Classic Business

CEO Fleetwood Grobler

CEO Noel Doyle

Dr Thami Mazwai, advisory panel member of Sukuma Fund & former special advisor to the Minister of Small Business Development

Prof Adrian Puren, head of the Centre for HIV and STIs at NICD

Russel Lamberti, strategist at ETM Macro Advisors

Wendy Alberts, CEO of the Restaurants Association

Hellen Ndlovu, director of regulatory & public policy at SAB

Makwe Masilela, CIO of Makwe Fund Managers & Nick Kunze, portfolio manager at Sanlam Private Wealth

In this weekly feature Michael Avery gets up close and personal with South Africa’s business and political economy leaders, to uncover what makes them tick, keeps them up at night and keeps them going through the Covid storm.

This week Avery caught up with Tashmia Ismail-Saville is the CEO of the Youth Employment Service, which is a joint initiative between business and government that aims to address South Africa’s youth unemployment challenge

She has started 4 businesses, served as business school faculty, lecturing in innovation management and inclusive business, for over 8 years in SA, Rotterdam and at the Kelley School of Business in the US.

She has co-authored a book called New Markets, New Mindsets, along with several case studies and research papers based on company innovation experiences in multiple countries.

Locally and internationally, her career has focused on innovation, inclusive business, digital training and behavioural research. Some awesome apps and content have emerged from this work with over 13 000 marginalised youth clocking close to 5 million minutes of online business training on smartphones, over a year and across the country.

Absa is celebrating substantial completion of its separation programme from Barclays PLC, three years after the start. The separation, one of the largest and most complex corporate programmes of its kind, followed Barclays PLC’s 2016 decision to reduce its shareholding in the African group to a minority position. Barclays became the majority shareholder in Absa in 2005 and the two groups subsequently integrated systems, processes and policies over time. Michael Avery sits down with Absa Engineering Services CE Paul O’Flaherty, Paul, to find out how his team managed to unscramble that omelette. A herculean effort, but coming from Arcelor Mittal and Eskom, perhaps not quite a Sisyphean task as turning those ships round for O’Flaherty.