Keeping an eye on the road ahead

Ambition and grit are key in describing the Namibia Revenue Agency’s (NamRA) newly appointed senior tax officer, Fabian Heinrich de Kock.

De Kock, who was born and bred in the heart of the south - Keetmanshoop- completed his secondary school education at Suiderlig High School and gravitated towards the finance industry ever since.

He currently holds a diploma in management, having majored in accountingm as well as a bachelor’s of commerce in law from Stadio University, while he is currently in his final year of a bachelor of law degree, also from Stadio.

Meanwhile, he is pursuing a master’s degree in international business from the Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics in China. The driven De Kock has been working on obtaining his self-funded accolades while balancing a full-time job, which he had prior to his new appointment, at the ministry of finance’s inland revenue department.

“I applied for the position internally and went through the process. I would describe myself as a self-motivated individual driven by my humble beginnings, taking into account that there can be two drivers of motivation: The ‘to’ and the ‘from’.

“The motivation to escape is motivation ‘from’. In the case of motivation ‘to’, we are attempting to attain our goals and obtain the outcomes of our actions. The motivation ‘to’ creates the wish to do something and enables the actions to attain. While both motivations are helpful, the motivation ‘to’ is needed to have as much as possible in and it is recommended to avoid the ‘from’ motivation.

“Now, I am driven by the ‘to’ motivation with a slight heed to the ‘from’ motivation,” De Kock said in an interview with Careers.