Ian Mangenga

05 Sep 2023
05 Sep 2023

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My one advice is get involved in your life's plan. We all have dreams of where we want to be, but those dreams take time, effort and preparation... so be invested.

Communications Manager at Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Both my undergraduate degree and my current degree have a strong focus on people and spaces. Through my 5 year+ career span in civil society, I have had to consider both people and place. Currently as the executive director of Digital Girl Africa I also play the role of executive creative director. This means i'm in-charge of developing innovations that will help the organization achieve it's goals while still achieving the greatest return on social impact. I use design-thinking a lot and always find myself having to refer back to people and places to inform my design interventions. Whether these are programs, events or actual spaces. The intended outcome for all the work I do is sustainability and inclusion, two topics I have learnt about more intimately through my qualifications.

Both geography and archaeology and landscape architecture are multidisciplinary subjects that require one to have multiple skill set and open to learning new things. My ability to embrace difference, unite different ideas under a common goal and be diplomatic is definitely the biggest skill I use.

My day-to-day activities, mainly revolve around my school work. However i have a daily routine that begins at 4 am, where I work on my work tasks. Then from 9am to end of day I work on school. I'm fortunate to have a team of capable women and men as a part of Digital Girl Africa, which allows me to focus on my school work.

My one advice is get involved in your life's plan. We all have dreams of where we want to be, but those dreams take time, effort and preparation. So be invested, your plans for your future should interest you and you should make time to find out what is new and trending in your field. Thanks to digital technology, you can even start crafting your career while in university simply by blogging about your findings and sharing the information with others who are just like you.