Who I am
I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Woolworths Food, and for most of three decades I've worked where finance, technology and operations meet. In Woolies I have been fortunate to work across all three: reengineering Woolworths' core retail and online processes, growing its business and supply chains across SA and the rest of Africa, and leading a dynamic and experienced finance team.
Right now
I'm driving AI across trade and finance, with one aim: making both areas materially more effective. That plays out on three fronts. Automating low-value processes giving time back to our teams. Augmenting executive skills, making better decisions more quickly and building sophisticated anticipation and evaluation models, so we see improve our decison making. The use cases are real and live: helping trading teams analyse and react to trade every week, smart transactional automation, and advanced scenario modelling and reporting.
Career
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2022–
Chief Financial Officer, Woolworths Food
Executive Director, responsible for finance across the Food business: SA Retail, SA Food Services, Rest of Africa, Franchise and Absolute Pets. Drove the improvement on online profitability and supported the model expansion of online to nearly 10% of SA sales. Led the acquisition and integration of Absolute Pets over achieving acquisition case. -
2015–2022
Chief Financial Officer, Woolworths South Africa
Executive Director, responsible for finance across the South African group, and Rest of Africa Director across ten countries. Doubled the Africa business over seven years despite COVID-19 and delivered sustained cost savings of over R500m a year. -
2010–2014
Head of Strategy, Planning & Performance, Woolworths South Africa
Responsible for group strategy coordination, integrated financial planning, and performance management and reporting. Drove the integration and benefits realisation of the franchise store buy-back process across South Africa and 10 other African countries as well as the establishment of a management and performance framework. -
2007–2010
Head of Central Finance, Woolworths South Africa
Responsible for a 200-person Central Finance and Process Development team. Replaced the legacy mainframe with an end-to-end Oracle ERP that remains core to Woolworths today. -
2005–2007
Head of Finance Process Development, Woolworths South Africa
Responsible for finance process improvement strategy. Led finance workstream across a complex multiyear program, fundamentally changing core retail merchandise, planning systems and store sales and stock management systems, turning around early delivery concerns. -
2003–2005
Operational & Information Systems Director, The Parcel Company
Responsible for operations and IT across six branches handling over 100,000 parcels a month. Implemented a nationwide web-based tracking system giving clients real-time visibility of every parcel. -
1993–2003
Earlier career
Business development, financial management, consulting and audit roles in Cape Town, Johannesburg and London, including KPMG and Moore Stephens.
Education
- C.A. (SA), SAICA — qualified 1995
- Bachelor of Accountancy (Honours), University of the Witwatersrand, 1992
- Bachelor of Commerce, University of the Witwatersrand, 1991
- Advanced Strategic Management, IMD Switzerland, 2013