Many have described me as an anomoly or enigma. I guess that would be attributed to my seemingly boundless positive spirit that is always striving to be among the best at all I do (I try extremely hard to keep my competitiveness underwraps). I am always looking for something new to learn while ensuring my output is above expectation. The coolest thing though is that I keep surprising myself (it gets really stressful sometimes [I THRIVE IN STRESS]). Consequently, I am almost always looking for new avenues to explore, new people to meet, new problems to sink my teeth into. The Future is NOW!! I can help you get ready for it -
DISRUPTIVE LEADERSHIP, AUTOMATION, DATA SCIENCE, STATISTICS, COMPUTER SCIENCE, CULTURE INFLUENCER.
Cape Town, Gauteng, South Africa, 8001
Pretoria, South Africa
English, Afrikaans
Male
Following a successful first year and notable achievements, including my instrumental role in the accelerated development of the data platform, I was offered a permanent position with a promotion to "Senior Data Engineer." This transition underscored my contributions and marked a significant milestone in my career.
Throughout my tenure at Momentum, I took on various roles earning me nicknames like "hole plugger," "spaghetti man" (the one who makes sense of seeming nonsense), and "Swiss army knife." My multifaceted nature led me to consistently be involved in more than two projects simultaneously. I often found myself in challenging teams, tasked with revitalizing and optimizing team dynamics before transitioning to the next assignment.
My involvement in numerous high-profile use cases, including Historical Data Clean-up, Finance Automations, Data Platform development, Financial Simulation Products, ML Solutions, and Data Solutions, highlights the diverse and impactful nature of my contributions during my time at Momentum Investments.
"The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them."
-John Maxwell
Upon joining Momentum, my initial role as a Data Engineer involved becoming part of the data team responsible for various data-related initiatives. However, the dynamic changed rapidly when all other developers on the team were set to leave within a month. This necessitated an intensive learning curve as I not only had to maintain existing systems but also rapidly acquire knowledge on platforms and technologies previously unfamiliar to me.
In response to a leadership decision to accelerate the development of the data platform, outsourcing to a consulting house became a crucial step. In this phase, I assumed partial responsibility for the technical implementation of creating and maintaining a data platform built on "Data Mesh" principles. This period marked a significant growth phase for both the team and my role within it.
GOLDEN NUGGETS
"In the crucible of challenging circumstances, genuine growth thrives." – My role as a contractor at Momentum Investments, steering a complete development team through uncertainty, taught me the invaluable lesson that authentic growth is often cultivated in the midst of challenging circumstances. This principle guides my approach, emphasizing the transformative potential embedded in navigating and thriving amidst adversity.
"Plan diligently, adapt swiftly." – This guiding principle emerged from my transition to Momentum, initially driven by a move from a managerial to a technical role. Swiftly finding myself back in a leadership position, the experience highlighted the importance of adaptability. I recognized that while excelling individually is significant, true strength lies in the ability to harmonize individual skills within a collaborative team.
In February 2020, I assumed the leadership of Fraud Operations' inaugural in-house Development team, tasked with introducing automation to a department hungry for efficiency. Leading a team with no prior coding experience, I navigated challenges and facilitated a remarkable transformation.
After a month of intensive training, the team successfully deployed over TEN process automations, developed FIVE system-integrated applications, and crafted FOUR data-driven dashboards. The team's capacity to handle diverse ad hoc requests marked a pivotal shift in Fraud Operations' operational landscape.
Witnessing the team's rapid progress, I was tasked with mentoring an additional 5 team members. The headcount nearly tripled within the first month, and I take pride in having cultivated a multi-platform development team that operated with sustainable self-management.
Anticipating my departure, I proactively groomed a successor, ensuring a seamless transition. The team, under new leadership, not only remained stable but also saw an expansion in responsibilities. This underscored the foundation of stability and effectiveness laid during my tenure.
GOLDEN NUGGETS
Catalyst for Change in Large Corporations – Genuine change often arises reactively to external pressures in large corporations, where internal initiatives face resistance due to hierarchical and political dynamics. Adaptation to external stimuli and, at times, proactive creation of stimuli is essential for meaningful transformations.
Unlocking Potential Beyond Conventional Roles – Large organizations tend to confine individuals with untapped potential to roles that only marginally utilize their capabilities. Proactive leadership is crucial to identifying and nurturing talent, ensuring it flourishes beyond predetermined boundaries.
This is where I learnt that I am in-charge of my career progress. If you leave your career decisions to others the outcome will benefit them more so than yourself.
“Sometimes the difficult path, not the laziest, is best.”
I had made it my goal, based on observations during my earlier rotations in the bank to find better opportunities for self-growth and development. After necessary conversations, the head executive of bank-wide operations created open-ended opportunities throughout the operations space. Through those opportunities I landed at my new home, Fraud Operations.
This role was exciting as I was given free reign and no goals to perform against; only my competitive nature to be the best. During this time I created multiple applications to centralize workflow data (i.e. complaints, fraud cases, digital applications), I was also introduced to cloud-based solution opportunities (coded a speech-to-text pilot solution in both Azure and AWS cloud spaces), built and implemented my own performance management system for the entire Fraud Enablement and Tehnology space (Fully digitised Gemba board) and created a fully internal, peer-reviewed idea tracking tool that doubles as a developmental workflow tool. I also created multiple click-bot automations; automating the sending of specific large volume mails, capturing complex data and automating various manual processes. This was done using an amalgamation of coding languages and platforms (WorkFusion, Java, Python, Office365, bash, Azure, AWS).
GOLDEN NUGGET:
The full benefits of Great Leadership is incalculable (for now) – Great leadership goes far beyond just ensuring that sufficient output is maintained. Output must be maintained while all team members understand the vital role they play in the process , but not too valueable that they feel irreplaceable as that can also be very dangerous. It is often as simple as noticing potential in your team members and cultivating that potential to the point where it surpasses your own. A great leader knows the success of their team is ultimately their success whether acknowledged or not, especially if their success surpasses that of your own. There are also so many more complexities that I have yet to discover.
Straight out of my second 4 year qualification, I only completed one work application (too lazy to apply elsewhere), for Standard Bank’s Graduate Programme. Little did I know this lazy decision would spark a raging fire of efficiency.
“Laziness is the first step towards efficiency.”
― Patrick Bennett
The rotational Graduate Programme is designed to ensure that graduates gain enough exposure to adequately work towards solving the most pertinent problems that cross the silo-barriers within the bank. Graduates were brought in and told they are there to breakdown the silos, disrupt old systems and inspire corporate change. For my first rotation through the graduate programme I was, however, sent to study Data Science at WITS. This decision was made, as I was seen to have the potential to cope with the additional challenge. I had to place my ambitions for change on hold and put my varsity cap on one more time.
My second rotation occurred in the Business Performance Improvement (BPI) space; the automation core of Bank-wide operations. I was afforded the opportunity to work with the WorkFusion automation framework, which was rated the top financial automation software in 2018-2019, and additionally gathered some of my largest GOLDEN NUGGETS to date:
Despite the “perceived” desire for change, many current hierarchical leadership structures prevent this from gaining traction operationally. Graduates are plied with the belief that they are there to be “agents of change”, to “brake down the silos from within” … standard challenges for bright-eyed bushy-tailed individuals who have never been exposed to corporate individuals ingrained with legacy thought patterns. Without a doubt, the common feeling was, “How can we bring change to those who are actively against change?” (Large Corporates are proliferated with such individuals). I am still in the process of finding my best solution to this problem, specifically when the individual is above my standing (this makes no sense, but is part of the corporate legacy - never disagree with a superior, you will likely endanger your personal progress.)
Despite going through months of having to fight against the notion that one needs to “babysit their desk” in order to prove productivity and that within a corporate space one is expected to only deliver work for and within one’s own current “silo”, I got myself out of the space and into the next and walked away with yet another GOLDEN NUGGET:
More consideration for individuality must be applied in order to get the best performance from team members – The number of people who give up on their individuality (and what makes them of value) to keep team leaders happy, is shocking! To this I decided all I could take from the time and space I had been in was that I would strive to not fall into this rut myself as I climbed the corporate ladder. I would “Embrace change. Envision what could be, challenge the status quo, and drive creative destruction.” ~ Charles Koch
My first “Official” Employment was as a developer for a Collaborative Project between the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of California in San Diago (UCSD).
The interview process was grueling. It all began with a timed coding challenge where over 20 applicants with varying levels of education and development skills (Mostly Masters Level and above) openly had to showcase their skills in order to compete for the position. I (an honours student at the time) was selected for the role because the way I code made the most sense to the reviewers. Not to mention, the coding challenge was designed in Julia, a language that hadn’t been taught in class. It took me only 3 days to learn enough about Julia to competitively compete with individuals with higher Certification.
“A Computer Science degree means you should be able to learn any coding language in under 2 weeks” ~ First year Compsci Professor.
A principle I thoroughly took to heart and strive to live up to.
During this role, I was brought into contact with the process of deep sequencing of the entire genetic information of envelope encasing viruses, specifically HIV and AIDS. One of my tasks was to create a visualization that 2 of my predecessors had failed to complete, and consequently was thought by the lead researcher to be impossible. (Small brag… I DID IT!! 😊)
GOLDEN NUGGET
Everything is possible, if you think out of the box – The amount of times people stop trying to do what is needed simply because someone else planted the seed of impossibility in their minds is surprisingly too high. Most times all that is needed is a different perspective or the tenacity to be a little ankle biter and not let go until the fiend is crippled!
This is where things started becoming fun. My first time studying at the expense of my employer. "Sometimes re-learning something with the hopes of being exposed to something new, can be disappointing based on expectations, yet positively surprizing in other aspects."
After barely a month I was earmarked by my employer as an individual with potential, and was sent to study Data Science with a group of similar international employees. During this period I was given the directive that I did not need to work while studying, however, work related requests never ceases. Resultantly, I was working almost as usual while completing the necessary course requirements. I am proud to say that I graduated Salutorian of the class. I had also found out through the course organizer that the head lecturer apologized that the structure of the course did not cater for someone with my knowledge and skillset. While I was hoping to learn something that had not been covered in my previous qualification, I ended up learning much more about people in corporate structures.
My main project was about predicting how likely a customer is to make a vehicle purchase based on demographics, spending patterns and other similar data. To achieve the desired result to 58% accuracy (using bootstrap aggregation), a neural network was trained on foreign data as access to Local Data was "Red Taped". Due to the red tape, this venture was unnecessarily infeasible.
GOLDEN NUGGETS
Red Tape is the worst... but it has its place... but that doesn't mean its any more understandable or downright absurd in some cases... Just deal with it - If you are in anyway comparable to a Data Scientist, you should know fullwell this feeling about Red Tape. Even If you are just someone who wants to push the bounderies and try something new, chances are you have a good knowledge about this as well. RED TAPE, 'nough said!
This is where things started becoming interesting. Second 4-year Qualification... "If you are not SEEN working, it is assumed you are not working... Even if your work is acknowledged. CONFUSING"
Having just completed my first 4 year degree, while completing the undergraduate equivalent for Statistical Sciences, this was supposed to be the year I took to relax (while completing my Statistics honours). Two months into it and I was looking for part-time work opportunities just to curb the boredom. In June I found myself first-time employed doing international collaborative work between UCT and UCSD. And through this endeavour I had my first dealing with "corporate-academic" politics, not from my first employer but from certain lecturers.
During this qualification, Neural Networks, Deep Learning Models, Advanced Statistical Modelling (Time Series Analysis, Operations Research, General Linear Modelling, Decision Modelling among others) and more were added to my skill toolbox - pairing perfectly well with my Computer Science Qualification. Not only do I know what to do to get the most pertinent information from a large dataset [Graduated Top of 2017 Class], but also how to do it as efficiently as possible (only when necessary, overkilling simple problems with overcomplicated solutions is a waste of resources and time, but great for bragging rights).
GOLDEN NUGGETS
The theory of Supply and Demand is extremely important - Take the issue of deciding to look for part-time work knowing that some of my marks would suffer (Strategic decision - Rather get exposure while getting a qualification). This inturn caused frustration for one of my passionate lecturers, since they took pride in their ability to teach students to perform well in tests and exams. As you can imagine, this wasn't a very fun time, lecturers can really make or break one's university experience.At that time, the demand was for better results, while I knew that my supply should be more future fit - Experience trumps excellent results in terms of career opportunities.
Not everyone will agree with decisions made - Sometimes difficult decisions must be made. Instead of going to class, I will broaden my horizons by gaining experience, even though my marks are likely suffer they are mine after all. While it begrates me to know that I am not necessarily performing according to everyones expectations (an Impossiblity, you cannot make everyone happy), I am satisfied making desicions that I believe to be the most utilitarian. The outcome -> Graduated Top of My Class WITH 6 months work experience AND a cited publication, as opposed to only graduating, "Topper" of my class. I would make the same decision given the chance. Sometimes difficult decisions must be made, not everyone has to agree with them.
In true Morné fashion, I applied to do the "most difficult" course, Actuarial Science, while doing all the extra subjects so that I could get my Computer Science 4-year qualification in tandem with Actuarial Science. Whilst in Actuarial Science I was introduced to Statisctics and fell hard. I also grew to realise that ultimately a Computer Scientist / Developer that understands Act. Sci. could automate that role to a great extent, which in future could render Actuarial Science to nothing more than a "puff piece". Backed with my strong interest in Advanced Statistics I made the decision to change my career path and tandemly complete a Computer Science and Statistics degree in 4 years.
GOLDEN NUGGETS
A good plan is always a good start but, "Just because you made a good plan, doesn't mean that's what's going to happen!"
Sometimes, I find that we become so attached to our plans and dreams that we do not give way to better ones, no matter how obvious they are. I live consciously with this fact, and have come to understand that it's better to temporarily feel like you have "failed" and ultimately reach even higher peaks, than to continue on a blindly mediocre path out of competitve stubbornness.
I had to learn to cope with the fact that my actions could be misconstruded as "giving up" or people could think I found the course "too difficult". These are the thoughts one must grapple with but if varsity also taught me anything it was that everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't; thus to compete with anyone besides yourself would be futile.
8 Distinctions
11 subjects (only 7 required)
Nominated as Prefect only 3 month after joining the school
GOLDEN NUGGETS
After joining St Peter's late in grade 11 (we relocated from CPT to JHB) I learnt that starting afresh is only as daunting as you allow it to be!
You can either see it as losing your past, which many hold onto as they believe it is what gives substance to them as people, or you could look at it as gaining a new possible future. I learnt that making that mental switch often leads to more gain than anything lost. Unbeknownst to me at the time, taking multiple additional subjects also forced me to grapple with the concept of stakeholder management, especially since not all classes could be attended. Throughout my career stakeholder management is the one constant that you can never learn enough of, each stakeholder is unique and thus new strategies must continuously be tested and implemented.
Not all Strategies are successful -> Fail Quickly, Learn, Adapt, Improve.
This section highlights some of my qualifications, projects (both personal and career related) , experiences and some other things I would like to mention.
Think of it as my semi-visual portfolio. I have grouped the items according to the tabs above, select the tab you would like to further explore.
Disclaimer: Please note that I have used my own LOGO to hide the identity of my employer at the time. This is only a showcasing tool of what I can do!
I spent a week "undercover" as a cleaner; this involved starting at 4:30am, cleaning toilets, showers, the gym and general areas. I simply wanted to understand how one's perceived role impacts how one is seen and ultimately treated by others.
I fundamentally believe that above all, we are people first and we should treat people in all roles (CEO, Manager or Cleaner) with equal foundations of respect. I am happy to report that my findings were quite positive and shared by majority of my colleagues.
Inbound complaints have the tendency to arrive on multiple platforms depending on complainee preference. This consequently makes complaint trends difficult to analyze due to their dispersion. I designed this application to be a centralized platform to house the complaints across all divisions within the department. Going forward, we are able to gain invaluable insights that were never before possible due to untracked data dispersion, a common problem in many industries.
The lesser of two evils, as I see it. I am not a fan of lengthy stand-ups, I watch as almost every team member loses interest when not giving their updates or listening to information pertaining to their work.
I set out to solve this problem by creating a platform that allows team members to manage their own workload, assign tasks to other team members, provide progress updates, indicate challenges faced, give suggestions to others, to see all the work with in the entire team and more.
I successfully obtained my Amazon Web Services Cloud Practioner Certification. This is the foundation for all AWS cloud based certifications.
This is the publication I contributed to during my first employment as a Bio-Informatic Computer Scientist. In this project I was involved in developing some of the pivotal visualizations as well as looking at possibilities of speeding up the analyses. All the while completing my Statistical Sciences Honours degree.
A tool I designed and built to compile, encrypt and send the requested letter to the specific customer. A process that once took consultants up to a day to complete, is now automated in under 10 minutes.
Less Repetitive Manual Work -> Risk of Mistakes -> Quicker Response Time.
Ever since I can remember I have always like looking at knives. So much so that I decided to build my very own knife during my matric finals (2012).
Finally, I picked it up again when getting my knife making certification at the end of 2017. During this course I was practically taught the theoretical basics of metallurgy while forging my own stainless and Damascus steel knives, custom making handles and leather sheaths.
Life is about seizing every opportunity to learn as much as possible, about as many subjects as possible. In so doing, less will be taken for granted.
A 4-year Computer Science qualification. Bachelor of Business Science, completed in conjunction with 3rd year Statistical Sciences courses.
Modules: Logistics of Artificial Intelligence, Evolutionary Computation, New Venture Planning, Ontology Engineering, Research Methods, Digital Forensics, Network & Internet Security, Visual Thinking & Visualisation.
Concurrent Statistics Courses: Inferential Statistics, Operational research Techniques & Strategic Thinking.
During the final year of my Computer Science degree, one of my closest friends was invited to assist with an open air doctoral excavation. Due to unfortunate circumstances, the team was one member short and I was then asked to join.
Having no experience with Archaeology, I spontaneously jumped at the opportunity to learn something new and broaden my possibilities.
Consequently, I may have missed 2 weeks worth of lectures, tutorials and assignments, but sometimes gaining new experiences are much more valuable than perfecting known ones.
As one of the prerequisites for my employment, I was subject to 3rd-Party competence and psychometric tests. After my one-on-one session with the examiner, who was quite surprised by my performance, she told me to apply to an international Computational Neuroscience programme.
I was awarded a full scholarship and offered opportunities to further my academic career abroad and in a field I had just been introduced to. For my final project I built an evolutionary reinforcement learning algorithm that taught itself to predictively catch a specified object.
Work comes in and now needs to be evenly delegated among team members, this allocation of work is time consuming and always cause for debate around even distribution of work.
This tool automatically allocates work to the next free team member based on their online status and position in the queue. Work can now be allocated as soon as it arrives as opposed to when the delegator has time to spare.
All employees have great ideas, most of those ideas go unheard. This tool allows all employees to log their ideas and peer review the ideas of team members. Due to its functionality, this tool is also used to track any development or change requests.
Shared mailboxes are notoriously difficult to correctly manage and audit, making performance statistics difficult to compile. This is a problem especially since shared mailboxes are a common solution for broad communications. My team and I built this solution on the PowerApp platform to make data generation and reporting of work through shared mailboxes simple. It is now being scaled to multiple departments.
My Data Science qualification through the University of Witwatersrand. Graduated Salutorian of my class. Modules: Analytics Ecosystem, Python Programming, Data Ingesting, Data Wrangling, feature Engineering, Exploratory Data Analysis, Various Distribution Types, Visualisation, Supervised Learning Techniques, Reinforcement Learning, Heuristic Algorithms, Cluster Computing & Multi-core Optimisation.
This publication is as a result of my Computer Science Honours Year dissertation, Reusable Virtual Orchestration Applications. Specifically exploring alternative ways to host easily accessible education tools and workflow packages.
A simple, user friendly survey tool to allow both internal and external customers to have their say. This data is then immediately available for visualization through the accompanying dashboard.
There are many processes that are split across teams, where each individual is responsible for a specific portion of the process. This often leads to pivotal information being stored or processed in many unique ways. I created this tool with the purpose of standardizing the way information is captured for the specific process. It is now, for the first time, standardized and accessible by all team members (business continuity).
After learning that the corporate landscape is filled with various niches, and that not all of them are benefitial for everyone, I moved to a better suited niche. After 8 Months I received the Top Performer award for my contribution to the team.
I pride myself on my ability to deliver over and above expectations and push myself to do so in all that I do. This was the first time that this had been corporately acknowledged.
This was supposed to be a year of relaxation, only focussing on my studies. However, that turned out to be boring so I found a part time job, contributed to a publication, studied as much as I needed to graduate first in my honours class.
Modules: R, VBA, Matrix Methods, General Linear Modelling, Stocastic Processes, Likelihood Theory, Bayes Theory, Operational research, Decision Modelling, Econometrics, Multivariate Statistics, Time Series Analysis, Portfolio Theory & Analytics.
Understanding and being excited about complicated concepts is challenging. It is even more challenging to explain to others. After this training, I can confidently say... I am a great presenter :)
I was invited to participate in a high intensity accelerated Project Management course. This course specifically looked at the AGILE methodoloy, from the perspectives of both planning and implementation.
The Presidents Award (TPA) for youth empowerment is the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award in South Africa. I am proud to have earned both my Bronze and and Silver awards.
During my Presidents Award Journey I was elected to be the Chairperson of the Gauteng TPA Committee. I was even asked to be the Master of Ceremonies for certain Presidential events. Even presidents and well revered diplomats are but ordinary people at the end of the day.
I successfully obtained the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification. This speaks to a basic and broad understanding of the Azure cloud ecosystem. The first step towards almost all Azure learning paths.
Due to my knowledge and use of the inhouse Microsoft ecosystem, I was of the few applicants to successfully complete this course. This involved:
• building informative managment information dashboards, stand alone applications, process flow automations as well as complexed database structures.
• implementing the tools built both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tel: 072 535 2279 Mail: Wesley.Clegg@standardbank.co.za
A Natural Leader who shows the rare combination of both technical and conceptual thinking. Morné is primed for a senior role.
Tel: 082 439 8255 Mail: Melvyn.Mohan@standardbank.co.za
Two hours with Morné was more valuable than an entire 4-day development course.
Tel: +61 481 138 917 Mail: np989@uowmail.edu.au
Morné's quick learning and positive demeanor was fundamental to my perseverance and ultimate completion of my doctoral thesis.
Tel: 083 564 2334 Mail: Valerie.Pave@standardbank.co.za
Two lines are not enough. Please feel free to contact me for my reference for Morné.
Cape Town, Western Cape
