Staff Study: Marlize

Marlize was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa.  Here she studied Fashion Design at the Academy of Fashion and Art, before making the decision to live and work overseas.  Settling in London in December 1999, Marlize began her working life as she had trained, in the Fashion industry. Experiencing the ever cut-throat and pretentious fashion world, she soon moved into hospitality.

Loving the travel opportunities that came with this type of work, she stayed in the industry for four years, finally progressing into a managerial role. In 2001 she found herself on a 3 week holiday in Thailand, after three and a half months and a few scuba diving qualifications later, Marlize returned to the UK.

Ever seeking new challenges Marlize then was set on a career change.

Having always been a logical thinker, IT was the natural progression for me

Determination and self motivated study soon gained her Microsoft certifications and her first IT role was based in the heart of London, for an IT support company. During this role Marlize soon climbed the IT contracting echelons and was supporting increasingly larger and larger clients and gained lasting confidence and ability.

Later she moved to a more permanent position as IT manager for a SMB Architecture and Interior design firm. Seeing this as a more hands on role being put under increasing pressure, Marlize stayed with the company for 2 years. During these 2 years, she negotiated with an external proactive support company, Wanstor, to assist with the larger projects after which an opportunity arose for Marlize to join Wanstor.

Whilst at Wanstor, Marlize has gained increasing exposure to large clients and currently shares her time amongst 3 onsite roles plus office support days. As communicating more technical aspects to less IT experienced people, being in client facing roles comes naturally to her. Marlize has an in depth knowledge of many Microsoft desktop and server applications including Active Directory, Exchange and Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Marlize has been involved with a number of projects at Wanstor, including infrastructure migrations from sites to collocation centres.

Always aiming high, my ambition is to have greater involvment with designing larger network infrastructures and the virtualization platforms.