Thoko Mokgosi Mwantembe was born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg. Her family relocated to Swaziland when she was still very young. She learnt social skills by living in a large family that was not just strictly biological.
Thoko Mokgosi holds a BS from the University of Swaziland and an MS in medical chemistry from Loughborough University of Technology. She has completed a senior executive program at Harvard and a managing corporate resources program from the Institute of Development Management of Swaziland. She also holds a diploma in teaching.
She started working with pharmacological research and did her masters in the UK. She worked in R&D; in the labs where she researched and worked with atoms and molecules. When she moved back to South Africa, she found the work not as challenging as it had been. Thoko Mokgosi decided to take a leap of faith to handle a more challenging position. She applied for the marketing position at Telkom as an 8 months pregnant woman. She got the job. Her successful career path began at Telkom.
Thoko Mokgosi Mwantembe has handled top positions in her career journey. She is the CEO of Hewlett-Packard South Africa. She was also CEO of Alcatel South Africa, divisional managing director at Siemens, and Sales and Marketing director at Lucent. She also holds Senior Executive positions at Telkom.
She is a director at Knorr Bremse SA (Pty) Limited, Absa Group Limited, and Paracon Holdings Limited. She is currently the CEO of Kutana Investment Group. Kutana is a Pan-African investment company focused on delivering significant shareholder value while contributing to the transformation of the economy and society at large. The group has one of her Investment portfolio in Media, Telecoms & IT. She holds a number of non-executive board positions for leading South African companies which include ABSA Bank, Vodacom group, AVENG group, Royal Bafokeng Platinum, Smollen group & Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital.
Thoko has received various awards. In 2005, she won the ICT Achiever of the Year Award, the Top ICT Business woman in Africa Award, and ICT Personality of the Year. She is the recipient of the Businesswomen’s Association Businesswoman of the Year Award in the Corporate Category. She is a Fellow of the fifth class of the Africa Leadership Initiative-South Africa and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She was also a recepient of South African Business Women of the year award in 2007, IT businesswomen of the year and voted 2nd most influential women in Africa for IT, Media and Telecoms.
Why we love her:
Thoko believes that once you have an opportunity, you need to embrace it and work hard. She believes in continuous learning and development; a keyword at TechHer that led to the commencement of Continuous Learning and Development Programme (CLDP) for women. Thoko emphasizes that to be a successful carrer woman, you have to work twice as hard since most industries are dominated by males. This is something we absolutely love about her.
Thoko says: My mission in life is that I need to make a difference in my environment, whether it's at work, at home – wherever.
About Her:
Annette Muller is a digital consultant by profession. She obtained a certificate in Digital Change Management from the renowned Hyper Island Digital Master Class New York in 2011. She graduated from the University of Cape Town, South-Africa with a B.Sc. in Business science, Financing and Marketing in 2007. She also has a certificate in Spanish from Universidad de Salamanca. She was profiled as one of the 10 female technology entrepreneurs to watch in Africa by Forbes magazine.
Her Work:
Annette Muller has worked at several institutions in the course of her very successful career. In 2008, she worked as an Intern with Quicktell. She was exposed to online marketing, updating website content and copywriting using Joomla and CMS.
Still in 2008, Annette was the Account Executive at ikineo. She worked on NOKNOK; a social network created by MTN back in the day.
From January 2009 to April 2009, she worked at Glaceau as their digital and social networker for the Country Launch.
Between September 2010 - March 2011, Annette worked with the Digital Business Manager of Nasper Group where she assisted with the setup of all social media initiatives, moving journalists onto twitter and integrating social media into the existing web and media platforms.
from August 2009 – August 2010, as the Lead Innovator at MiWorld, Annette implemented strategies and concept as well as full digital experience planning bridging the online/offline client experience with the launch of the popular new MiBAR. In this capacity, she was responsible for concept development, digital experience, planning and management of all technology developments including web, mobile and touch screen tables & screens, back-end development and all integration.
In March 2011, she founded DOTNXT in Johannesburg, South- Africa. DOTNXT is a strategic innovation management firm in Cape Town that was established to bridge the gap between strategy (consulting) and delivery (project management) on a range of digital, mobile, social and next-generation branding projects. It empowers businesses to embrace the real-time digital dynamic cultures of today and new technologies, propelling them forward to the forefront of success.
Why TechHer Loves Her:
She saw a gap in companies between strategy and execution and decided to offer more hands-on strategic programme management. She lives her mantra which is “if you are the smartest person in the room you are in the wrong room!"
