Written by: Admin_SheEvo
Growing up on a farm 30 kilometers away from the nearest village, I began working every December at a vegetable shop located diagonally across from the bank starting at the age of 15. This experience eventually led to a job interview and an offer to join the bank when I was 18. I still clearly remember standing by the gates of Natal University among a massive crowd, explaining my choice to enter banking instead of pursuing a career in law. My father’s powerful words still resonate deeply with me: “If you did law you would do the law of the land but go to the bank and do justice, justice you can do anywhere.”
This dedication to community is why I go by the name Aunty B. To me, an “Aunty” is someone who anchors and supports their family or community. It is a title young people use for me, and it is how I want to be recognized across the continent. Although my given name is Barbara, the “B” represents being completely borderless—which is what it truly signifies for me.
When I was 20, I took a gap year to au-pair in London and backpack from Tel Aviv to a farm near Eilat, alongside other travels through Europe. Upon returning home, my career shifted, and I soon became the head of foreign exchange. It was in this role that I met my husband, an environmental scientist specializing in waste management—a field quite rare at the time. Our dating years were filled with me studying environmental science terminology in order to translate it for those around us. Later, at age 31, I became a bank manager.. Back then, he constantly brought up carbon credits, reeds, and dolomite. I often brushed it off, telling him I had balancing tellers to worry about rather than the environment. But one day, while we were driving to work, he gently took my hand at a red light and told me, “Babe, there will be NO bank if there’s NO environment.” That profound moment altered my life forever, and it remains the exact quote I use to open every talk and training session today .Later I would work with him for 5 years managing a landfill and later training integrated waste management to youth and communities. A journey to my current position training boards in both Corporate Governance and Ethics and ESG.
After ’94, I transitioned into the role of bank manager, constantly mindful that my grandmother, a Zulu woman, would never have been afforded the opportunity to stand in that office. Feeling a deep responsibility to honor that lineage, I made a personal pledge upon accepting the position: I would define my success by sharing a cup of coffee in my office every week with a Black woman, simply to acknowledge her. This commitment allowed me to engage meaningfully with women, offering them a dedicated space where they were included in the economy and supported in navigating their real-world challenges.
I entered spaces simply believing I belonged there. However, the boardrooms back then were lonely places—hardly anyone looked like me, and no one was in my age group. This isolation, combined with the massive pay gap between myself and my male colleagues, is what drove me into understanding equity . I had to master the mechanics of equity and shareholding, recognizing that these assets were entirely absent from the balance sheets of Black people at the time, as equity allocations were almost exclusively held by a white male majority.”
There’s a burden of obligation, a burden of representation, a burden of being the only one in the room. I have carried that burden — because I know how brilliant so many are, and why are they not in the room? And how can we get others in? I’m always looking for a way to get others in, always asking, who’s missing at the table? All our voices matter— because I can’t be their voice. I’ve just been sensitised to it. I did a shoot not so long ago, for a magazine, and I realised I’d be the only black woman in the magazine, and I thought, that’s a burden I don’t want to carry. I connected with a friend and asked, ‘Can we co-create the entry into this space, so there’s more than myself in there?’ and we did.
My heritage is woven into my very DNA, connecting me directly to my great-grandmother MaNdlovu and grandmother Mkhize through our shared clan songs—an identity that cannot be washed away. Yet, looking back on my journey, I realize that the surnames I carry have made the woman in my story invisible. Between Lawrence, an English name, and Strydom, my husband’s Afrikaans and Dutch surname, or my birth names Barbara and Dianah, their stories are not visible, almost completely erased and obscured. This has sparked a deep self-determination within me to imagine an Africa where race is invisible or altogether erased. I want to remove the cataract of race from my own eyes, so that it no longer plays a part in how I perceive and profile the people around me.
The year my husband passed away, I undertook a journey from Cape to Cairo, volunteering as a coordinator and co-driver for someone who was differently abled—a journey that became my grief trip. It was on that trip I had defining conversations with God and I felt called to speak about ownership and equity for stewardship, recognizing that they already hold everything. Receiving this profound calling made me deeply question what this gift is actually for.
“For me, the bottom line is a journey of three steps: remember, reimagine, and re-story, because we cannot truly reimagine the future without first remembering the past. This philosophy fuels my passion for ownership, equity, and stewardship—concepts that enable benefits to pass down from generation to generation. Our culture teaches us that you never eat the seed, a principle that reframes our thinking to eliminate ideas of poverty and lack. When you enter a space holding something of value in your own hands and see your own capabilities, it ignites your potential to step forward.”
“Whenever I secure a seat at the table, I consider it my responsibility to introduce this perspective into spaces where such an understanding doesn’t yet exist. To achieve this, I have spent the last eight years retraining minds around equity and ownership through stewardship labs and Master Dreamer sessions. Having already facilitated over 5,000 sessions during this time, my ultimate aspiration is to impact a million lives.”
“A central piece of this training is the creation of the African Currency Intelligence Model, which functions as a balance sheet tailored for an African person. It prompts us to ask vital questions: Where do our traditions belong on a balance sheet, and what constitutes our goodwill? How do we build our own frameworks when global standards are defined by others? Ultimately, it is about learning how to walk into a room with a full glass so we can accumulate more, ensuring our unique value systems keep us from being excluded from financial networks.”
I offered to sponsor a bench and its initial intention soon shifted and I needed to create the bench to remember invisible women, women who have impacted lives and create change. The eco brick bench was recommended and The Green Net collaboration began. They had already installed four benches and as we were discussing the details I thought, I need a ‘her’ in the eco story so that it becomes an echo. The logo has that beautiful woman’s face crafted in the H to create the echo.
By incorporating eco-bricks to divert waste and adding ‘her’ to bring forth the echo alongside a QR code, I carefully developed the entire concept piece by piece—from the QR code itself to the link and the submission form. Between now and the 9th of August, our target is to collect 70 tribute notes. In the year ahead, this initiative will expand into tree planting, ensuring that every woman honored in these tribute notes has her name dedicated to a tree. This allows nominating families to see a complete, living tree story unfold—a real story rooted in our core philosophy: remember, re-imagine, re-story. It is all right there.
I carry three guiding quotes into every space. The first, written for basketball players, advises us to “be where your feet are”—a reminder to look down and find grounding whenever life becomes turbulent. The other two are about impact,the lesson of the pebble: “If you just throw the pebble into the waters, don’t follow the vibration — trust that it is a vibration.” The third centers on the butterfly: “For as long as we are flapping our wings, where we are, a vibration crosses continents.”
I am profoundly grateful for this journey, for the posture I am able to hold on this planet, and for everything that has been poured into my identity and being. Yet, I remain deeply mindful that this path comes with a great responsibility—a duty for gifting, shaping, reshaping, remembrance, mentioning, and sustaining a story.
We extend our sincere thanks to with our current collaborators: The African Monarch Group, The Centre for Mental Wellness and Leadership, Sis Pinky, and Nakanyane Seriti Path Coaching and all our sponsors.
To adopt a bench, donate or nominate a woman who shaped your life, visit www.auntybAfrica.co.za
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@barbaralawrencestrydom
