HR Indaba Network launch off to a flying start

Jonathan Muthige, chief human capital and transformation officer and CEO for the Growth Markets division at Alexander Forbes, had spent much of his career looking after people. Then a stage-three prostate cancer diagnosis forced him to confront what happens when the person who has spent most of his career responsible for caring for others suddenly finds himself needing care too.

Architecture was Bianca Anthon’s first attempt at building better communities. More than two decades into HR, the HR director at Illovo Sugar South Africa is still driven by that same idea, only now she’s building organisations rather than buildings.

Helen Bredenkamp has always known a thing or two about performance because, long before becoming group head of people and culture at The Unlimited, she was immersed in performing arts.

You don't have to love basketball to understand what excites Nyameka Semenya, senior HR director at NBA Africa. For her it’s all about what happens when thousands of strangers rally behind one team, young people discovering a new sport, and communities finding connection by a shared love of the game.

Jabu Mahange, group HR executive at Famous Brands, sees policies as only valuable when they help a business perform, not when they are treated as immovable rules, filed neatly in ring binders and dusted off when something goes wrong.

Karen Hammond, group head of people at Meridian Group, learned one of life's most important lessons at an early age by realising that difficult circumstances do not have to define your future. After losing loved ones while she was still young, she could easily have allowed hardship to shape the direction of her life. Instead, those experiences gave her a deep sense of purpose and a desire to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.