Shirley is PwC SA’s CEO, Regional Senior Partner, Southern Africa, and the firm’s ex-officio board member. She has held numerous leadership positions within the firm before the current one. She is a Chartered Accountant (CA SA) and a Chartered Director Southern Africa (CDSA), with over 30 years of experience in internal and external audit, risk management, compliance, and governance across all industries. She has been deeply engaged in internal audit and served on IIA local, global, and regional structures.
Shirley is a Trustee of the global Internal Audit Foundation since 2019 and has been recently nominated to serve as chair of the Finance and Development committee. She diligently chaired the Institute Relations Committee and has been a member of the IIA Global Board Committee (Member Relations Committee) for six years.
She represented Southern Africa as a member and Secretary General of the African Federation of Institutes of Internal Auditors. She is a renowned thought leader on governance, risk, and internal audit. She participated in Partner Development Leadership Programme (PDLP) by GIBS, PwC Global Network Key Talent Pool (NKTP), and Reinventing the Future (RtF) programmes, and she is now a fully-fledged futurist. She is also a mentor to Network Leadership Development Programme, a PwC global partner development programme. She is currently a board member and audit and risk committee member of BLSA, AMCHAM since 2020, Pathfinder International since early 2023 and IoDSA since early 2024. She is also a board member of IWFSA since November 2023 and Deputy chair of its Leadership Development Committee.
Shirley is a global speaker on governance, risk, internal audit, and D&I and presented at conferences and key events like Africa WEF, UN Women side events in New York, Forbes Woman Africa Leading Women’s Summit, the Standard Bank Top Women Leaders Conference, IWFSA Women Leadership Summit, and LeadersX, to name a few.
She’s been a judge for the Gender Mainstream Awards since 2018. She has been awarded various accolades, of which recent ones are “Africa Business Woman of the Year” by ABLAA, African Business Leadership Award, “Women Lifetime Achievement Award” by ABASA, “Audit Partner of the Year” by AWCA and “AWCA Luminary Award” for its 20th-anniversary celebration and “Chairman’s Guardian of Governance Award” by IIASA. She has recently been announced by Forbes Africa as one of top Africa CEOs.