Think again if you believe age limits superhero inspiration! Let’s take Advocate Simthandile Gugwini-Peter for instance, who is a mother of three beautiful girls, a lover of life and an agile legal mind. Akin to the MARVEL movie character, Wonder Woman is adept at doing it all. As her story unfolds, the parallels between Wonder Woman’s courage and AIDC-EC’s mission become clear.
From the beautiful agricultural landscapes and mountains in Maclear town now officially known as Nqanqarhu in the Eastern Cape which is her place of birth - to creating something that was not always there through policy development by coming up with solutions, crafting contracts that enable exponential growth for the organisation, harnessing prospective new funders and wielding conversations that align the organisation with where the rest of the world in the automotive sector is moving towards.
Advocate Gugwini-Peter’s fate as a Legal and Compliance practitioner was decided early in her adolescence years when family members would occasionally refer to her as “’Advocate’’ owing to her inquisitive and argumentative disposition. Little did she know!
“The biggest growth for me within the automotive sector is Policy Development. I constantly must deal with a lot of contract risk because in the public sector, you must align yourself to the PFMA (Public Finance and Management Act) all the time as that is a compliance issue. You are then saying to your shareholder ‘you can continue to fund me’.
While it is imperative for a corporate environment to align with organisations that are boundless in growth, it constantly must be in-between being a public entity while reaching out to companies talking billions in autonomy. Hence, the visions that management has about those billions Gugwini-Peter cannot drop them in terms of her contract-drafting by maintaining that high vision they have. Whilst remaining aligned to the PFMA that has very strict boundaries in terms of Financial Management.
‘’One of the risks I have had to deal with is setting those boundaries. Defining for the organisation that compliance does not have to move away from its strategic visions”.
She is in senior management where she is at the heart of creating a culture of compliance, and ethical business practices which is of paramount importance for its long-term sustainability and investor attraction.
‘’You cannot speak compliance without aligning yourself to Codes of Ethics. One code that we report to is the King Report which speaks to Principles of Leadership; how an organisation through ethical leadership enhances value creation”
Emotionally mature leaders are seen in the way they treat their employees and the value they place on their employees.
‘’By the time I come to work I have already done all the wonder work and now here to do something that exhilarates me. This is a space where I can escape to any kind of reality”.
An unusual juxtaposition about Wonder Woman is her allergy to manual labour. Best put her in an automated car with good leather seats and that will be news of the past!
We celebrate women making awe-inspiring strides in the automotive sector through the work of the AIDC-EC.
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