Gayle Adlam, Editor, KwaZulu-Natal Top Business Women 2023
The theme this year is ‘Celebrate the Extraordinary’. Through this initiative, we aim to place some of our KZN women in the public eye and to honour
their ‘extraordinary’ successes.
Each woman participating is making a noticeable impact on their respective industries and communities. These women are innovators and role models who are leaders in their fields and who inspire others to follow in their footsteps.
Significantly the majority of the women participating this year commented that this recognition means that other people are watching their efforts, which is a huge endorsement that they are being ‘seen’ and ‘heard’.
In addition, being recognised as a KZN Top Business Women provides each participant a platform to further many of their goals as well as to network with other extraordinary women with a view to create synergy to implement a range of projects.
The vision of KwaZulu-Natal Top Business Women is to each year celebrate these women’s achievements through a range of media – webinars,video, photography, and the written word.
As such, all the womenwere interviewed on camera and asked the same questions:
How did you get to where you are today?
What are your business and/or community achievements?
Who or what has motivated or inspired you and why?
What challenges have you experienced and how have you overcome these?
What are your future goals?
What advice would give to young women who are following in your path?
How do achieve some balance in your life?
These answers to these questions were used as the basis for the writeups in this book and for the production of the videos. Some of the key themes that emerged, among others, are:
Embracing one’s feminine side as a personal strength
Recognising failureas a learning curve
To just start your journey
Being true to oneselfand being authentic
Holding on to one’svalues and integrity
Breaking perceived limitations
Having a strong supportstructure
The importance of uplifting other women
Finding time to connect with family and other important people in one’s life
Many of the women are passionate about being good role models and strive to inspire other young women (and men) that with some effort attaining one’s dreams and goals for one’s own life is possible. And it is important to have big dreams.
The team at KwaZulu-Natal Top Business would like to thank each of the women featured, for the time that they have offered us and the insights that they have shared. Without their willingness to tell their stories, this initiative, and our accompanying video series and would not be possible. And I am sure you will enjoy reading their stories and watching their videos!
A special thank you to our photographer Brendan Bromfield for the beautiful portraits, which are featured in this book, and which are presented to each participant. He made sure that we all enjoyed the sessions in front of the camera.
Also, a special thank you to Daniel Chappe who has spent many hours filming interviews as well as editing the footage to produce the videos that are available on our website: www.kzntopbusiness.com as well as on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media platforms.
We sincerely thank Mangwanani African Spa and their staff for their support and for use of the beautiful Mangwanani Signature Spa The Capital at Zimbali for the photo and video sessions. We were so inspired by the space to relax that we have kept the Mangwanani touch for the photos in this book. We all need to strive for balance in our lives – it’s what makes us human!
Many thanks go to Anneme Coetzee for her time and effort in facilitating each of the three webinars. These provided our participants an opportunity to introduce themselves and answer a few questions. Theses webinars are on our Youtube channel www.youtube.com/c/KZNTopBusiness
Lastly would like to acknowledge the various people who have facilitated the process and helped with setting up interviews, handling queries, and writing profiles.
Our heartfelt thanks go to David White and the team at DRG and BusinessFit SA for their sponsorship of the KwaZulu-NatalTopBusinessWomen2023. We hope that this initiative will continue to inspire other women.
