COVER FEATURE: CLG GLOBAL
Raised on range and rigour
Professional advisory firm CLG Global executives Oneyka Cindy Ojogbo and Strayson Vermeulen tell SA Business Integrator just what it takes to lead an agile pan-African enterprise operating in traditionally male-dominated spaces while setting the standard for rigour and representation.
You became CLG’ s CEO at a relatively young age. What prepared you to lead across markets and professional cultures? Nobody hands you a manual for this kind of leadership. I have been fortunate to work in world-class firms and to forge my career contributing to exceptional transactions. So, my preparation has been from the work itself, not any single credential. Managing oil and gas, energy, and infrastructure transactions, among others, across more than 30 African jurisdictions, and globally, means operating within different legal systems, regulatory cultures, and expectations of what leadership looks like, often within the same week, from New York to Johannesburg and Lagos to Abidjan and Cairo. That kind of range is not taught. It is built, deal by deal, through disciplined exposure to complexity.
It has also required strong teams, an important and often underappreciated aspect of this role. No single person holds the local insight needed across multiple countries. What has prepared me most is learning to build and trust a network of people, and to lead in a way that harmonises very different working cultures under one coherent standard.
As a woman in energy, finance, and commercial law, how did you establish authority in traditionally male-dominated spaces? Through competence, consistency, and visibility. Early in my career, I understood that credibility in this industry is earned through the quality of the work and the discipline behind it, not only through asserting a position in the room. I made a point of mastering all the technical details, whether that was regulatory frameworks, deal structuring, or fiscal terms, so that the substance of my work spoke first.
I also made a deliberate choice to remain visible, to stay in the rooms where decisions are made, rather than step back from them. Representation matters, but it has to be paired with rigour. Over time, that combination changes how a room engages with you.
CLG is expanding beyond oil and gas into broader advisory services. What does that shift require from you as a leader? CLG started as a specialised oil and gas firm but has since transitioned into a full-suite legal, tax, and business advisory firm. That kind of growth does not happen by accident. It is a testament to the vision of my predecessors. The transition to becoming a pan-African professional advisory firm has required ambition, discipline, grit, and resilience. Scaling any business demands clearer internal structures, stronger central oversight, and greater consistency, and for CLG specifically, it demands preserving the agility that has always defined us.
As CEO, this shift asks me to think institutionally rather than transactionally, to build systems and successors, not just close deals. Growth at this scale will define CLG for years to come and we are ready to disrupt the industry
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