XX TECHNOLOGY
10
QUESTIONS FOR PIETER VAN DER WESTHUIZEN
Life Healthcare Group CFO Pieter van der Westhuizen shares how a strong work ethic, perseverance, teamwork, experience and agility have been instrumental in weathering the Covid-19 storm. By Puseletso Mompei
L
ife Healthcare group CFO Pieter van der Westhuizen didn’t expect he would have to lead South Africa’s second-largest private hospital operator through the biggest health crisis in recent times when he was appointed as acting group CEO in addition to his role as the company’s group CFO in January 2020. Pieter joined President Medical Investments in 1999, which became part of Afrox Healthcare. He served in various roles within the finance department of Afrox Healthcare and played a significant role in the company’s delisting in 2005. In 2010 the company relisted as Life Healthcare. Pieter was appointed as group CFO in 2013 and served as Life Healthcare’s acting group CEO from 17 January 2020 to 31 August 2020.
hat influenced your choice 1 W of career? I grew up in Pretoria and realised that I wanted to become a chartered accountant at an early age. I had a natural knack for logical subjects like maths
40
CFO MAGAZINE • CFO.CO.ZA
and accounting and made the choice following a career-based assignment at primary school. Further cementing my decision was seeing my father, who was a bank manager, thrive in a corporate environment. Initially, I wanted to work in banking, but during my articles, I very quickly realised that the healthcare industry was more appealing to me as an environment that both challenged and excited me.
2
What is a recent challenge you had to confront?
It was not long after I was appointed interim acting group CEO in addition to the group CFO role that Covid-19 hit and I had to lead the company through an unprecedented crisis. As a healthcare company, we have been in the frontline of fighting Covid-19 and so our challenges during this period have been very different from other industries. As if a pandemic were not enough to deal with, we were the victim of a brutal cyber-attack that effectively took our IT systems down for 30 days.
