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Couplepreneurs: stirring legacies, one kidpreneur at a time!

02 January 2024 | Story Igno van Niekerk | Photo Igno van Niekerk

Dr Tafadzwa Maramura participated in a study on couplepreneurs and ways in which they influence their children to become better entrepreneurs.

After years of hard work, the lonely entrepreneur rode off into the sunset. No family. No one to share the lived experience with. The entrepreneurial journey can be a recipe for loneliness. However, it does not have to be, you can enjoy an entrepreneurial family that leaves a legacy.

Dr Tafadzwa C Maramura, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Public Administration and Management at the UFS participated in a study with Drs Eugine Maziriri (University of Johannesburg), Miston Mapuranga (University of Pretoria), Brighton Nyagadza (Marondera University of Agricultural Sciences) on couplepreneurs and ways in which they influence their children to become better entrepreneurs. The interinstitutional study drew on several fields of expertise and was a fresh addition to the research on access to water that Dr Maramura is doing.

Couplepreneurship is a concept that explains businesses owned and operated by married and/or cohabiting couples. According to Dr Maramura: “The development of couplepreneurship in South Africa as an emerging economy has led to increasing interest in the study of how kids are inspired and/or influenced by their parents towards starting their own and to participate in the already existing family enterprises.”

Nurturing entrepreneurial potential

Couplepreneurs are in a great position to raise kidpreneurs. Who better to listen to the heroic stories of how mom and dad started off with a big dream, growth mindsets, and steadfast commitment to building their business than their offspring? Like teaching a person how to fish rather than giving them fish, couplepreneurs do not hand their kids a business, they teach them how to run and grow a business.

Dr Maramura believes that nurturing an entrepreneurial potential is the result of “encouraging resilience, adaptability, and a willingness to embrace failure, even as a learning opportunity”. Combine this with an environment that promotes creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, and you have the recipe for a kidpreneur to become an entrepreneur. Now add more ingredients: parents who offer support, mentorship, and exposure to diverse experiences. Put it in the heated oven called business – and you have created the meal all entrepreneurs crave: Legacy.

News Archive

Harvard couple to present lectures on Biostatistics and Mathematics at the UFS

2015-12-07

Professor Donald Rubin

Prof Donald Rubin (John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics at Harvard University) and Elizabeth Zell (MStat - mathematical statistician in the Division of Bacterial Diseases) will visit the University of the Free State (UFS) where they will present lectures on their respective work.

Over his prestigious academic career, Prof Don Rubin’s 400 publications and 13 books have earned him around 180 000 citations at an h-index of 113. He is one of the most cited statisticians/mathematicians/economists/psychologists in the world over the last 10 -15 years. He has supervised 35 PhD candidates as sole-supervisor, 17 more as co-supervisor, with a further eight in the pipeline.

Prof Rubin who will meet with UFS academics in the Department of Mathematics and Actuarial Sciences will also deliver a lecture: Rerandomisation to improve covariate balance in experiments.

Randomised experiments are the “gold standard” for estimating causal effects, yet in practice, chance imbalances often exist in covariate distributions between treatment groups. If covariate data are available before units are exposed to treatments, these chance imbalances can be mitigated by first checking covariate balance before the physical experiment takes place. Provided a precise definition of imbalance has been specified in advance, unbalanced randomisations can be discarded, followed by a rerandomisation. This process can continue until a randomisation yielding balance according to the definition is achieved. By improving covariate balance, rerandomisation provides more precise and trustworthy estimates of treatment effects.

Prof Rubin received an honorary professorship from the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS.

Elizabeth Zell

The lecture will take place on:
Date: Tuesday 8 December 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Albert Wessels Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus

Zell earned her Master’s degree in Statistics at North Carolina State University, and for more than two decades, was an active bio-statistical researcher in various offices of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Since 2013, she has been the Principal Statistician and President of Stat-Epi Associates, Inc. Her 150+ publications have earned her 14 500 citations at an h-index of over 50. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and, in 2010, she received the Statistics Section Government Award for outstanding contributions to statistics and public health by the American Public Health Association. During her career at the CDC, she earned more than 20 CDC research awards and honours.

She will deliver two lectures at the UFS. The first is entitled A Potential Outcomes Approach to Documenting the Public Health Impact of the Introduction of PCV13 for the Prevention of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease. The topic of her second lecture is: Assessing the Effectiveness of Intrapartum Antibiotic Prophylaxis for Prevention of Early-Onset Group B Streptococcus Disease through Propensity Score Design

Elizabeth’s lectures will take place on:
Date: Wednesday 9 December 2015
Time: 10:45 and 13:00
Venue: West Block 111, Bloemfontein Campus

For more information, please contact Dr Michael von Maltitz at VMaltitzMJ@ufs.ac.za.

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