Gerald Roberto Schreiner died on Saturday, 27 June from lung and heart failure at the age of 44. As head of business development at Daily Maverick, he played an important role in the survival efforts of the organisation, taking on the unenviable task of selling politics to corporate South Africa. He came to us looking for a new challenge and to help make an impact on the world. He found and achieved both.
But he was no snob. He had time for all his friends and colleagues and supported even the most difficult, but important causes. Which is probably why he was drawn to working with us at. He was handed a monumental task to generate revenue in a declining news media industry, dominated by Silicon Valley giants and much larger incumbents.
But to talk of Gerald and not mention his personal struggles would be a disservice to his values and others who carry their own version of his pain. To not mention them as part of his story would only justify the shame it didn’t deserve. He was beset by physical and mental health issues that rollercoastered in the years we got to know him, made worse by a crippling fall that severely damaged his back and hisAs friends and colleagues, we tried to support the big man with an even bigger laugh.
We’ll wrangle with ourselves whether our nudges were enough, or whether a more direct intervention would have made a difference. The lines between employers, colleagues and friends that felt restrictive then seem embarrassingly so now. We won’t make the same mistake again and as a society, we still have far to go in how we deal with the mental health hurdles of our friends and colleagues.
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