Our facilitators
ADV. ANNAMARIE VAN DER MERWE
Advocate Annamarie van der Merwe (B.Iuris, LLB, LLM) has been a corporate lawyer and company secretary of companies in the listed environment for more than 30 years. She is a member of the King Committee on Corporate Governance for South Africa and was actively involved in the writing of King III, focusing specifically on the chapter dealing with boards and directors.
Annamarie is also a well-known presenter of workshops for directors and company secretaries on issues such as board effectiveness, statutory duties and liabilities and effective meetings. Annamarie was extensively involved in the review of King III and the preparation of the King IV™ report as part of a dedicated task team mandated by the King Committee for this purpose. She is executive Chair of FluidRock Governance Group and a non-executive director of a number of companies, including Pick n Pay Stores Limited and the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy NPC.
MARIANNE FOURIE
Marianne Fourie is a professional company law consultant and Attorney of the High Court. Her academic qualifications include B.Comm (Law); LLB. Her core skills include company secretarial work, governance, compliance and she enjoys training people. Being involved in compliance she had to deal with the myriad of laws that regulate businesses and this understanding she uses to assist boards and members.
CRISNA ERASMUS
Crisna Erasmus is a governance professional who advises governing bodies on governance best practice and compliance. Prior to being affiliated with FluidRock, Crisna has worked in the company secretarial industry for a number of firms since 2005. During these years she gained extensive experience with organisations of all sizes in a vast array of industries. As such, she understands how the implementation of good corporate governance practices could and does benefit any organisation.
SIHLE NCUBE
Chartered Secretary and a Certified Director. She holds active membership with the Chartered Secretaries Southern Africa, the Institute of Directors Southern Africa and The Ethics Institute. Sihle is Governance Consultant at FluidRock and has more than 10 years of experience in the company secretariat environment mainly in the public sector and was managing a team of administrators during her tenure at a National Department.
Ronelle Kleyn
Ronelle Kleyn is a businesswoman and governance professional who understands the importance of organisations reaching their strategic objectives. Her academic qualifications include B.Proc, LLB, B.BA (Business Administration and Mandarin), ACIS. She has been involved with companies at board level as director and advisor as of 2012.
SHIRLEY BRAHAM
Shirley Braham (FCIS) has in excess of 30 years’ experience in our industry and has worked at several audit practices (Centner Levine; Price Waterhouse, Deloitte & Touche) as a secretarial consultant and was appointed a manager of Deloitte & Touche’s company secretarial department in the mid 1990’s.
ANDREA VAN DER WESTHUIZEN
Andrea van der Westhuizen (B.Com, Post graduate diploma Corporate Law) heads the statutory division of FluidRock. She is passionate about the technical aspects of statutory compliance and has an in-depth understanding of statutory and administrative processes and how best to achieve the desired results in the most time efficient manner whilst maintaining high standards of service delivery.
HARRY PRETORIUS
Harry Pretorius is an attorney and notary public, internationally certified compliance professional and ethics officer with a proven track record of leveraging legal, compliance and ethical risk management expertise to deliver mission critical results for various multinational organisations and is constantly alert to opportunities to rectify and improve risk management, business systems and compliance procedures.
Harry is experienced as the Head of Compliance, FSCA registered Compliance Officer, Company Secretary, Group Money Laundering Control Officer, Audit Lead, Ethics Officer, Legal Counsel, and serving on EXCO, MANCO, STRATCO and various board committees with more than 20 years experience. He has experience in several industries and specialities including financial services, insurance, healthcare, legal, compliance, internal audit, accounting, technology. Harry exercises strong commercial judgement that aligns seamlessly with industry-relevant legislation, regulation, risk and ethics. He is keen to share his knowledge on risk and compliance and is a facilitator on our various Risk and Compliance courses.
STEPHANIE BROWN
Stephanie has over 20 years’ experience in commercial law. She was a commercial litigation lawyer in the Toronto office of global law firm Fasken Martineau from 1991 to 1998 and held various South African and global roles for Royal Dutch Shell from 1999 to 2021. Her roles with Shell included: Associate General Counsel responsible for Shell’s Downstream businesses in India, Pakistan, Egypt, Oman, Saudia Arabia, Spain, Italy, Turkey and South Africa; lead counsel for Shell’s global Retail business and Head of Legal for South Africa. Her responsibilities included advising the business on matters of ethics and compliance.
Stephanie is passionate about animals and the power of individuals to contribute to a better world. She has been involved with nonprofits since 2011 and is a co-founder of Kusudi La Adventures launched in 2021. Kusudi La is a for impact (non-profit) company which uses adventure to raise funds for charitable goals, primarily in animal welfare. Stephanie has climbed Kilimanjaro four times and her ambition is to build a sustainable adventure fundraising model that can provide sustainable and impactful funding for animals and communities.
Stephanie moved to South Africa from Canada in 1999 with her South African husband, Advocate Paul Farlam. She has four rescue dogs: Jess, Juno, Ollie and Maggie. When Stephanie is not on purposeful adventures or walking her dogs, she consults in the area of corporate governance with a particular focus on business ethics. Education Stephanie holds a B.A. from the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario 1986), a Certificat en francais langue seconde from Universite Laval (Quebec, Quebec 1986), an LL.B. from the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, Ontario 1989) and an LL.M. from Columbia Law School (New York, New York 1997).
INE-LIZE TERBLANCE
Ine-lize Terblanche is the founding director of inFidi, a consultancy that provides specialised, yet cost effective support towards tax governance, tax risk management and greater tax transparency. She is particularly interested in the interplay between governments, the public and corporates in sustained value creation and domestic resource mobilisation and the ability of an organisation to build a relationship based on trust and transparency with internal and external tax stakeholders. For the past 17 years she has been involved in tax risk advisory across various industries. She spent 9 years at PwC where she lead the tax function effectiveness team and 5 years at Vodacom where she was responsible for the Group’s tax governance and stakeholder engagement across Africa.
Since 2018 she has worked as an independent contractor to assist large organisations establish a future ready tax function in the current global tax landscape. Ine-lize has both authored various articles and participated in panel discussions on the topic of tax governance and tax transparency. She is and non-executive director of OTB Advisory where she focusses of strategy, governance and integrated reporting. Ine-Lize is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa and holds a Master’s degree in Tax and Commercial Law. She holds certificates in Senior Leadership Development and Mentoring from WITS Business School, a PROCI Certification in Change Management and has completed various trainings in corporate governance, integrated reporting and sustainability. She is also a member of the Institute of Risk Managers of South Africa.
SONJA PRONK
As training manager of the Voice Clinic, I discovered my passion for developing and empowering others approximately 24 years ago. My combined experience from a service delivery background and training and development coupled with academic qualifications in both psychology, communication and speech coaching and drama, secured the platform for influencing and altering my learner’s thoughts, behaviour and actions.
Ultimately my goal is for the student to not only acquire and implement new skills but to develop the person as a whole. All training programs follow the Do–Review–Learn–Apply Model to meet participant objectives and deliver the most beneficial outcome for the learner as well as the organization. I have facilitated training for blue chip companies such as ABSA, IFC, Volkswagen, Transnet, Bigen Africa, Sasol and Momentum as well as various government departments e.g. Department of Labour, Health, Auditor General, DTI and various municipalities.
My field of expertise include delivering powerful and memorable presentations, effective organizational communication, customer service excellence, telephone and frontline etiquette, professional business etiquette, English pronunciation, voice coaching as well as service delivery in the public sector based on the Batho Pele principles. Most recently I added “Presenting to clients via online platforms”.
I firmly believe in keeping education practical and enjoyable, thus ensuring a capable and empowered learner.
CAROLYNN CHALMERS
Carolynn is an internationally recognized name in governance and a renowned facilitator on several aspects of governance. She has been involved since inception in the drafting of ISO 37000 and is one of the few people who can provide the history behind, and the intentions of, every aspect of ISO 37000. Carolynn also chairs the South African Bureau of Standards’ technical committee responsible for this standard.
Paul Dubal
Paul has 25 years of corporate secretarial, corporate governance and regulatory experience both in house and as a professional services consultant in the United Kingdom, Canada, Caribbean and the Middle East. He has worked for KPMG LLP and PwC in leadership roles and served in senior in-house roles for several listed financial services companies. He has also provided governance services to Mid-Cap and Large-Cap companies in Europe, North and South America and the Caribbean region. Paul has worked extensively with a diverse range of boards and senior management teams on governance matters. His most recent assignment was as Head of Corporate Governance at First Abu Dhabi Bank, the largest bank in the Gulf region, where he developed the Bank’s corporate governance framework, advised the Board and executive management on the new UAE Corporate Governance Regulations, refined the Bank’s management committee, and developed its international governance structure across twenty jurisdictions globally.
A certified life coach, group coach and certified emotional intelligence (EQ-i) assessor and practitioner, Paul founded Perfect Balance Consulting (www.perfectbalanceconsulting.ca), providing governance solutions to small/mid-Cap organizations, group training across a variety of business solutions, and one-to-one executive coaching to mid-senior level professionals with a focus on leadership and EQ. What drives Paul is the desire to influence people to develop new ways of thinking; not just become leaders; but leaders with empathy and compassion, who will always seek to do the right thing, even when no one is watching. EQ is a critical skill in the modern workplace, and mastering EQ is an essential requirement for professionals to support their personal brand and reputation to propel them to success.
Paul has recently completed the book EQ for the Governance Professional, which explores the vast range of soft skills required of a successful governance practitioner. Paul is a Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute of Canada (CGIC) and holds an LLB from Middlesex University (UK) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from Leicester De Montfort University (UK).
Please see Paul’s website https://perfectbalanceconsulting.ca/webinars-%26-seminars to view recent webinars.
Sally Blaine
Sally Blaine has been providing consulting services to clients for almost 30 years. Her specific remuneration experience has included developing remuneration projects, conducting remuneration reviews, reviewing and making recommendations to Remuneration Committees on appropriate remuneration policies and executive remuneration and acting as a Remuneration Consultant to support Remuneration Committees for listed, private and development sector organisations. She also has extensive experience in the public sector and is currently appointed as a Long Term Advisor with the Government Technical Advisory Centre which is part of National Treasury where she works on a range of projects providing human resources and organisational design support. Sally has an MBA and a BSoc Sc degree.