The company we keep: Verashni Pillay 

Verashni Pillay is the founder of explain.co.za, a platform offering accessible and empowering news to those who don’t usually follow current affairs. She is a CNN African Journalism Award winner, an Open Society Foundations and Mandela Washington Fellow, and was named one of the BBC’s 100 Women. She was editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian and HuffPost South Africa.   

Pronouns? She/her 

Born? 11 February 1984 

Status? Single 

School? Sutherland High School, Centurion 

University? Rhodes University 

First job? Journalist, News24 

Home? Grew up in Laudium, Pretoria, but I live in Westdene in Johannesburg now.

Transport? An old but reliable Nissan Livina. My soccer-mom car (although my six-year-old daughter is a gymnast for now).

Book on your bedside table? All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. 

Music in your playlist? Currently listening to a live fire set by journo-turned-deejay Charles Leonard at Breezeblock. He’s currently playing “I’d rather go blind” by Etta James and it’s gorgeous. 

Describe your job in no more than seven words. I find different ways to fund journalism. 

What keeps you awake at night? The threat to the global rule of law and democracy as the world shifts towards MAGA-inspired fascism… And how we’re losing young (and old) boys to “red pilling”. 

Who is your biggest hero? Nelson Mandela, cliché for a reason. Can’t think of a more impressive leader, and I’ve tried.

Remote or office? Hybrid. My team would probably riot if I tried to make them come in full-time and honestly, so would I. Those industrial ways of working are long gone and employers should stop hanging on to them. But younger people, especially graduates, need the contact so hybrid is a good compromise.

What’s the most exciting part of your job? Forging a path with my team, including making it up as we go, without the establishment telling us what to do. Running one’s own organisation is terrifying and liberating

Career highlight? Successfully launching and running my own media business

What is your superpower? Hiring good people. Mostly. And public speaking. Also, mostly.

What is the least known fact about you? I’m pretty crafty. Literally. I love knitting and I’m getting into beading.

If you could get the ear of one person, to convince them your work is important, who would it be? MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos). I love how she left that awful man and proceeded to give away the money she got to great causes. I feel she’d love the work we’re doing and would be an amazing partner. Melinda Gates too, for that matter. 

If you had the power to pass a presidential decree, what would it be? Stop corruption through AI. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for years. We lose too much to this scourge and it tanks democratic participation.

Your best piece of advice? Stop thinking so small.

What’s your next big thing? This is my year of growth and big swings. So we’re launching Explain Foundation and going after more grant funding to grow the journalism work we do. Wish us luck! 

What do you do to relax? Play chess. Knit. Audio books. Run. Urban cycling. Hiking. I have too many hobbies so I do all of them with a fair level of mediocrity but boy do I enjoy them.