Our MasterStart team is beyond excited to be shortlisted for the Learning Awards 2022. The Learning Awards have been recognising innovation and achievement in learning across the globe since 2006, benchmarking education standards, celebrating learning and acknowledging leaders within the education space. Nominees have put their best foot forward across a variety of categories and MasterStart is honoured to be recognised as a finalist in the Learning Giveback category as well as the Rising Star category where our own CIO Faryn Pearson has been shortlisted for her exceptional impact spearheading our MasterStart ethos and making waves in the education sector.
Below are the awards our team are finalists for, an overview of the impact MasterStart is having on the community, how we are striving for sustainable and meaningful education and how Faryn is making a name for herself and our team.
Learning Giveback Award
This award is presented to individuals and organisations who have showcased creative and innovative methods of supporting learning to benefit the community. As a result, the award is given to those who have successfully applied learning to support the core values of humanity.
So how does this apply to MasterStart?
On our drive to intentionally engage with our audience in a humanistic way beyond the traditional format of online courses, we have provided educational opportunities to over 6,000 learners, many from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Starting out in South Africa, we feel a special responsibility to provide women with relevant and sustainable learning opportunities, the type that is needed to bridge the gender pay gap with accessible, relevant and much-needed skills development focusing on creating empowered women leaders.
In 2021, a tough year for many, MasterStart ran four separate campaigns to sponsor women for placements on our UCT-GSB Developing Women Leaders course. Beginning with the first round of a month-long Developing Leaders Course campaign, peers had the opportunity to nominate a woman who inspired them and made positive contributions to their community to stand a chance of winning a course placement.
We received an outpouring of over 500+ inspirational nominations of women overcoming situations of poverty, gender-based violence, disability and discrimination. The engagement was so high that MasterStart ran it a further three times and developed the MasterStart Diversity Champion programme. This allowed corporations to sponsor other worthy nominees to complete MasterStart programmes and to have a further positive impact as leaders in their communities. In total, MasterStart sponsored seven inspirational women while corporations sponsored a further 17 more with life-changing courses.
As the interest and impact of this course and the campaigns continue to grow, we look forward to actively improving and bettering the lives of members of the community through accessible, innovative and humanised online learning.
VIEW OUR PREVIOUS CAMPAIGNS:
Developing Women Leaders Launch: Click here
Developing Women Leaders Round 2: Click here
Developing Women Leaders Round 3: Click here
Give the Gift of Education: Click here
Sponsorship: Click here
Rising Star Award
The Rising Star Award recognises individuals working both within learning institutions who have shown exceptional promise or freelancing in this sector, having demonstrated excellence in their field. Our rising star is none other than our CIO and acting COO Faryn Pearson.
Beginning as our Group Legal Advisor, Faryn quickly established herself as a key strategic thinker who had a passion for education. With her invaluable contributions to the MasterStart mandate, strategic skills, and international partnership growth, Faryn was quickly promoted to Chief Innovation Officer in 2020.
Faryn’s first challenge was to take MasterStart’s successful South African business model, reinvent it for international expansion and scale the business at a pace not seen before.
Identifying the key programmes to bring to market, Faryn did extensive research on the subjects that worked from a progression standpoint, that had a market demand, that were appropriate for the partners and most importantly – that aligned with the business’s mission and values. The new courses included Managing Diversity and Inclusion as well as more skills-based programmes that had sustainable leadership and responsible governance at their core.
Alongside her hard work, Faryn is passionate about providing educational opportunities for women and girls and has established herself as a thought leader and spokesperson for the company on many of these important issues. We couldn’t be prouder of Faryn!
We have put an immense amount of hard work into creating what we are today – an online learning provider putting students at the heart of everything that we do. The hard work and effort behind the scenes by none other than our remarkable team are seeing MasterStart make an impression in the awards space and a competitive up and coming leader in the online education sector, offering accessible, impactful and innovative skills development.
Find out more about the Learning Award 2022: Click here
