Sue Birch
CEO Wines of South Africa
Tel: +27 21 883 3860
www.wosa.co.za
For the past nine years, Sue Birch has been CEO of Wines of South Africa, a section 21 body mandated by the wine industry to promote South African wines in export markets. During her tenure, wine exports have increased dramatically — from 117-million litres in 2000 to 407-million litres in 2008.
The growth in sales is largely due to an increase in their exposure at trade and consumer events worldwide. Birch was previously marketing manager of Capespan, responsible for international brand strategy, advertising, promotion and packaging development. In 2007 and 2008, she also served as vice chair of Cape Town Routes Unlimited.
Her awards include the International Wine and Spirit Competition’s Women in Wine Award (2005), the Institute of Cape Wine Masters’ Wine Personality of the Year (2005) and Drinks Business Woman of the Year (2009).
Jenna Clifford
Jenna Clifford Designs (Pty) Ltd
Tel: +27 21 423 5915
www.jennaclifford.com
The United Nations appointed jewellery designer Jenna Clifford as a South African ambassador and torch bearer for the Millennium Development Goal 3: Call to Action Global Campaign in March this year. The campaign draws attention to the empowerment of women and gender equality. Clifford has been designing jewellery for nearly three decades and launched her company in 1992.
She was involved in the successful amalgamation of three businesswomen’s organisations — the Executive Woman’s Club, ProWaldo and the National Association of Women Business Owners — to form the Businesswomen’s Association. She has designed and produced jewellery and trophies, ranging from gold lapel brooches for Commonwealth heads of state in 1999 to Man of the Match trophies for rugby Tests and golf tournaments.
De Leeuw Roses has named a rose after her. She is a patron of the Cancer Foundation and a trustee of the Walter Sisulu Paediatric Cardiac Centre and received the 1997 Rentmeester/Rapport award for most inspirational and beautiful woman of South Africa. She was an honoree in the 1998 International Who’s Who of Professional and Businesswomen. A wing of the Bellevue Hospice has been named after Clifford.
Cynthia Carroll
CEO
Anglo American
Tel: +27 11 638 9111
www.angloamerican.co.uk
Cynthia Carroll is the first Anglo American outsider to reach the top and Anglo’s first woman CEO. She came to London-listed Anglo in 2007, after 18 years running the aluminium company Alcan. Her expertise includes divestitures, joint ventures, research and technology, human resources and mergers and acquisitions.
In mid-2009 she rejected a merger with rival Xstrata, a move applauded by trade unions and government. Carroll has an MBA from Harvard University and is a non-executive director of AngloGold Ashanti. Her major priority is safety on the mines and she has taken a strong approach to improving it. As a result, Anglo’s fatality rate dropped by 33% in 2008.
Salukazi Dakile-Hlongwane
Chief Executive Nozala Investments
Tel: +27 11 463 5588
www.nozala.co.za
Nozala Investments is a leading investment company with interests ranging from hospitals and education to construction materials and telecoms. CE Salukazi Dakile-Hlongwane was previously assistant general manager of specialised finance at BoE, and senior manager of the structured finance unit and senior project officer at the Lesotho National Development Corporation.
She also held positions at the Development Bank of Southern Africa and at the African Development Bank (Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire). Dakile-Hlongwane is a director of Eqstra Holdings Limited; MCC (Mutual Construction Company); MIH Holdings Limited (Multichoice); Synergy Freight International; Natal Rubber Compounders; Afripack; Tsebo Outsourcing Group; Woodlands Dairy and the Don Group. She is also a trustee of the Chancellors House Trust and the Nozala Trust.
Adria Greene
CEO
Lawpoint
Tel: +27 21 526 0445
www.lawpoint.co.za
Adria Greene is a the founder and chief executive of Lawpoint, a legal process outsourcing company that provides legal services to worldwide corporations, financial institutions and law firms, in English, French, German and Portuguese.
She studied and qualified as a lawyer in the United States and is admitted to the New York State Bar. She holds a BA in international relations from Wellesley College, a JD from the University of Michigan Law School, and a diploma in management from the University of Cape Town.
She previously practiced corporate law in New York City, and moved between South Africa and the United States for eight years, but is now based in Cape Town. In 2009, the World Economic Forum named Greene a Young Global Leader. She is also a founding member of the South African Legal Process Outsourcing Association. She is an active member of the board of several non-profit organizations and has provided pro bono counsel on microfinance, arts and gender equity to a number of organisations.
Tanya Holgate
Sole Member Zulugas Fuel & Transport
Tel: +27 35 787 0931
Employed as a bookkeeper at Zululand Gas & Outdoor in Empangeni, Tanya Holgate obtained a diploma in advanced accounting with distinction, and when the owner moved to Australia in 2000 she took over the management of the company, purchasing the business three years later.
She has opened gas depots in Mbazwane, Kozi Bay, Ephondweni, Bambanana and Ulundi which are managed by women from the local communities. Her depot is the only holding site for LP gas tankers loading imported LP gas from Richards Bay Harbour for distribution in South Africa and neighbouring countries. It is also a Caltex diesel depot.
Holgate also owns a fleet of trucks and trailers transporting gas cylinders for clients between Durban and Botswana. In 2006 Zululand Gas & Outdoor changed its name to Zulugas Fuel & Transport. Holgate was a finalist in the 2008 Businesswoman of the Year competition.
Joan Joffe
Venture Catalyst
Tel: +27 82 990 0007
Joan Joffe has been in the IT and telecoms industry since 1960. After completing studies in mathematics and computer science at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Stanford, she worked for various companies including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Wells Fargo Bank and Standard Oil of California.
In 1977 she started Joffe Associates, and when IBM launched its first PC — overseas, but not in South Africa, which the company did not see as a viable market — Joffe imported the machines herself. She sold the company 10 years later, and a restraint of trade provision kept her out of the IT field. But it did not keep her out of the business world.
Joffe joined Vodacom, then a start-up, in 1994, and filled the roles of general manager: marketing, and group executive: corporate affairs and communications, and was chair of the Vodacom Foundation, retiring in 2003. A founding member of broad-based women’s empowerment group Nozala Investments, Joffe serves on the boards of several companies, including Datacentrix Ltd. She is a former Businesswoman of the Year and a recipient of the Wits Business School Lifetime Award for Entrepreneurship. She currently consults to various companies in the IT telecoms area.
Lulu Letlape
Executive Director: Corporate Affairs Mercedes Benz
Tel: +27 12 677 1980
www.mercedes-benzsa.co.za
Lulu Letlape’s role as part of the senior management team of the Mercedes Benz Group of Companies in South Africa involves the leadership of the corporate communication, corporate social investment, stakeholder management, public relations and corporate sponsorships departments. Letlape is also a non-executive director at Prasa (the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa).
Her qualifications include BA and BEd degrees from the University of Natal, now the University of KwaZulu-Natal; a master of management degree from the Witwatersrand University’s Graduate School of Public and Development Management; and she completed the Breakthrough Programme for Senior Executives at the IMD international business school in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Libby Lloyd
Media Consultant
Tel: +27 83 393 2557
www.heritage.org.za
Libby Lloyd started out as a journalist, working mostly in radio: Capital Radio in South Africa, National Public Radio in the United States and BBC Ireland. She was also active in the Speak media project and was subsequently head of radio training at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg.
A councillor with the Independent Broadcasting Authority (the predecessor of Icasa), and founding CEO of the Media Development and Diversity Agency, she is now a consultant, working on projects including media and development issues and policy, focusing on gender and communications. She was chosen as Vodacom Media Woman of the Year in 2005.
Wendy Luhabe
Chairman International Marketing Council
Tel: +27 11 880 7117
www.brandsouthafrica.com
Wendy Luhabe has been involved in two major initiatives that have revolutionised the involvement of women in South Africa’s economy: she pioneered the founding of Women Investment Portfolio Holdings (Wiphold) in 1993 and the Women Private Equity Fund in 2003.
She qualified in business commerce at the University of Lesotho and became a non-executive director of the JSE-listed ICS board at the age of 36. She has been chair of the Vodacom board and currently chairs the Industrial Development Corporation, International Marketing Council and Vendome. She is a director of JSE Limited and has business interests in Ogilvy, an advertising agency, and Ralph Blackie and Associates, a packaging firm. She is a trustee of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Trust and a member of the Club of Rome.
Luhabe is the chancellor of the University of Johannesburg and the recipient of many accolades, including two honorary doctorates in commerce, from the universities of Fort Hare and Stellenbosch. The author of Defining Moments, on the experiences of black executives in South Africa over three decades, she offers mentorship and coaching services to young men and women, CEOs and board directors.
Portia Maurice
CEO Tedcor Group (Pty) Ltd
Tel: +27 11 463 0731
www.tedcor.co.za
Portia Maurice is CEO of the Tedcor Group, a waste management company which incubates new business enterprises. Maurice was formerly CEO of women’s investment company Nehanda and for five years prior to that was with the MTN Group as a general manager in the strategic investments and corporate affairs divisions. A former journalist, she has worked in a range of media houses including The Argus, Mail & Guardian, Sowetan and the SABC.
In the public sector, she was the first director of communications in the department of education and served as chief director in the presidency’s government communications and information system. She has an MBA from the Gordon Institute of Business Science, an MA from London University and an honours degree from the University of Cape Town. She is an alumnus of Rhodes University and of the Harvard/Wits University senior executive programme, and has completed the Sapoa property development programme. She is a non-executive director of Bell Equipment Sales, South Africa and of Nehanda.
Phuti Malabie
Managing Director Shanduka Energy (Pty) Ltd.
Tel: +27 11 305 8900
www.shanduka.co.za
Shanduka Energy (Pty) Ltd is an investment company primarily focused on electricity, oil and gas. Phuti Malabie moved to Shanduka in 2004 from a post as head of the Project Finance South Africa unit at the Development Bank of Southern Africa. Prior to that she was vice president at Fieldstone, an international firm specialising in the financing of infrastructure assets.
Malabie is involved in a number of activities with youth, including ‘Dignity Day” led by Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum (WEF) as well as the Umsobomvu Youth Fund and African Leadership Academy mentorship programmes. She was awarded the Top in Project Finance 2003 award by the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals, the WEF named her one of its Global Young Leaders in 2007 and she was listed as one of the top 50 women in the world to watch in 2008 by the Wall Street Journal.
She holds a BA in economics from Rutgers University and an MBA from De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom. She completed the Kennedy School of Government’s Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century programme at Harvard University in 2008. Malabie is a member of the board of Vodacom Group and the Black Management Forum as well as a number of Shanduka Group investee companies.
Leigh Meinert
Managing Director Tertiary School in Business Administration
Tel: +27 21 532 2750
www.tsiba.org.za
Leigh Meinert is a co-founder and managing director of the Tertiary School in Business Administration (TSiBA), a private not-for-profit provider of higher education based in Cape Town. TSiBA offers emerging leaders an opportunity to study towards an innovative and enriched business degree that is focused on entrepreneurship and leadership.
Full-tuition scholarships for TSiBA’s bachelor of business administration degree are funded by private sector corporate partners. The institution produced its first graduates, including a Mandela Rhodes scholar, in 2008. Meinert left school at the age of 16 to start her first NGO, called Youth With Vision. After completing a BA in value and policy studies at Stellenbosch University, she worked for the Parliament of the World’s Religions before entering the corporate world as a project management consultant. Together with three co-founders, she opened TSiBA in 2004.
Totsie Memela-Khambule
Managing Director Postbank
Tel: +27 12 401 7669
www.postoffice.co.za
Totsie Memela-Khambule was named managing director of Postbank, a division of the Post Office Group, in 2006. She joined First Rand in 2001 and, prior to moving to Postbank, was CEO of customer services and retention for First National Bank’s home loans division. She began her banking career in 1993 with Nedcor, where she served as community liaison manager, and was promoted to branch manager six months later.
In 1996 she was appointed regional manager for Peoples Bank. Two years later she moved to the Land Bank as general manager of operations. In 2000 she was appointed acting managing director. Memela-Khambule holds a BA degree in social science from the University of Swaziland and a master’s of public administration from the University of Zimbabwe.
She has served on the boards of the Rural Housing Loan Fund and Advice @ Work, a division of Momentum. She also serves on the boards of Memela Pratt & Associates, Melanani Investments, International Partnership for Microbicides and Imvuno Investments.
Maud Motanyane
Media Consultant
Tel: +27 11 462 7436
Email: [email protected]
Maud Motanyane is an entrepreneur and former editor who now works as a media consultant. While living in Europe in the early 1990s, she established and ran the Jikelele Media Group, a television programme distribution outfit, with offices in the United States, Europe and Africa.
She was one of the original shareholders in Worldwide African Investment Holdings, one of the first black empowerment groupings. A graduate of the University of Zululand, Motanyane entered journalism at The Star, moved on to Post and was the founding editor of Tribute magazine.
Later she ran an exclusive health spa in Johannesburg, having studied cosmetology in the United Kingdom and earning qualifications from the Switzerland-based Confederation of International Beauty Therapy and Cosmetology. Motanyane is chairperson of the boards of Kagiso Media and G4 Securicor and a director of the Mr Price Group and the Urban Brew Production Company. She is also on the boards of the Historic Schools Restoration Project and the Catholic Education Trust and is one of the judges for the Vodacom Journalism Awards.
Dawn Mokhobo
Executive Deputy Chairperson Partnership Investments
Tel: 27 11 784 5665
www.partnershipi.co.za
Dawn Mokhobo was appointed as the first black woman to the management board of Eskom. She is the chairperson of African International Advisors and the Ombudsman Council for Long Term Insurance and executive deputy chairperson of Partnership Investments, a woman-controlled BEE enterprise. She is a director of Engin Limited and Sabvest Limited and a trustee for the Financial Services Board Foundation.
Mokhobo received the Businesswoman of the Year award in 1993 and a year later she served on the Independent Electoral Commission, supervising the first democratic elections. She has also been a member of the United Nations’ special committee on women and economic development.
Precious Moloi-Motsepe
Chairperson African Fashion International
Tel: +27 11 269 6960
www.africanfashioninternational.com
Dr Precious Moloi-Motsepe turned a hobby into an enterprise two years ago when she assumed the chairmanship of Leisureworx, and subsequently assumed the chairmanship of African Fashion International (AFI), staging fashion weeks in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. In 2009 AFI staged a highly successful Arise Africa Fashion Week, the first of five annual events, in conjunction with Britain’s Arise magazine.
AFI could not have a more appropriate leader: Moloi-Motsepe has won many style awards and she graces the pages of celebrity magazines. She runs the Motsepe Family Foundation and is a medical doctor by training, regarded as a women’s health specialist.
Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane
Managing Director CEO Sentech Limited
Tel: +27 11 691 7069
www.sentech.co.za
Dr Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane holds a BA degree in political science, an MSc in radio and television from Syracuse University and a PhD in educational administration from the University of Texas in the United States. She has extensive experience in the broadcasting, film and telecommunications sectors in the US and in South Africa.
She has been co-chair of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and project manager of the Tertiary Education Programme Support and has served on a number of government appointed task teams, among them selection committees for the .ZA Domain Authority. Currently she is a member of the Presidential National Commission on Information Society and Development, deputy chairperson of the Unisa Council, chairperson of the Market Theatre council, a member of the South African Council for Space Affairs, on the external advisory board of the department of institutional advancement at the University of Pretoria and the Free State University’s advisory panel.
She received the Black Business Quarterly’s Businesswoman of the Year award for 2004, ICT Leadership award for 2006, the ICT African Businesswoman of the Year award for 2006, and the 2007 award for South Africa’s Most Influential Business Women in Business and Government in the ICT Category.
Kerrin Myres
Director Centre for Entrepreneurship Wits Business School
www.wbs.ac.za
Kerrin Myres, director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Wits Business School, University of the Witwatersrand, was the founder and CEO of Resonance, a research-based consultancy which specialises in the design and evaluation of entrepreneurial development programmes.
She also established the Richard Branson School of Entrepreneurship at Cida City Campus and has filled consulting and line management positions in a range of businesses in South Africa and Australia.
Myres graduated from Macquarie University with an MBA in 1991, winning the Allan Knott Scholar award for academic excellence, and has completed a DBA at the Gordon Institute of Business Science. She lectures in marketing, strategy and entrepreneurship and has presented papers at a wide variety of conferences, including that of the prestigious Strategic Management Society. She has published articles on marketing and strategy in numerous South African and Australian publications.
Khanyi Ntsaluba
Financial Director Mvelaphanda Resources
Tel: +27 11 325 5323
www.mvelares.co.za
Khanyi Ntsaluba completed her articles in 1995 and joined Adcock Ingram Critical Care as a project accountant. In 1998, Ntsaluba moved to Standard Bank as financial manager for commercial banking (Gauteng) and to Johnnic two years later, as financial and planning manager, primarily responsible for M-Cell (now the MTN Group).
She joined the Industrial Development Corporation in 2001 where she later became the senior account manager for the Media and Motion Pictures’ strategic business unit. She has been financial director of Mvelaphanda Resources since August 2005. Ntsaluba is a qualified chartered accountant, having obtained a BCom from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a BCompt (honours) from Unisa.
She also holds a higher diploma in tax law from the University of Johannesburg. From 2001 to 2004, Ntsaluba served as an external audit committee member for the Gauteng provincial government.
Christine Ramon
Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Sasol Limited
Tel: +27 11 441 3434
www.sasol.co.za
Christine Ramon joined Sasol Limited as chief financial officer in May 2006, moving to Sasol from Johnnic Holdings Limited, where she had spent more than a decade in several senior positions including chief executive of the listed Hotels and Gaming Group. Ramon had previously worked in senior positions at Coopers & Lybrand, both in South Africa and Italy.
In 1994, on secondment from Coopers & Lybrand, she served as deputy finance director to the Independent Electoral Commission. A qualified chartered accountant, Ramon is also a graduate of the senior executive programme offered by Harvard Business School in conjunction with Wits Business School.
She serves on the Sasol Limited Board as an executive director and is a director of various other Sasol subsidiaries; she is also a non-executive director on the Transnet board. In 2005 Ramon was awarded a Golden Peacock Achiever Award by the Indian Academy of South Africa for leadership skills and academic achievements. She was also a finalist in Lebone Woman of the Year 2000 and in 2007 was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader 2007.
Mamphela Ramphele
Executive Chairperson Circle Capital Ventures
Tel: +27 21 425 2231
www.circlecapital.co.za
Dr Mamphela Ramphele added another category to her considerable career when she joined her son, Hlumelo Biko, in Circle Capital Ventures, a venture capital black economic empowerment company. A medical doctor, she is also an academic and in 1996 was the first black woman in South Africa to be appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town.
Four years later she joined the World Bank in Washington as MD responsible for human development. In the mid-1970s Ramphele, then a leading black consciousness activist, was banished to a small, remote village where she founded a clinic; when her banishment order ended, she continued to play an active role in medicine and in the struggle against apartheid. She has written a number of books, the most recent titled Laying Ghosts to Rest: Dilemmas of the Transformation in South Africa.
Sibongile Sambo
Managing Director SRS Aviation
Tel: +27 11 659 2078
www.srsaviation.co.za
Sibongile Sambo is the founder and managing director of SRS Aviation, a 100% black female owned aviation company that provides personal and professional flights to global destinations. Operating mainly in Africa, Sambo’s company offers charter services ranging from VIPs to medical evacuation to crop spraying.
Sambo holds a BA degree from the University of Zuuland, BA honours from Unisa and is currently pursuing an MSc in management of technology innovation at the Da Vinci Institute. Her entrepreneurial spirit has earned her a string of accolades, including the Businesswomen’s Association’s Regional Business Woman of the Year, the Black Woman in Business Award in London and the Impumelelo Top Female Entrepreneur of the Year, all in 2006, and the Black Management Forum’s Presidential Award in 2008.
In 2007, Sambo was named a Leader of Tomorrow by Fortune magazine, and in 2008, Sambo featured in the World Bank report entitled Doing Business: Women in Africa. Sambo is working towards establishing a non-profit company aimed at providing financial opportunities for women to enter the field of aviation.