So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO?
A News24 podcast series hosted by Bruce Whitfield that features unfiltered conversations with founders, executives, and industry leaders about the realities of leadership. Each episode explores the pressure, responsibility, and personal contradictions of running a company, without consultants or spin. The series aims to reveal the true cost of leadership beyond the title.
Episodes
Edward Kieswetter: Leading From The Ashes
Edward Kieswetter grew up in a township. He ended up running the Wilge power station, then overseeing six large coal-fired power stations for Eskom. Then FirstRand. Then a broken Alexander Forbes – which he turned around and listed on the JSE. Then retirement. Then a phone call. The SA Revenue Service had been hollowed out by state capture and needed someone who’d done it before. So he came back.
Serame Taukobong: Leading a Resurrection
“I was kicked out of a lab. They thought I’d blow it up. And I ended up in marketing.”Serame Taukobong trained as a chemist. His first employer had other ideas. What followed was Unilever, SAB, M-Net, fifteen years at MTN across Africa and then Telkom, a part state-owned telecoms relic haemorrhaging landline revenue and fighting for relevance. On day four as CEO he was in court. On day twenty-five
Sir John Lazar: Leading Ahead of the Tech Curve
John Lazar studied computer science at Wits before the personal computer existed as a consumer product. A Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, decades building and leading one of the UK's most consequential telecoms software companies, and now President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and knighted by King Charles III for services to engineering and technology. He co-founded Enza Capital to back t
Stephen Newton: Leading without a safety net
Stephen Newton didn’t have a safety net growing up and that shaped him – he rose to senior positions in three international corporates – started and failed at three businesses – one in SEO, one importing African art and a third an electronic trading company which bombed just as he believed he had cracked the algorithm. When Accenture retrenched him at the height of the global financial crisis, he
Bertina Engelbrecht: Leading From The Inside Out
Bertina Engelbrecht grew up on the Cape Flats, trained as an attorney, and became CEO of a Top 40 JSE-listed company via human resources (HR). Not the obvious route and not one she designed.She joined Clicks in 2006 as HR director, spent 16 years understanding every nerve ending in the business, and in 2022 became the first black woman to lead a listed retail group in South Africa. Clicks is the d
Sir Brad Fried: Leading by design
Brad grew up in Cape Town. A phone call to Jim Wulfensohn who later became head of the World Bank changed his life. He worked at McKinsey, ran Investec in London and was drawn into public service culminating in being appointed Chairman of the Court of the Bank of England. He has been chairman of Goldman Sachs International and in recent years has been CEO of Kirsh International – running the compl
Gary Lubner: Leading Through The Cracks
His grandfather pushed a cart of glass through downtown Johannesburg at the start of the 20th century and became chair of Belron. His father later ran the business.When Gary Lubner took it over, it had a turnover of €600 million; by the time he retired it was headed to €7 billion and employed 36 000 people.Listen to the extraordinary story of building Belron, the world’s biggest autoglass business
Mike Teke: Leading from the coal face
Mike Teke built Seriti Resources into one of South Africa’s most significant coal miners. Now he’s navigating the uncomfortable transition to renewables in a country that still depends on fossil fuels to keep the lights on. No consultants. No compromise. Just an expectation that his people show up with global best practice or don’t show up at all. This is a conversation about what genuine convicti
Natasha Sideris: Leading Tashas in a war zone
Natasha Sideris grew up running the till in her dad’s restaurant, and was studying psychology when she started a side hustle she named after herself. Now with 45 stores in five countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, she has been fighting for survival on the dangerous fringe of the Iran war. This is a conversation about what you actually find out about yourself when the thi
Letting Go Was Yuppiechef Founder’s Toughest Test
Andrew Smith and Shane Dryden built Yuppiechef from a lounge-floor startup into one of South Africa’s most recognisable online brands – then had to confront the hardest truth in founder psychology: the skills that build a business are rarely the ones that scale it. A self-confessed people-pleaser who struggled to delegate control, Smith’s real leadership test wasn’t the funding rounds or the growt
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