Twenty years of watching capable people get stuck

Annelize brings financial expertise, commercial thinking and a healthy dose of personality to the table.

She knows the numbers, but she also knows that numbers don’t make decisions. People do.

Her approach is practical, direct and human, helping leaders make sense of complexity, challenge assumptions and see what others might miss. She brings curiosity, candour and a genuine interest in people into the room, and she asks the questions others sometimes avoid.

Because good leadership isn’t only about knowing the numbers. It’s about understanding the people behind them.

How she got here

I was 22 when I met my first real leader. She did not manage me. She developed me. She saw something I could not yet see in myself, gave me room to try, space to fail safely, and the kind of honest feedback that only somebody who genuinely believes in you can deliver.

I have carried one question through every team I have built since. Does this person know I believe in them? Not because I said it, but because of the work I put into their growth: the assignment slightly beyond where they currently sit, the conversation about their career that has nothing to do with this quarter's numbers, the standard I hold them to. A low bar is not kindness. It is the opposite.

I spent 20 years in finance, in South Africa and then in New Zealand, in industries that do not get written about much. Finance sits at the intersection of every part of a business. It sees the data, the trade-offs and the pressures before anybody else does. Which means the people in it can either report on what happened, or take part in shaping what happens next. Building teams who do the second thing is where I have put my energy.

I chaired the CIMA Australasia Area Committee for two years, representing around 5,000 members and 700 students across Australia and New Zealand, working on governance, member engagement and where the profession goes next. That work confirmed something I already thought: the most lasting thing any leader does is make the people around them better at their work, and more confident about who they are.

My mother graduated recently, at a stage of life when most people have stopped studying, and made the news in South Africa for it. She has always modelled that dedication pays off. I suspect a passion for growth might be genetic in our family. Either that or very strong role modelling. I have not decided which.