T-Systems South Africa: An ICT company with Soul


“I think this is a brilliant industry for women to be involved in. There are many different streams within the ICT environment for women to pursue.” Management Today magazine’s Amanda Dormehl talked to 2008 Nedbank Businesswoman of the Year and T-Systems Managing Director Mardia Van der Walt-Korsten.


employees, was ‘rated as number 12 in the market and not even considered relevant’. Today Mardia Van der Walt- Korsten is the Managing Director of T-Systems South Africa. The organisation has a turnover of close to R3 billion, employs more than 2,700 staff and is considered a tier 1 player in the Information Communication Technology field.


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Mardia Van der Walt-Korsten Managing Director, T-Systems


Mardia ascribed some of her organisational culture changing success to women being generally more intuitive. ‘I don’t claim that it is only women who have this ability...’


40 Management Today | August 2011


How was this gargantuan turn-around achieved? With a Masters in Clinical Psychology Mardia joined M-Net/Multichoice in 1990 as an Organisational Development Consultant. Under the leadership of Koos Bekker, who she describes as an unorthodox and visionary leader, she was promoted to the position of Vice President of Human Resources. ‘He played a major role in my formation in terms of how business leaders thought’.


by T-Systems South Africa and in 1998 headed up their Human Resources team. Her major skills were a real understanding of business and


Mardia was head-hunted


n the 1990s T-Systems was an IT Solutions Organisation that had around 200


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