Elize Kirsten - University of Pretoria Lecturer
Proves yet again to be the irrefutable Winner of The CFO Brand Ambassador Contest 2017, scooping the title for the second consecutive time!

Elize remains a Lecturer in the Department of Financial Management at the University of Pretoria. She continues to show her passion for education and being an inspiration, imparting knowledge to her students, proving that hard work really pays. She worked with the students in 2016 and has done so in 2017 diligently, encouraging them to work on the case study and produce good reports with the main goal of bringing real-world business challenges into the classroom for students to address, and create a context for discussing and analysing business issues that are seldom amenable to traditional teaching methods. Maintaining her tireless effort providing unending support to the teams and is a good example of what is expected of a Brand Ambassador. Her efforts and passion saw her building up the most number of teams who entered the competition and managed to submit reports.

She featured in The Future CFO Magazine - October 2016 edition where she amplified on what she envisioned the impact the education system should have on tertiary students, she said, “It is very important for South Africa to give students international exposure and a chance to benchmark themselves against students from around the world. With a competition like this, South African students can see what other students from other countries do and also realise that they do not function in isolation as we live in a globalised world.”

The CFO Brand Ambassador Contest participants were asked to encourage aspirants to enter The CFO (and CFO Junior) Case Study Competition and submit a report. The Brand Ambassador with the highest number of reports (with a minimum of 15) submitted by teams they entered was to be awarded the title and a cash prize of ZAR 10,000.
There were 1500 Aspirants representing 370 teams from 35 countries and 60 academic institutions. In this 2nd edition of the battle of the minds, contests were well matched, as the brand ambassadors had to work, motivating the teams to push through the challenging and stimulating case study. However, Elize Kirsten yet again proved to be on top of her game coupled with experience and her passion, she emerged the undisputed 2nd-time winner of this year’s contest!

Johannesburg, Gauteng – 12 & 13 October 2017 – Mark these dates on your calendar as they will be the semi-finals and finals of The CFO (and CFO Junior) Case Study Competition 2017 respectively. The semi-finals will take place at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) while the national & global finals will be hosted at the Finance Indaba Africa2017 at the Sandton Convention Centre. 

Mr. Nti, the Executive Director said, “We yet again congratulate Elize Kirsten for this remarkable achievement. Also for maintaining the vision and guidance to direct the students seeing the impact that the competition has on them.”

As from the 1st of August we have just entered Stage 2 (Public Votes) of the competition. The top 6 teams for both competitions have submitted 1.25 minutes (75 seconds) 2-part videos introducing their teams, why they entered, setting out their hopes and dreams including how The CFO (and CFO Junior) Case Study Competition has and could assist their future career. The videos serve to convince why the public should vote for their respective teams. They are now live on broadcast & social media and will be for over 60 days until 2nd of October 2017 for the public to have their say by voting for the best video. The 3 teams with the highest votes from the public will respectively, earn 2, 1 and 0.5 points to their credit going into Stage 3. 

To view all videos and vote now, click here.