Dorothy Diedericks, Founder & CEO at BlueBlox GmbH, Most Empowering Women Leaders of 2022 Profile

Dorothy Diedericks
Founder & CEO
BlueBlox GmbH


Dorothy Diedericks, Founder & CEO at BlueBlox GmbH, Most Empowering Women Leaders of 2022

“Creating Pioneering Solutions”

Dorothy Diedericks, Founder & CEO, BlueBlox GmbH, is a very energetic person with outstanding qualities to lead the business in an ever-changing environment of compliant trade. She has proven herself to be a strong person who drives her own company towards success, prosperity, and growth despite all difficulties and odds. Growing up in South Africa, Dorothy witnessed the ongoing struggles and injustice in society. Since that, she embarked on a journey to create solutions that would empower individuals, increase the economic participation of the poor and middle class, and bridge the gap between public and private sectors in Africa. With this mission to help people, Dorothy founded BlueBlox in late 2014. This trade compliance consulting company enables cross-border trade in the emerging markets of Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. She believes that true empowerment cannot come through aid alone as it can make people potentially dependent on it. On the opposite, she believes that participating in trade gives individuals the ability to take financial control over their lives.

The steadfast leader is a very hardworking person. As Dorothy puts it in a nutshell, “We endeavor to grow continuously to be the best we can be. At BlueBlox, we go the extra mile and never give up.” BlueBlox helps its clients to attain their rights by law, even though it is not a common practice in emerging markets. Dorothy summarizes, “We believe that business should be easy, even though it is not easy in many countries yet. But we are on a mission to make business and trade easier for all.”

Dorothy is passionate about providing mentoring support to female entrepreneurs. It is difficult to predict the obstacles that will inevitably arise when starting a new business or new career path when entering entrepreneurship. That is why it is helpful to have some valuable advice from someone who has already gone this way. She is always open-minded in providing help and guidance to other women through unprecedented and new challenges they confront on their career paths.

The pioneer never stops believing in people and their uniqueness. Dorothy believes that if you focus on your strengths, there are no limits; that is why she helps everyone in the team discover their strengths. On the contrary, she believes that our weaknesses should never hold us back. Through awareness of our weaknesses, we as a team can work together to support any individual team member not by necessarily improving their weaknesses but rather by overcoming the weaknesses through teamwork. Dorothy believes that this will help her team develop their knowledge and skills because she believes that growing new leaders of tomorrow starts with investment today.

Furthermore, Dorothy always looks after her team's well-being because she deeply cares for each member. And another way around, all team members appreciate having Dorothy as the company's CEO. The team puts tremendous effort into mastering its everyday tasks. Due to Dorothy's investments in her team and the efforts of each team member, the company is growing and becoming what it is – an excellent service provider for its clients.

BlueBlox successfully achieved its goals over the past few years. The team uses a holistic and sustainable approach to everything they do. They constantly work towards achieving results that benefit the whole community rather than some individuals, companies, or the government.

One of the recent groundbreaking achievements for the company was obtaining a Valuation Ruling from the Egyptian Customs. Their client had been experiencing regular uplifts to their shipments for several years. The Egyptian Customs Authorities (ECA) had consistently applied an uplift of 50% or greater to the value declared, resulting in a significant overpayment of duties and taxes. Moreover, ECA refused to release shipments until additional duties and taxes were paid. BlueBlox consultant team approached various government authorities and worked through the appeal procedures under the customs legislation. Their ground-up and positive approach allowed BlueBlox to educate operational customs teams and develop a comprehensive justification for the acceptability of the client's business model and the valuation methodology used. “We were successful and received an official ruling from Egyptian customs, which obliges customs to accept the declared value submitted by our client. Solving this case, BlueBlox obtained a milestone valuation ruling from the Egyptian Customs Authority, the first ruling issued by Customs in Egypt in 150 years.”

When Dorothy founded BlueBlox, she had a single vision: bringing economic and educational empowerment to the emerging markets. Together with her team, she is still working towards this aim because she believes that businesses impact their nation's economy through trade. WL


Company

BlueBlox GmbH

Management

Dorothy Diedericks
Founder & CEO
BlueBlox GmbH

Description

BlueBlox is an international trade compliance consultancy firm founded in late 2014 with the vision of economically empowering markets in Africa, Middle-East and Eastern Europe.


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