Resilient, hardworking, self driven, ambitious and intelligent are the words to describe this young woman .
Born African, Gina also known as Gina Tigere or @thatafricangold on socials, was one child who had big dreams, one of them was to become a supermodel . Her dad wasn’t in agreement, but her mom gave her full support .
Despite all the big dreams she had, Gina didn’t have an easy life growing up and found it difficult to make her dreams come true as her parents could barely pay her tuition fees, she took it upon herself to eradicate poverty in her family and started doing menial jobs at a very young age .
Gina would move from house to house, cleaning toilets, washing dishes, and doing several household jobs from one home to the other just so she could fend for herself and ensure she continued her studies .
Doing all this was quite difficult for Gina to pay attention to her studies, but in all that she managed to pull through with coming out as one of the best students in her class, she had to make a schedule for herself, as she had several jobs .
As Gina grew older, she began to have interest in computers and everything digital . She decided to pursue that instead and was so eager to pay for her studies at the Cambridge Home School in Fish Hoek, Cape Town where she studied IT .
To ensure she finished her studies, at age 16, Gina went from cleaning houses to working in a local fish and chips store, to selling clothes, perfumes and started building websites with the aim to earn better . But as the months went by Gina was slightly making progress .
All these difficulties Gina had to face, she found life so challenging as she saw how life worked and how people of low status were treated.
With all this, Gina made it her destiny to eradicate poverty in her family and the world as a whole, so she worked twice as hard to double her income. Years went by and Gina kept working towards her goal relentlessly.
At age 21, life took a huge toll on her, Gina had lost her mom to suicide.
Gina was left devastated, at that point she saw her world crumble before her. Her mother was her backbone and full supporter, she was her reason behind her drive to succeed.
Despite everything, the death of her mother gave her more zeal to be successful and break all generational curses in the society that everyday she reminded herself to live each day to make a difference.
Gina found courage to move past the tragedy of her late mom, she had to keep going.
Right after matric, she started applying for internships, her website designing experience landed her an internship at ROI MEDIA which is now called ROI DIGITAL.
Gina started making progress in her career, in 6 months she had learnt SEO and how the search engine works, then for 2 years she worked as an assistant to the CEO Allen Jaffe and General Manager Julie-Anne Walsh who is now the CMO of Takealot.com .
After years working with these powerhouse, she learnt a lot about running a business, marketing, great communication skills and understanding the values and ethics to be successful.
Moving forward, Gina left the company after 2 years, she went on to work with the now payment giants, ozow.com for 12 months.
She had the most eye opening experiences, she learnt how to manage client accounts, business acquisitions, social media marketing and the secret ingredient to being successful.
Gina’s life was starting to go as planned, she connected and worked with great people in the industry and later went on to start her own agency, called ‘Be Digital’ with the motto “Become Digitally involved this instant “.
With wanting to make her agency grow to the potential she had envisioned it to be, Gina was put to a test as she was taken advantage of, she faced the reality that most young African females face in the business industry.
Yet the experience she had didn’t make her back down, Gina kept going. She had to put her business on hold, went on to doing auditions and was able to get herself a commercial gig for one of the largest telecommunication companies in Nigeria, Globacom.
This marked the beginning of her journey in film and Tv production. She later then decided to focus on her agency and started building slowly day by day.
While working on her brand, Gina became a digital partner with the African Rising International Film Festival – ARIFF and went on to create her own high ticket boutique agency.
With all the challenges she faced and how she summoned courage to keep going, this woman deserves to be celebrated, or at least recognized.
Her journey to digital marketing excellence had her path crossed with Maiquel Tavares who is the founder and CEO of Ojimah. A travel tech solution that’s about to change the travel industry as we know it.
Now Gina currently holds the position as Director of Business Development which involves new prospects acquisition as well as digital marketing advisory .
She also started a self – help podcast called A 1000 Voices Podcast. Her podcast is a leading show that talks about oneself, self love, self care, self healing, self development and so much more .
Gina’s vast experiences relate to a majority of people, she believes all that she went through was to help share and relate to people, teaching them how she navigated past the challenges that got her where she is today.
Her podcast brings to light some of the key lessons of life starting on the first 42 episodes. The rest episodes are with prominent people all over the world who have attained various levels of success.
The challenges we go through in life are what makes us who we are.
Gina’s goal is to use her story to help individuals overcome challenges in all aspects of life and help make their lives better.
You may listen to the podcast via this link:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-1000-voices/id1573668804
