Tashmia Ismail - Avid curiosity and combatting inequality
In this episode, I chat with Tashmia Ismail who has built models to combat inequality across socio-economic groups. Born in South Africa, a remarkably fascinating but unequal country in career opportunities and the job market, Tash has an avid curiosity about democratising access to the basic chances of employment available to young South Africans.
“I’m a big fan of two types of models. One is a Robin Hood model and the other is a Platform Model, both of which work well together. And the idea of working with people who have the resources and skills and hopefully can build empathy to work together on platforms to address some of these issues.”
From dentistry to heading up youth employment empowerment (YES4Youth)
Tash attributes her first foray into the working world as a dentist (despite her own preference to study law at the University of Cape Town) to her mother. Going into university, her mother insisted that her first choice was dentistry as “a good choice for a woman”. With only 45 people going to dental school, Tash was convinced that she wouldn’t get into the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg to study. But, low and behold, she got in to study dentistry and felt obliged to took the opportunity because she thought that she would break her heart if I didn’t.
Once stepping out of university, Tash started working as a dentist and learnt the tough lessons of entrepreneurship on the job when she made the initial decision to start her own Dental Practice. She wanted to start something which could offer people the type of service that she wanted to give, which no other dental practice was doing. Having no formal business education (like a surprising number of start-up founders and entrepreneurs), Tash took on the role of an entrepreneur while working as a dentist. After years of learning business knowledge practically on-the-job, Tash made the bold move from dental work to build a platform to empower youth to learn business literacy and step into the working world with the right resources and knowledge to excel.
No knowledge gained is ever a waste
Despite wanting to study something else at a different university, Tash is grateful for the knowledge she gained from her time at WITS. She points a lot of the successes she’s seen in YES4Youth as a result of the information and soft skills she gained from her time at university:
“No knowledge is ever lost.”
“Studying the human body is fascinating. Science is fascinating. It set me up to understand neuroscience which I use in the work I do now. So dentistry might not have been the best fit for me as an actual career choice, but in terms of the knowledge I gained and the understanding into the human body, I think a science-based education has been critical in the way I’ve looked at problems.”
Debt is a thief from your future
When starting her dental practice, Tash didn’t take out any loans despite the fact that banks were willing to lend and fund her money. From the lessons learned, one of the most important ones was to reduce any capital amount, because of how quickly that compound interest adds up.
“At the tender age of 23.5, the school of knocks works quickly and I remember being absolutely driven to reduce that capital amount. Anytime I collected any sort of money, boom! It would go straight towards reducing the capital and there was no better sense of gratification and feeling of achievement than seeing that balance come down…
“Compound interest is your enemy if you’re on the paying side of things.”
Now, using elements she learnt from her studies and work outside of university, Tash ensures that the youth in the YES programme can learn the lessons about the dangers of owing money with interest. The platform teaches important lessons in business literacy, related to the working world and the importance of setting up a career without having debt as a major roadblock in the future.
“Debt is a robber. With debt, you steal from yourself.”
Curiosity and rounding up information to be a better person
Tash acknowledges that so much of what she knows now and can use to build towards the YES platform comes from work that has nothing to do with youth employment. From working as a dentist to studying through correspondence at the University of South Africa, she consistently learns to know more to diversify her knowledge. The curiosity that drove her to study more and do other things, Tash sought knowledge to beat the “fear of missing out” on new information.
“I have FOMO on knowledge. I need to understand and know things. In our schooling system, you go straight from school and deep-dive into very specialist knowledge and I felt that I wouldn’t be a good citizen of the planet if I didn’t round my knowledge. I needed to know more to be a better human being.”
If you want to get in touch with Tash or find out more about the Youth Employment Service, find her on Twitter, or through the YES4Youth website.
