FNB Business believes in the advancement of gender equality, transformation and the empowering of women for sustainable business growth.  This belief is among some of the reasons we chose to support East Coast Radio by sponsoring the FNB Business Women’s Breakfast. The event aims to bring together leading business women from various sectors in an open and supportive environment for sharing, learning and networking.

The FNB Women’s Breakfast served women with the opportunity to exchange ideas, insights, experiences, and challenges of being a leader in today’s business environment.

The FNB Business Women’s Breakfast in association with East Coast Radio filled out the Durban ICC on 12 August 2016.  The event brought together female business thought-leaders to discuss key strategic insights to performance-enhancing ideas and concepts, and share their own unique inspirational business journeys and practices with fellow phenomenal women.

IT guru, Stafford Masie kicked off the power presentations, drawing attention to the fact that the notion of driving businesses in a masculine way is a thing of the past, but rather for women to open up their business to collaboration and co-creation of the ecosystem.  The biggest organisations are ones that co-create, “Women are not equal. Women are better!”

Yolande Steyn, Head of FNB Innovations dished up honesty with a dash of simplicity, in her account of the challenges, trials and tribulations of being a woman in business. Yolande is an industrial engineer who has extensive experience in product development and strategic project management. She has played an integral role in consulting, mobile telecommunications, software development, mobile money and innovations. Yolande’s advice to women in business is, “If you want to make your mark, know that you are good enough. Be the best, then be better. Speak from your heart. Feel that strength you have inside of you and the infinite capacity that you can unlock. There are no boundaries or barriers, except the ones you create for yourself.”

“The work we do needs to be aligned with our purpose. At the end of the day, we are all wonder women!” were the powerful words of wisdom from Ndalo Media CEO and award-winning media personality, Khanyi Dhlomo, as she shared her inspirational journey.

Using humour and personal anecdotes, entrepreneur Vusi Thembekwayo encouraged women to boldly charter new territories and highlighted the need for women to compete in the ever evolving business world.  â€œWomen have far greater odds to go up against when they want to build lives, build businesses, build careers. So I stand before you with a sense of humility, knowing that I’m speaking to an audience of powerful people who face odds, who I as a man, would never understand.”

The event drew more than 800 women from all spheres of business and has grown to be one of the most anticipated events on the KwaZulu-Natal corporate calendar. We’re proud to support and invest in this high-quality event of this nature.

The increased presence of business women plays a major role in the social and economic factors affecting South Africa, this has led to government initiatives and legislation being enforced and promoted in such a way that they empower women.

Women can achieve what they want by defining their goals and creating a framework in which to achieve them. FNB Business understands the benefits of having women-led start-up, scale-ups and lead businesses and will continue to support initiatives that help local female owned business’ navigate the uncertainties of the business world.

www.fnb.co.za/business