#30 Dr. Armand Bam - Leadership for Equality in South Africa

Tech and Trees

The people I get to interview on Tech and Trees are different every time and all of them have different stories to share. Yet, I feel that this one turned out to be more personal than others. I talk to Armand Bam, the head of social impact at the Stellenbosch Business School. He oversees their efforts to make education more inclusive and labels himself to be an academic-activist whose opinions often are not welcome. We talk about his path into academia. To say the least: Opportunity was not handed to him easily. To get to school he spent four hours on a train every day, in university he was the only person of color to graduate in his class. He says that he was not the brightest but that he was taught good values as a child and that he learned to persevere through hardship early on. We go into the social aspect of sustainability and challenge how Western countries impose certain sustainability standards without ever having set foot into disadvantaged African communities. Africa is in need of responsible leadership to deal with the sprawling inequality and while Armand trains leaders at Stellenbosch Business School, he thinks that leadership qualities are built at an early age and can only be further developed later on. Our conversation was personal and philosophical at times but worth every minute. Unfortunately we were experiencing connection issues and had to cut our conversation short in the end. Nonetheless, I hope that you find a piece of wisdom in there that is useful to you. Enjoy

Follow Armand on LinkedIn or Twitter

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-armand-bam-ab069253/

https://twitter.com/ArmandBam

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