Who I am
I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Woolworths Food, and for most of three decades I've worked where finance, technology and operations meet. In retail those three are usually run apart. My career has been a long argument that the business runs better when they're run together: rebuilding Woolworths' core finance and merchandise systems, growing its Africa business, and now using AI to change how finance and trading teams think and act each week.
Right now
I'm leading experimentation with AI across finance and trade, with one aim: making both areas materially more effective. That plays out on three fronts. Automating low-value processes so the function stops spending its best people on work that doesn't need them. Augmenting executive skills, so decisions are better informed and made faster. And building sophisticated anticipation and evaluation capabilities, so we see what's coming and judge our options more rigorously than periodic, manual analysis allows. The use cases are real and live, not pilots: how trading teams analyse and react to trade week to week, an end-to-end rethink of procurement, and more advanced modelling in quarterly planning and reporting.
Career
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2022–
Chief Financial Officer, Woolworths Food
Responsible for finance across the Food business: buying, retail operations, online, supply chain, IT and the Africa business. Led the acquisition and integration of Absolute Pets and improved Online Food profitability by 8% of sales over two years. -
2015–2022
Chief Financial Officer, Woolworths South Africa
Responsible for finance across the South African group as an Exco member, and Rest of Africa Director across ten countries. Doubled the Africa business over seven years despite COVID-19 and delivered cost savings of over R500m a year. -
2010–2014
Head of Strategy, Planning & Performance, Woolworths South Africa
Responsible for group strategy, integrated planning, performance management and financial reporting. Led the buyback of 93 franchise stores across Africa and set up trading and governance for an R1.5bn Africa division. -
2007–2010
Head of Central Finance, Woolworths South Africa
Responsible for a 200-person Central Finance and Process Development team. Replaced the legacy mainframe with an end-to-end Oracle ERP that remains core to Woolworths today. -
2005–2007
Head of Finance Process Development, Woolworths South Africa
Responsible for finance process improvement strategy. Led finance on a R500m+ retail, merchandise and planning systems replacement, turning around early delivery concerns. -
2003–2005
Operational & Information Systems Director, The Parcel Company
Responsible for operations and IT across six branches handling over 100,000 parcels a month. Implemented a nationwide web-based tracking system giving clients real-time visibility of every parcel. -
1993–2003
Earlier career
Business development, financial management, consulting and audit roles in Cape Town, Johannesburg and London, including KPMG and Moore Stephens.
Education
- C.A. (SA), SAICA — qualified 1995
- Bachelor of Accountancy (Honours), University of the Witwatersrand, 1992
- Bachelor of Commerce, University of the Witwatersrand, 1991
- Advanced Strategic Management, IMD Switzerland, 2013