Titled “mastering the art of impact in times of change”, the Executive Communities Women’s Dinner provided an ideal opportunity for networking, engagement and growth.
Executive Communities’ partners came out in force to celebrate women’s month and to engage with and celebrate female business leadership at the annual Executive Communities Women’s Dinner. Partners not only showed their support of the executives attending the event, but also invited women from their own communities to join in the conversation.
The exclusive dinner, which takes place in the first week of Women’s Month, gave partners the opportunity to engage over 150 top women leaders from the CHRO South Africa, CFO South Africa, and CIO South Africa communities at The Maslow Hotel in Sandton.
The partners of all three communities played an integral role in enabling the exceptional experience of the event, themed “mastering the art of impact in times of change”, which gave the women in attendance the opportunity to network, learn and grow, and gave partners the chance to strike up meaningful conversations in this space.
The programme was made up of a number of impactful segments, including a keynote address by Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, CEO of Naspers, who emphasised authentic leadership, the importance of influence over permission, and how leaders are shaped by geopolitical shifts, the AI revolution, and the increasing control of global wealth by women.
She was followed by a panel discussion featuring Njabulo Mashigo, executive director of HR at Vodacom, Rebecca Pole, CFO of NTT Data, and Sandra La Bella, an independent IT executive, who discussed how to align talent, technology, and capital for organisational impact.
Sam Cowan, consciousness and recovery coach, then led a discussion that encouraged women to acknowledge their “invisible emotional labour” and to set boundaries.
And then, in a lively interactive segment “Ask a Man”, senior male executives Joseph Rock, Exxaro CPO, Paul Stedall, King Price Insurance CFO, and Dr Stanley Mpofu, Wits University CIO, addressed unfiltered questions about gender dynamics and privilege in leadership.
Executive Communities’s support and celebration of Women’s Month is made possible by a range of partners, including:
Principal Partners
- Cassava Technologies
- Entelect
- Huawei
- iOCO
- Marsh
- MakwaIT
- Old Mutual
- Regenesys
Executive Partners
- Anchor Capital
- BDO SA
- Coupa
- Discovery
- Equinix
- Franklin Covey
- HCLTech
- LRMG
- STANLIB
- Workday
In recognition of Women’s Month, the CIO, CFO, and CHRO communities collectively made a donation to an IT graduate through Feenix, a crowdfunding platform that links tertiary education students with funders to help them pay their unpaid university fees. The partners’ commitment was instrumental in supporting the Women’s Month celebrations as well as this meaningful donation made in the names of all the executives in attendance.