Carina Wessels is a seasoned legal professional and governance expert with extensive experience across various sectors, including corporate law, sustainability, and compliance. Currently, she holds a senior role at Alexforbes, where she oversees governance, legal, compliance, and sustainability efforts. Carina’s career trajectory has been anything but conventional, which she believes has been instrumental in her personal growth and the wide array of opportunities she has embraced. Initially studying law, she ventured into selling cost recovery software to attorneys, where she discovered that many lawyers were dissatisfied with their careers. This realization prompted her to explore other fields before ultimately returning to her passion for law.
Carina’s early career included a brief stint as a client services manager at a hospital, but it was not long before she gravitated back to the legal field. She initially focused on labour law but later expanded her expertise into corporate governance and commercial law. Over time, she gained experience across diverse areas, including Human Resources, Finance, Risk Management, Business Improvement, Project Management, Corporate Secretariat, Executive Management, and Sustainability.
Her professional journey includes a nine-year tenure at De Beers and a year at Investec, where she further honed her legal and governance skills. In 2011, at the age of 33, Carina secured her first executive role at Exxaro, which marked a pivotal point in her career. It was during this time that she also assumed responsibility for managing legal services, prompting her to pursue a second master’s degree in Extractive Industry Law in Africa. This diverse background has equipped Carina with the leadership skills necessary to navigate complex business and legal landscapes.
Today, at Alexforbes, Carina continues to make significant contributions to the fields of governance, legal compliance, and sustainability, drawing on her broad expertise and strategic vision to drive the company forward.
Below are highlights of the interview:
Describe who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
If I had to choose a single word to describe myself, it would be passion: a passion for making a difference in every aspect of my life. Being driven to always leave a person, a place and a piece of work in a better state because of my contribution.
This desire is also the driver behind the charitable causes I support, like the Change a Life Cycle Tour, an annual cycle tour open to leading company executives both in South Africa and abroad. The tour was established in 2008 in memory of Mike Thomson, a Computershare executive who was murdered at his family home in 2007. For over a decade, Change a Life has raised over R80 million for crime prevention and youth development projects that are creating more sustainable futures for young South Africans and their broader communities. The Change a Life Cycle Tour has developed a track record as one of South Africa’s leading fundraising tours.
The tour combines my passion for cycling with charitable giving and spending time with my husband, Sas. Sas and I are also very passionate about traveling, which we love to do with our eleven-year-old daughter, Nicci.
What has made you successful? What do you value?
I believe central to my career growth has been being the person that consistently got things done (big or small) and often being the hardest worker in the room; ultimately, I believe there is no substitute for hard work and staying the course. Resultantly, I also greatly value similar work ethic in others. Additionally, honesty, integrity, and trust are central to all my relationships, both personally and professionally.
Which are the major services of the company, and how does the company get ahead in the competition? What value-added services does the company provide?
Alexforbes is a diversified financial services company founded in 1935, providing a broad range of employee benefit solutions, retirement, healthcare, and sustainability consulting, as well as investment and wealth management solutions to both corporate clients and individual customers.
What sets us apart is our dedication to delivering impactful services and solutions for our clients and members, underpinned by integrated advice. We have built our reputation through an in-depth understanding of retirement, healthcare, and investment dynamics to deliver the best advice to clients, winning their trust and confidence in the process.
Collectively we are driven by our purpose to pioneer insight, to deliver advice and solutions that impact people’s lives.
Give us your opinion on; do organizations rely heavily on individual heroics or team processes?
Although there might be brief instances of individual heroics in many businesses (especially when, i.e., new CEOs step in), business sustainability and long-term success cannot depend on individuals alone. Collective action and teamwork towards a shared purpose are critical.
What are your responsibilities? What is the happiest part of your daily routine?
I have executive accountability for governance, legal, compliance, and sustainability. The happiest part of my daily routine relates to our efforts within sustainability, which mandate includes both our own ESG practices as well as leading and growing our Impact Advisory offering for clients.
Considering the significant capital retirement funds steward, they are in a position of immense influence over the wider economy and simultaneously have a duty to protect member outcomes over multiple time horizons.
As an example, research has shown that switching the average individual’s pension fund to sustainable investments can be 21 times more effective at cutting carbon footprints than not flying, becoming a vegetarian, or moving to solar.
Hence, the opportunity to contribute to Pan African businesses and, very importantly, retirement funds, becoming more resilient and sustainable is a massive responsibility and privilege.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
Ask yourself why you want to be a leader, what kind of leader you want to be, and what difference you want to make.
Learn from those that have gone before you: read as many leadership books as you can and spend time with leaders whom you respect, through mentorship relationships or otherwise, whilst also learning what not to do from those not respected.
Always remember that it is a privilege and a tremendous responsibility to lead others; it is never a right or a positional power. Most importantly, be authentic, be human, be real.
