Bukkie moved into the role of VP – Finance and Business Intelligence at Prospera Credit Union in April 2022, after leading and transforming the internal audit function into a ‘partner and advisor’ since she joined the CU in Aug 2020. In her new role, she is part of the Prospera Leadership team where she is deploying her collaboration and multi-disciplinary skills to work with her peers in achieving the strategic and operational goals of the organisation.
She is a business leader with over 19 years of consulting and audit experience. In her past role with SNG Grant Thornton in Johannesburg, she was a Partner and Director, leading large complex portfolios and providing insights to Boards, Audit Committees, and the C-Suite. She played a big role as an advisor enabling clients’ anticipation and management of both current and emerging risks, transforming their internal controls, and fostering an effectively governed environment.
Within the firm, she proactively led business growth with a proven track record of cross selling the firm’s services; market visibility; quality and risk management; staff development and training. She represented Advisory on the Risk Management Committee of the firm (RMC).
An active player in the industry, she was a board member of the Leadership Academy of the IIA (SA) as well as Chair of the Occupational Qualifications Committee. She was also a panel member of the ACCA (South Africa). She was part of the Community of Expert Practitioners (CEP) that redeveloped the national occupational qualifications for Internal Audit in South Africa. She was one of the esteemed judges on the Annual Global CFO Competition from 2016 – 2019. She is currently a board member and Treasurer for Impact Toolbox, an NGO in Canada.
Her skills span across internal audit, risk identification, assessment and management, corporate governance reviews including board assessments and training, controls transformation, quality assurance review of internal audit functions, training, compliance audits and consulting, accounting, and tax. Her industry experience is both in the public and private sectors.
Take us down memory lane of your early years
The initial years of my life was typical of the middle income family lifestyle in Nigeria in the 70s and 80s. Born to educated civil servant parents, I attended very good private primary schools, but our nuclear family lifestyle took a different turn when my dad married other wives. As time went on, our care and education soon fell mostly on my mom.
With her meagre salary as a secondary school teacher, I watched her put in her best to feed, clothe and educate us. Most times, her salary was already finished by the 3rd day of the month, and we would go through a credit cycle until month-end when she could pay neighbours who sold us foodstuffs on credit. That shaped my view of life and made me believe strongly in the empowerment of a woman.
It has been a major propelling factor in my life. No matter how able and caring a man is, I am of the view that the woman should also ensure she is able to cater comfortably for the family. I also wanted so much to make my mom proud and I believe she must be, God rest her soul.
Tell us about Prospera Credit Union and becoming VP, including your roles
Prospera Credit Union is a financial institution. It is a similar system to the formal cooperatives that we had in Nigeria in the 70s and 80s. It does most things that a bank does – loan you money for buying houses, cars, setting up a business; takes deposit from you for safe-keeping and pays you interest on the deposit; provides you with financial planning, wealth advice, insurance, registered plans and so on.
Most importantly, we serve members who are community people and clients of the credit union, hence there is a strong investment back into the community with support for local organisations and projects. I am a child of the community and how ironic that I get to work for an organisation that is invested in the development of the community.
On my role, I am currently the VP for Finance, Business Intelligence and Procurement. Up till March this year, I was heading up the Internal Audit Portfolio, initially as a Director and then becoming a VP in October last year. My current portfolio includes financial reporting, planning and analysis, data analytics and insights as well as procurement. Having this opportunity to move between portfolios is reflective of an organisation that believes in the transferability of leadership skills.
19 years of being a business leader in consulting and audit experience, what have you learnt?
I have learnt a lot. I have learnt that your strength as a leader is in how much you empower the people that you are leading. If you are the only one who knows something and that does not change over time, then you should re-examine your leadership. It is all about raising others who can also become leaders in their own right; paving the way for others to thrive and succeed.
Inspiring others to want to follow where you tread. Leadership is also about continuously learning and acknowledging that you do not know everything. However, you must be able to surround yourself with the people that have the knowledge to work with you to achieve your vision and goals, otherwise you will not be effective as a leader. I could go on and on. There is so much to learn and accumulate on this leadership journey.
Share with us on being Director/Partner at SNG Grant Thornton in Johannesburg
Oh, wow! I have done some brave things in my life but two stick out for me. One of them is leaving Deloitte eight years ago, to join what was SNG Protiviti at that time, until it became SNG Grant Thornton. However, it turned out to be a brave decision that accelerated my path and exposure to leadership.
I got thrown in the deep end and hence I learnt to swim so quickly, leading my portfolios all on my own as an Associate Director. I also got the opportunity to really help an organisation transform as I joined them shortly after the merger of the two biggest black audit firms in the country, they were on a journey of building up.
I had the leeway to influence decision making on strategy, policies, human resources and so on as well as to take actions to help reposition the internal audit function, at that time. The empowerment was really good, I took advantage of the opportunities afforded to me, contributed to the organisation, but also built up my own personal brand as a thought leader in the industry, giving presentations at conferences and sitting on the boards of professional associations. I became a full Partner within less than 2 years of joining the firm.
How did you represent advisory on the Risk Management Committee (RMC) of the firm?
The Risk Management Committee of SNG Grant Thornton was a committee that oversaw quality and risk control processes including compliance with the regulatory requirements i.e. the standards to which we held our units, how we perform our work, how we take clients on and so on.
Each service line in the organisation – audit, advisory and so on, had a representative and because of the work I had undertaken with the team in revising our quality and control standards for the advisory division, I was afforded the opportunity to be the representative of the advisory leadership on the committee.
Tell us about Impact Toolbox and your role
I am a member of the Board of Impact Toolbox, and also now appointed as the board treasurer to assist with oversight on finances. My history with youth community development goes way back to the late 90s when I was at the Obafemi Awolowo University.
I was involved in a number of student leadership roles and programs. One of them eventually took me abroad for the first time to participate in a world youth exchange program – 3 months in the UK and 3 months in Ede, Osun State.
I always say that program opened my eyes to the role of youths in community development and hence when the Founder of Impact Toolbox approached me to be one of the board members, I was eager to support young people in any way that I could.
Share your experience at Deloitte SA with us
Deloitte SA was amazing. I am still filled with a sense of pride when I think of the ambience of the environment. One of my fondest memories is the free lunch you can eat when you are in the office (I hope they still have that). The organisation is quite mature in terms of processes and the opportunities that one can access.
I loved the innovation and brainstorming rooms and facilities you can access. I had the privilege to work with very smart people who were visionaries in their field. My time there was memorable. I handled very complex portfolios and a number of business development opportunities, even at senior manager level. The organisation is caring and at that time, was really committed to transformation.
There were a number of changes in my division over time and at a point, I wanted my career to take a different trajectory. The decision to leave the organisation, when SNG head-hunted me, was one of the most difficult I have made in my career.
What memories of being at PwC Nigeria and lessons learnt would you want to share?
Oh! PwC Nigeria was absolutely brilliant. I think if I did not leave the country, I would still probably be there. I got my first culture shock when I joined them 19 years ago and we were told to call all our superiors by name. Oh! Lord, how do I call all the elderly managers and partners by name? But that set me up for the western culture when I eventually moved to South Africa.
At PwC Nigeria, the people were particularly caring, I was not mobile initially, and there was always someone to give me free rides to and fro work. They were also very fair in terms of compensation, I always felt on top of the world whenever we got increase letters. I learnt a lot of lessons from my superiors there. I was lucky to work with people who planned for the future and were brilliantly financially savvy.
I was in Tax and Corporate Advisory and one of my senior colleagues advised me to write ACCA and make myself global, which I did. I was also introduced to fixed investments with private houses and this fetched me good returns on my monthly salary back then.
When I was leaving Nigeria, a colleague advised me on how to divide up my money, where to put it and how to plan the portion to take along with me. Overall, my time at PwC Nigeria was one of my most outstanding working experiences. And to think I nearly passed up the opportunity to work with them, if not for the timely advice of a friend.
Are there peculiar challenges with women on boards/C-Suite?
There are a number of peculiar challenges with women on boards and C-suite. One of them is balancing the societal expectations on us as women whilst wanting to fulfil our personal career goals and aspirations. This is especially difficult when one has young kids.
Having that balance is challenging. On this one, I normally tell women to look for and accept good help when they find it. We can’t always be “superwoman”. There is also the challenge of the imposter syndrome. It is real and although as women, we have a lot to contribute, we sometimes doubt our own abilities.
My solution on this one is that we need to continuously build ourselves up in knowledge and skills, acknowledge the doubts in our mind and deal with them. Having coaches, mentors, sounding boards and so on also helps. They give us a fresh perspective and help in validating our opinions on whether we are on the right track or not.
What can be done to get more women on boards?
This has to be intentional. Roadblocks for women are more when compared to men. It takes us longer because we stop to have children, to build our homes and then we want to play catch up. Sometimes, we have not had the same exposures as our male counterparts as we could not leave the home to attend that leadership program in Harvard or the strategy one in Oxford.
I would advise organisations to intentionally seek out women who have potential and then invest in developing them. If they cannot travel, how about getting them on to virtual programs? Getting them coaches and just going that extra mile in helping to shape the needed boardroom skills.
Also providing opportunities to work flexibly to enable a balance of life and work, by doing that, more women can be retained on the career path and won’t have to choose between their families and their careers.
One thing that I have noted about female leaders is the diligence and the desire to excel, because we know that we are already on a back-foot, we want to do things at a 150%, we therefore just need the opportunities that are not just for ready-made women leaders but those that are committed to investing in building a new crop of female leaders.
What role is internal audit expected to play in the future of organisations?
Internal audit should be an advisor to their organisations. If well set up and adequately resourced, they should be able to help the organisation with anticipation of risks that may affect their strategies as well as an evaluation of the strength of current controls and recommendations on additional controls that are needed for the future.
The beauty of internal audit is that it can focus and advise on any area of the business.
What is the importance of having a risk culture and how can it make or break the achievement of strategic objectives of a company?
Having a risk culture is really critical to the success of any organisation. When an organisation sets up its strategic imperatives, it must ask itself “what can go wrong”?
This is where risk identification comes in. Having a good risk culture, implies that everyone in the organisation understands that risk management is a role for everyone and in everything that they do, they need to apply their mind to what could prevent the achievement of the objectives of the organisation.
This understanding and awareness will help such management to set up the needed controls to manage their risk effectively. It is quite evident that not having a risk awareness mind-set and understanding across the organisation means that the mindfulness of what can cause failure may not be there. This is why some companies fail.
Why did you leave Nigeria?
I had to leave because my husband was living in SA and after going to and fro for a couple of years, the time came when I needed to do the needful and join him. PwC was gracious enough to arrange for me to transfer from the Lagos office to the South African Office.
What burdens your heart most about Nigeria and what change do you hope for?
I am the typical “Girl who left Nigeria but Nigeria never left her”. 17 years outside the country, and I still eat something Nigerian everyday. My love for our country and culture is so deep. My heart is burdened by the state that the country has degenerated into.
When I left, I knew people who used to say they will never leave the country no matter what and today, some of those people have left. The insecurity and loss of communal love is the most painful. I took so much pride in my people being kind, accomodating and respectful, but what we hear now shows that the country has changed dramatically.
The sense of community is not what it used to be and the crime stats is appalling. The change I hope for, is better security for everyone, more control over crime, better living conditions – electricity, road, water, healthcare and basic amenities.
What memories of IITA Ibadan would you want to share? What is your view on NYSC scheme? What can be done to make it better?
IITA Ibadan was also good. That was 20 years ago. I made some good friends during that service year. I believe the one year mandatory experience is good for new graduates to integrate into the world of work. My view is that the NYSC scheme is relevant in some aspects but has outgrown its usefulness in others.
When it was created, the main intent was to have graduates sojourn to other geographical regions in Nigeria as part of learning and nation building. With the current state of security, quality of roads and transportation in Nigeria, the scheme has turned into something dreaded by parents and graduates alike.
Many youth corp members now lose their lives whilst travelling or during unrest in their areas of primary assignment. Whilst I believe the program itself should be preserved to provide that one year mandatory work experience for youth corps members, I would say that it should be modified to allow everyone to stay in their own geographical areas.
What are you looking forward to?
I am looking forward to a future where women of my generation and my daughter’s generation have no limitations, where we are supported by a society that understands that women have a lot to give and one where we show that we can excel at every opportunity that we get.
Final words
I encourage every woman reading this to identify the limitations within their environments and strategise on becoming the best that they can be. Your future does not have to mirror your past. Look for opportunities to be mentored, coached and supported.
Allies, both male and female are important to have, on a career journey. We need cheerleaders who help us get back on our feet when we fall, make sure you have those around you. Accept good help, we cannot do it all on our own, some things will have to give sometimes and when we are supported by good people, they help us where we fail.
