| The ladies in leadership at the ASB – Introducing Willemina de Jager |
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The question in my life is, how do you get from a little farm girl to an executive in the public sector?
There is only one answer and that is passion. The passion for accounting and travelling ensured that I enjoyed every part of my life.
Starting on a farm in the Free State and attending school at Reitz Hoërskool for 12 years, my best subject at school was accounting. After school, I spent a year in George at the South African Women’s Army College. One day came across a sign “Chartered Accountant” while wandering in the streets. Went into the office and discovered what a CA(SA) is, and immediately knew this is what I want to be one day.
After studying at Pretoria University, articles followed at the then Deloitte Haskins and Sells and the opportunity to work in their offices in London for 20 months. This was my first trip overseas which started with a boat trip in the Greek Islands on my way to London.
That is where my second passion started, travelling. During a trip to Russia I heard about the Century Club, to which you can belong when you have visited 100 countries. The rest of my working career was travelling and working in-between. Priorities are important in your mindset. With such a passion you work double the hours before and after the trips, and then progressing your career also happens.
Be true to yourself in everything you do and in everything that happen to you. My work approach was to “work yourself out of the job”, therefore ensuring what you start, complete it successfully and then you can move on. The amazing journey in my working career was that the next opportunity was on offer when it was time to move on. Travelling also enables you to be flexible and therefore my working career spanned from auditing, to lecturing, the private sector and finally the public sector for the last nearly 20 years. The public sector gives women wonderful opportunities and my best achievement was a financial director, and producing clean audit reports for a period of 10 years. That is what passion is about.
Zig Ziglar said: “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time”. It is therefore important to set basic targets for your life. My targets in life were to visit 100 travel countries before I am 60 years old, to save 40% of my earnings, and ensure I spend most of my money (the other 60%) on my passion travel.
The best award to yourself, is to look back in life and realise it was possible to reach your life-set targets - leaving the rat race (official work) at 60, after visiting more than 100 travel countries and still having the energy to enjoy life. Now for every day added to my life, I can give back to society with the experience gained in finance and governance and still travel while the body and mind can cope because the savings target was also achieved. This is all thru the grace of GOD my ultimate LOVE.
My advice to women is, define and live your own passion and never some else’s.
Willemina joined in the ASB Board in 2021, and is the Chairperson of the Operations Committee. |
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