M
aryka is a dynamic young businesswoman
whose four years at First Distribution so far
have seen her operate as a business unit
manager for Oracle, Veeam, CommVault
and McAfee before taking up her current
position as manager of the newly launched
up with an understanding of that situation without needing
to know what all the separate parts are, are all unique qualities according to her. “Woman are also better team players”
she quips.
After studying law at NWU, Maryka ended up taking a
holiday job opportunity with Sykes Enterprises to assist in
paying for her following year of study. Needless to say, her
next year of study turned into her first year of work and the
study turned part-time!
“Believe in yourself!” she says earnestly. “Set short and long
term goals and track your progress against them. Award
yourself every now and then when accomplishing your
personal and career goals (and always separate the two).
Work to live hard and be true to yourself, your beliefs and
your own convictions. Never hear: “You can’t” but rather “I
challenge you to try”. A good friend always says, “Wear a
red coat in a world filled with people wearing white coats....”
FD Academy.
The rest is history as they say, and after working for HP as
the marketing & business development manager for SA &
Africa, as well as a stint at Comztek as Symantec product
manager, she left the industry to become a business owner
of a small wellness SPA. The IT bug had bitten hard however, and she returned to the IT channel business, joining
Workgroup as the product manager for Sun Microsystems,
before moving to First Distribution shortly thereafter.
Maryka lists the culture, the flexibility and the thought-leadership as her favourite things about First Distribution.
“FD is built on a set of core values evident not only to us as
staff, but also to our channel” she says proudly. “New business initiatives such as EsQlator, First for Cloud and the FD
Academy, to name a few, are clear signs of thought-leadership. If possible, it would be great to see clearer paths to
career development and ways to implement them”
she adds.
Maryka honours her grandmothers and her mother as setting a good example to her, and for being pillars of strength,
support, teachers, counsellors and ‘friends’.
“In IT my first and biggest role model, amongst others, is
Carli Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. She was the
first woman to lead one of the top twenty U.S. companies,
and I was fort չ