Like most of SA’s corporate sphere, the chartered accounting (CA) industry still has a long way to go before it can be deemed truly transformed. Despite the challenges, though, there’s been significant progress.
The number of black female CAs has risen from 407 in 2002 to 4 249 as of July 2015. As a champion for real empowerment, these strides make Lesego Sennelo (38) exceedingly proud and feed her passion for making a difference.
Having successfully harnessed her own CA qualification to become a formidable force in the corporate and investment world, she wears three hats on a daily basis. As the President of AWCA, an NPO focused on supporting and fast-tracking the growth of black female CAs, she’s tasked with ensuring that its initiatives – from school-level to mentorship and leadership development programmes – are in line with its vision to produce well-rounded women leaders.
She’s also the MD for AIH, a commercial investment arm founded by 60 AWCA members in 2008. “We injected our own seed capital and have shareholders. It’s a broad-based professional women’s BEE entity. “We focus on transactions that
generate wealth for the shareholders and AWCA is also a beneficiary. Besides long-term shareholder value, one of the key objectives is to create a revenue stream for the NPO to ensure it becomes sustainable over time,” she explains.
In between, she serves on a number of boards, including those of two JSE-listed companies. While this is a very full plate, it demonstrates her need to make an impact at the highest possible level, influence the strategy of organisations and foster good leadership and corporate governance.
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