Nonkululeko Nyembezi is the Chairman of Standard Bank Group, Africa’s largest financial services organisation by assets, headquartered in South Africa. A seasoned business leader, she has a wealth of technical and strategic insight with a background in engineering and extensive industry experience spanning technology, steel, mining, and financial services in South African and global organisations.
She has served at the C-suite executive level at multinational organisations such as ArcelorMittal Group, where she was CEO of the South African subsidiary. She also served as CEO of Ichor Coal N.V. and, before that, Vodacom Group, where she headed strategy and M&A. She started her career as an engineer at IBM’s research labs in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Nonkululeko’s governance roles include serving as a non-executive director on the board of Anglo American plc, having previously served as Chairman of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and Alexander Forbes Financial Services. She also holds the position of non-executive Chairman of Business Leadership South Africa. This industry advocacy group counts among its members the largest listed companies and top-tier professional services organisations in South Africa.
Her interests extend to academia—where she serves as Chancellor of the Durban University of Technology—and culture, actively participating as trustee and board member, respectively, of the Norval Foundation, which showcases contemporary African art, and two orchestras, namely KwaZulu-Natal and Joburg Philharmonic.
She has a B.Sc. Honours degree in electrical engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology and a master’s degree in the same discipline from the California Institute of Technology. She also has an MBA from the Open University (UK).
South Africa