“Get stuff done!”: Alexandria Procter is an MSc student on an entrepreneurial mission

Before there’s time to ask about that, Procter launches into her bio, which is an entrepreneurship story to match any MBA graduate. Aged just 22 she founded DigsConnect.com, an online platform to help students find accommodation in South Africa. Her timing was impeccable, and a crisis in student housing pushed soaring demand for the online platform. Her success caught the attention of policymakers.

“The next thing I know, I had a call from the President’s Office in South Africa asking if I would take a board member role with the country’s National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), which is tasked with uplifting the country’s youth who are struggling with unemployment,” says Procter.

“Over 60% of young people are not in further education and unemployed,” she explains. “And you can just imagine, you have people sitting around at home, it's leading to violence, particularly against women. It's leading to drink and drug use and to teenage pregnancies and just a feeling of hopelessness.”

“My purpose was to focus on young people and entrepreneurship, as a means to get people working and busy and really ignite that part of the economy,” she says. “I try to mentor as many up-and-coming founders as I can. And I try to speak to teenagers who feel disheartened or anxious.’” 

Procter empathises with South Africa’s struggling youth because she has experienced these feelings too. She describes herself as having struggled to find her place before she discovered her knack for entrepreneurship. “In school, I was always in trouble. I was hyperactive and struggled with authority and the system in general just didn’t work out for me. I felt I was on a path to nowhere.”

It was only upon leaving school that Procter realised the attributes that often landed her in hot water in school could her make her a great entrepreneur: “spotting problems, building solutions – I can get stuff done! It was extraordinary. I went from being a really bad student to suddenly finding my place in the world and finding what I loved and finding my community, my crowd.”

It was when Procter relinquished her role as CEO at DigsConnect, and her time as board member of the NYDA came to an end, that she found herself considering the Smith School’s MSc in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment.

“I was speaking to people at the UN and thinking about the UN sustainable development goals. And just how much slower progress has been than was hoped. I thought, if I could find a way to fund and support founders who are working in these fields that can achieve tangible results quickly, I could make a difference.”

Procter enrolled at Oxford with a FirstRand scholarship and quickly immersed herself in the course. “The Smith School’s MSc exactly aligned with what I wanted to do. It’s such an interdisciplinary course,” explains Procter. “We do hard science - like atmospheric physics with Professor Myles Allen, but also finance with Dr Ben Caldecott, and then a lot of geopolitics, which I’ve really enjoyed. Our course leader Quentin Coutellier has been awesome and is always open to feedback and discussion. I was very lucky and very grateful to get a scholarship from FirstRand. Oxford is like a wonderland – it’s the experience of a lifetime. I was so happy to come here and lean into everything that’s on offer.”

In her thesis, Procter is looking into how AI and earth observation satellites can be used to predict shortages of natural resources and avert potential civil unrest and conflicts. How that relates to her meetings around rocket launch sites in South Africa is a story for another time, and for now, she is embracing Oxford’s entrepreneurial community to the full, and currently sits as an Entrepreneur in Residence and Startup Judge at the OX1 pre-accelerator incubator.

“There's this kind of chaos where if one route doesn't work, you can try and make other routes. There's a million different startup organisations and funding bodies both student-led and university-led. You can find your space, you can find your niche, you can speak to someone. Everyone I've spoken to in the startup world is so excited to do stuff – it’s a great place for founders and aspiring founders alike,” she says.

Dr Quentin Coutellier, Departmental Lecturer in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment at the Oxford Smith School, commented: “Individuals like Alexandria bring a wealth of experience to the classroom, enriching our diverse cohort of students, which ranges from fresh graduates to seasoned professionals. All benefit greatly from the peer-to-peer learning and networking opportunities that naturally emerge within such a fantastic and dynamic group.

“I believe the sheer diversity of the student body, combined with the interdisciplinary nature of the course, is what makes this experience at Oxford truly unique and especially appealing to students who are eager to learn from a multitude of perspectives. It equips them to tackle complex problems that require not just one skill set or mindset, but the integration of several disciplines and approaches.”