JAW Design
What does your company do?
I lead three interwoven ventures, each built on a foundation of good business done well.
JAW Design and Advertising is an all-female creative agency that helps businesses craft standout, strategic brand experiences. From branding for Startups to strategies, campaigns and events for Blue Chips, we deliver with heart, creativity, intelligence and precision.
D2C (Designed to Change) is my social impact initiative – offering pro-bono and low-bono creative services to changemakers and community causes that can’t afford big-agency rates, but deserve big-agency thinking. We also upskill non-profit leaders to upskill them in marketing, networking and brand-building.
The Good Businesswoman™ is my platform for advocacy, education and storytelling - where I mentor, speak, and write about ethical leadership, team culture and the messy beauty of building a business from the ground up, for good, through good. My soon-to-launch book Feeding Unicorns is a practical guide for leaders who want to retain talent by doing better for their teams.
Together, these platforms form one ecosystem: profitable, purposeful and people-first.
What is your biggest success?
My biggest success has been creating a business culture that proves empathy and excellence can coexist - and scale. At JAW, I’ve built an all-female team with industry-leading talent and a culture where people genuinely want to stay. We offer 57 days of combined leave a year, work-from-home flexibility, and support systems that prioritise well-being without compromising performance.
This people-first approach hasn’t just kept staff happy, it’s grown our client base, attracted global brands, and birthed D2C: our social impact arm that channels our skills into community projects. Alongside this, I launched The Good Businesswoman and am publishing my first book this year.
In a world where burnout is normalised, I’ve built a business that thrives by caring - deeply, deliberately and consistently.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
The greatest hurdle has been standing firm in the face of corporate bullying.
As a small, female-led agency, we’ve done work that was good enough to be used by big international brands… just not good enough, apparently, to be paid for or credited. We’ve been ghosted after delivering fully fleshed campaigns. We’ve watched ideas repackaged. We’ve received emails that say “if you can’t meet this impossible deadline, we’ll give it to someone else.” That’s not partnership. That’s intimidation.
And here’s the hardest part: when you’re a small business, especially in South Africa, your options are limited. Lawyers are expensive. Fighting back takes time you don’t have.
But I refuse to stay quiet. I’ve spoken out publicly, protected my team, and doubled down on transparency and ethics—even when it cost us revenue. Because I’d rather lose a client than lose our integrity.
That’s the stand good businesswomen have to take.
Supporting Examples of Ethical Challenges Faced as a Small Business:
• Idea usage without credit: We pitched a full creative route to a national courier business. Months later, their TV ad bore striking resemblance to our concept - executed without feedback, payment, or acknowledgment.
• Ghosted after delivery: After a month of meetings, proposals, and creative iterations with an international airline, we were met with total silence post-submission. No feedback, no outcome, no payment.
• Undue pressure from corporates: A current situation with an international retailer coming to South Africa has exposed us to last-minute demands, shifting expectations, and a major reduction in scope after 6 months of work on the full scope without payment, putting immense pressure on a small team, even with contractual protection.
• Tightrope of retaliation: Speaking up risks losing future opportunities, yet staying silent perpetuates the exploitation cycle that so many small agencies endure behind the scenes.
