Yvonne Muthien

Yvonne currently serves as Chairperson of the Rhodes Food Group, and as an independent non-executive director on the boards of the SA Reserve Bank and the SA SME Fund. She was also on the board of Thebe Investment Corporation, Chairperson of Bankserv and Chairperson of the Sasol Foundation. Yvonne previously served as Chief Executive: Group Services at Sanlam and Executive Director of Sanlam Ltd as well as Non-Executive Director of Santam, Sanlam Investments and Sanlam Investment Management. Preceding that she was Vice President of Public Affairs & Communications for Coca-Cola Africa based in London and Group Executive Corporate Affairs for the MTN Group Ltd. She also formerly served as a non-executive director for Aurecon, Sentech, MTN Nigeria, the SABC, and Transnet. She was the founding Executive Director of Democracy & Governance at the HSRC and Public Service Commissioner in President Mandela’s government. Yvonne completed her D.Phil. degree in Sociology and Politics at Oxford University (UK) and holds a MA from Northwestern University (USA) as well as a BA and a BA (Hons) cum laude from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. She previously held the position of Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Natal, Durban. She is widely published and has written and edited several books, articles and international conference papers. She completed ‘Leadership in Financial Organizations’ at Harvard Business School. She has also completed executive management courses at the Wits Business School, and the ‘Senior Executive Leadership’ programs of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, as well as MTN.