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How did your university experience prepare you for your current career?
University gave me a broad exposure to some of the high-quality accumulated knowledge of mankind. Curiously, the subjects I rated least, like Business Management, ended up being the subjects most valuable to me later on.
Which characteristics or skills are essential for the workplace?
Perseverance and accepting responsibility for your results are the most important. Secondly, it helps if you can motivate yourself and others.
What is the most challenging part of your job?
Keeping, myself, my employees, and my customers calm and productive, even in the face of adversity.
What drives you to excel in your career?
The world has many unsolved problems. Every time somebody dies of cancer because we have not figured it out yet, it is a great tragedy. On a larger scale, at some stage a great natural extinction event, like a meteorite hitting earth, will happen. If we are not at least a multi-planet species at the time, it will wipe us out, therefore we are in a massive race against time.
What are the best opportunities for someone entering your career?
We at Xineoh predict consumer behaviour using AI. AI is at the centre of the fourth industrial revolution. Learning to use AI will put you in the same position as the first people who could build and invent electrical appliances in the second industrial revolution. It is a massive advantage.
Name three things you wish you had been told as a university student.
- Life is extremely short, only 28 000 days long; do not spend a single day being upset about things you cannot control. People other than yourself fall into that category.
- Be conscious of the things that are in your control and focus all your energy only on that; this will make you happy, empowered, and productive.
- Your life is like a story: It has a beginning, it has challenges, it has other characters accompanying you on the journey, and then it has an end. Leave a story behind that you are proud of.