Sophie Jessie joined ISLA in January 2021 as the Director of Finance and Operations.

Sophie is an Associate Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA) and a member of Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) in UK. She has 20 years’ experience working as an accountant in both profit and non-profit making organizations. She has worked in both Lesotho and South Africa. She studied accounting at Centre for Accounting Studies in Lesotho where she qualified as a General Accountant. She holds Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management and MBA from MANCOSA.

Sophie’s professional roles over the years includes being a head of finance and admin departments for several NGOs. Her responsibilities ranged from management and oversight of Finance Departments, Administration Departments, Procurement and Logistics, and Facilities Management. Her responsibilities in these functions included development of policies and procedures, internal controls, risk management and strategic management.

Sophie has worked and managed donor contracts with government departments, international organisations, corporates, and foundations, including private fundraising initiatives. Some of the organisations that she has been involved with, during her professional career, include, amongst others,  South African government departments, DFID, UNFPA, IDRC, KfW, GIZ, USAID, Football For Hope, FIFA Legacy Trust, Global Fund..

She has worked for several non-profit organizations in charge of the finance operations including personnel needs assessment, recruitment, performance management and other related human resource management aspects. She has also been involved in several cross sectional and inter departmental projects and teams for proposal writing, implementing new systems, changing/improving the existing systems, and also developing and documenting the policies, procedures, and work instructions.

One of Sophie’s passions is conducting workshops and facilitating trainings. She worked as a part time lecturer at School of Management Accounting, a tertiary institution that specialised in preparing students for CIMA exams. She was teaching Fundamentals of Financial Accounting, Financial Operations and Financial Management.