This accolade recognises her passionate commitment to the logistics industry and a legacy of purposeful achievement built over the span of her remarkable career.
"Once again, the calibre of the candidates, across all the sectors was exceptional and we are confident that the winners are a true reflection of the talent pool of influential women in South Africa," says Yvonne Finch, life coach and founder of Yvonne Finch Consulting, who headed the judging panel.
"The process began by filtering out those nominations that had not been completed correctly to begin with. All the successful candidates who passed this initial validation process were then reviewed by the five judges on the first judging panel, reducing their number to a list of semi-finalists." Worth noting is that each judge received five lever-arch files containing 240 nominee curriculum vitaes, with the brief of selecting five nominations in each category as semi-finalists. They also had to ensure that each nominee was represented in the correct category to afford them the best opportunity in the competition.
Following the first round of judging, this list of nominees was then whittled down to just over 100 finalist nominations, which were then sent through to the five judges on the second judging panel, who then made their recommendations of finalists, numbering 81 in total.
These finalists participated in a filmed question-and-answer session with Finch, as the facilitator of the judging panels. "Each finalist was asked the same set of questions to ensure that the process was fair. The unedited interview footage then accompanied all the finalists' written nominations to the five judges on the third and final judging panel, which processed the material over a two-day period and chose their winners," concludes Finch.
Zikalala was the only finalist in the category Logistics, Shipping and Transportation.
See the full list of finalists and winners [PDF].
