Zender leaves her mark

Wetumwene Shikage



Zender has been working in the marketing industry for the past seven years. She started her career as a marketing and public relations intern at the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN) and moved around in various industries before being employed at BIPA.

She applied for this position after she saw that the job description was ideal for her to continue building her marketing and communication skills and eventually venture into a new industry that can promote entrepreneurship and innovation.

With responsibilities that include working on the company’s communication campaigns, Zender’s role includes assisting to craft messaging for the BIPA brand which goes to both internal and external stakeholders and ensuring that all messaging and branding is in line with overall strategic objectives. After the company has finished wrapping up a campaign centred around compliance to annual duties, they are looking to launch another campaign focused on creating awareness around trademark registrations and its benefits.

Zender’s day-to-day work routine includes developing project plans for running campaigns, ensuring all the deliverables for a campaign are done by liaising with the creative agency and other suppliers and the rest of the department with projects. “We need to integrate ourselves in all the different departments regardless of the industry you operate in, so agility is key.

About Zender

She was born and raised in Windhoek and completed her secondary education at Jan Mohr secondary school before enrolling for the bachelor of marketing programme at the Namibia University of Science and Technology. Zender says she has always been interested in the creative and artistic side of things. “I have been wanting to venture into the creative world of marketing and communications since I was a young girl. This is because I noticed how much I love to speak and write. Being able to marry these two loves and witness how my ideas can be transformed into something tangible is proof that I am where I belong,” she said.

Accomplishments and challenges

Zender considers accomplishments as being able to make an impact in any area you operate in. “If you can make a difference in the way things are done in an organisation or make a certain process easier, people will still remember the impact you made. I still get calls from where I previously worked to go over some scripts and review some writing. That to me is an accomplishment,” she said.

Reflecting back to times when things didn’t always go as planned, Zender says she has learned valuable lessons from the challenges she previously faced. She further explained that there is a long way to go for industries to understand that the marketing function in any organisation is not just about pretty pictures posted on social media and placed in newspapers, but rather about developing a well-thought-out strategy on how best to solve a problem for customers.

She shares her gratitude to be part of BIPA when several changes are underway. “I am fortunate to be a part of it and look forward to bringing my experience in project management, account management, digital marketing and writing skills to make an impact in these changes that will take place,” she said. Zender hopes to make an impact in the landscape for especially small, upcoming businesses and look at ways to nurture the environment they operate in providing platforms for growth and sustainability.