The World of Possibilities Of EdTech By Temi Giwa, Product Manager, PayStack.

Paystack can boast of being the biggest start-up acquisition to date to come out of Nigeria, as well as Stripe’s biggest acquisition to date anywhere owing to a deal that was brokered between the two companies in October 2020, worth over $200 million. Founded in Lagos in 2015, Paystack has more than 60,000 clients, including small businesses, larger corporates, fintechs, educational institutions and online companies. At the heart of all of these achievements and acclaim is Temi Giwa, who conceptualises and actualises the creative and technical direction of the products users get to experience and interact with in her role as Product Manager, a role she had held since 2019. Her roles before that were none less shining as she has an impressive background working with high ranking companies like KPMG, Chevron, WakaNow and Konga after earning a Bachelors in Computer Science from Lincoln University.

“You could wake up tomorrow and decide you want to be a rocket scientist, and you could educate yourself to be a Rocket Scientist from YouTube and Google. It’s such a monumental time and technology is going to be the thing that unlocks all the potential that we have in this country”.

Temi’s hopes that girls take up space everywhere they find themselves, recognising that they are a person first before they are their sex so much so that they embrace responsibilities as well as challenges and aspire to bring excellence to every role they might have. As someone who grew up with solely female siblings, the gender bias, especially in her industry, wasn’t something she walked through life knowing until her experience at a hackathon where she found herself the female participant. The reality check didn’t deter her from emerging winner alongside her teammates even in the face of initial opposition. Temi has carried on with a champ streak since then, creating monumental shifts in tech and otherwise, especially in Nigeria. One of such pivotal strides was when her and her fellows pivoted her e-Commerce organization by launching a public platform marketplace that saw a 2000% consumption and adoption with minimal marketing. If she had a chance to give herself from those years a heads up knowing what she does now, she’ll tell her to carry about these moments with more confidence and ambition no matter how many takes and do overs she does on her way to success.

She is constantly motivated to execute these huge ideas time and time again by her desire to see direct tangible and measurable impact that elevates the lifestyle of Nigerians. She further desires that Nigeria becomes an enabling environment where people can be their best self and grow in any area of their niche interest in that facilities and education are readily available for everyone regardless of social or economic background. Temi acknowledges that this education doesn’t necessarily have to be the conventional classroom system as these days learning can take on different forms through different platforms.

“I would say to people, the earlier and faster that you learn the way technology works, the more influential you can be in the future. I started really late, but the earlier you can learn this stuff, the more that it becomes second nature to you. It will accelerate your life and your career much more than you can expect”.

Temi holds data analytics and management skills as a top skill to have today. “I would say learn to understand data and this could be something as simple as learning how data is structured, how to use Excel to analyse data, and so on.” She also considers above par communication skill a great tool in one’s arsenal as there is nothing more “powerful than learning to communicate your ideas to other people because it allows you to be very influential”. She believes this should come through in business and social relationships whereby one is able to lead by influence rather than authority.