still is a male-dominated industry - it has taken great strides to encourage more women into engineering fields to enhance gender transformation. In those times you signed a contract to work back every year of study with the company that paid for your studies. So, I had a four year contract to work back, which made our time at university as bursary students very serious. We knew that failing could mean paying back the money which we knew our parents could not afford, so the most responsible thing to do was to focus on our studies. Read more to follow along my journey in the mining, diamond and now coaching industries...