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Wednesday, November 6, 2024
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Willie Maritz And His Ambition To Help Solve Youth Unemployment

Today, we learned many things about Mr. Willie Maritz and his business journey. He is an entrepreneur and the founder of multiple businesses, including Wing.Studio, Kalleo People Group, NoMoreCourses.com, SquirrelThat, TalenTek, etc. In addition, Willie Maritz is an expert in the field of Human Resource Development who always looks forward to coming up with excellent learning solutions.

What’s more, Willie Maritz also has Global consulting experience with renowned brands including J Walter Thompson, Vodafone, De Beers, Diamond Trading Company, etc. He started Wing.Studio with his partner Pieter de Bruyn to change how young people search and find jobs and how employers find the right young talent they need.

When talking about what he aims to do through Wing.Studio, Willie Maritz said that he wants to solve the global issue of unemployment, especially for young people who don’t have enough work experience to get a decent job. Wing.Studio is generally an online social platform where people can prepare their profiles to showcase their talents. The company/platform also has an active LinkedIn page.

It’s pretty inspiring how Willie Maritz and the other co-founders of Wing.Studio, Pieter de Bruyn, and Sana Choyakh are working towards solving the youth unemployment issues worldwide. Let’s learn more about it below!

Explain the background of you and the Company in detail.

I am the founder of multiple companies and am passionate about developing people. After selling my latest venture, I decided to help solve the global youth unemployment problem. I partnered up with a fellow South African, Pieter de Bruyn, to brainstorm how we could make an impact on this crisis.

Later on, we also welcomed Sana Choyakh from Tunisia onto our founding team, and together we are on a mission to change the lives of young people.

One of the most frequent problems today’s youth experience when searching for their first employment opportunity is the response that they need more experience. Of course, they are often frustrated with this response because they just need a chance to start somewhere and prove their worth. However, unfortunately, most youth (and employers) don’t realize that they already have a lot of experience and have already developed effective skills and valuable attributes. It’s just not proven in the form of a job listing on a resume!

So, Pieter and I set out to build an application that allows young people to capture all the cool things they do that would actually serve as evidence of their skills and attributes. It works as a social media platform to create posts of activities like sports, volunteering, science projects, temp work, etc.

The platform translates these activities into proof of skills and attributes. For example, organizing a volunteer beach cleanup could be evidence of leadership, organization, project management, and environmental consciousness. Building a popular social media platform is evidence of marketing skills, content creation skills, interpersonal skills, and so much more.

Wing.Studio uses all these posts to create a real-time and evidenced-based profile of the young people and what they have to offer the world. As a result, it helps employers make better employment decisions, reducing their risk.

What are your goals?

We are planning to grow Wing.Studio into THE platform for young people around the globe to prepare themselves for the world of work. Not only will they build an evidence-based professional profile, but they will also have access to a whole ecosystem of support, resources, and networks of other people with similar interests.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of yourself/Company right now?

Our biggest strength is our ability to give young people a stronger chance to enter the world of work.

What was the path you/your Company took to get to where you are today?

We started conceptualizing the idea during the initial phases of the Covid pandemic. After that, we were fortunate enough to fund the platform’s development ourselves, up to the point where we could test the concept with young people and employers alike.

We decided to run full steam ahead based on the overwhelming response and encouragement we received. We started speaking to investors and were surprised at the excitement and support we received from them.

In addition, we raised a Seed Investment round, enabling us to continue improving the application, recruit a team of passionate contributors, and market what we do to the intended target audiences.

Although the apps are already available on the app stores, we are busy with some updates and plan to fully launch at the end of March 2022.

Why did you start (or want to be the head of) this Company?

I have three daughters who are at the start of their working and professional lives. They come from pretty privileged circumstances and always had whatever they needed for their education.

Despite this, I noticed their frustrations and anxiety about getting started and realized that there are millions of young people worldwide for whom this entry into the world of work is much more daunting.

Some actually have little or no hope. Yet, I knew and believed we could make a difference in their lives. That’s how I started working on ideas for Wing.Studio.

What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?

Building a complex application like this is not an easy task. Peter nor I are software engineers, and we’ve had to figure out how to execute our vision by working with others. This journey has been much harder, slower, and more costly than ever imagined. However, we never gave up and kept forging forward.

Give us one word that describes you the best.

Passionate

What makes you excited about Mondays?

Mondays represent the start of a new “working sprint” where we can get things done and move closer to our goals.

What do you value most about your culture and vision?

We keep on reminding ourselves of two primary goals:

  • Excellence in everything we do
  • Focus on WHY we do it
Tell us about a project that forced you to be innovative and creative.

One of our biggest challenges has been to understand our target audience. Unfortunately, we are not in the shoes of the young people we are building this for, and we quickly realized that we could not make assumptions about them and their needs.

We initiated a series of workshops with young people in the UAE and Africa. The interactions with them have been inspiring and empowering for us. They challenged us to listen, be creative and come up with innovative solutions and designs for the application.

What are your Company’s strategies, and how do they stand unique from your competitors?

We are working with several global organizations that are all focused on supporting youth. By collaborating with these organizations (and government entities), we can align our efforts to large-scale initiatives and make a bigger impact.

What are the fundamental values that helped you overcome the roadblocks/challenges in your career? Tell us something about your memorable incident in your leadership?

As an entrepreneur, I’ve been through several challenging times. However, somehow I always managed my way through and came out stronger on the other side. Every time I get through a tough time, I grow more confident in dealing with things. This confidence allows me to take bigger risks and solve problems on a larger scale.

How do you see the Company changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?

Our biggest focus for the next two years would be to scale what we offer to millions of young people across the globe.

Where is your leadership going? What benefits do your clients get from your Company in this competitive world?

As a leader, I want to inspire others to believe in themselves and do what they do with a mindset of excellence and focus on solving problems that matter.

What services/solutions or products are offered by your Company at par with the current industry standards? Tell us something about your upcoming products or services?

As I stated before, our services focus on helping today’s youth and employees increase their chances of getting their skills acknowledged and making an impact on the unemployment crisis worldwide.

Although we only launch officially in April 2022, the apps are already available on the app store and on the web. Go to www.wing.studio or search for app called Wing.Studio. We are also keen to partner with any organisation that contributes to developing young people and are keen to help us solve the unemployment crisis. Potential partners can send an email to willie@wing.studio.

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