Everyone wants the title. Almost no one is ready for the truth behind it. This is a News24 podcast series for people who build things – and for those who want to understand what leadership actually costs. Hosted by Bruce Whitfield, each episode is an unfiltered conversation with people who have sat in the chair: founders, executives, disruptors and industry leaders who have faced the pressure, responsibility and personal contradictions that come with running something bigger than themselves. No consultants. No spin. No highlight reel. Just honest conversations about the distance between what l
Absa has churned through six chief executives in six years. Kenny Fihla looked like a Standard Bank lifer – and then Absa came calling, and he walked away from comfort into one of the most scrutinised leadership jobs in African banking. One year in, headline earnings are up over 12% and profit has hit R25.6 billion. The turnaround is real. This is a conversation about what it actually takes to stabilise an institution that has forgotten what stability feels like.
This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank.
Follow all the episodes here.
17 Aug 2026
Adrian Gore: Leading on Purpose
Adrian Gore started Discovery as a health insurer in 1992.
Today it covers the full gamut of financial services from insurance to banking – has a 25% stake in China’s biggest private health insurer Ping An Health, owns the third biggest health insurer in the UK with 2 million customers, and its Vitality Rewards programme is attached to health insurers in 40 markets, impacting 50 million lives.
It all comes down to four key principles.
This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank.
Follow all the episodes here (https://specialprojects.news24.com/so-you-think-you-want-to-be-a-ceo/index.html).
Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.
10 Aug 2026
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. This is a conversation about a particular kind of leader – one who doesn’t seek out the burning buildings, but keeps finding himself at their doors and walking in anyway.
This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank.
Follow all the episodes here.
Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.
3 Aug 2026
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 a presidential proclamation wiped R3 billion off the share price before he’d received his first pay cheque.
Today Telkom’s mobile business is the third largest in South Africa and one of the few state-linked companies making money. It turns out the man they threw out of the lab was exactly what the building needed.
This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank.
Follow all the episodes here.
Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.
27 Jul 2026
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 the African tech founders most investors haven't found yet. This is a conversation about what it means to spend an entire career one step ahead of where the world is going and whether that's a gift, a discipline, or simply what happens when you refuse to look anywhere but forward.
20 Jul 2026
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 formed the global consultancy Elixirr - listed on the London stock exchange with more than 700 people working in major markets worldwide.
He accepts that people see him as “Marmite” – you either love him or don’t – and he is okay with that.
13 Jul 2026
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 dominant health and beauty retailer in southern Africa with one of the most envied pharmacy networks on the continent.
This is a conversation about the slow, deliberate accumulation of influence and why the person who knows the most about the people in a business sometimes turns out to be the best person to run it.
This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank.
Follow all the episodes here.
Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.
6 Jul 2026
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 complex Affairs of Africa’s richest man and driving the deal to sell Natie Kirsh’s Jetro Cash and Carry in the USA for $29bn.
29 Jun 2026
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.
This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank.
Follow all the episodes here (https://specialprojects.news24.com/so-you-think-you-want-to-be-a-ceo/index.html).
Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.
22 Jun 2026
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 conviction looks like in an industry where everyone is hedging, and why being unreasonable is the only honest response to a global crisis.
This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank.
Follow all the episodes here (https://specialprojects.news24.com/so-you-think-you-want-to-be-a-ceo/index.html).
Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.
15 Jun 2026
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 thing you built gets taken apart by forces you never saw coming.
This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank.
Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.
8 Jun 2026
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 growth – it was learning to get out of his own way. This is a conversation about the gap between building something and running something, and why the exit cheque is sometimes the most honest feedback a founder ever gets. This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank. Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.
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