Meet Lyndelle Lok

Lyndelle Lok is a BI and Data Warehouse Specialist and avid basketball player from Cape Town. Read about why Lyndelle is proud to be Chinese and proud to be South African.

'Always embrace your culture and ethnicity and look to enlighten others about our unique heritage.' ~Lyndelle Lok

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Name: Lyndelle Lok

Occupation: BI and Data Warehouse Specialist

1. Where were you born?

In beautiful Cape Town

2. What schools/colleges/universities did you go to?

I grew up in the Southern Suburbs and went to Wynberg Girls High School, and then studied Information Systems at Cape Technikon (now called CPUT)

3. What is your fondest childhood memory, growing up as a Chinese child?

I always enjoyed getting together with family and friends at the Chinese community centre. There was always something happening there that would strengthen and tighten our community bonds, such as fund raising dinners, the elders playing Mah-jong, preparing for Community chest carnival where the Chinese community had a food stall, but most enjoyable was the sport we have at the community hall, where I grew up playing basketball. I still am a keen basketball player today.

4. What is your favourite Chinese food?

Red Pork, Chinese dumplings, Joburg Char Sui Bao, Bak Choy

5. Where do you live?

Still in beautiful Cape Town

6. What work do you do?

I am working as a BI and Data Warehouse Specialist at MMI holdings, Metropolitan offices. I analyse, design and build data warehouses to deliver key metrics and stats primarily for the decision makers of the business.

7. What do you love about your job?

I love that my role covers many areas within IT, each day is different where I could be analyzing data, coding, problem-solving or designing and creating pretty dashboards or infographics for the business.

8. What is your proudest achievement?

I have been involved in mentoring programmes where I’ve been training graduates and interns on BI and ETL programming. It has been very rewarding watching them learn and grow and providing them with a solid foundation for the rest of their career.

9. Why are you proud to be South African?

Despite South Africa being absolutely beautiful with a majestic coastline, mountains and the best wine farms, South Africa is rich with diversity and many different cultures. My proudest South African moment was taking part in the anti-Zuma march where I saw the people of South Africa come together and unite as one regardless of colour and creed, all for a common goal.

10. Why are you proud to be Chinese?

Our culture is enriched with strong family ties, deep respect for our elders and has many traditions and celebrations that we follow, which we also encourage our young ones to follow too.

11. Name one Chinese tradition that you’d like future generations to continue with?

Home-cooked chinese food is the best, make sure the traditional recipes are past down to the future generations.

12. What advice would you give to the Chinese youth today in South Africa?

We are still a minority race in South Africa, where you might still find there is a lack of understanding of our South African Chinese heritage in the workplace or at schools. One can still be faced with stereotypes and racial connotations today. Always embrace your culture and ethnicity and look to enlighten others about our unique heritage.

Follow Lyndelle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyndelle-lok-488646146/