Our Team

Darren Isaacs

Founder & CEO

Darren is on a mission with his team at Makosi to change the way public accounting firms deliver work. This requires our clients to go global and on-demand with resourcing strategies, operate virtually as well as forge automation and data analytics strategies. His mantra is "get your hands dirty, figure things out, keep it simple and never give up."

Paul Emery

CXO

At the age of 28, Paul rode a motorcycle around the world. While he was riding, he thought about quitting almost every day. But despite the bad weather, brushes with the law, mental and physical fatigue, he kept going. Today, Paul puts that perseverance to work as a member of the Makosi leadership team by delivering exceptional service and experiences to our clients.

Kevin Kletz

COO

Kevin is an experienced finance and operations executive with a varied industry background including real estate, sports & entertainment and financial services. He ensures that our teams are able to consistently deliver to our clients in a compliant and effective manner.

Pieter Strydom

Head of Product

As a technology entrepreneur and former external auditor at Ernst & Young, Pieter uses his knowledge and experience to provide clients with technology they want. By leveraging industry leading product development practices, UX/UI design thinking, robotic process automation and AI, we’re building product to accelerate innovation in the audit industry.

Cindy Botha

CPO

Cindy is an experienced People Leader boasting with varied industry background and experience, most of which were acquired as an Experienced Talent professional at one of the leading big 4 auditing firms before expanding her global & Africa experience at a UK based NGO. She brings to Makosi her expertise and experience, which ranges across several core enabling talent capabilities. She is driven by her passion for people, purpose driven impact and innovative pragmatic people strategies.

Graham Paulsen

Talent Acquisition Manager

Graham is an experienced recruitment manager with over 10 years of expertise, the bulk of which was acquired at South Africa's largest specialist recruitment firm. He has grown and lead teams across the Finance, IT and Risk fields and received various awards and accolades as a recruitment specialist and manager. He holds a BCom Marketing Management from the University of Pretoria and an ISPr designation with APSO.

Robert Betts

Community Manager

Robert is a career consultant to Chartered Accountants with global experience within international consulting groups based in UK, South Africa, Bermuda and Cayman Islands. With more than 10 years’ combined experience in the accounting and recruitment industry, he's uniquely placed to understand both the consultants and client by identifying top talent for our international client base.

Ryan Najmulski

Client Success Manager

Ryan Najmulski has worked closely with audit, advisory, and financial services firms for over 8 years. After receiving his degree in marketing and finance, he lived in New York City and worked at a Fortune 500 company helping c-suite leaders with talent solutions. After New York City, Ryan lived in Bermuda and partnered with Big 4 and global reinsurance firms on projects and hiring related to accounting and finance initiatives. Ryan brings in-depth experience and a consultative approach to help audit leaders with workforce strategy and talent solutions. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado with his wife and red husky and is an outdoors enthusiast.

Carly Choffo

Marketing Manager

Carly is an experienced marketing and business development professional with over 4 year's experience building brands and driving business growth. Carly is passionate about creating meaningful and insightful content for our clients, helping them take advantage of opportunities and thrive in challenging business environments.

Kathryn Olsen

Office Manager

With a strong support and administrative background, Kathryn allows the team to move quicker, which in turn allows the team to move quicker for our clients.

Dana Naidoo

Product QA Manager

As a Chartered Accountant with 6+ years audit experience turned Product QA Manager, Dana is able to bring the same detail-orientated approach to quality assurance on Makosi's product releases as she's done on audit engagements. Dana is passionate about building technology that works as it should, and delivering tested, intuitive and user-friendly product to our clients.

Ashleigh Forster

Business Analyst

As a business analyst you need to be comfortable with the unknown and “making sense” in the chaos. Ashleigh ensures that requirements are clear from both the development team and the business stakeholder’s perspectives, so that we can deliver the best features to our users. She is passionate about optimizing process and bringing teams together to work towards a common goal.

Kubendran Sigamoney

Engagement Manager

Kubendran is an experienced audit manager, with strong professional experience in Internal Audit, External Audit, US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), IFRS and Income Tax. Kubendran has worked on several audit projects across the US, including New York, Florida and California. He's passionate about delivering the most professional and effective audit engagements to our clients.

Seth Gordon

Engagement Manager

Seth is a Chartered Accountant and former EY audit manager, with 4+ years of external and digital audit experience. With his varied industry experience gained on multinational audits in the manufacturing, real estate and technology sectors, Seth is able to thrive in high-pressure, deadline-driven environments, where he helps our audit teams successfully deliver on challenging and complex audits.

Jennifer Lebethe

Engagement Manager

Jennifer is a former Deloitte audit manager, with over 4 year's experience, having worked across various industries including financial services, manufacturing and technology in South Africa as well as in Boston, Massachusetts. When she's not managing high-performing audit teams for our clients, Jennifer helps drive Makosi's impact initiatives forward.

Liron Leiboff

Engagement Manager

Liron is a Chartered Accountant and former investment banker and management consultant. He gained vast transaction and advisory experience during his 3+ years in banking and 7 months in management consulting. He was awarded a Top Achiever in Execution award in 2020, a testament to his obsession of delivering quality and going the extra mile for our clients as an Engagement Manager at Makosi.

Alisha Nadasen

Journey Advocate

Alisha is deeply passionate about people and their development. She’s been with Ernst & Young for 7 years and spent most of her time within the learning and development space, upskilling and coaching both aspiring and qualified chartered accountants. She thrives on creating the most exceptional journey from start to finish for our community members, while pushing them to constantly be the best version of themselves.

Shelby Wilson

Journey Advocate

Shelby is an experienced accounting professional with 5 years of audit experience, as well as 2+ years' experience as a Senior Accountant and Financial Manager. Her passion for working with people, coupled with her remarkable interpersonal skills and intimate knowledge of the journey of an accounting professional, makes her ideally placed to guide experienced and young professionals alike through their career with Makosi.

Parfait Ngoie

Journey Advocate

Parfait's passion lies in building and driving consultants towards their goals and aspirations. His enthusiasm working with people, coupled with his 7 years' experience in the accounting, audit and finance industry, makes him the ideal candidate to work alongside our workforce in helping them achieve their personal and career objectives. Parfait takes pride in matching client requirements with consultant expectations and thrives in high pressure environments, where he helps audit and TAS consultants deliver exceptional quality.

Melanie Smit

Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist

Melanie is a skilled recruiter with more than fifteen years’ combined experience in internal and external financial recruitment, consulting, and marketing. She has a far-reaching network and comprehensive understanding of the full recruitment cycle. Melanie is dedicated to securing the best talent and in doing so, building an exceptional workforce to positively impact Makosi and its clients’ businesses.

Cara Van Wyk

Talent Acquisition Specialist

Cara’s passion and motivations lie in facilitating people ascertain their goals and dreams. She has demonstrated this over many years in the recruitment space, with a vast network and knowledge in the accounting industry. She takes immense pride in her deliverables and finds satisfaction in the success of matching business requirements with her specialist talent acquisition capabilities.

Alryn Appalsamy

Talent Specialist

As an accomplished accounting professional with 5+ years of audit experience under his belt, Alryn has worked on several audit projects across the US, servicing clients in New York City and San Francisco. Having worked abroad, he brings keen insight and a unique perspective to the talent team’s recruiting function, ensuring that the standard of consultants serving our clients are always of the highest quality.

Kent Naicker

Fulfilment Specialist

Kent is a seasoned accounting professional with 8+ years of industry experience, having worked locally and internationally on audit projects for clients in the Real Estate and Non-profit sectors. With his intimate knowledge of the audit environment in South Africa, the USA and Australia coupled with an in depth understanding of what it means to be successful on a global level, he brings his unique insights and instincts to the talent team, ensuring that Makosi recruits first class talent, newly qualified and experienced alike, to deliver an unparalleled experience for our clients.

Richard Fisher

Retired CHRO, EisnerAmper

David Madden

Intelligent Automation

Wayne Kaplan

Retired Managing Partner, Grant Thornton