The Everyday Leader podcast features inspiring individuals building and leading teams across Africa. Listen to episodes on your preferred podcast platform here.
About our Guest
This episode’s conversation is with Tricia Govindasamy, an award-winning South African scientist specialising in Geographic Information Systems and data science. She works as the Senior Data Product Manager for Africa’s largest civic technology and data journalism initiative, Code for Africa (CfA). Tricia manages CfA’s DataLab which supports data journalism projects by sourcing data, cleaning and analysing it, and designing novel data visualisation techniques. Tricia is also a coordinator for Africa’s largest network of female data scientists, journalists and technologists, WanaData, and she creates content and trains data literacy as part of academy.AFRICA, one of the continent’s largest digital journalism skills initiatives. Tricia has a strong interest in using data and technology to drive change and impact in Africa and the Global South through the development of digital tools for localised informed decision-making.
Everyday Leadership in Action
Here are a few highlights from the conversation with Tricia:
Leverage your team to facilitate peer learning: Tricia organizes a weekly skill sharing session amongst her team whereby each week one of her team members teaching the team about a particular skill or tool. The topics have ranged from Google Analytics to French for Business. Often topics focus on a new skill or trick that a team member has recently picked up from a work project, and so the activity also helps lock in learnings and remind staff how much they are learning on the job.
Separate project checkins vs personal checkins: Tricia schedules monthly 1:1 check-ins with her team members to make sure she is connecting with each of them on a personal level. She does this on top of the more frequent project-based meetings. She has found it helpful to keep the conversations separate to ensure the personal elements are not clouded by the project work.
Embrace the world of data to unlock policy insights: Tricia works at Code For Africa, which is a non-profit organization that conducts a range of data-related research and projects. Tricia fell into the world of data analysis and hasn’t looked back. Code For Africa’s projects have shown her how crucial it is for the right data to be collected and analyzed to develop good governmental policy, and motivates her to continue upskilling herself in this field.
The Everyday Leader is a podcast featuring conversations with leaders from across Africa’s companies, organizations, and governments about their experience managing teams and projects throughout their careers.
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Tricia Govindasamy: Senior Data Product Manager, Code For Africa