Her father, a human rights lawyer, and her mother, a teacher, ignited a passion for making a difference.
“I am very proud of where I came from. I had, what some may call, a typical KwaZulu-Natal South African Indian upbringing. Most of us growing up in that time, under apartheid, felt we had to do something to change the socio-political-legal environment,” she reflects.
“My family was in the struggle [against apartheid] and my role models were the human rights lawyers that visited our home, regularly highlighting the importance of everyone making a
contribution,” she adds.
Sayuri, who holds a PhD in International Business and Environmental Governance from the University of the Witwatersrand and master’s degrees in both Environmental Management and International Business Law from the University of London, began her legal career at the public interest law firm, The Legal Resources Centre, in the early 1990s.
“It was during the apartheid years, and we advocated on behalf of people who had no rights, no voice. While a lot of the work we did was challenging, we often simply helped disempowered communities with day-to-day problems where the system had failed them. For example, we ran a clinic where we helped old people claim their pensions, but also initiated litigation for victims of police brutality,” she recalls.
Post-apartheid, Sayuri moved into general legal practice and corporate law, with a focus on structured financing. She spent more than a decade at multinational companies like Nestlé, Absa and Ericsson, heading up teams in Sub-Saharan Africa advising on the structuring of project finance transactions. This evolved into a specialisation in infrastructure project finance.
“In the 90s and early 2000s, much of financial structuring was based on tax benefits. We saw that start to transition to structuring for socio-economic benefits. When I worked at Anglo American in the mining industry, for example, corporate finance transactions were structured to achieve broad-based economic empowerment and Mining Charter goals,” she explains.
This period honed her financial acumen as did her role as associate director in PwC’s sustainability strategy division.
Tech and finance
Today, as ESG director at Open Access Data Centres (OADC), two trends continue to excite Sayuri: sustainable finance and the use of smart technology in achieving sustainability goals.
“We need the right financing instruments to achieve the SDGs,” she states, “And technology, particularly AI, has immense potential to help us collect and analyse data to work more efficiently. Throughout my life, I have always had an interest in the environment and conservation. Somehow it all came together as the paths of my career and interests have now converged: the legal social justice aspect, technical environmental science concepts and principles, a strong finance background, and using smart tech, like AI and blockchain, to accelerate how we achieve sustainable development goals.”
The role also allows Sayuri to delve a bit more into governance, and some of the challenges that come with that.
“With ESG, a lot has become about compliance and governance, and that can be quite frustrating for professionals. Securing funding is a major hurdle for small and medium-sized companies. In a smaller corporate environment, the day-to-day goal may involve sourcing finance through development finance institutions, impact or private equity investors. A critical aspect of governance is reporting to your investors or funders. This can be very paper- and information-intensive,” she explains.
In addition, the profusion of ESG standards can be daunting.
“We have to implement ways of measuring what we’re doing to give stakeholders insight regarding our performance and impact. Showing alignment to global standards is also critical. My legal background has certainly helped in that respect. Our biggest funders at OADC are African Capital Alliance and the International Finance Corporation – and we use the IFC Performance Standards as one of the benchmarks for our ESG performance. We have also just concluded a sustainability-linked loan which has its own governance requirements as a structured product,” she explains.
Deeper conversation
However, Sayuri is also quick to point out that the conversation surrounding sustainability and ESG has matured, moving beyond mere compliance to stakeholder value creation, with a growing recognition of the interconnectedness of environmental and social issues to financial performance.
“The emphasis has recently been on climate and energy, but we are now seeing a stronger voice from the perspective of biodiversity and nature-related risks. There is increasing pressure on companies to align to new global standards like the Taskforce on Nature-Related Disclosures [TNFD],” she says, “When you look at what corporate sustainability means, it refers to the long-term performance and resilience. of a company or industry. Previously, this was measured by looking at financial indicators, whereas now we recognise that non-financial indicators (like environmental and social factors) also play a significant role on the company’s success and survival.”
She adds, “ESG is not something that is separate from the business, it is essential in assessing the intrinsic value of a company. When talking to an FD or CFO, they realise that if they are trying to get funding from investors, there will be full due diligence on environment and social performance.”
Sayuri further points out that the focus on ESG has forced companies to ensure that there are proper systems in place to measure, monitor and report on environmental and social factors, and to quantify the risks and opportunities that they represent.
For aspiring sustainability professionals, Sayuri’s advice is simple: Anyone can get into the field.
“Find your niche and what you’re passionate about. You may not need to pursue a new qualification. I chose to study further and add environmental science expertise to my skills, but that is not strictly necessary,” she says, “Just start from where you are and add the ESG lens to what you are doing. This field of work is constantly evolving so rather than studying additional formal qualifications, keep up with developments through reading and participating in industry and technical forums and groups.”
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