BY BETELHEM BEDLU
She is known for her astonishing acting career but it is with her human-centered deeds that she won the hearts of her admirers. Despite having a great value towards the acting career, she does not seem to be called an artist.
She goes by the name Yetnayet Tamrat or Mimi. Currently, she has joined a Swiss healthcare company based in Zurich as the representative and Director for Africa. Besides being an easygoing and fearless woman, she possesses a very decisive character where she could go miles to accomplish what she believed in without any hesitation. Yetnayet has gone through tough times due to her child’s health conditions. The fact that her child could not get the required medical treatment at home, had made it difficult for Yetnayet though she decided to do something about the problem by engaging in the health business to fill the gap that has forced her to sacrifice a lot.
She was born in a place commonly known as Lideta, in Addis Ababa, and raised around Atlas area with her two brothers in a disciplined manner. Yetnayet has BA degree in Accounting and Business Administration along with Graphics Design, Interior Design then after management and other software trainings. Before earning her first degree, Yetnayet had started her professional career at Greenland Household Importer Company around Kazanchiz as an Accountant for two months. Then right after she graduated, she got another job offer to work at Veras Wonderland, the first children recreation center in Ethiopia which she got an opportunity to meet most VIPs from Ethiopia. Going up the ladder of success is not new to her as she was engaged in doing various businesses ever since she was a child even before joining the film industry as an actress.
Initially, her father facilitated for her to be hired in his friend’s furniture importing company and that opportunity led her to her second career to be employed in children amusement center where she was able to meet various celebrities and public figures. Having an entrepreneurial mindset, she again met a person through her second job that she ended up getting in to printing business. She then learned a lot about graphic design and other important areas of the sector from the owner. She did not stay there for long as she decided to start her own printing business. Soon after, she opened her business using her family’s living room as working area. Funny as it seems, she did not have printing machine by the time she joined the business. All she had to do was doing the graphic design and then undertake the printing elsewhere.
As she started winning the expectations of customers by doing printing on hats, t-shirts, billboards, graduation magazines and others and the number of her customers increased, she decided to move to a bigger place. Fortunately, she did not have to go far since she rented a house with three rooms from her parents. With her business flourishing rapidly, Yetnayet started to feel uncomfortable staying there again. In spite of her mother’s disagreement, she rented another big house and left her parents. Throughout this journey, however, she has been stretching a helping hand for those who needed it. Not only she helped those who needed support but she used to be get closed with them like a family. “My kindness has never left me with regret or anything like that.” She has come so far by supporting people living with HIV and AIDS and related health issues. She said her daughter, which she gave birth at a young age, is the reason that she joined both the film industry as well as the health sector.
Her pregnancy was highly complicated that she had spent the entire month in critical condition though she was able to give birth and raise her relatively peacefully until she started noticing her child’s abnormal conditions. Besides the challenge that brought her to the hospital, Yetnayet was deeply saddened for seeing the anguish and pain that most mothers had to go through to get their sick children treatment. It is with deep pain that she recalled the story of all the destitute mothers that she saw at the hospital especially at the Black Lion Specialized Hospital. Yetnayet had no chance but to dedicate her time (more than three years) taking care of her child being very far from her life activities. Her close friend and colleague, renowned Ethiopian filmmaker Serawit Fikre insisted that she worked and she became his Marketing and Business Development Director for about 10 months.
While she was working with Serawit and his wife, Yetnayet was casted for a movie entitled “Werq be Werq” which was a commercial success. Buoyed by the success of her acting career, Yetnayet established a production company called Spot film productions through which she has made numerous movies and international documentaries. Furthermore, she had made several movies of her own like ‘Yanegeskegn’, ‘Hamesa Lomi’ and others.
After several painful situations, her daughter’s health started getting improved after she went through surgery that took over five years in Switzerland. Though she had no medical background, her situation gave her a lesson about the very gaps observed in the health sector. Therefore, she decided to open ‘Swiss Diagnostic Center’ with huge capital.
Currently, she is a founder, shareholder, Board member and CEO of SDE (Swiss Diagnostics Ethiopia), an advanced medical diagnostics center which targets most African countries patients. The institution’s facility performs diagnostics that are commonly carried out abroad. This special diagnostics center is established in a joint venture with world-renowned Swiss medical Doctor Roger Gablinger who owns the first private hospital in Zurich, Switzerland.
The center, besides alleviating the challenge in the health sector, has so far created job for over 40 professionals, apart from helping in technology transfer as the medical equipment are imported from different countries. As part of exerting her company’s corporate social responsibility, Yetnayet has so far donated over five million Birr for ‘Dine for Ethiopia’ project. She also called on citizens to focus on the things that put us together and capitalize on positive aspects; instead of matters that amplify our differences and divide us. “Let’s get out of blaming each other; and engage in activities that prosper and elevate our country,” she underscored.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 18 MAY 2023
