People of Vox: Spotlight on Kaylee McKay
At Vox, we believe our employees are the beating heart of our company, with merit and value built into all our available positions. In this edition of People of Vox, we meet Kaylee McKay, who works in the Wireless division as a Product Manager: APN and LTE. Kaylee, who’s based in East London, combines business and tech problem solving with a deep love of being in nature and walking on the beach.
As a Product Manager for APN and LTE, Kaylee balances technical liaison work, cross‑departmental coordination and an appetite for hands‑on problem solving with an easy, upbeat and humorous manner.
Her story at Vox began in 2015 and continued until 2019, when she took ‘a very brief two‑month detour’ before returning to Vox ever since. She describes herself as having grown up at Vox and says that the business and its people have helped to shape both her professional confidence and personal resilience.
During her life so far, Kaylee has moved between East London (recently renamed KuGompo City), Bloemfontein and Johannesburg, before returning to East London in 2023. “I learned during my two months away from Vox that the grass is not necessarily greener when you’re on the other side. It’s just greener where you water it and where you value it.”
Today, Kaylee has established her roots in East London and is very happy to call it home. We find out more about her, both inside and outside Vox.
Facilitating a Well-Oiled Machine
It’s useful to take a step back and clarify what LTE and APN mean – the acronyms at the heart of Kaylee’s work.
With LTE, short for Long Term Evolution and also known as 4G technology, Vox offers a plug-and-play wireless internet service in South Africa that delivers home and business broadband using mobile network towers instead of physical cables. The service connects via radio waves from mobile networks, and the customer inserts a Vox SIM card into a compatible LTE router, turns it on and connect their devices. There’s no need to wait for a technician to dig trenches or install a fixed telephone line.
APN is short for Access Point Name, and means a network setting that tells a mobile device how to connect to the internet or a secure corporate network using a SIM card.
Against this background, Kaylee’s role is operationally complex, with her job requiring her to work from concept to customer. She explains: “This includes testing and vetting new devices with the research and development (R&D) team, creating product codes, building sales workflows, developing marketing collateral with the marketing department, designing billing structures with finance, training sales teams, and coordinating with projects, implementation, service delivery and customer service.”
In short, she helps to ensure that the LTE and APN products and services move cleanly through the organisation and reach customers correctly, with different teams owning different parts of the value chain.
An LTE router that got the Kaylee stamp of approval“I work with people from almost every department at Vox,” says Kaylee, “and I enjoy the feeling of the company operating like a well‑oiled machine when things run smoothly. At the same time, problems do arise, and I’m often the person people come to when something goes wrong.
“While I enjoy sorting out problems and challenges, I do prefer people, where possible, to have initial conversations that could help to make sure that issues don’t have to happen in the first place – especially if it’s the same issue for the tenth time in one day! My philosophy is definitely NOT to ‘ask forgiveness, not permission’ – no, don’t do that! Let’s talk about it first, and then we won’t have to get to the asking for permission part.”
Professional Growth and a Warm Culture
Kaylee came into the Product side of Vox initially from a Finance/Revenue background, both at Vox as well as working for a previous employer, and she says she had quite a steep learning curve when she first moved into product in 2017.
“I wouldn’t describe myself as being super-technical,” she says, “but I’m curious and I enjoy learning, and in this way I’ve built up my required technical understanding. If need be, I’ll ask my colleagues to ‘speak English’ when discussions become too technical!” she smiles.
Her immediate team is small, as Kaylee handles the LTE/APN arena together with her line manager, Chris Boshoff, but they form part of the larger Wireless product team, and she speaks warmly about the entire Wireless division, and Vox as a whole.
“I’ve built long friendships and learned many of my professional lessons at Vox,” she says, “and I am also grateful to my first manager in the LTE team, Justin Hovener, who – it must be said! – threw me into the deep end soon after I started, but gave me early encouragement and valuable coaching.
“I really value the company’s supportive culture: Vox is the sort of organisation where people wear the brand with pride, and they support their colleagues through personal and professional challenges. I’m proud to work for Vox and be involved in this company, and I hope to continue learning and growing until I get to a point where I can become a Senior Product Manager.”
She combines her ambition with a clear sense of the day‑to‑day satisfaction she gains from continuous on-the-job learning.
A Full Circle Journey
Kaylee has had some nomadic moments in her life. Having been born in East London, she spent her primary school years there before attending high school in Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.
“My family moved to Joburg when I was 16,” she says, “and that’s where I matriculated from. Before that, I also spent a year in boarding school in Bloemfontein, which was good for me. I learned how to be more independent and became a lot more mature during my time there.
“I also embraced swimming while I was at boarding school – I’m quite tall and my mom used to say that I was born with flippers for feet! – and I even got my Free State Colours for swimming. During my time there, I also learned how to play water polo, which is a very intensive and physically demanding sport, and I tackled and completed my first Midmar Mile swim.”
[Editor’s note: More on the Midmar Mile later!]
After beginning her post-school career in Joburg, Kaylee finally returned to East London about three and a half years ago, thereby coming full circle back to the place of her birth and her early childhood: “I wanted to escape the fast pace of the big city,” she says.
“I enjoy the stunning coastal scenery around East London, and I prefer its slower rhythm and beautiful beaches. I feel that returning to this place, which feels like home, has brought me additional peace and steadiness that contributes to my well-being.”
East London, it seems, is definitely where Kaylee’s grass grows the greenest.
Living Life to the Fullest While Also Giving Back
Some additional stability comes from her partner Craig, whom she describes as being accepting, grounding and calming. As a keen home chef, she enjoys cooking for both of them, with butter chicken being Craig’s current favourite meal, and therefore a weekly staple on the dinner menu!
“But other than that, I like to experiment in the kitchen,” she adds, “and I look for recipes. So there will always be something random that I want to try – cooking with rice paper is the latest thing! And you know, they make it out on the videos to be so easy, but it’s definitely not an easy thing to work with – very finicky…”
Kaylee’s much-loved daughter lives in Australia, and they make a point of speaking to each other very often. Kaylee hopes to visit in the future; it’s at the very top of her bucket list.
Away from work and her busy kitchen, Kaylee enjoys walking on the beautiful local beaches, and she likes to plan adventures and her bucket list wherever possible. Charity work and giving back to the community are also important to her, and Kaylee is an active member of the global humanitarian network, Rotary International, in East London, where she recently completed a term as Club President.
Since her first Midmar Mile at school, Kaylee has completed another three of these challenging swimming events, which are (as the name suggests!) a full mile (or 1.6 kilometres) in length. Taking place annually at the Midmar Dam in KwaZulu-Natal, the Midmar Mile event has the distinction of being the largest open water swimming event in South Africa and, in fact, the world! In one of the events, Kaylee swam the distance to raise money for CHOC, the Childhood Cancer Foundation of South Africa.
[Editor’s note: You can click on the photo of Kaylee below to go through to the CHOC link and find out more.]
Kaylee is always keen to live life to the fullest, and her bucket‑list items include going to the island of Ibiza off the Spanish coastline, as well as scuba diving, skydiving and bungee jumping off an iconic bridge. As well as her Midmar Mile swims, she’s already taken her adrenaline levels to the outer limits by experiencing a 40‑foot SCAD freefall.
[Editor’s note: A SCAD freefall – short for Suspended Catch Air Device – is an adventure activity where a person drops from a high tower in an unattached free fall before being caught softly by a specialised giant net.]
Kaylee describes it as follows: “A local SCAD freefall – which is actually the highest in the world! – takes place at Soweto Towers in Gauteng, inside one of the former cooling towers of the decommissioned Orlando Power Station. You go up in a lift and are then unclipped and dropped into a net, so that you fall backwards into the 40-foot drop. It was absolutely amazing!”
Check out Kaylee’s ‘joy ride’ here!
Kaylee’s all-embracing approach to life is partially shaped by a sad family loss, because her father passed away when she was in her mid-teens. “Age is not gifted to everyone,” she says reflectively, “so I believe that we should live fully while we can.”
In that vein, she plans to continue growing professionally, and her aim includes growing into a senior leadership role while continuing to learn and adapt in a fast‑moving sector. She clarifies: “Technology changes and evolves constantly, and so products are evolving every day. I therefore continue learning something every day – I don’t think, especially in our telecommunications industry, that a person can ever peak. I look forward to continuing to learn and grow and take on more responsibility whenever the opportunity arises.
Kaylee pairs technical curiosity with commercial discipline, and she thrives on fixing issues and helping people. Her story combines personal growth and human connection with an equal appetite for both responsibility and life’s adventures.
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