“I actually want to work until the very last day of my life”, Judy Dlamini ALEC HOGG: Upper Echelon is brought to you by Deloitte – for innovative thinking and thorough strategic planning turn to Deloitte. In our Upper Echelon this week, Judy Dlamini, chair of Mbekani Investment Holdings and better known through her chair of Aspen Pharmacare, one of the hottest stocks on the JSE. In fact, since 2007 when you took over as chair there, Judy, the share price has just gone one way and that’s up. That’s always a good thing, one of the top 20 companies in South Africa. I guess that you were made for it though, given that you are a medical doctor by training and then moved into investment banking, then into entrepreneurship but let’s go back a little bit. Going through your CV I saw Vryheid came up there, Vryheid High or certainly the fact that you did your high schooling there, how did that work in? JUDY DLAMINI: Actually interesting that you could dig that out, it’s an interesting story, I met my husband when I was at Marianhill High School and the plan was that I would do matric at Marianhill High School but the nuns were not too happy with me going out with my husband then. They had this system that they would say you can come back to do matric but we just need your dad to come so that we can talk to him and my dad was very strict. So I went back home, I said, dad, I don’t want to go back there, the maths is not so great. So my dad the whole of November, December he was looking for a school and he found Vryheid, so that’s how I ended up there. ALEC HOGG: That’s incredible, which school in Vryheid? JUDY DLAMINI: Vryheid State High School, not Inkamana because it was so late, the application was quite late and you get space but not for a maths and science class. I used to say to my dad it’s maths or nothing because I knew what maths could do for you. ALEC HOGG: That’s a fabulous story and, of course, your husband Sizwe Nxasana is well known in his own right but you’ve been a little bit in his shadow, Judy. It was interesting to look through here, Discovery Holdings, you were on their board, I guess when there was a split with FirstRand, they might have felt [they] didn’t really want a competitor to be on the board and I guess it’s in your family, you must be one and the same? JUDY DLAMINI: Not really, that’s not how it worked out. I just felt that I had too much on my plate. So every five years I actually look at the portfolio and then I’ll actually say no, I need to come off this board and focus on other things. So that was the reason really and I love low profile, I guess it’s just the personality. Maybe it’s the medical training, doctors are more your one on one people than people who love the podium. ALEC HOGG: What took you out of medicine into investment banking first and then into the entrepreneurial environment? JUDY DLAMINI: I wanted to be a doctor from the age of four, I always wanted to be a doctor and I loved it but I lost the passion, maybe because there was crime involved in my practice and something in me died. Maybe also I just felt I wanted more, I just needed my brain to be stimulated more. As a medical doctor I just felt that your view in life tends to be a bit myopic and then I decided to go to business school and did an MBA, which broadened the horizon, it actually…you know a little bit of something in every field, which for me was ideal. Ja, so the losing of passion was good because then it actually broadened the way I view things. ALEC HOGG: And ignited new passions. JUDY DLAMINI: Oh yes. ALEC HOGG: Business, growing up was it something that did appeal to you? JUDY DLAMINI: I had this focus of being a medical doctor but on the side there was the element of business because my father wasn’t highly educated, actually he had hardly any education but he was an entrepreneur, he ran his small painting contractor company and maybe from that. My mother was a primary school teacher, which is actually just streamline professional but my father is, I guess, where I got the business and the entrepreneurial keenness from. ALEC HOGG: How do you and Sizwe get this life balance or work-life balance? I asked him the same question, when we spoke a little while ago, in this same series of Upper Echelon, I’d love to hear your input? JUDY DLAMINI: We make the effort, Alec. You have to make the effort, you never get the balance right but we try, we always try. I was just talking earlier on that last week he had a meeting in London and I organised my diary that I actually joined him so that we had two extra days to spend with each other. We just take the time to spend with each other and also with [our] children. So let’s just say it’s our priority, it’s the main priority, family and then work. ALEC HOGG: It hasn’t been all plain sailing, we were all very saddened when Sifiso passed away. Was there anything in his passing, your son, that has maybe changed the way you look at things? I ask this because I share that experience as well and it’s not something that easily sits with one, they never go away and it is a… JUDY DLAMINI: It doesn’t, it’s still very fresh as you can imagine and I’ve had a lot of pain in the past, it’s just the worst. ALEC HOGG: Judy, but the contribution… Continue reading Judy Dlamini, Aspen Chairman’s Upper Echelon interview
