LYNETTE
COETZEE
Lynette Coetzee, the recipient of the Health Care Services / Public Service Award, is Portfolio Manager: Health, Group Corporate Social Investment for Transnet Limited and is the Project Manager of the Phelophepa health care train project.
Lynnette
grew up in an Afrikaans-speaking environment in Germiston, left school
as a teanager and joined the railways. She knows how things work: “I
started with Transnet at the age of 17,” she remembers, “so
basically I grew up with these guys. That’s why they can’t
really try to tell me anything” about why things can’t be done
with the train, the track or the schedule.
She became the company’s
librarian, a position that taught her the fastidious filing and organizing
skills that she brings to the job of managing this complex health-care
project and its mission to far-flung places.
In 1990 she moved to Transnet’s
social responsibility portfolio. She has a degree in Library Science, a
post-graduate diploma in Museum Science, and an Honours Degree in Labour
Relations. She also holds a Senior Management Program Diploma.
As Project Manager, she is responsible, together with her teams from Johannesburg
and the Phelophepa for a variey of operations.
These
include marketing and communications, strategic planning, financial
and project management and all the operational activities
regarding the Phelophepa Health Care Train, liaising regularly with
training institutions for manpower, national and international supporters
and the Department of Health.
She runs the Phelophepa project as a
strict business concern, and has shown that such projects can be run
in a cost-effective and financially accountable manner.
She is receiving wide-spread recognition for the success of the Phelophepa train.
Due to the manner that Lynette runs the project, she was chosen as the regional
winner (Gauteng Central) for the Corporate Business Woman of the Year: 1998 Competition.
During March 1998, she received a Probe Dental Award from the British Dental
Association
for her role in bringing health care services to rural South Africa.
Lynette
has been nominated for recognition in the sixth edition of the American
Biographical Institute’s “International Who’s Who
of Professional and Business Women” and for their “International
Who’s Who of Professional and Business Women’s Hall of
Fame”.
Lynette has also been awarded an “International Order of Merit” by
the International Biographic Centre in Cambridge, England, and in 2000, the University
of Port Elizabeth conferred upon her the degree of Doctor Commercii, Honoris
Causa.
She is a joint winner in the Health Category of the Shoprite Checkers SABC3 Woman
of the Year 2000 Awards.
South African Women for Women is proud to recognize the creative problem solving
and enthusiasm displayed by Lynette Coetze and her co-workers on the Phelophepa
as they bring essential health care to rural South Africa.