Against Marinka Naudé’s office wall sits a black frame with the following quote:
“Service excellence can be attained
if we constantly strive to perfection
and care enough to do our very best in everyday”
Those who know her, also knows she’s constantly either on the move, in a meeting or surrounded by heaps of documents, busy sorting out admin. There’s no doubt she tries to fit as much as possible in an eight to five day. On paper she’s Head: IT Finances and Administration and oversees the correct application of financial policies, co-ordinating, planning, budgeting, management and administration of Personnel, Operational and Capital funds. But her job stretches much wider than the description.
A failed attempt, caused by confusion about the deadline, to enrol for Food Service Management at the Cape Tech, inadvertently, on the recommendation of a student advisor, rather led to a newly launched course, Company Administration. Standard 6 Accounting was quickly dusted off and her career kicked off. In spite of this, one of her favorite activities still remain browsing through recipe books and of course cooking.
Over the years she gained valuable experience working at a chartered accountant in the southern suburbs, an auditing firm in Worcester where calculators took flight during heated moments, and later at an estate agency in the city. In 1998 she accepted a job at IT under the Director of Administrative Information Systems, JJJ du Plessis.
Three years later he resigns and, in spite of being thrown in the deep end, Marinka takes over his financial duties.
“Everything is transaction driven and involves a cost.”
For this reason she is involved in many aspects of IT – from HR systems, staff plans and evaluations to managing the phone system and everything else with a financial slant. This variety of functions and the overview and understanding it gives one of an entire company, is the most fulfilling part of her work.
In 2008 she completes her BTech degree in Business Administration at CPUT part-time and in March of 2013 also an MBA at the SU Business school. Her thesis is based upon the university’s human resources system and titled “An Evaluation of the Oracle HRMS System at the University of Stellenbosch from a User’s Perspective”.
Considering Marinka was raised on a farm, it’s no coincidence she’s good at multi-tasking and works well under pressure. She fondly recalls all the farm activities on their farm outside Worcester – tractor rides during harvest time, early morning trips to the market and how used to floods the farm community in the area was.
“It’s a completely different life – something today’s children don’t know.”
Initially she attended a farm school with only 12 children – from Sub A to Standard 5 – with only one teacher. “We were so few, inevitably we all played together during breaks.” Later during high school she had to get up at 6:15 to catch the first of three buses to get to school in town.
She tries to avoid shopping centres and crowds and would much rather go camping, white water rafting of take to the air with a microlite. Even shark diving’s on her to-do list.
She clearly thrives on adrenalin – probably since childhood, if you listen to her stories about temperamental bullocks. They were brought up in groups of ten and had to be fed a powdered milk solution by hand twice a day.
But as they grew up, they also grew mischievous! Time and again they had to be chased out of the garden after they slipped out of their enclosure. Once Willie, Marinka’s brother, who was in the air force at the time, was particularly hesitant to take part in chasing and rather stood at a distance shouting “shoo, shoo!” Needless to say, it didn’t have much effect. Keeping a distance wasn’t such a bad idea, Marinka would confirm. She herself has been chased through a stream by one.
These days she prefers smaller and more docile animals like her two cats, Asjas and Trensie.
As a child she had to learn North-Sotho at school while they lived in Elsburg, but nowadays she’s also adding Xhosa to her list of languages.
“I just completed my first Xhosa course at the Language Center and will be starting the second one next week.” Otherwise she’s completed three Argus events, many walking events like the Big Walk and enjoy squash.
One things you can be sure of, if you need something done fast and effectively, you can just wander down the passage of IT’s second floor and Marinka will be there to help you. “Service excellence” indeed.
