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Leadership celebrates inspirational womenHundreds, if not thousands of festivals on every continent celebrate women by means of parades, parties, competitions and religious ceremonies. Deeply rooted in local traditions, these celebrations honour the feminine spirit, mark women’s rites of passage and commemorate their achievements.
Women are praised for being mothers, warriors, goddesses, providers, lovers and seducers, but equally as a source of wisdom, health, and wealth.
The empowerment of women has been at the forefront of our national Liberation Struggle.
During national Women’s Month, we remember the integral role that women played in the Struggle to rid our country of the injustices of the past, and we celebrate the role that they continue to play in the entrenchment of democracy in our society today.
Over the last few years, Leadership has profiled some incredible women – from Helen Suzman, Mariam Makeba, Maria Ramos and Jane Raphealy to Wendy Ackerman, Helen Zille, Charlize Theron and Pam Golding.
In terms of women’s representation and participation in political life, our country is a leading light – not only on our continent but in the world.
Similarly, at other levels of government, in business, in civil society and in households throughout our land, outstanding women continue to prove their equal worth in society.
Leadership takes a look at some of the ‘new’ Leading Ladies and those who are rising to the challenge.
Julia Fourie
CEO of HBD Venture Capital
HBD Venture Capital is a Cape Town-based venture capital firm founded and wholly funded by African entrepreneur, Mark Shuttleworth.
Shuttleworth’s objective, when starting HBD in 2000, was to reinvest a portion of the funds received from the sale of his company, Thawte, into South African companies. This objective was driven by his belief that entrepreneurs in South Africa have the potential to start businesses with global impact.
Julia Fourie has been with HBD since its inception and, as a founding member, supported in the setting up of the organisation. She is the chief executive officer of HBD Venture Capital, is a member of HBD’s investment committee, and is a non-executive director on a number of HBD’s investments.
Julia’s career has spanned a number of industries including hospitality, financial services and human resources. It was during this time when she discovered a true passion for IT, which led her to study for a BTech in Information Technology.
Julia also has an Honours degree in Financial Analysis and Portfolio Management from the University of Cape Town. Upon completion thereof, she took up the role of leading the development team at Thawte, a digital certification authority.
During her time at Thawte, Julia established the WOT (web of trust) concept, assisted in building the architecture for the system, brought structured project management and facilitation between development and marketing departments and acted as a notary (a role she still performs today).
After the sale of Thawte to a United States consortium, VeriSign, Julia supported in the set up of HBD Venture Capital, establishing it as one of the few venture capital companies focused on funding early stage businesses in South Africa.
She initially played a key role on the investment team of HBD’s first venture capital fund, HBD Fund1, which focused on start-up businesses.
She was then promoted to CEO of HBD in 2006 and led the company’s strategic shift from start-up to early-stage companies through the launch of HBD Fund2.
Julia leads a dynamic and driven team that counts among its key successes, the profitable sale of one of HBD’s investments, Red Five Labs, as well as discovering and investing in a range of exceptional early-stage South African businesses.
These include Moyo, a contemporary African hospitality brand; OrderTalk, developers of sophisticated online ordering software; EDH, radar tracking technology pioneers; and CSense, the creators of highly sensitive trouble-shooting software.
HBD has also been instrumental in pioneering the venture capital concept in South Africa.
Julia’s passion remains IT, but she has expanded her business expertise to include developing business strategies, negotiation, mentoring of entrepreneurs as well as general and financial management.
In addition, Julia launched concepts such as The Big Idea, and is a trustee of the Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit organisation that supports innovation in education in South Africa; and a director of BSquare Communications, which, through the HIP2B2 brand, aims to inspire young South Africans to embrace their education, specifically in maths, science
and technology.
Magda Wierzycka
CEO of Sygnia Asset Management
Magda was one of the founding members of Sygnia in 2003. She is an actuary with extensive experience in the field of investments.
Prior to launching Sygnia, she was a director and head of Institutional Business at Coronation Fund Managers for six years, where she was responsible for overseeing all the day-to-day activities of the institutional side of the company, including administration, client relationships, product development, marketing, operations and quantitative analysis.
Sygnia is a leader in new-generation multi-management in South Africa and offers off-the-shelf products, customised multi-manager strategies, and pure investment administration.
The company relies on its leading edge multi-management technology, Sygnia Platinum, to provide clients with an incomparable service.
Sygnia has been appointed by institutional clients in the United States, United Kingdom and South Africa.
In 2003, when Sygnia was bought out by African Harvest (Pty) Ltd, Magda was appointed as chief executive officer of the African Harvest Group, including African Harvest Fund Managers.
Under her stewardship, African Harvest Fund Managers grew its assets under management from R10 billion to R33bn, entering the ranks of the 10 largest asset management companies in South Africa, and becoming the largest majority black-owned asset manager in the country.
She was also instrumental in enabling staff to acquire a 45% stake in African Harvest and in launching African Harvest Collective Investments.
In 2006, Magda used the opportunity created by the corporate restructuring of the African Harvest Group to acquire control of Sygnia Asset Management, Sygnia Life and Sygnia Systems.
Today, Sygnia Group’s assets under management and administration services exceed R40bn (up from R3bn at the end of 2006).
Prior to joining Coronation, Magda worked as an investments product development actuary at Southern Life, and was a director and a regional head of investment consulting
at Alexander Forbes.
Nonkululeko (Nku) Nyembezi-Heita
CEO of ArcelorMittal South Africa
At the end of January 2008, the Board of ArcelorMittal South Africa announced the appointment of Ms Nku Nyembezi-Heita as chief executive officer and member of the Board of ArcelorMittal SA. She took up this position on 1 March that year.
Nku was previously chief officer: Mergers and Acquisitions at the Vodacom Group.
She has achieved much on her journey to where she is today. She graduated as an electronic engineer from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology with a BSc Honours (Elec Eng), and an MSc (Elec Eng) from the California Institute of Technology, and holds an MBA from the Open University Business School in the United Kingdom.
Nku began her career as an engineer at the Research Triangle Park, IBM’s premier research and development facility in Raleigh, North Carolina.
After a brief stint at IBM’s Dallas, Texas office, she returned to South Africa and joined IBM South Africa in a marketing role. She established and managed IBM’s Namibian operation.
Nku was previously CEO of Alliance Capital Management (Pty) Ltd and serves on the boards of arivia.kom, Macsteel International and the Bond Exchange of South Africa among others.
ArcelorMittal South Africa is the largest steel producer on the African continent, with a current output of seven million tonnes of liquid steel per annum and planning to increase its installed capacity to 9.5 million tons by 2011.
Nku is married to a medical doctor and has two children.
Since joining ArcelorMittal SA, she has confronted the economic downturn with a thorough cost-cutting review and focusing on greater efficiencies.
She has also emphasised the need for the company to expand on its wider obligations in the environmental, social responsibility and health arenas.
Mariëtte du Toit-Helmbold
CEO of Cape Town Tourism
Without doubt, Cape Town is an awesome place.
Great beaches, excellent shopping, scrumptious food and wine... what is there not to like?
The place almost sells itself. ‘Almost’ being the operative word.
Cape Town Tourism chief executive officer Mariëtte du Toit-Helmbold is the lady who makes sure that ‘almost’ translates into ‘definitely’.
Having grown up on a nature reserve close to the whale-watching haven of Hermanus, she quickly developed a love for the environment and used this as her inspiration to make a life out of tourism.
Oddly, she majored in English and Political Science and graduated in 1996 from Stellenbosch University. It did not deter her interest in tourism, though, as she remained involved in various conservation projects and tourism route development throughout her schooling years; and she later supplemented her education with courses in Marine Tourism, Specialist Whale Guiding, Fynbos and Cultural Tourism.
There is a distinct Cape Town bias in her CV that provides more than enough evidence that she is the perfect person to spearhead the Mother City’s cultural assault on the international tourism industry.
When looking back at past accomplishments, you see things such as: she was responsible for conceptualising and developing the first Gateway Tourism Centre for South Africa based at the V&A Waterfront.
The initiative that resulted in the formation of Cape Town Tourism was project managed by her.
Cape Town’s Service Excellence Programme? Also her idea. Not to mention the integrated Cape Town safety and security plan.
That is an extremely truncated example of an rather extensive list; Mariëtte practically exists for no other reason that to promote all that is Cape Town.
As the lady herself says: “I do not see Tourism as a career or just a job – it is a way of life; it thrills me, motivates me and enthuses me.”
Tshidi Madima
Executive director at Mineworkers Investment Company
Tshidi Madima is the executive director at the Mineworkers Investment Company (MIC).
She holds a Masters degree in Accounting and Financial Economics, as well as a BA (Honours) in Accounting and Financial Management from the University of Essex, England. She has extensive knowledge of investment analysis.
Tshidi says that making a lasting difference to MIC’s beneficiary base and bringing hope to people who never expected to have access to tertiary education is a major driving force and passion within her job.
She has had a number of career highlights while working at MIC. These include the distributions to the Mineworkers Investment Trust (MIT), and all the social development and educational impacts that this money has enabled over the years.
Being part of the growth of MIC from a mere R3 million in 1995 to a balance sheet of R3 billion with assets under management of over R10bn has also been a tremendous learning experience.
Another highlight, she says, is being on the journey with MIC from being a minority shareholder at an asset level in the Peermont Global Group in 1996 to a 33% holding in the group today.
“It’s not just about the money, however. The relationships built over the years have grown from strength to strength. MIC is now taken seriously as an equal investment partner and not just a ‘nice to have’ BEE component,” explains Tshidi.
She says that her strategic goals for the year include thinking about cash generation in the portfolio to match and improve on MIC’s current distribution track record to its shareholder, and to maximise the return on its existing portfolio for improved performance.
Other goals include managing MIC’s assets in the currently challenging economic climate as well as improving internal skills. For example, she sees as a major task for herself over the next few years, increasing the internal capacity to achieve the full skills set required for MIC’s business and allowing MIC to move towards having sector specialists internally.
In addition to her directorship at MIC, Tshidi is currently a board member of Primedia, BPSA, Peermont Global Group of companies and Momentum.
Jules Newton
Founder of Avocado Vision
Jules Newton is a South African entrepreneur with passion and expertise in many different fields, mainly relating to upskilling, educating and empowering women.
Jules founded soft skills training company Avocado Vision over 13 years ago. She is also co-founder and director of Ngikwazi Field Marketing (Pty) Ltd, a company set up in November 2006 to launch and manage the retailer network (8 600) of the National Lottery.
Last year, Jules started Footprint Field Training Force, which is a project aimed at empowering and training mainly rural women in order to educate them in terms of basic financial literacy and healthcare.
Based on the success of their recent training completed for the Financial Services Board, her company has been awarded a R2.8-million project for the Financial Education Fund based in the United Kingdom.
FEF is using international money to build the access to financial services for the poor in South Africa.
The project commences in August and the brief is to find the most effective way of delivering financial literacy education to these individuals. Footprint has to reach and train 10 000 people who fit into this category.
In 2006, Jules was named Emerging Leader of the Year by the Unisa School of Business Management.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association of South Africa and was recently profiled in the book, Inspirational Women at Work by Lisel Erasmus-Kritzinger.
Jules’ work and life motivation is mainly about empowering women. Her employees bring their children to work, married couples work side by side in her office, she is happy for employees to have flexi time if their family needs this, and she is about to embark on a ‘role-sharing’ employment structure that helps two moms with small children stay in the game and add value to her organisation.
Jules is a very special lady who is truly contributing to helping improve and change South Africa.
Her community support roles include: founding member and director of Own Two Feet, a section 21 company; trustee for the Jeppe Trust; and governing body member of the Jeppe High School for Boys.
Liza van Wyk
CEO of AstroTech and BizTech training organisation
Liza van Wyk grew up in Zambia and South Africa. She matriculated in Scottburgh on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast before enrolling for and completing a degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
At the time, in the early 1990s, less than 10% of those studying engineering across all disciplines were women.
Since then, Liza has also completed a diploma in Financial Management with distinction.
She graduated and began her career with Eskom, which had afforded her a bursary as an exceptional candidate for her university studies.
She worked as an engineer around electricity transmission and distribution, and is an expert on power control systems on which she occasionally still lectures; and developed the Masters degree module for the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
In late 1998, Liza formed AstroTech from a spare room in her home and by early 2000 had already received an award from the Minister of Provincial and Local Government for “outstanding effort and considerable achievement” for the government Y2K project.
By 2001, what had begun as an engineering consultancy had grown to incorporate project management and training.
AstroTech was contracted by the government’s Industrial Development Corporation’s support programme for industrial innovation, where Liza was the first female to be appointed as technical consultant.
In 2003 she opened business at her present offices in Edenvale with two other staff. By 2007 AstroTech, under her direction, had 12 full-time staff, eight contract staff and approximately 25 trainers.
The training division offers over 60 courses ranging from Information Technology and Law, to Finance for Non-Financial Managers, Communications, Human Resources and the finer techniques of Business Management.
Liza has built the business up to the point where the turnover is now of the order of R20 million and the company has a BBBEE recognition level of 125% (level 2 contributor).
An extremely modest and humble person, Liza hopes to build hers into the largest training organisation in South Africa, and recently began training modules in Cape Town and Durban.
Despite her young age, she has achieved a remarkable amount and has not allowed her gender to ever be a barrier to her success.
Gail Curtis
CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi
Named the most powerful woman in advertising (Finweek, 2005), Gail Curtis is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi and head of its Africa Network; while also sitting on the group’s European board.
A pioneer in the advertising world, Gail was the first woman in South Africa to start her own advertising agency, The Old Shanghai Firecracker Factory, which was considered among the top 20 such companies in the country.
She was also the only women awarded the Long Term Achievement Award by Financial Mail for her innovation in the industry.
In 2005, The Old Shanghai Firecracker Factory was acquired by Saatchi & Saatchi and shortly thereafter in 2006, Gail was appointed as group CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi.
Since her appointment, Saatchi & Saatchi has gone from strength to strength, boosted to one of only eight Lighthouse Agencies in the global network in 2008.
Her reputation in the industry saw her unanimously elected to the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA), the representative body of the advertising industry, representing over 100 advertising agencies, and provides further credence to Gail’s “most powerful woman in advertising” title.
Her position in the ivory tower has not blinded her to the needs of others, however.
As a founding member and a trustee of the Youth Education Training Initiative (Yeti), which funds the Imagination Labs, Gail has taken up the commitment to bringing fresh blood into the creative industries.
The initiative promotes talented, formerly disadvantaged youth to look beyond their circumstances and to join the creative workforce.
Gail encourages others to have confidence in their ability to succeed, to be passionate about what they do and not to be afraid to have
big ideas.
Isla Galloway
CEO of Dauphin HumanDesign Group
Dauphin has become one of the most respected marketing and manufacturing companies in the South African office furniture industry.
Isla has been with Dauphin Office Seating South Africa since it opened its doors in 1994.
Much loved for her personable, solutions-based business style and her problem-solving business acumen, through her energetic endeavours Isla has made big business sit up and take note. Her ability to help corporates rethink their approach to working smart with quality office design is legendary and thanks to her, a chair will never simply be a chair.
Twice nominated Businesswoman of the Year (1998, 2000) and recipient of the BidVest Chairman’s Award for 2006/7, Isla firmly believes that “people are the backbone of your company”.
Working in the travel and tourism industry gave Isla her first career wings and after her introduction to the science of office furniture in 1988, she was set to fly.
Come 1994, Isla had joined forces with leading international brand Dauphin Office Seating and by 1996, in true crackerjack Isla style, she had become the company’s chief operating officer.
In the 12 years since, she has helped build a brand that may take its inspiration from its European parent company, but which is 100% proudly South African.
Though she undoubtedly makes her mark in the business arena, Isla puts an equal amount of energy into her personal life. Not only has she completed three Comrades Marathons, she is also a mum to a six-year old and devoted wife to husband, Laurence.
The Dauphin HumanDesign Group employs 94 people, with a factory and showroom in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The Dauphin HumanDesign Group is a member of The BidVest Group Limited.
Leadership salutes you all and wishes you a Happy Women’s Day!
Robbie Stammers
