F E AT U R E : M O N I C A S I N G E R
“EUREKA!” MONIC A SINGER (BACC 1987) IS A VOC AL ADVOC ATE TO ADOPT BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY IN AFRICA. SHE BELIEVES SHE'S F OUND A WAY TO ELIMINATE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION. BY JACQUELINE STEENEVELDT
I
n 1983 Monica Singer ran away from home. The only daughter of a granite quarry miner in Uruguay, she followed her boyfriend, whom she later married, to South Africa — escaping the sheltered South American country and a difficult family background. “I didn’t tell my parents until a week before I left and a friend paid for the ticket. That was my opportunity,” she recalls. Monica had been biding her time. At 21, she was in her second year of studying towards a degree in accountancy. But the family business was off limits to her as a woman. “I was kept away from business things. The thinking was women get married and a husband can look after them. With my personality I wasn’t going to settle for that.” Accountancy suited her taste for order, but what she found in Johannesburg was a blow. Apartheid. “It was traumatic — a terrible time. I thought God punished me for what I did.” She found a job at Arthur Young (currently EY) and was given credits to start the second year towards a Bachelor of Accountancy at Wits. “I worked during the day and took a bus after 5pm to attend lectures until 8.30pm and that was my life. It was hard, very hard. “But the happiest time of my life was to be at Wits. I had such an absolute desire to be there. I didn’t ever miss a lecture. In the final year of doing accounting part-time, I was one of the top 10 students.” Yet she never took her success for granted. “After every exam, I’d cry thinking that I’d failed. I was obsessed with a dream of being a chartered accountant.” Today, she chats from the slopes of Lion’s Head overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Bantry Bay — much like the coastline of her home town, Montevideo — for a Zoom
52 W I T S R E V I E W
interview. Monica is the South Africa lead at ConsenSys, one of the world’s biggest blockchain companies, based in the US. She has been working from home since 2017 and is a vocal champion for the adoption of blockchain technology in Africa. “We can run a company from anywhere in the world. From day one, we were remote at ConsenSys.” As she’s a board member of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Accounting Blockchain Coalition (which sets the audit, accounting and tax guidelines for crypto assets based in the US), Monica’s predictions about the future of money and the impact of blockchain technology on all industries are getting attention. She brings to it not only youthful energy and curiosity, but three decades of experience in executive roles. “At the moment it feels daunting because the technology is a bit raw, but it’s similar to the evolution of the internet. In the beginning it was complicated and scary. Nobody wanted to use it, but now my mother can send emails, Facebook, send WhatsApps. Everybody can use it. That’s what I predict is going to happen,” she says. Her career seems to have come full circle, since she began at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 1990. Within a year she was made technical director representing South Africa on the international standards and auditing committees, a position she held until 1995 when she was poached by the World Bank. “I packed up my family and flew them to Washington, DC.” But when she got there she was disillusioned by the red tape and seeming lack of desire for change. She lasted eight months. “I quickly found out that less than 40% of funds allocated for social impact projects actually went to the right place.”
