---
title: "Backstory: Ravi Naidoo CEO Youth Employment Service - yes4youth"
description: What‘s your one top tip for doing a deal?Anticipate events. When I led the launch of SA’s Green Fund we believed that as host country for the climate change conference (COP17) in 2010, the much-hyped “Global Fund” would fail to materialise. So we were ready and waiting with the SA version, which our government announced to the world.
---

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# [Backstory: Ravi Naidoo CEO Youth Employment Service - yes4youth](https://blog.yes4youth.co.za/updates/backstory-ravi-naidoo-ceo-youth-employment-service)

 Written by [Admin](https://blog.yes4youth.co.za/updates/author/admin) | Mar 17, 2022 9:26:45 AM

What‘s your one top tip for doing a deal?

**Anticipate events. When I led the launch of SA’s Green Fund we believed that as host country for the climate change conference (COP17) in 2010, the much-hyped “Global Fund” would fail to materialise. So we were ready and waiting with the SA version, which our government announced to the world.**

What was your first job?

**I worked as a junior researcher at the Labour Research Service in Cape Town.**

How much was your first pay cheque and how did you spend it?

**It was for R1700 a month. I rented a room in Rondebosch East for R400, borrowed a battered car, and counted every cent. I saved a lot.**

What is the one thing you wish somebody had told you when you were starting out?

**That your life will go through highs and lows — and what matters most is the meaning you attach to those experiences.**

If you could fix only one thing in SA, what would it be?

**Make radical changes to improve the quality of education in the worst 50% of schools, so that young people have the educational assets to truly change their futures.**

What’s the most interesting thing about you that people don‘t know?

**I was the national school chess champion and even now think of life a bit like a chess game.**

What ls the one investment you wish you had made or made earlier?

**Cryptocurrencies – by the time I bought bitcoin it was already old news. New technologies from articial intelligence and biotech will change the world.**

What is the hardest life lesson you‘ve learnt?

**Speaking inconvenient truths comes at a personal cost. But there’s also a cost to not doing it.**

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

**Loyalty as a virtue can be misused in defence of incompetent and corrupt people. What SA needs is a focus on merit, performance and people who demonstrate that they are committed to building this country.**

What is something you would go back and tell your younger self that would impress them?

**Never mind that you just scraped a 50% Latin pass at law school at the University of Durban-Westville, you will up your game and one day you’ll be top of your class at Harvard University!**

It you were President Cyril Ramaphosa, what would you change, or do, tomorrow?

**History will judge kindly the “turnaround” president who makes the difficult choices for SA Inc, even if it ****means upsetting vested interests and becoming a one-term president. Our labour market regulations must be ****changed to make it easier for employers to employ people. And the civil ****service employment rules must be changed to ensure that only the best and brightest in society get the top jobs.**

Original article: Financial Mail – Backstory

[View full post](https://blog.yes4youth.co.za/updates/backstory-ravi-naidoo-ceo-youth-employment-service)

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