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Lessons from a reformed fraudster – Finding healing and self-forgiveness

Doctor Claudelle von Eck in an interview with Brad Sadler. Brad was convicted of fraud and had undergone a transformation process to where he is now – avidly spreading the word that fraud only brings negative dividends to the fraudster. In this first of two interviews, Dr Claudelle and Brad Sadler discuss whether fraudsters can be reformed and what one needs to do to reform yourself when you have wronged society. Brad has an honest conversation about the pain he caused and how he dealt with it. He provides crucial advice to those who have taken a wrong turn in life and guides them on how to find self-forgiveness and become an asset in society. You can come back from a major mistake.

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A Board is only as strong as the judgment it can hear

1 October 2026

Consider an imagined village gathering. A drum calls everyone together and announces the decisions. Its sound commands attention, and people remember it long after the gathering ends.
But before the drum sounded, a spider had been weaving connections between people, carrying ideas and shaping opinions. The drum was audible; the spider’s influence was less visible. The loudest voice is not always the one that moves the community.
Boardrooms can work in much the same way. Airtime and influence are not the same thing. To understand the quality of a board’s judgment, we must examine both what happens during the discussion and what has already shaped it.
A board can have the right skills around the table and still fail to use them. Its members may collectively understand finance, operations, people, technology, risk and the organisation’s wider environment, resulting in a board that looks well composed on paper. Yet, it may not see what is actually shaping its most material decisions.

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When Pressure Enters the Boardroom

30 September 2026

Those moments, when the tension is so thick in the Boardroom that you can cut it with a knife, tend to sneak up more often when the organisation is under pressure. They arrive without being calculated into the room.

I prefer to the called in prior to cultures becoming toxic, but I generally find myself called in when tension runs high between the NEDs and the executives – and most of the time both have legitimate reasons to be tense. Frustration is palpable and, before you know it, an us-versus-them atmosphere is created. I am often amazed at how a group of good people divides itself into camps where each considers the other not worthy of their trust. And often the cost of the tension to the organisation is not calculated or even acknowledged. Especially not when the organisation is in crisis.

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When People Doing the Right Thing Stand Alone

9 September 2026

As we grow older, experience bends and reshapes the things we believe. Sometimes we see the reshaping and are consciously aware of where it takes us. Sometimes we only realise long after the fact that the bending happened. I have a long list of items that have been bent and reshaped in my consciousness. I am pretty sure that some of them are not yet in my conscious mind. I was recently reminded of one of my reshaped opinions when I was asked to speak at the University of Johannesburg’s annual Corruption Summit.
There was a time in my career when a younger version of me stood before professionals and told them that they must do the right thing—even when they had to stand alone. I said it with conviction, because it was the right thing to say. But, with more life experience under my belt, I now understand that I had a too narrow view back then.

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