CA (SA) was not Mariam’s plan – it was destiny and now she is Chief Officer at Vodacom Financial & Digital Services

• Hi! My name is Mariam Cassim, a chartered accountant, an MBA holder from UCT’s Graduate Business School, and Chief Officer at Vodacom Financial and Digital Services.
• After qualifying as a CA, I had no idea where I ultimately wanted to end up but I certainly knew that whatever I did, I wanted it to be my BEST effort.
• 8 years down the line I realized that I wanted to be on the business side and so I decided to tilt my career toward business management and operations.
• In 2016 I joined Vodacom Financial & Digital Services, a loss-making entity and together we transformed it into a profit-making business of R1 billion.

Growing up and receiving a fully paid scholarship to Study Accounting

Growing up, life was positively challenging. However, it was also the biggest contributor to who I am today.

I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs as my dad worked in the family business and my mom was a work-from-home seamstress.

By the way, my mother being a seamstress meant that I had no store-bought clothing items for many of my early ages as she sewed all my clothes. So hard work was plentiful and we did not have many luxuries when we were young.