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Gerda's handmade quilt of learning

Henley Business School Africa prides itself on creativity and innovation, but there are few who will come close to Gerda Olivier; in an era of always on artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital connectivity, she took her creativity to the next level by hand making a quilt.
Gerda's handmade quilt of learning

But it’s not any old quilt. Instead it tells a story. Hers.

The multi-degreed banker was doing her ADMP (Advanced Diploma in Management Practice) as part of a cohort of Standard Bank staffers when she was asked to present her final assessment, a reflective essay. She had sent her programme director Candace Ristic a gift beforehand, with strict instructions not to open until it was Olivier’s turn to present her essay to the class via Zoom.

The gift was a quilt, made up of squares, reflecting the blocks that made up Oliver’s ADMP .

“The first thing I learnt is that you never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone. To reflect on the way the Ecosystems journey shaped me, I have decided to step out of my comfort zone - I have decided to choose something I can’t do at all and then use this to describe my Henley Journey,” Olivier told her class.  

She and her husband challenged themselves five years ago to master a skill they’d always wanted to do, but couldn’t. Her husband learnt the guitar. Olivier did needlework, hated it but fell in love with quilting. As she told the class, making a quilt was like doing the ADMP itself. “Every block was an assignment and a reflection,” she says.

“In the beginning there are so many loose ends, loose materials, loose patterns… but at the end it all comes together and this beautiful story is created.  This is exactly how I felt when I started with Henley – all the loose ends, lots of learning material, new lecturers, colleagues you don’t know, and nothing is making sense. At the end you have this beautiful story, and I wish to share this story with you!  All handmade…every stitch…every step.”
Normally a quilt takes a year to make, but for Olivier it’s like reading a book, once she starts, she has to finish. The quilt, with a block for each of the 31 classmates who finished the journey and smaller ones for the seven who were unable to because they’d left the bank, along with bigger blocks for the angels; Noms Dyantyi, Jayesh Reddy, Nicole de Villiers, Lerone Prior, Brett Will, Darren Lang, Melani Prinsloo, Gene van Heerden and Ristic the programme director, took her three weeks to complete.

Olivier, who holds a BA, an honours degree and a master’s all from North West University as well as all her necessary banking qualifications, found going back to study, especially at the same time that she making sense of working from home, quite challenging. 

“When I began the course, I was bowled over by all the new concepts like pelopele, cohort, system thinking, design thinking, computational thinking, position paper, reflective paper and even ‘you’re on mute’.”

The lecturers though were first class, underpinned by Ristic and her team. If she needed any more affirmation that she had made the right choice to study at the school, says the mother-of-two, it came from her daughter Rizaan, who is working in the Netherlands.

“When I told her I was going to Henley, she told me all her contemporaries had told her that was the place to be and that’s when I realised in what high esteem the business school is actually held when the 28/29 year old professionals are all aspiring to go there!”

Henley is also held in extremely high esteem in corporate South Africa, she says. “I was promoted into a brand-new job as head of private banking for the Garden Route, Karoo and Boland West Coast, while I was still doing the ADMP, they didn’t even wait for me to graduate,” she said. 

“You must always leave people with something to think about. Candace left something in my heart so this is my way of paying it forward. There’s a tree in the middle of the quilt. The individuals are the branches in the tree, Candace managed to keep us together by growing strong roots and ensuring we make an impact wherever we go. The beauty of the tree lies in its branches, but its strength lies in its roots.”

For Henley Africa dean and director Jon Foster-Pedley, the story of Gerda Olivier’s quilt symbolises everything the business school stands for. “It’s an incredibly personal and heartfelt statement to make something like that for your teachers to express your appreciation for how much they’ve done for you.

“Candace is a real Henley star; I think we are all a bit jealous of her to be honest. We teach of the love of teaching and to unlock the potential in those we are given the privilege to work with. Gerda is right, Henley is a close network and it’s a relationship that we hope is sustained well after our students graduate.”

  • Henley Business School Africa is a leading global business school with campuses in Europe, Asia and Africa. It holds elite triple international accreditation; has the number 1 business school alumni network in the world for potential to network (Economist 2017); and is the number 1 African-accredited and -campused business school in the world for executive education (FT 2018, 2020), as well as the number 1 MBA business school in South Africa as rated by corporate SA (PMR.Africa 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021).


13 Aug 2021 12:30

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