She is responsible for a company that employs 300 people and has an annual turnover in excess of R200m.
As the daughter of two teachers, both of whom attended Adams College, founded by missionaries just outside Amanzimtoti in KwaZulu-Natal, Dhlamini was always likely to attend the same school.
"During the 1980s there were few schools of that calibre so I was fortunate to have gone there.
"Obtaining a good education was something my father had always encouraged. He often used to tell me that it was the only way to ensure that I left home as an independent woman," says Dhlamini, who grew up in the township of Umlazi, near Durban.
But the path towards accountancy was not as straightforward.
In 1993, aged 20 and having obtained a BSc from the University of Cape Town, Dhlamini began her working career at Southern Life as a computer programmer. But after two years her horizons changed and she decided to pursue her real passion: to become a chartered accountant.
After her stint at Southern Life she returned to UCT to do what was then called a one-year BCom conversion course. This was followed by articles at one of the big four accounting firms, Deloitte, where she stayed for six years.
But when the opportunity to start Xabiso Chartered Accountants came in 2003, she grabbed it.
"It was a time when women were being encouraged to start companies. It was a message that appealed to me.
"The challenge of working for any organisation founded 100 years ago is that they pretty much have all their processes well entrenched, which makes it difficult as an individual to make an impact," says Dhlamini.
But as fate would have it, barely a year after she had founded Xabiso, Abel Dlamini, who is now executive chairman of SekelaXabiso, had also just started Sekela Consulting. And since then the two have been working together on a number of projects.
"In many ways it's like a relationship in which we've been living together but it's only now that we've decided to make it official," says Dhlamini.
With ambitions to quadruple the size of the business in eight years, targeting a turnover of R1bn, Dhlamini certainly has her work cut out.
"Our strategy is to exploit the opportunities in the internal auditing and advisory space and I believe it's only as a combined force that we'll achieve that goal."
Source: Financial Mail via I-NET Bridge
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