PAST PARTICIPANTS
Andile Khumalo
Andile serves as Chairman of investee companies Ince and Brave Group, and also founded I AM AN ENTREPRENEUR. His current non-executive roles include serving as Chairman of the Investment Committee of South African National Parks and an Independent Audit Committee Member at the Amplats Group Provident Fund.
Andile previously served as a member of the Takeover Regulations Panel, a member of the Directorate of Market Abuse, a non-executive director of South African Airways, and President of ABASA.
Abel Sakhau
Abel is a Sustainability and Climate Change strategist with 16 years of experience in the mining industry and a combined 22 years of work experience.
I am a qualified environmental scientist from the University of Witwatersrand and hold a Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership and an MBA from Stellenbosch University. I have expertise in sustainability strategy development, managing professional and specialised business units in climate change, environmental management, and sustainability.
I have a solid and adaptable management approach that seeks to bring authentic leadership skills to employees and allow them to make a difference in global sustainability and climate change issues. I enjoy working in an environment that facilitates critical thinking, sustainability innovations and high-performance teams.
At home, I am a husband and father to two beautiful daughters. My values drive my authenticity and are central to my interpersonal relations and decisions making. I am energetic and passionate about the adult learning process and value-based authentic leadership.
I enjoy volunteering to empower the youth, impart the power of ethical leadership, and pursue one’s goals despite existing constraints. I have been in various leadership and management positions within and outside my current organisation. I served as the Chair of the Regulating Committee for Meteorological Services and past president of the National Association for Clean Air, South Africa. I am loyal to organisational values and ethical leadership embedded in diversity and inclusion. Sustainability innovations and entrepreneurship mindset in the green economy are my current learning focus areas that I am working to build my competencies.
Dr Stephanie Giamporcaro
Stephanie is an Associate Professor at the Nottingham Business School and an adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB).
Her research and teaching focuses on how sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) is being implemented in both developed and emerging markets. She previously piloted the first ESG rating system for SRI funds distributed in France, and in 2013 she launched the African Investing for Impact Barometer (AIFIB) supported by the UCT GSB Bertha Centre.
Dr Stuart Theobald
Stuart Theobald is Chairman of Intellidex, a research and consulting house specialising in capital markets and financial services. Stuart advises investors, financial services businesses, senior policy makers and global development institutions on developing capital markets and financial sectors. He has studied finance, economics and philosophy and holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, where is also a visiting researcher.
Teboho Makhabane
Teboho joined Sanlam Investments from Edge Growth Ventures, where she developed meaningful experience in investment into private businesses under commercial mandates that sought social and environmental impact. Earlier in her career, she spent time as a research analyst part of which was at the Bertha Centre, researching and evaluating impact investment strategies across the continent, assessing the extent of their social and environmental impact.
Teboho is an Impact Investing professional who is passionate about directing investment capital to address the most pressing social and environmental issues in society. The growing inequality, poverty, climate change and many other social and environmental issues provide an opportunity for private capital to close the financing gap in moving the global community towards achieving the sustainable development goals (SDG’s) as well as on a national level the NDP’s . As an ESG and Impact investing practioner, Teboho monitors and advices on sustainable investing.
Shameela Ebrahim
Shameela is the Chief Sustainability Officer of the JSE. She joined the JSE in 2007. Passionate about the systemic importance of sustainability thinking in corporate strategy, she is responsible for advising the Executive Committee and Board of the JSE Limited on sustainability and the integration into strategy. She is the past chair of the World Federation of Exchange’s (global) Sustainability Working Group, a member of the Strategy Group of the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance (GISD), and chair of the Sustainable Finance Working Group of National Treasury.
Her responsibilities for Sustainability at the JSE include products, services, strategy and board reporting. She represents the JSE on various industry advisory panels related to sustainability, responsible investing and climate change internationally. As a sustainability specialist she has, inter alia, been a key contributor to the JSE’s work into climate change, the potential for a local market to trade in carbon credits and environment-related products, the development of a Green, Social and Sustainability bonds framework, impact investing, the JSE’s sustainability, innovation and CSI strategies as well as the annual sustainability investor briefing/showcase sessions. She project-led the JSE’s Sustainability and Climate Change Disclosure Guidance which won the 2022 award for Thought Leadership in Sustainable Investing: Africa from Environmental Finance.
She is a non-executive director of the WWF (South Africa), and of the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA).
She is the winner of the SERAS Africa CSR/Sustainability Professional 2021 and the IRMSA ESG Sustainability Professional 2020 awards. Her previous experience includes senior roles in the banking and insurance industries, and she was the JSE’s senior manager of strategy prior to assuming responsibility for the Sustainability portfolio. She is a popular speaker at local and global events and a regular contributor to media articles.
Shameela completed a Master’s degree in Sustainability Leadership (MSt) at the University of Cambridge and holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Pretoria, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). She is a recipient of the Chevening and Mansion House scholarships and is a member of the Institute of Directors of Southern Africa (IoDSA). She holds the ESG Global Competent Boards designation (GCB.D).
Hilary Joffe
Hilary Joffe is Editor at Large and a columnist at Business Day, where she writes about the economy, political economy and finance. She has an MPhil from Oxford University and degrees in economics and sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand and taught at the University of Cape Town before embarking on a career in journalism. She has spent much of the past three decades at Business Day, to which she returned in 2021 after stints as a senior adviser at global consultancy Brunswick, and as Contributing Editor at the Sunday Times Business Times. She served as Eskom’s national spokesperson from 2010 to 2013.
Nastassia Arendse
Nastassia Arendse is a business news anchor at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), helping viewers navigate the world of stocks and investing. She is also the host of a weekly book feature at the public broadcaster, where she sits down with local and international authors.
Having made her debut on radio as a traffic reporter for YFM (99.2 FM), Nastassia has been in the broadcasting industry for 13 years and has worked in television and radio. As a television anchor, she presented Closing Bell East Africa and Open Exchange on the international business channel, CNBC Africa. She has also hosted business shows on Business Day Tv, SAfm and Classic FM.
As an experienced reporter, she has covered global commodity markets for the financial media company, Moneyweb, writing features that track changes and trends worldwide in the commodity space. The beat focused on how prospects for the global economy, interest rates and currencies influence investor decisions concerning gold, precious metals, fixed income, and equities.
She represents a new breed of journalists that have managed to break the mould of the profession and explore different avenues in the media and public sphere.
MATHYS-GRAAFF
Head of Sustainability Solutions, Snr Director Investments
Willis Tower Watson
Monique Mathys-Graaff
Monique joined Willis Towers Watson Investments in Sept 2021. She brings +20 years of experience in a variety of investment strategy and sustainability product development within pension funds, asset managers, investment banks and corporates. As a CFA charter holder her investment experience across Emerging Markets compliments her experience with sustainable development practices globally, including impact investing. Monique was Senior Advisor at the Impact Management Project/Platform, where she worked with a diverse set of institutional investors, Philanthropists and sustainability focused standard-setting organisations to drive systematic transformation across Global Capital Markets.
Sandra Myburgh
Sandra Myburgh is CEO and founding partner of FERN Impact Partners LLC in New York, an alternative investment manager specializing in impact investing. She has been actively and continuously involved in alternative investing for more than 25 years, particularly in the area of hedge fund advisory, portfolio management and derivatives trading.
Her experience covers management and supervisory roles with several global financial institutions with postings in New York, Singapore and Johannesburg. Most recently, she served as director and head of hedge fund investment due diligence for the Barclays Private Wealth and Investment Management Division in New York where she was also a member of the Investment Strategy Committee. Before that, she was Principal for the Fund Management Group at Barclays Global Investors. She was director at ABN AMRO Bank and before that Senior Portfolio Trader and Derivatives Structurer at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore and New York, where she focused on trading and structuring interest rate, currency and credit derivatives in emerging markets. She began her career as a currency options trader at Rand Merchant Bank in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Sandra holds a Bachelors of Commerce Degree in Information Technology, a Honors Degree in Economics and a Masters Degree in Economics (cum laude) from the University of Johannesburg. She served as a Board Director for Ubuntu Pathways (www.ubuntupathways.org) and as an Advisory Board Member for an African clean tech company.
She is focused full time on triple bottom line impact investments (making a financial, social and environmental impact).
Andrew Johnstone
Andrew is an infrastructure, climate and blended finance specialist with over 30 years’ experience in the development of and investment in infrastructure and climate related assets in emerging markets.
Andrew is currently the CEO of Climate Fund Managers (CFM), the creator and manager of large climate focused blended finance facilities which operate across Africa, South East Asia and Latin America, active in the development and financing of solar, wind, hydro, water treatment, desalination, waste to value, and ocean co-system assets.
Andrew is also the CEO of Sanlam InfraWorks, the specialist infrastructure and climate unit of the Sanlam Group.
For fifteen years ending 2014 Andrew led the Africa funds business for Macquarie Bank and was the Chairman of Macquarie Africa.
Waseem Thokan
Waseem Thokan heads up the ESG research offering at Peresec, the largest Equity & Derivative brokerage in South Africa. There he has developed and brought to market complementary quantitative and qualitative analytical approaches designed to measure the ESG disclosure, policy and performance of companies and also to seek to engage with the quality of company leadership response to material ESG issues and its implications for their operational, financial & strategic delivery and ultimately for their business models and risk-return performance. These are important dimensions of the ESG question for investors because they speak to both the societal utility of investments from an ESG perspective but also the extent to which their return profile is sustainable. He has also done extensive thematic research on the South African investible universe and built out an in-depth proxy advisory service with the most comprehensive coverage universe of the South African market for use by clients across the South African investment value chain as well as by emerging market institutional investors. He has contributed to integration of ESG into investment processes across various contexts including development of policies, build-out of processes and governance and promulgation of software utilities for implementation of ESG across different investment styles, strategies and imperatives within investment processes.
Prior to entering the ESG research space in 2013, Waseem was Economist at Legae Securities, with responsibility for coverage of the South African macro-economic environment. He holds a B.Com(Hons) degree in Economics.
Waseem’s work has been featured in print in publications such as Financial Mail, Business Times, Business Day and industry periodicals such as Today’s Trustee. He has also appeared extensively in on broadcast media platforms such as BBC World, CNBC Africa, Business Day TV, SABC News and Power FM discussing, ESG, financial markets or economic issues. He led his team to the number 1 ranking in the FM Top Analyst award for the last 4 years consecutively and prior to that, was part of, and subsequently led, rated teams in the Corporate Governance and Innovative Research categories of the Financial Mail Ranking the Analysts surveys between 2014 and 2018. He received the Research Analyst of the Year award from the Association of Black Securities & Investment Professionals in 2015.
Karabo Nondumo
Karabo Nondumo joined the Sanlam Board with effect from 4 December 2015. She was since appointed on various Board committees and currently serves as a member of the Audit, Actuarial and Finance committee, the Risk and Compliance committee, the Social, Ethics and Sustainability committee, the Independent Non-Executive Directors committee, the Non-Executive Directors committee, the Nominations committee as well as the Human Resources and Remuneration committee. The Board appointed her as an expert in risk and compliance, accounting, governance, human resources and remuneration. She currently also fulfils the role as Chair of the Social, Ethics and Sustainability committee.
Karabo obtained her BCom degree in Accounting from the University of Natal in 1999 and her HDip in Accounting from Wits University in 2000, whereafter she qualified as a CA(SA) in 2003. She started her career at PwC where she gained valuable experience in financial services (insurance and banking), manufacturing and telecommunications. From 2004 to 2007, she worked as an investment principal at Shanduka Group where she was responsible for the analysis and implementation of transactions for the resource, financial services and energy divisions. She was also an executive assistant to the Chair of the Shanduka Group. In 2008, she became the inaugural Chief Executive of AWCA Investment Holdings, an investment company for black female chartered accountants. She further fulfilled various positions in the Vodacom Group which included the Executive Head: Corporate Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions as well as Executive Head: Enterprise Business Unit.
She is currently also appointed as the Chair of the Audit and Risk committee of African Rainbow Life Limited and the Audit and Risk committee of Sanlam Developing Markets. In addition to the latter, she serves as an independent non-executive director of Harmony Gold Mining Company Ltd, Channel Life Ltd, Safrican Insurance Company Ltd and MTN Rwanda PLC.
GARDINER
Working Groups and Africa Coordinator
Sustainable Banking and Finance Network (SBFN)
Louise Gardiner
Ms Louise Gardiner has been a sustainable finance and disclosure specialist with IFC, part of the World Bank Group, since 2005, and part of the Secretariat of the IFC-facilitated, Sustainable Banking and Finance Network (SBFN) since 2012. SBFN is a voluntary learning platform that currently supports 76 financial sector regulators and banking associations from 62 emerging markets as they develop national enabling frameworks for sustainable finance.
Louise is Working Groups and Africa Coordinator for SBFN and manages working groups on “Sustainable Finance Instruments” and “Data & Disclosure”. She led development of the 2018 SBFN report “Creating Green Bond Markets”.
Over the past decade, Louise has worked closely with SBFN members to advance national initiatives to create markets for sustainable finance. This has included support since 2011 to the South African pension and banking sectors, and to South Africa’s National Treasury to develop a national green finance taxonomy.
David Aserkoff
David Aserkoff is an Executive Director and the head of CEEMEA Equity Strategy. He is ranked #1 in Institutional Investor’s survey for EMEA Equity Strategy. David joined J.P. Morgan in November 2010. Previously, he was the Chief Russian Strategist at Renaissance Capital in Moscow. He also was a partner in the hedge fund MT Thaler, which was Emerging Market Hedge Fund of the Year in 2006. David began his career at First Boston Corporation. He graduated cum laude from Columbia University.