About
From a barefoot farmgirl in Central South Africa to the CEO and Co-Founder of Crybex Technologies Ltd, Maria Elizabeth van Niekerk’s journey has been shaped by adversity, reinvention, curiosity, and a persistent belief that has carried her through decades of challenges: there must always be another way.
Physical, personal, and financial difficulties repeatedly pushed Maria to search for solutions rather than accept limitations. Over time, that search developed into a philosophy that now influences her work at Crybex: individual talent, knowledge, and experience cannot simply be transferred from one person to another, but systems, tools, and techniques can be created to help people access new possibilities.
Yet Maria does not attribute the journey entirely to strategy, perseverance, or human effort. Looking back at the convergence of people, timing, experience, technology, and opportunity, she believes the complete picture was too intricate to have been orchestrated by one person alone. For Maria, that guiding force is the Divine.
This belief does not diminish the importance of action or responsibility. Instead, she sees the two as complementary: people must do everything within their ability with what is in front of them while remaining open to the possibility that some outcomes develop beyond what can be planned, predicted, or controlled.
That perspective is closely connected to the questions driving Maria today: What if the right technology could make opportunities more accessible? And what if financial technology could ultimately offer people something even more valuable than money, greater time and choice?
Crybex Technologies Ltd was formally registered on September 29, 2025, but its technological foundations reach back more than seven years through the work of Dr Cody Plants and his team. During those years, they developed, tested, refined, and worked through complex technological challenges. Maria and Dr Cody met approximately three years before Crybex was established, a meeting she now views as one of the defining moments in a much larger story.
Maria often describes her journey as an enormous NFT artwork created one pixel at a time. Every challenge, lesson, person, decision, and breakthrough contributed another micropixel to an image she could not yet see. Meeting Dr Cody became one of its defining pixels.
Together, they shared the belief that powerful technological tools should not remain confined to large institutions or an elite few. Dr Cody’s technological expertise and years of development, combined with the dedication of the wider team, helped turn possibility into something tangible. For Maria, Crybex emerged when preparation, perseverance, technology, and timing converged in a way she believes could not have been engineered by any one individual.
“There was work we had to do, decisions we had to make and challenges we had to solve. But when I look at the complete journey, I know I could never have orchestrated it myself. Humanly, it was impossible. I believe only the Divine could have brought all those pixels together at exactly the right time.”
Maria is equally emphatic about another part of the story: Crybex would not exist as it does today without Dr Cody and the extraordinary team behind it. She does not position herself as its sole creator. Instead, she describes herself as its face and voice.
Behind that voice is a collective of developers, technologists, strategists, leaders, communicators, support professionals, contributors, and users, each adding another pixel to an evolving picture.
Today, Crybex is developing a technology-driven ecosystem incorporating AI-powered trading automation, guided by a broader vision of making intelligent financial tools more accessible. For Maria, however, financial freedom is not the ultimate destination; it is a starting point.
She defines freedom through choice, the ability to exercise greater control over time and create space for health, relationships, creativity, contribution, purpose, and passion. As artificial intelligence continues reshaping industries, economies, and everyday lives, Maria believes technology should empower humanity rather than deepen dependency.
Technology can provide tools. Tools can create opportunity. Opportunity can create choice. And choice can create space for purpose.
Being recognized among AllAroundWorlds’ “Emerging Visionaries Making Their Mark in 2026” is therefore something Maria sees as extending far beyond herself. She views the recognition as belonging equally to Dr Cody, the Crybex team, and everyone contributing to the picture they continue to create together.
Her journey carries a wider message: people can plan, build, learn, persist, and act with everything available to them, yet sometimes it is only in retrospect that the connection between seemingly unrelated challenges, people, opportunities, and moments becomes visible.
For Maria, that extraordinary artwork is far from complete. More pixels are being added, more possibilities are emerging, and the larger picture continues to unfold.
The picture is only beginning, with an invitation to innovate and inspire toward a better world for all.
