She couldn't get online in her corner of South Africa. Now she heads an internet access provider that employs 500.

Born and raised in the small village of Myakayaka in Limpopo, South Africa, Doreen Mbhalati-Mashele graduated from university with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Chemistry in 2001.

Despite her qualifications, she couldn’t find work. The economy was bad, and she lived in a rural area where jobs were scarce.

So was internet connectivity, which made job-hunting harder. She checked newspaper ads and mailed her resume to prospective employers.

But the post was unreliable. “You don’t even know if they’ll receive your letter,” she says.

Staying at home was frustrating, especially with a STEM degree that everyone assumed would help her land a job right away. 

“People laughed at me. They said, ‘Look at that girl. She studied math and science, but now she can’t get a job. Why didn’t she become a teacher, or a nurse?’ I was depressed, always sleeping. I didn’t even want to go out.”

What made it worse was knowing that, if she’d had access to the internet, she’d have boosted her odds of finding something—the first glimmer in her mind of why connectivity was important.

Her father worked as a butcher at Pick and Pay, a big local retail chain. He helped her get a job packing groceries. Eventually, in 2006, she landed a position in Johannesburg at Transnet, a freight company. But she remained fascinated by connectivity.

What are you guys doing?

“One morning, coming off the night shift, I noticed some guys working next to my house. They said they were doing a project for the local telecom, installing optical fiber.”

Wanting to know more, Doreen asked to see their supervisor. She met him, but didn’t get much information. She then got contact information for the owner of the company that was working on the project and received a fuller explanation of what network connectivity was all about.

“I said, ‘I’m interested in this. I want to be one of the people bringing technology to South Africa.’”

Although she had a full-time job and was working nights, Doreen wanted to do something new. The owner of the company she was talking to was a contractor for Telkom, one of South Africa’s largest providers of telecommunications services. He said, “We can give you a small project, but you need to get skilled, experienced technicians to do the work. Do you know anyone?”

She did not. “I told them, ‘I need to use your guys. They can train my guys.’ And the CEO was like, ‘You want me to give you work, and now you also want me to give you my staff?’” Doreen laughs. “They said they’d give me two guys. I needed three, plus tools, plus a car. But within four days, I had everything, and I went back to them and said I was ready. They said ‘Wow, you really want this thing.’ I said, ‘Yes, I do.’”

Doreen’s men had done construction, but they had never laid fiber. Doreen told them, “I’m relying on you.”

That first job as a subcontractor in 2012 went well, and the company started giving Doreen contract work doing maintenance and repair to damaged telephone lines. But eventually she decided maintenance was boring. “They weren’t giving me enough of the high-end work. I wanted to work on optical fiber.”

“My first bid, I didn’t win. They saw that I didn’t know anything, so they rejected me. I eventually did get to work on fiber projects, but not before I failed at least three times.”

Doreen realized she needed to get personally involved in the work, so she negotiated with her employer, Transnet, to work only nights. That left her days free to be on site, supervising workmen who were laying the cables to bring connectivity to local homes.

Telkom had contracted this work to Huawei, which had subcontracted it to several local companies. These, in turn, passed part of the work on to Doreen.

Huawei eventually noticed that Doreen’s name kept popping up on their projects. They also noticed that at Doreen’s sites, work was done on time, and to a high standard of quality.

They asked why I was sleeping in the car…

One morning in 2015, after coming off the overnight shift, Doreen drove to a site and fell asleep in her car. She figured her crew would be more diligent if the boss was nearby, even if she was asleep.

Some Huawei people showed up at the site. Doreen awoke with a start, expecting them to be angry with her for sleeping on the job.

“But I could see in their faces that they were feeling pity for me,” she said. “They asked why I was sleeping in the car, why I hadn’t simply gone home after working all night. I said, ‘When I go home, my guys don’t work! So I do this every day.’”

Huawei asked who Doreen worked for, and she named five companies – all of them Huawei subcontractors. “The Huawei people said, ‘You’re doing work for five different companies. Why don’t you just get your own contract with us?’ I said, ‘I guess because I don’t qualify.’”

But Huawei wasn’t sure this was true. Through an interpreter, Doreen talked to a Mandarin-speaking Huawei executive from China. He asked, “If we can give you a contract, will you work for us?”

By now, you can probably guess her answer.

Huawei gave Doreen five trial sites. It was Christmas holidays, and she didn’t leave the sites until the work was completed in January. Not long after the holiday ended, Huawei gave Doreen a contract and a purchase order. Soon she was managing dozens of sites.

Later, Huawei consolidated its supplier base from 60 vendors to five. Doreen’s company made the cut. Finally, Huawei appointed her to be one of the main contractors supplying fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) in the Gauteng region.

Today, Doreen’s company employs 500 people.My goal is to make life better by providing WiFi connections used for communications, transport, connectivity and ultimately eliminating waste; she says. "I want to see myself as a part of changing South Africa from the old, traditional ways to more advanced ones."

This change isn't just about better tech, it’s about using tech to protect the planet.We'll become more environmentally aware, she says. "We will change our lifestyles, reducing pollution and waste, and enhancing productivity. I want to see South Africa change and go green, so people are leading more environmentally friendly lives."