15/09/2023
Originally from South Africa, Vari Mureriwa has spent the majority of her career working in public sector and health entities. A lot of the work she’s done over the years is focused on modernization. And with her tech- and customer-driven mindset, Vari was looking for academic reinforcement on how to drive big transformations.
Varaidzo Audrey Mureriwa, known as Vari, is currently working as a managing director at Accenture in health and public sector business. She’s been there since 2007 and wears two different hats on her day-to-day. The first is guiding digital transformation in the public sector, mainly in healthcare, from strategy to implementation. And the second is looking at how we develop cities, specifically their transportation and infrastructure, focusing on leveraging digital tools to better plan, implement, maintain and manage infrastructure, freight rail and passenger rail.
Throughout her time in public sector and health entities, Vari has spent most of her time working toward modernization. This includes the rollout of transformative technologies to either improve citizen servicing, improve fiscal management from a public sector perspective or improve health outcomes from a health perspective. She describes the work that she and her team does as transformative. What starts out as technology implementation ends up being organizationally transformative. This allowed Vari to see that her work went beyond the implementation of technology and turned into a crucial transformation for organizations.
As she learned more about this transformation, Vari began to realize that there had to be another way of thinking about implementation—one that looked beyond technology into the realms of people, processes and culture to successfully transform and achieve the desired outcomes.
Vari was looking for academic backing on how to think, run and implement transformations triggered by technology, leading her to the Executive Master in Digital Transformation & Innovation at IE University.
Vari’s decision to join the program was about moving beyond her experience by fortifying it with an academic perspective. She wanted to meet like-minded people who were also driving digital transformation in order to learn from their experiences and challenges. The digital space is continuously evolving, and so above and beyond the academic research that’s been done, Vari considers it equally important to learn from others’ experiences of navigating similar situations. And in her cohort, she found just that.
“The diversity of my cohort was not just geographical or demographical, but it was also found in what backgrounds people were coming from. A lot of my classmates were either deep techies or deep marketers, for example, who are looking for the virtue of the space they’re in. Their spaces are becoming a lot more digital and they are being forced to understand what digital transformation is and understand how to leverage digital for innovation.”
In addition to the diversity within her class, Vari found that her colleagues each had a dynamic mix of experiences. From those with more senior roles in areas such as accounting and finance, who were looking to understand how technology is changing their space, to young professionals who were just starting out and understood that tech is on the rise, each of her classmates had something unique to offer. The structure of the program allowed each participant to offer their ideas and their perspective, resulting in well-rounded learning.
Throughout the program, Vari felt reaffirmed in the skills she already had. She went into the program unable to measure her knowledge of digital transformation, and after the first semester, she could clearly identify her gaps and could focus on getting exactly what she needed from the program. She explains that because of how the program was structured, she almost had a roadmap of what was coming. This allowed Vari to target where she needed to dive deeper, further enhancing her learning experience as well. She got what she wanted out of the program and more.
“In such an ever-changing environment like digital transformation, it’s very difficult to truly quantify what you know and don’t know. How IE University structured the program was key.”
Vari remembers talking with her peers about how they would get a playbook for digital transformation. But she was struck by the “light bulb moment” where each of her colleagues, herself included, realized that there is no one playbook. Instead, students receive a recipe with the components, or ingredients, of digital transformation. “It’s about understanding which ingredients are the right combination for your company’s transformation journey. Understanding that and seeing that light bulb moment was beautiful to experience.”
Thanks to her deeper understanding of digital transformation, Vari is now able to identify if an organization has been digitally transformed. She looks at how they view technology and data, and how different employees throughout the company use these tools. A digitally transformed company is one where every leader is a technology leader.
Every part of the business intimately understands tech and uses it as an enabler for success.
As she continues to work in public and health entities, Vari is using her knowledge from the program to implement change, particularly in South Africa. She now has a clear understanding of how she can contribute to the space itself and is confident in what she can bring to the table. She feels that her biggest takeaway is solidifying an understanding of what she offers and the space she wants to work in. From the outside, South Africa is a developing economy and there are many challenges of working in a space focused on emerging technology. But from Vari’s perspective, the work they’re doing in South Africa is innovative, at the forefront, and really valuable. Her newly acquired experience helps her bring ideas to the table and remind her peers that they aren’t far behind in an industry transformation perspective.
Her time in Madrid helped her find empowerment, confidence and understanding. The program opened doors for her, as well as for her clients. She gained a new sense of credibility among her team and her clients. This credibility was also encouraged by her peers. She was awarded as the top student not only in her class but across all IE Business School’s part-time students. At graduation, her peers were chanting her name. This came as a surprise to Vari, mainly because she felt she learned just as much from them and was positively overwhelmed by their support. Vari would tell anyone she meets to do the program, advising them to know what they want from it and dive in. Connect with the broader IE Community and seek out experiences—don’t limit yourself.
