South Africa has a stream of black executives who still have a lot to offer but who are not occupying top positions.
The inaugural 2021 Sanlam Gauge, a report on the B-BBEE released by Sanlam Group, paints a bleak picture about the status of transformation in SA’s boardrooms. According to the report, there are still too few black executives occupying management positions in South African businesses. Only tourism, financial services, property, marketing, advertising and communications and agriculture, are achieving better BBB-EE recognition.
The executive search space in South Africa continues to be dominated by global executive search firms. To imagine it took a female black-owned firm 13 years of perseverance to get its first top black executives into a board, is stuff
that legends are made of. Yoni Titi, founder of a 100% black women-owned recruitment and executive search firm, Yoni Titi Human Capital plans to bring some diversity in SA’s boardrooms. Her company is the first black female-owned search company that targets black executives. Titi has successfully catapulted several business leaders to leadership, including candidates such as renowned executive banker, Kennedy Bungane, as the new CEO of African
Bank .
Titi herself is a qualified executive in her own right, having graduated with an MBA from Edinburgh Business School. Her corporate experience spans 19 years of working for esteemed brands such as Bowman Gilfillan, Investec Bank and First National Bank. She is also a qualified leadership coach with a qualification from Georgetown University , Washington DC and she has coached several leaders in both the USA and South Africa.
Her last corporate role was Business Manager to former FNB CEO, Michael Jordaan. “I learnt a lot under this legendary leader. I immediately posted on my MBA that I worked with him and my real experience and skills were in Law – yes with a piece of paper that proved I gained an international MBA. But the CEO Office of MJ gave me so much holistic application of what Business School teaches you – I was indeed hungry to learn,” Titi tells TransformSA.
Commenting on awarding the recruitment mandate to Yoni Titi Human Capital Evolution the chairman of African Bank, Thabo Dloti, says the Bank as a champion for transformation in the corporate and business sector supports the emergence of black and women-led and professional services providers in financial services.
“Yoni has earned her stripes as an executive recruitment specialist. We have experienced this first hand with other appointments elsewhere in the bank. When the opportunity to recruit for the top job in the bank arose, we had no
hesitation in awarding her with the mandate to search for the best candidate to lead African Bank. We are proud to have trusted her with this crucial recruitment exercise and we were impressed with the energy and professionalism
she displayed throughout the process,” says Dloti.
Titi says this was her toughest assignment by far. “I was of course also made nervous by the noise in
the market and appreciated how this assignment had the interest of many stakeholders. I began with a market mapping exercise of top African candidates who had the right combination of skills set to lead a bank which, as part of its strategy, is to shift from micro-lending but be a competitor to other Tier 1 Bank and also use product innovation, customer centricity and its existing client base for more growth,” she recalls.
According to Titi, market mapping involves getting the client a long list of potential candidates that meet the role requirements. Once the information has been presented to the board, it allows them to come up with their
first shortlist.
“Favoured by 13 years of experience in recruitment, fortunately, I had some names in mind that have such proven track records. After I had shortlisted from the long list to 5 candidates it was then up to the board to make a final shortlist of 3 candidates. As this is a regulated appointment requiring sign-off by the Prudential Authority the stakes were high. The search was really for the Rolls Royce in banking,” she says. “Equipped with a thorough briefing by the board,
I was able to use the information and the vision of the bank to market. One lesson I learnt in the process is “you will never know if you don’t ask”.
That call to Kennedy Bungane to position this role still brings me such laughter. It did feel like a 6-year-old being called to the Principal’s office! With his personality, humour and approachable manner, Kennedy made this easy and here we are with African Bank having earned the bank the top candidate for the role,” Titi reveals.
The next phase of the recruitment for Titi and her team was the psychometric assessments that helped the bank understand not only the strengths of the top candidate, but also their preferred working style and any areas of
development.
“This is very crucial for a Board to understand and know how best to work with their CEO in appreciation of this kind of feedback. The final step would be the Board receiving psychometric feedback and when they were satisfied the proposal for the appointment of the CEO needs the approval of the Prudential Authority. The market suspense was high at this stage as the onus and level of confidentiality on a market-sensitive placement is higher.“
The latest placement is yet another C-Suit of the CEO of ECDC, we wait eagerly for the announcement. The recognition of C-Suit black executives is definitely rising
