Falah Rajput: Faculty of Management

Summer internship at Impact Hub in Johannesburg

I am currently a third-year BCom student in the Desautels Faculty of Management, where I explore a balance between rigorous academics, student involvement, and leadership experience. This past summer, I interned in Johannesburg, South Africa with Emzingo, a social impact consulting corporation. I was excited to accept this consulting internship because it gave me the unique opportunity to combine my field of study with my passions, one of which is social impact.

One of the major aspects of the internship concerned cultural training and leadership development. The former included developing a solid understanding of South Africa’s culture, language, and its history, with guided tours of historical landmarks such as the Apartheid Museum and the famous Soweto township and crash courses in the local slang. The latter consisted of various workshops and sessions on topics as wide ranging as human-centered consulting to impact investing, from design thinking to social entrepreneurship. These sessions gave me a much deeper understanding of why empathy in business is paramount and have formed the solid foundations for my values as a young professional.

During the internship, I was staffed on a consulting mandate at Impact Hub Joburg, a social entrepreneurship-focused co-working space and the Johannesburg branch of the global Impact Hub network. Working at Impact Hub was an amazing opportunity to collaborate with some of the brightest minds in South Africa who are thought leaders and impact makers in the fields of social entrepreneurship and idea incubation, and are working hard to bring about positive change in sub-Sahara African economies.

Every single day was a steep learning curve, with difficult though rewarding lessons to learn. Cross-cultural flexibility was one of such key takeaways. Having adjusted myself to the low-context, task-oriented North American work environment when I moved to Canada from the Gulf to start my degree, it took some active learning and unlearning for me to adjust to the high-context, relationship-oriented South African work expectations that originate from the country’s historical, social, and cultural context. Thus, the work experience has exponentially increased my cross-cultural adaptability and communication.

Moreover, as a public policy enthusiast, I learned invaluable lessons in racial and income inequality hands-on, observing the South African model of developing tangible solutions to tackle pressing problems, such as income inequality and land redistribution, in attempts to solve some of the grave social ills such as unemployment, poor housing and high crime rate that the country faces. An extremely valuable lesson in economic empowerment I learned was the massive impact that legislation such as broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) have had in creating a vibrant, black middle-class in the post-Apartheid era that is increasingly looking for professional, social, and cultural advancement and is spearheading the country’s progress towards a brighter future.

For far too long, too many people have been excluded from spheres of influence and positions of power, and South Africa is a classic case study of a nation collectively righting the wrongs of times gone. While much needs to be done to overcome four centuries of oppression, the progress the Rainbow Nation has shown in the past 24 years is absolutely impressive and is an incredible lesson for both developing countries, including my native Pakistan, as well as developed ones, like Canada, as we search for solutions to global challenges.

From bungee-jumping to the glorious sunset in Soweto to watching a live gum-boot performance, from zip-lining in the Magaliesberg to watching the World Cup finals in football-crazy Joburg, and from spotting the Big Five animals on safari to walking deep into the ancient Sterkfontein caves, South Africa offered some of my life’s best memories. A remarkable summer only deserved a remarkable end with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to listen to President Obama’s live address on Nelson Mandela’s centenary, where I got to see the Rainbow nation come together, proudly displaying its customs and costumes with pride.

This internship was an incredible opportunity to meet new people from different backgrounds, force myself out of my comfort zone, and get hands on work experience in a very different cultural environment. None of this would have been possible without The McGill International Experience Award. Thank you to Peter and Connie Todd for giving me this amazing opportunity to experience working on a different continent at the young age of 20. As the locals say it: Sharp, sharp South Africa!

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