Chief Operations Officer (COO) at Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation
Melanie Spencer
Melanie Spencer is the Chief Operations Officer (COO) at Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation and has a passion for the non-profit sector. She works tirelessly to ensure that things get done timeously and professionally.
Being a COO comes with many responsibilities and requires one to be active in many areas, so Melanie advises that it is best to have a list of tasks for the day and to do the things you least like first thing in the morning and get them out the way.
Melanie enjoys working offline and only reads emails at set times in the day. It helps that she has a highly competent team that ensures the ball keeps on rolling. This also balances her work life and personal life.
Melanie’s personal mantra is: “My life is in harmony”. She uses this mantra to ensure she keeps her life balanced. She tries to ensure that she gives the requisite energy to all aspects of life in the right proportion. It is undoubtedly difficult to manage work life and personal life especially so early in one's career but finding that perfect harmony as Melanie has suggested is the best way to look at it.
A fun fact about Melanie is that she was part of Shanduka Group and worked as the Personal Assistant to the Executive Chairman, Mr Ramaphosa, for a period of nine years. Of course, it was a demanding role and the standards were high, but the family culture of Shanduka, Mr Ramaphosa’s great personality and all there was to learn, meant she loved the experience.
She utilized her qualification in Bachelor of Primary Education, with Maths and English majors, to resonate with the work of the Foundation in education and youth and skills development. Teachers are also pretty organised people, so that helps in an Operations role.
But with any great success, there are always challenges along the way that require even the strongest people to face. Seeing where Melanie is today, she successfully overcame those challenges. Melanie says that some of the obstacles that she had to face was sexism and changing her career path.
“I loved teaching but found it very challenging in that teachers are expected to work extremely hard and their work has such significant impact, and yet their pay is so very low compared to other professions. I believe since the sector is dominated by women, the low pay is a form of sexism. I was frustrated by this unfair, entrenched system and ended up leaving the profession to move to a different profession that paid more appropriately.”
Melanie then worked in various business sectors and eventually found her way to the development sector, which is definitely her preferred environment. We can see from the few things we have just learned about Melanie that she has a true passion for what she does, because she recognises that community needs are still high, and she truly loves the work that the Foundation does.