The South African-born banking CEO who was named one of the world’s most powerful women

South African-born Gail Kelly became the first female CEO of a major Australian Bank and was named one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes.

Kelly (formerly Currer) spent the four decades of her life in South Africa.

Born in Pretoria in 1956, she attended and studied Latin at the University of Cape Town before briefly moving to Zimbabwe with her husband Allan as he served his compulsory military service in the late 1970s.

She was the only member of the Latin department roughly 80 kilometres out of Bulawayo. She later returned to South Africa and taught in a government school.

Feeling unhappy while teaching, she moved into the banking space, becoming a teller at Nedcor, which would later become Nedbank.

She was known to be eager and hardworking and quickly rose through the ranks at the bank.

She then did an MBA at the Wits Business School, where she graduated with distinction.

Her thesis looked at how CEO success depended on the development and advancement of employees who showed potential.

She became the General Manager of Human Resources at Nedcor in 1990.

Despite Kelly being happy in South Africa—her husband, who worked as a paediatrician in an HIV clinic and with abused children—was concerned about their children’s future.

The Kellys thus moved to Australia in 1997 where she started work as the General Manager of Strategic Marketing at the Commonwealth Bank in October 1997.

She then became head of the Customer Service Division and was responsible for running the Commonwealth Bank’s branch network.

In 2001, Kelly and her family became Australian citizens.

Following the death of the incumbent CEO, Kelly was recruited as the CEO of St George Bank in 2002. She thus became the first female CEO of a major Australian bank.

During her tenure, St George Bank more than doubled its total assets and profits, which stood at over A$100 billion and A$1 billion by 2007, respectively.

That same year, she resigned from St George Bank but would quickly return to the banking space as the CEO of Westpac.

This made Kelly the first female CEO of one of Australia’s big four banks.

In 2008, she orchestrated the merger of Westpac and St George Bank, boosting Westpac’s share of the home loan market.

With her leading one of the biggest banks in Australia, Kelly was named the eighth most powerful woman in the world by Forbes in 2010.

This placed her ahead of singer Beyonce Knowles (#9), US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (#11), US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (#31) and former Absa CEO Maria Ramos (#32).

Kelly pushed for greater female representation at Westpac.

In 2010, she announced a target to have women occupy 40% of the top managerial positions at Westpac. This task was nearly achieved less than two years later.

In addition to her gender policies, profits hit a record A$7.6 billion in 2014. That same year, she announced that she would be leaving Westpac.

Since leaving

Following her stint in the Australian banking sector, she held several roles that leveraged her experience and insights as a global leader.

In South Africa, she served as a Non-Executive Director of Woolworths from 2015 until 2019.

She currently serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of UBS Group AG and as a senior advisor to McKinsey.

She also established the Gail Kelly Global Leaders Scholarship between the University of Cape Town and the University of New South Wales, which facilitated an exchange program between the two universities.

Her memoir, Live Lead Learn: My Stories of Life and Leadership, was published in 2017. It details her experiences as a high-profile businesswoman.