The Irish woman recruiting chief executives for South African firms

A holiday to South Africa in the early Noughties proved life-changing for Wicklow woman Sarah Arnot Mulhern. There she met the man who would become her husband. She moved permanently to Paarl in the Western Cape in 2005.

Though now divorced, Arnot Mulhern has continued her love affair with South Africa, while developing her career in corporate business coaching and consulting.

“The lifestyle here is tremendous. The weather is so much better than Ireland, the food and wine are magnificent and inexpensive, the scenery is beautiful, it’s not far from the sea, infrastructure is good and there’s an international airport 20 minutes away.”

Arnot Mulhern joined Accenture after she graduated from Trinity College with a master’s in Italian and philosophy in 1990, and was posted to Antibes in the south of France and then to Paris.

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She later moved to the international consulting firm Spencer Stuart, where she specialised in executive search. The firm’s global reach meant that she was able to continue working for them in consulting assignments when she moved to South Africa.

In 2015 she decided to take her career in a new direction and took an MPhil in leadership and coaching at the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Since then she has spent much of her time coaching senior corporate executives.

“That was quite life-changing for me because it meant I would actually walk the road with leaders. South Africa is very diverse, so you meet all sorts of people who have made it to the top of the business world from completely different backgrounds and walks of life and that it makes it endlessly interesting.”

[ ‘Coming from a farming background you have an entrepreneurial spirit within you’ ]

In 2018, she cofounded a leadership consultancy firm with business partner Andrew Woodburn. It operated successfully for four years but she felt clients could best be served by a larger consultancy with a global reach and joined up with her present firm, Heidrick & Struggles, in June 2022.

Among her roles, she now assists corporate boards on chief executive hiring decisions as well succession planning. “Typically, you might have a headhunter who will find a shortlist of suitable candidates and I will go in and do a deep dive assessment of each.

“The French have a lovely saying that every client wants a sheep with five legs, but of course they only come with four, so my job is to is to go in to the client and explain to them exactly what they would be getting with each of these people, the impact they are likely to have on the business and the risks associated with hiring one individual versus another individual. I give that feedback usually to the nominations committee of the board.”

She is also the author of two best-selling leadership books: Find Your Focus: 5 Steps to Your Best Ever Year and Keep Your Focus: 40 Thought Pieces on Maintaining Your Top Performance.

There was a problem with our water pipes, resulting in around 100 people living here as well as 30 horses and the neighbouring farm having no water. People here found multiple solutions

When Arnot Mulhern married and moved to South Africa, the couple lived initially on a farm, which helped her to indulge her lifelong passion for horse riding. She remains a keen competitive equestrian. When the farm was sold following her divorce, she moved to a secure estate in the area.

Security is a big issue in South Africa, and her current home is in a gated community of 21 houses in parkland surrounded by high walls and 24-hour security at a gated entrance. There is a strong sense of community and people help each other out when problems arise, she says.

South Africans are resilient, she says. “There is an Afrikaans expression that translates ‘the farmer makes a plan’. There was a problem with our water pipes, resulting in around 100 people living here as well as 30 horses and the neighbouring farm having no water. People here found multiple solutions to make sure that everybody who needs water gets water in the community while the municipality and the formal processes are put in place to fix the bigger problem. That’s very typical here.”

She is acutely aware of the troubled history of the country and sees some parallels with Ireland as well as key differences. “You have the struggle for freedom and the creation of new functions of state but here you also have multiple races and languages. You have to let the past go but you also have to acknowledge the past in its complexity, richness – and horror, in some cases.”

Ireland has become so much more diverse. I feel I am returning to a much more modern country now

South Africa today has many challenges and problems, she acknowledges. There is long-standing political and economic uncertainty, with high unemployment and crime rates, a brain drain of talent and a currency that has devalued.

While infrastructure, such as roads, telecommunications and electricity supply, is good in the Western Cape, it is poor in some other parts of the country, which she says, has led to many more people moving into the region she lives in.

She visits Ireland every year to catch up with family and friends and is looking forward to teaching a short module on leadership at the Trinity School of Medicine later this year.

Having lived abroad since the early 1990s, she sees a profound change from the Ireland she left. “The focus on education and attracting industry and investment has paid off so well and Ireland has become so much more diverse. I feel I am returning to a much more modern country now.”

Among the cultural differences she sees is a much more friendly and helpful attitude in Ireland in customer service situations compared with her experience in other countries. The Irish also stay up later, she says. “When I come home, people are up chatting until one in the morning. In South Africa, people would be in bed before 10 o’clock at night and up early the next day.”