So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO?

Everyone wants the title. Almost no one is ready for the truth behind it. This is a News24 podcast series for people who build things – and for those who want to understand what leadership actually costs. Hosted by Bruce Whitfield, each episode is an unfiltered conversation with people who have sat in the chair: founders, executives, disruptors and industry leaders who have faced the pressure, responsibility and personal contradictions that come with running something bigger than themselves. No consultants. No spin. No highlight reel. Just honest conversations about the distance between what l

So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO? is a business podcast hosted by News24, with 10 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

News24 hosts So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO?, a business show with 10 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO?

  Adrian Gore: Leading on Purpose

  Aug 17, 202649 min

  Adrian Gore started Discovery as a health insurer in 1992. Today it covers the full gamut of financial services from insurance to banking – has a 25% stake in China’s biggest private health insurer Ping An Health, owns the third biggest health insurer in the UK with 2 million customers, and its Vitality Rewards programme is attached to health insurers in 40 markets, impacting 50 million lives. It all comes down to four key principles. This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank. Follow all the episodes here . Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.

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  So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO?

  Edward Kieswetter: Leading From The Ashes

  Aug 10, 202645 min

  Edward Kieswetter grew up in a township. He ended up running the Wilge power station, then overseeing six large coal-fired power stations for Eskom. Then FirstRand. Then a broken Alexander Forbes – which he turned around and listed on the JSE. Then retirement. Then a phone call. The SA Revenue Service had been hollowed out by state capture and needed someone who’d done it before. So he came back. This is a conversation about a particular kind of leader – one who doesn’t seek out the burning buildings, but keeps finding himself at their doors and walking in anyway. This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank. Follow all the episodes here. Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.

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  So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO?

  Serame Taukobong: Leading a Resurrection

  Aug 3, 202638 min

  “I was kicked out of a lab. They thought I’d blow it up. And I ended up in marketing.” Serame Taukobong trained as a chemist. His first employer had other ideas. What followed was Unilever, SAB, M-Net, fifteen years at MTN across Africa and then Telkom, a part state-owned telecoms relic haemorrhaging landline revenue and fighting for relevance. On day four as CEO he was in court. On day twenty-five a presidential proclamation wiped R3 billion off the share price before he’d received his first pay cheque. Today Telkom’s mobile business is the third largest in South Africa and one of the few state-linked companies making money. It turns out the man they threw out of the lab was exactly what the building needed. This series is sponsored by Discovery Bank. Follow all the episodes here. Editions drop on Tuesdays at 07:00.

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  So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO?

  Sir John Lazar: Leading Ahead of the Tech Curve

  Jul 27, 202642 min

  John Lazar studied computer science at Wits before the personal computer existed as a consumer product. A Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, decades building and leading one of the UK's most consequential telecoms software companies, and now President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and knighted by King Charles III for services to engineering and technology. He co-founded Enza Capital to back the African tech founders most investors haven't found yet. This is a conversation about what it means to spend an entire career one step ahead of where the world is going and whether that's a gift, a discipline, or simply what happens when you refuse to look anywhere but forward.

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  So, You Think You Want to Be a CEO?

  Stephen Newton: Leading without a safety net

  Jul 20, 202639 min

  Stephen Newton didn’t have a safety net growing up and that shaped him – he rose to senior positions in three international corporates – started and failed at three businesses – one in SEO, one importing African art and a third an electronic trading company which bombed just as he believed he had cracked the algorithm. When Accenture retrenched him at the height of the global financial crisis, he formed the global consultancy Elixirr - listed on the London stock exchange with more than 700 people working in major markets worldwide. He accepts that people see him as “Marmite” – you either love him or don’t – and he is okay with that.

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