Kereng blazes her way up

Research has shown that for staff members to thrive, company leaders need to actively foster employee engagement, loyalty and growth to enable them to excel in their roles. Kgomotso Kereng is thankful to her employer Debswana for doing just that for her; enabling her to blaze through her work with ease. Kereng is a Senior Finance Manager at Orapa, Letlhakane and Damtshaa Mines; a job she started in 2016 July. Kereng’s critical deliverables are to ensure that mine costs are managed and controlled efficiently and effectively to avoid over expenditure, to ensure that controls are working as intended and that best practices are adhered to within the mine. “Generally, I look after the finances of the mine and most importantly I look after the cost of the mine,” she said. Asked about how she is able to execute her responsibilities, Kereng pointed out that her experience coupled the ‘Debswana culture’ also makes her job easy. “I think Debswana has generally come from a culture of just spending anyhow to a culture of cost containment and cost savings; so you’ll see that even when you prepare budgets people are at point where they know that the mine has to save money and do not have to prepare a fat budget,” she said. Kereng is a Chartered Management Accountant, a qualification she attained from the Botswana Accountancy College (BAC) and has over 10 years of experience across various industries. She started off her career in accounting as an Assistant Accountant in 1997 at Water Utilities Corporation.  She was promoted to the position of Principal Accountant in 1999. In 2006, Kgomotso joined De Beers Prospecting as a Cost Accountant before being appointed Financial Accountant. “I also worked for Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana as Finance Manager from 2009 and joined OLDM from Anglo Coal Botswana where I worked as a Finance Manager.” Having  mostly worked in male dominated environments all her life and excelled, Kereng is fully confident in her capabilities and is making sure that whenever she sits at the table, her skills speaks for her and her voice is heard. “For me, it’s all about believing in yourself as a person and as a woman because you wouldn’t expect people to believe in you while you don’t,” said Kereng. She has so far learnt a lot since joining Debswana, especially on the mining side. “When you join a company as a leader, people expect you to know everything and the journey for me has been to learn and learn quickly; it’s about you being constantly alert and learning in the process,” she said. She, however, plans to spread her wings some more in the near future by moving out of Orapa, and maybe joining the Finance department in the Debswana head office or even moving overseas within the group. She is a single mother to an eight-year-old boy who is very passionate about soccer. She enjoys traveling, running, home improvements and décor as well as gardening.