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Careers in Finance with Susanne Swaniker

January 30, 2025 / 00:36:12 / E76

In this episode of Careers in Finance, we learn that sometimes it takes a little bit of grit. Susanne Swaniker, Group Financial Controller at De Beers, takes us through her career journey that started with asking for a meeting with a Deloitte Partner and asking for what she wanted: an auditing job.

Her career journey is equal parts organic and purposeful pursuit. Susanne is the epitome of a continuous learner, and her many academic and career achievements make her actions speak louder than words. Join us as Susanne shares her unique story from audit to leadership.



Transcript

Anna Talerico (00:10)
Welcome back to another episode of Careers in Finance. I am delighted today to be sitting down with Susanne Swaniker. She is a guest I’ve been trying to get on the podcast for quite a while.

She’s group Finance director at De Beers Global based in London and what an incredible career journey she’s had and some of the roles she’s had. And I’ve got a tell you, this episode is not going to disappoint because Suzanne is dropping lots of wisdom and advice. So hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I enjoyed the conversation with Suzanne. Let’s get started.

Susanne (00:43)
Thank you for having me.

Anna Talerico (00:46)
I’m going to jump right in because I’m excited. We’ve got a lot to cover. know, and careers in finance. I always start with your origin story. Did you always know you wanted to be in a finance role? What did you study in school? So tell us a little bit about that.

Susanne (01:02)
Wow. So I actually got into finance by mistake. You know, I grew up in Botswana, but went to school in Zimbabwe. But I was born in Ghana. And so after I finished school, my mom at that time said, you know, she wanted us to understand a bit about Ghana and she wanted us to go to university in Ghana. So…

I then went to Ghana only to be told that because the previous year there had been a strike at the university, they were not taking in intakes that year and everybody needed to go and do their national service. And I thought, well, I’ve never been to school in this country. Why should I go in to do my national service? So whilst I had been in high school, I had been taking accounting at college level

to try and catch up in school because I started accounting late and somehow I quite enjoyed accounting. So I then had a diploma in accounting and I thought well I know in Zimbabwe some people go straight into the profession so surely I should be able to do that. I asked around who could point me to one of the partners in the audit firms,

and I found somebody who introduced me to, you know, he gave me a name for a partner. So I rocked up at Deloitte and I asked to see this partner and he said, well, actually I work at Deloitte Consulting, but I think you’re looking for the audit site, which is actually across the road. So, and I said, do you have the name of a partner there? And they gave me a name. His name was Ben Kamali. So I went across the next

Monday and I said to the receptionist I’m looking for this Ben calling and she says to me well he’s not in yet but you know if you’d like to take a seat you know he should be coming in shortly I said well I don’t actually know him so can you point him out to me when he comes in. So she points him out and then she says to him when he walks in this young lady wants to see you and I was about 19 then.

So he said, “What do you want to see me about?” And I said, “Well, can I speak to you in your office, please?” So he said, “OK, fine.” We went into his office and I said, “Well, I’m Susan. I’ve just come from Botswana. I’m trying to go to university. But because the university is on strike, they’re telling me to go and do my national service. And I don’t want to do that. So I’d like to come and work with you.”

And he said, “Well, you know, we’ve just taken this year’s intakes for our program, so we’re not taking any one for this year.” And then we started talking and I told him a little bit about my background and then he said, “Well, why do you want to do this without a degree?” And I said, “Well, I know in Zimbabwe, people train and do their professional qualification.”

And so I want to that route. And so he looked at my results and said, “Well, actually, you’ve got very good results. So maybe we can find something for you to do.” And I said, “Well, you’ll need to go and send in your application.” I said, “Here’s my application.” You need a CV. Here’s my CV. So I literally went prepared.

So he then said, okay, sit down, went across, called his colleague who was the HR partner. And then she came and she sat down and we started talking. I thought it was just talking. I didn’t realize I was being interviewed for a job. So, you know, after a while they were like, “No, we don’t think, you know, you will stay. We have this issue with people who come in from outside, and they, you know, after a while, they get frustrated, and they want to go back home.”

“So we don’t think you’ll stay.” So I said, “Okay, well, I can bet you that I’m going to stay at least two years. So why don’t I bet you 100 US dollars?” At that time, 100 US dollars was a lot of money in Botswana. And I had literally been working during my holidays, and I think I had about 100 US dollars in my bank account. So I said, “Well, I’ll bet you the 100 US dollars that one, I’ll stay two years.”

Anna Talerico (04:58)
Well.

Susanne (05:09)
And two, after two years, I would have passed a lot more for my exams. So they said, okay. And that’s how I got into accounting.

Anna Talerico (05:19)
This and that is incredible. I know we had just talked a little bit about this, this part of your sort of origin story briefly. I love this because number one, you are prepared, right? So that’s come prepared for anything I think and be ready to move on your feet, but also just ask. This is something I think so many people who are stuck in their career journey or wondering what’s next or getting started need to hear, just ask, show up,

whether it’s virtual or in person and just ask, right? I love it.

Susanne (05:51)
Yeah, definitely. I mean

and I would never have, you know, otherwise gotten in because, know, first and foremost, I didn’t have a degree, you know, and I had this accounting diploma. And I think that’s really what, you know, helped me because they were like, well, you know, if you were prepared to do, you know, a college diploma whilst in high school, therefore, you know, it shows that you can

work and study which is what you know professional accountant you know program requires me to be able to work and study and I was doing that in high school so you know it also shows that well you do need to be flexible and show that you do need to have a grit in this profession.

Anna Talerico (06:39)
Grit is such a good word, it’s so true. So how long did you end up staying in that role, or there?

Susanne (06:44)
So I did stay two years and I got my hundred dollars. I stayed slightly over two years and then I got a transfer to the Deloitte office in Botswana. Continued my professional qualification, then I chartered at the age of 23. And by the time I was now a chartered accountant, classmates were now finishing university

Anna Talerico (06:47)
No.

Love it.

Susanne (07:12)
and were starting off as trainees. And so they were now starting as trainees and I was already a manager. So yeah, I had a bit of an early start.

Anna Talerico (07:20)
Yeah, already ahead of the game.

Amazing, I love it. Just again, being, I think too so often when I talk to people who’ve been on really interesting, successful career journeys, there’s often this theme of just biting off big challenges, like going and getting your degree and chartered and working. So I think that’s a good example of that.

How long did you end up staying there and what did you do next after you left?

Susanne (07:55)
So I stayed with Deloitte for a total of 10 years. And I actually got a stint, you know, internationally. So I was sent to the Deloitte North Carolina office for, you know, we had this just in time program where people would come from across the world and, you know, help areas where they’re quite busy. So I worked

Anna Talerico (08:00)
Wow, okay.

Susanne (08:25)
in the North Carolina office for almost four months working in the motor industry. And it was really a fun time because I got to travel all around the states. I got to meet quite a lot of different people that really opened my eyes to quite a lot around how you do things differently. I came back to Botswana.

And this was really for people who were on an accelerated management development program. And I started doing a bit of a dual role where I was also responsible for training of staff. I enjoyed the staff development program and the process of getting other people in. It was good because every year you would get allocated time where

you would not be on audit jobs, but you would be in training. So we would jet off to our training sessions and have trainees from all over Southern Africa in a room. Initially, I started with first year training and then I progressed to second year training. And then I progressed to third year training. And I realized at each stage how training needed to be tailored for different people

as they progressed in their career. So, you know, it really has helped me in how I also look at, you know, how we get professionals developed, you know, in the profession and accounting professional specifically. But also, you know, using that sort of background, it’s helped me to really look at when now, you know, being in a corporate, how do we also make sure that,

you know, accounting trainees understand, you know, the different aspects of the work role, because it’s very different being in a corporate and getting trainees that have not been in audit to get in trainees who have coming from audit because it’s much more structured in audit. And so, you know, I’ve sort of used that training background over the years. So after Deloitte,

I left and joined a mining client and that was also by mistake. Well, not mistake, but quite interesting how I got there. So I did an audit, and I think I had like a 60-page audit report of, you know, how bad things were. And the CFO came across to discuss the audit report and said to me, “Well, If you think you can do better, why don’t you come and sort things out?”

So another stage, I was looking for new challenges. I mean, I had been at Deloitte for 10 years. I was then a senior manager. So I thought, why not? So I said, OK, I can. And he offered me a job. I accepted the job. And I moved from Deloitte, and I joined the mining industry. So the first year of that,

Anna Talerico (11:42)
I love it.

Susanne (11:44)
took it as an internal consulting role. And I really thought, I don’t want this audit report next year with me sitting on the other side. It’s very easy to audit and comment. But when you’re on the other side and you see how challenging the business processes are, it’s a very different thing because now you need to fix it. It’s very easy to criticize, but when you need to fix it, it’s very different.

Anna Talerico (11:55)
Yeah.

Susanne (12:12)
So for that year, I took it as a consultant role and worked through things slowly and got half of the things cleared out by the end of the year. And I thought, wow, this is how we do business improvement. But because I really had to understand the business to fix a lot of things, I made it a point of trying to work with different people in the different parts of the business.

And mining is not that easy because you have people who may be working in a mine spending a lot of money on things, but really not understanding the impact it has on your cost. So I quickly very realized that if I was to add value to organization, I needed to get down to the basics. I needed to really talk to the people who are spending money,

not the managers. So I started trying to engage people on the shop floor to really understand how well they understood their costs. And I realized that people were spending money without understanding what it meant. So I started giving Saturday classes to the mining foremen in finance, trying to get them to understand and really be able to

Anna Talerico (13:34)
Uh-mm.

Susanne (13:38)
understand that when they do a stock requisition for something, it adds up. Because if things are not being done properly, it has a cost impact. At the end of the year, we managed to bring down our cost quite significantly through some sort of processes. After leaving that mine, I joined another Copernical mine still in Botswana.

By then I joined as finance manager and was there for a couple of years. During that time, I did quite a few roles moving from finance into IT, into compliance, into company secretarial, into marketing. So I did quite a few things outside finance, which was really very

helpful for me because I then got to understand that, you know, as a finance person, if you’re going to add value, you really need to understand the business. So then I realized that my finance qualification alone was not enough. So I needed to really understand business. So I then went and I did my MBA to really get to understand other aspects such as HR and, you know,

dealing with people. After that I joined a diamond mine where we were involved with setting up the mine from scratch and then I picked up a lot of project management skills, I learned how to set up you know facilities, banking facilities, so you know the treasury aspects of that was very very good and yeah.

From that, I joined Diamond Sales Company. By then, Beers had moved to Botswana and was looking to set up a sales entity that was out as a result of the negotiations between De Beers and the government of Botswana. So, I was approached to join the team that was setting up. I did that and really enjoyed the setup.

got a stint to do other aspects around HR. although I was the CFO, I was combining that with the people role as well. So it was both HR and finance, as well as all the other things that came with managing the finance and compliance part of the business. And then I joined De Beers as the CFO for what we call the Diamond Midstream based in Botswana,

looking after finance, security, compliance. And yeah, I was there another eight, seven years. And then I got this role in London and I moved to a group financial control role. So yeah, that’s been my path.

Anna Talerico (16:49)
Such an exciting one. So I’ve got so many things I want to come back and touch on. First, going back to leaving Big Four and audit. So tell us about how that did prepare you for going in inside and being an operator inside of an organization, but also how it didn’t. Because, a lot of people say like the great thing about being an audit is you just get exposed to so much, right? And so you learn how to quickly get up to speed and all of that. But it sounds like

there was a lot that was quite different for you. So tell us a little bit about how it prepared you, then also what the biggest kind of gaps were as you became, you know, now an operator inside of an organization.

Susanne (17:31)
Yeah, I think that’s a very good question. So what really helped me was understanding how to approach things that you don’t know. And I think audit prepares you very well for that. The ability to ask questions and interpret the gaps from their answers. So that was one thing that I was able to actually use very well to…

Anna Talerico (17:41)
Mm.

Susanne (18:00)
understand the business processes. I think approaching things as a consultant where you would ask and understand and fix, know, is something that audit prepares you for. But what I found challenging were the people aspects. I think audit does not prepare you to lead people because you’re telling people what to do. You come in, you…

Anna Talerico (18:11)
Yeah.

Susanne (18:29)
understand what is wrong and you tell them what to do and you walk away and you go on to the next job. But what it doesn’t prepare you for is how to lead people who don’t know what to do very well. you know, I really had to learn very quickly that, you know, when you’re in a corporate, you have people of different abilities.

And so you need to learn how to work with people who don’t have quite the skill set that you would find in an audit. Because generally the people who are in audit are more the highly skilled finance professionals, whereas the people that go straight into corporates and don’t have this background are more of the sort of…

Anna Talerico (19:13)
Yeah.

Susanne (19:20)
accountants rather than the chartered accountant. So you really need to learn how to balance that and really close the gap in ability. So I had to take a step back and learn how to manage people, how to deal with people. And it took a lot because it’s not something that you’re quite prepared for

in a professional environment because in a professional environment you’re dealing with people who are professionals who know what deadlines mean and work long hours to deliver. And here you go into a role where person somebody says, I’m sorry, it’s five o ‘clock, I’m going home. And tomorrow they’ll come back tomorrow and do it. And there is no sense of sometimes it’s urgency. And so it’s a very different process.

Anna Talerico (19:57)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Susanne (20:18)
So I quickly had to learn how to do that. But I think also dealing with different people in the business is also very different because you’re not dealing with finance professionals, you’re dealing with engineers, you’re dealing with HR people, know. So learning how to deal with cross-functional people to deliver on your work is very important because I had to learn how to manage stakeholders, you know,

Anna Talerico (20:47)
Yeah.

Susanne (20:48)
which is very different, it’s not something you really get to do too much of in an audit firm if you’re not the part.

Anna Talerico (20:57)
Yeah, yeah, I think you’ve articulated really well what I’ve anecdotally heard, too, when people leave either consulting or audit, they’re not used to having to implement the change. So that persuading people, leading people, you know, I would imagine your training that you trained people that experience probably really helped you though dealing with different kinds of, you know, abilities and skill and knowledge levels, but

that that can be such a big challenge of, okay, well, how do I actually get people to implement this now and that going through that? Yeah. So when you were in the role that you mentioned, where you almost took a tour of duty a bit, you know, in different parts of the business marketing and HR, was that because there was a need in the business and you were just jumping in? Did you have a coach or a mentor who was saying, Hey, go over here and get more experience in other parts of the business? How did that come to be?

Susanne (21:48)
So I say I collect often children.

So I think I’ve always looked at myself as a partner to the CEO in every organization that I’ve been in. I think being in a finance role, you get to see everything and you see where the gaps and controls are. So for me, I took that approach in my sort of career. And often what I found myself doing was where there was a gap in the business,

I found myself getting involved to fix those problems. And unfortunately, then I would also for my sins, be given additional responsibility. And I often found myself, you know, being given these additional responsibilities when there was a gap in the organization. And I took that as a learning, you know, I very quickly learned that Google

was my friend. So if I didn’t understand something, I would go and research. Before Google came in place, I would research online, try and understand, go to the library. So how do you do a balance scorecard? And really try and piece things together, even if I didn’t have the skill set.

Anna Talerico (22:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Susanne (23:20)
I would do the research, would learn and I would apply it. And I think that’s how I picked up a lot of these orphan roles. because then I had to really take myself out of my comfort zone to learn, I made a point of really trying to apply myself and trying to apply a finance and control lens to fixing the problem. So I wouldn’t traditionally go about it looking at it from a

perspective of the functional role, but more from a control perspective and try and then learn the function as I went along. And I think that has really been valuable because what it helped me to understand is that for you to add value as a finance professional, you need to understand the value drivers in the business. So where is the business getting value? And if you can fix that value, you get value back in the organization.

Anna Talerico (24:22)
Well said, well said. you know, something that strikes me about what you were saying too, about just like figuring it out. It’s another theme on this podcast. I hear it so much that you have to just come from a place of, yes, I’m going to figure that out. I’m going to figure out how to solve it versus this idea. Like, I don’t know. So I’m not the person for that. Right? Like it takes a bit of, obviously, confidence in yourself and your capabilities, but also just

boldness, it’s a little fearless, but that’s what sort of a career progression is about, right? Taking on the challenge and saying yes. So that was great. I wish I could piece together all these moments from this podcast of just people sharing a version of that because it’s important to hear, think. Oftentimes people get, you know, maybe an assignment or a task or see a problem, but they’re not, they’re afraid, they hold themselves back, right? Versus just going for it. I love it.

Susanne (25:57)
Yeah. Absolutely.

Anna Talerico (26:02)
Yeah, yeah. tell us about today. You mentioned you’re you’re now in London, you’re at De Beers Group as a group financial controller. Tell us about that role. What’s a day in the life like? Tell us a little bit about your remit and responsibility.

Susanne (26:20)
Yeah, that’s an interesting role. So, Depeya’s group is actually quite a big group. It covers quite a few countries. We’ve got operations in South Africa, Botswana, Canada, a bit of exploration in Angola, and also Namibia. And then we’ve got the sales offices in different parts of the world. So we’ve got the jewelry business as well. So it’s quite a role.

But I think for me, a day in the life is really more financials. And it is actually quite a change from my previous role, which was more business from a CFO perspective to a controller role. So controller role is more understanding your finance, understanding what’s really driving the business costs, really analyzing and understanding where variances are.

It is a bit of a narrow role, but also a lot more in depth role. And interestingly, what I’ve had to do is go back to some of my skill set that I had forgotten by really starting to go deep into more financial analysis and trying to take a step back to understand the numbers a little bit more. And I think over the years, as you progress, you tend to

Anna Talerico (27:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Susanne (27:46)
lose those sort of skill sets. So I’ve had to go back to understand that a bit, but it’s been interesting because it’s looking at it not from a one unit, but more from a wider group perspective. So it’s been quite a transition taking myself back there. But I’ve also sort of complemented that role with a bit more than what I guess a traditional controller would do in the sense that I’ve also picked up

Anna Talerico (28:20)
Yeah.

Susanne (28:21)
uh, the sort of compliance and risk management

Anna Talerico (28:23)
As you do.

Susanne (28:25)
part of the business as well. And that’s something that I do enjoy as well. So I think it does give me a bit of a variety to, you know, just the finance numbers. So yeah, keeping myself busy doing other things.

Anna Talerico (28:38)
Yeah.

So, okay. So I just have a few more questions and I’m going to ask this about the controller role as well as the CFO role. Cause I’m curious if there’s any differences in your answer, starting with the controller role, what characteristics or traits do you think make a successful controller? What do you, if you were to name two or three things that are really important to be a very strong controller, what would they be?

Susanne (29:02)
think for a controller role, it’s attention to detail. Really understanding your numbers. It’s about the commerciality of your understanding your numbers. It’s really about being insightful, providing answers using finance. And it’s really using

that to assist management in making informed decisions, right? And then also challenging the business to make improvements, streamlining operations. I think bottom line is to maximize profit and financial performance. 

Anna Talerico (29:50)
Uh-mm.

Susanne (29:51)
So that’s very much around the business performance of an organization.

Anna Talerico (29:57)
Yeah.

Susanne (29:57)
Yeah.

Anna Talerico (29:58)
And so how is it different for a CFO? You’ve been a CFO. What characteristics do you think are most important or skills are most important for success in a CFO role?

Susanne (30:02)
So CFO is more broader, right? So I think it’s more around collaboration, you know, how you interact with people, how you engage more effectively with both your internal and external stakeholders, you know, how you communicate the business objectives, you know, and it’s more about being inclusive and influence and impact, right? So it’s slightly different.

Anna Talerico (30:35)
Yeah.

Susanne (30:36)
And I think it’s also about driving ethics in the organization, more on the behaviors that you want to set. And it’s really also about taking your knowledge and expertise and experience and then applying it to the business to really deliver value.

So it’s very different. One is more finance and one is more business.

Anna Talerico (31:12)
Yeah. And I’m glad you touched on ethics because I think we don’t talk about that enough, but it’s just as important as everything else. So, last question for you, what advice would you give to, aspiring, you know, professionals that are, you know, people who would aspire to be in a similar role or have a similar journey to you. and you know, it’s interesting because with your, your background and doing some training, you’ve got such unique perspective, but

And already in our conversation, there’s been some incredible nuggets, but if you had to give two or three pieces of advice, what would it be?

Susanne (31:49)
Uh-mm. Perseverance.

Anna Talerico (31:50)
Yeah.

Susanne (31:51)
I think it is a challenging profession. You need to be able to be dedicated. It does take long hours, but the rewards are fantastic if you stick with it. So you do need the perseverance. You also need insight, As in the ability to be able to analyze information, generate new ideas.

make clear decisions, organize your work, focus on priorities and then learn to give results. Because for a finance person, we do work with timelines, we do work with deadlines. So how you prioritize and organize your work makes a big difference. And there’s also something else. It’s around something that we don’t see often, negotiations.

Anna Talerico (32:43)
Uh-mm.

Susanne (32:44)
So, you know, it’s about how do you negotiate with your partners, your, you know, the people that you work with. And these could be your internal customers or your suppliers, know, your peers in the organization and your employees to be able to get the value out of people. So there’s a bit of negotiation skills involved as well.

Anna Talerico (33:15)
Yeah.

Susanne (33:16)
And sometimes we forget about that. And even in terms of cost saving, negotiations is very important. know, recently we’re talking to our auditors and, you know, we’re talking about the payment plan for the end audit. And they’re saying, well, you know, can we do 40 % upfront and 40%, you know, and then, you know, 20 % when we finish? And I said, well, why don’t we, what’s wrong with us paying you 100 % when we’re done? You know?

And they looked at me very surprised. They’re like, why are we negotiating? And I’m like, yeah, you want money, I want money, let’s talk. And so, you know, there is a bit of negotiations that people don’t realize that as finance people, it’s good to have those negotiation skills and it really does help us to get things done.

Anna Talerico (34:03)
Yeah.

That’s a great one. That’s why I love that one. So ethics and negotiation are two themes we haven’t had a lot of on this podcast. I’m really glad they came up today. I also have to say I really like that you touched on the organizational approach to the work because something that strikes me about the finance function, FPNA included, is they’re fielding questions from the business all day long too

and that just the ability to know exactly where to go find that answer quickly, get it in an accurate format. Like that’s just different requests coming in every day, you know, from different lines of business. And just like the way you kind of organize that the body of knowledge and data can really change how much of a partner you can be to the organization too.

Susanne (34:48)
Absolutely and I think when you start realizing your peers are coming to you for advice Then you know you’ve become a trusted advisor, you know and not just advise on on numbers but on advice on the business Especially when somebody comes to you and say I’m thinking of doing this in my area What do you think? How would you approach it? Then you know

that you’ve become a trusted advisor. You’re no longer a finance professional, but you’re partner, a real business partner. And I think it’s something that we really need to all aspire to. But you can only do that when you understand the business. You can only do that when you understand the industry. You bring that together with your finance skill set, and you’ve got a winning methodology.

Anna Talerico (35:40)
What an incredible way to end the podcast. Fantastic advice.

Thank you. Thank you so much for doing this. I am so grateful that you would share your story and it will be so inspiring to so many others. So thank you for joining us today.

Susanne (35:54)
Thank you for having me.

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