Cheryl Buss, the UK-based CEO of Absa International, on her passion for Africa and its resilient, entrepreneurial mind-set.



Cheryl Buss lives by the mantra “smooth seas don’t make for good sailors”.



It was a quote she first heard Mercedes-Benz South Africa’s former CEO Arno van der Merwe use and one that has helped her navigate countries where populism, polarization and Brexit are rife.



It is a saying that will no doubt help the CEO of Absa International deal with one of the biggest challenges the world is facing – Covid-19, a deadly virus that is sending shivers down the spines of economies around the globe.



But for now, Buss is using her mantra to gain business in the United Kingdom and the United States.



The UK-based career banker wants to take Africa to Absa’s clients in the UK and the US and bring the bank’s clients to Africa, a continent she is very passionate about.



She is working hard to convince businesses that want to invest in Africa, to bank with Absa on the continent.



&nbsp;Her passion for both the continent and her job is driving her success in this endeavor.



“I’m passionate about the business in which we work and I am passionate about the opportunity for Absa and for Africa. I think that if you are passionate about what you do and you show up positive, that tends to hopefully spread around and is hopefully catchy,” says Buss, dressed in an elegant dark blue dress.



As she explains her passion for Africa to FORBES AFRICA, Buss’s eyes light up. The continent offers experience, diversity, opportunity in agriculture, farming and the provision of food supply, she says.



Excitedly, she adds it has the world’s biggest population of youth that if harnessed correctly will see the continent beaming with new ideas and new thoughts.



Africa’s people are another element that makes her an Afro-optimist.



Explaining, she says: “It struck me going into Zimbabwe a couple of years ago… this was probably three, four years ago, just a load of poverty, you can just see the roads are in bad shape, everywhere you look, you see people with beaming smiles. You think ‘God, what are you smiling at?’. But it is just African people, we are taught to be resilient, we are taught to come back and I think that is part of the excitement through which you see this entrepreneurial development and mind-set.”



But Buss does not just plan to take the conversation about Africa to the UK and the US, where the bank recently received regulatory approval to operate and has started engaging with clients, but also to Asia.



Confidently, she says “you would have seen Charles Russon, who is our CEO of Corporate and Investment Banking, alluding to the fact that we would be, we are considering what the China strategy would be like, that would be rather our next port of call… China is our first consideration that we are working with our strategy team to see and understand what that would look like and then there is the Middle East-Asia consideration as well, so we would look to kind of have the four corners.”



High in emotional intelligence, a trait the charismatic leader believes she picked up by being open to change, resilient to failure and open to learn, she says she wants to build the international business to be in the best place ever.



“For me, I want it to be ‘wow, that business didn’t actually have a blip it carried on’.”



How does she plan to get there?



“It is about that close personal touch, I like to have close personal relationships with my teams, with the people I deal with and the people I mentor and make sure I am offering guidance at the right level and I like to build close relationships with my clients as well…



“Banks are a commodity so the real differentiator is the people you employ in the bank and how they show up to our clients.”



-Monique Vanek

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The Afro-Optimist: This UK-Based CEO On Her Passion For Africa And Its Resilient, Entrepreneurial Mind-Set

At the 2020 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit in Durban on March 6, for the first time on the same stage, South Africa’s minister Dr Naledi Pandor and her entrepreneur-daughter Dr Aisha Pandor revealed their secrets to continued success.



It’s not often we get to witness a famous mother and daughter on the same stage sharing their lessons on success and legacy. And this duo was certainly doing so for the first time.



At the 2020 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit in Durban, South Africa, on March 6, Dr Naledi Pandor, the country’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, and Dr Aisha Pandor, CEO and Co-founder of SweepSouth, engaged in a stimulating and thought-provoking panel discussion titled ‘How To Raise A CEO’.



“Thank you very much to FORBES WOMAN AFRICA for the opportunity to be here with Aisha. I don’t often get a chance to see her. So it’s lovely to see you Aisha,” opened the much-loved minister, to laughter from the audience in the large ballroom at the international convention center in Durban.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="517" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-1024x517.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44166" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-1024x517.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-300x151.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-600x303.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-768x388.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306-1536x775.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2778-e1586614377306.jpg 1623w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Gugu Mfuphi, Dr Aisha Pandor, and Dr Naledi Pandor </figcaption></figure>



The panel’s moderator Gugu Mfuphi began with a comic disclaimer that Dr Naledi has four children and that Dr Aisha is certainly “not the favorite”. As the audience lapped up the moment, the minister, with a broad smile, shook her head in disagreement, saying: “They are all my favorite!”



<figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote>“It was very clear – just nurture them in a wide range of things. That’s really important.”<cite>&#8211; Dr Naledi Pandor</cite></blockquote></figure>



There was more laughter and life lessons in store, as the audience got to see the lighter side of the minister.



“As a mother, what I tried to do is nurture her where she wished to grow, but also, to encourage her to have as much experience in a range of areas as possible. We would encourage academic work. We also encouraged sport, creativity; all my kids had to do speech and drama at school, it was very clear – just nurture them in a wide range of things. I think that’s really important,” said the senior Pandor.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="711" height="883" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44176" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped.jpg 711w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped-300x373.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped-600x745.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2806-cropped-242x300.jpg 242w" sizes="(max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px" /></figure>



While she mapped out her daughter’s career path, she later came to an important realization.



“She was really good in science. I love science but I’m bad at it. So I thought ‘God gave me Aisha, she’s going to achieve you know, because she was good at math and science’. And so she did very well at school, and went into the science faculty, did very well at the undergraduate level, was invited to carry on with an honors degree. She did very well and was asked to proceed to her Masters prior to finishing the honors. So, I was over the moon. It’s my dream, right? She continues from Masters into the PhD track, and completes her PhD with much fanfare and celebration on our part because now I’m thinking ‘here’s our senior research partner’. All these things I’ve been talking about science and technology, my child is going to live the example. Well lo and behold…”



The minister went on to offer more life-changing anecdotes about her daughter.



“One day, Aisha comes with her husband – who happens to be a software engineer – they tell us about this plan they’ve cooked up; that they’re going to start this tech start-up. And so I say to her ‘what about your research career?”. And she goes ‘this is what I want to do”. I say ‘what, but you’ve got a PhD, you could be a professor at the University of Cape Town, what are you talking about?’ And she says, ‘no mom, we’ve designed this program, we’ve started our company’. They began to tell me and her father all about it. Both of us were livid. I must tell you we thought ‘these kids are going to be a problem for us, they’ll be coming to beg for money and everything’. Few years down the line, and here we are! I’m very proud of her. I’ve learned my lesson. Let your children go where they wish to go!”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="681" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-1024x681.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44169" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Forbes-LWS2020KZN-2807.jpg 1623w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Dr Aisha Pandor</figcaption></figure>



Aisha, along with her husband, learned quickly that being a CEO will require significant sacrifice.



“I lived with my parents for probably four years after starting our business. We eventually ended up selling everything we had, to fund the business,” she said.



“Our parents brought us up to have the right moral compass. Education and the idea of learning and knowledge have been very important. My parents gave us freedom in the decisions we made based on the fact that they knew they had given us that grounding.”  



Watch the full panel discussion below: 



<figure class="wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="#LWS2020KZN: Mother &amp; Daughter - How To Raise A CEO" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kqJiWcLTgGY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>

Tag: Woman CEO

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Afro-Optimist: This UK-Based CEO On Her Passion For Africa And Its Resilient, Entrepreneurial Mind-Set

How To Raise A CEO: A Mother And Daughter Share Lessons