Q & A: UFS SCHOOL OF FINANCIAL PLANNING LAW
The authority to lead
You progressed from junior lecturer to director of the School of Financial Planning Law. What most shaped you as a woman and a leader? It wasn’ t one moment but a series of deliberate choices: saying yes to harder projects, asking difficult questions, and refusing to shrink myself to fit others people’ s comfort.
Growth rarely feels safe. It often means stepping into something you’ re not yet certain you can do, and that taught me to sit with uncertainty.
What shaped me most was being underestimated and learning that the best response is simply to do good work until the assumption becomes untenable. I also had mentors who taught me competence and confidence isn’ t the same thing.
What have you learned about establishing authority in both the academic and financialservices environments? Both worlds can be quietly hierarchical, and both can mistake confidence, or simply being the loudest in the room, for expertise.
Authority isn’ t announced; it accumulates through consistency: arriving prepared, following through, and making unpopular calls when the evidence supports them. I also stopped apologising for taking up space. I once softened every opinion with a question mark. Now I say what I think clearly, and people trust that far more.
Women are more visible in financial services and higher education. Has that translated into real influence? Visibility and influence aren’ t the same thing. More women in senior positions matters because representation shapes what the next generation believes is possible.
But influence is about who sets the agenda, controls budgets, and decides what is rewarded. We’ ve made real progress in the spotlight, but slower progress in the rooms where budgets and strategy are decided. Closing that gap is the next frontier.
Where do the greatest barriers to women’ s advancement still remain? There are two, in my experience.
26 sabusinessintegrator. co. za