Dr Sane Ngidi, HR lead for Africa at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is committed to Africa, and passionate about the impact industrial and organisational (I/O) psychologists can make in the world of work.
Dr Sane Ngidi describes herself as a resilient, hopeful, and passionate human being. She is a proud Durban girl, who grew up with a love for academia and a strong work ethic, inspired by her parents’ career achievements.
Sane’s father became one of the first black chartered accountants in the country, while her mother opened up one of the first black woman-owned recruitment agencies in 1992, post-apartheid, which grew from one office in Durban to offices in multiple provinces. Growing up, she found herself more drawn to her mother’s trade and tenacious spirit.
“I grew up in an environment where I looked up to a woman who worked very hard to build not just herself, but helped so many in my family get an education. It is through her that I inherited the strength that a woman can bring, and what you can achieve if you work really hard.”
Sane’s outspoken persona and passion for people would ignite her interest in human resources, as she set her eyes on becoming an HR generalist and an industrial and organisational (I/O) psychologist.
“In HR, there’s always a dichotomy between becoming an HR generalist or being within a specialist function, and working in independent practice or within an organisation. I enjoy both HR generalist and specialist work, and have the ability to apply my I/O psychology expertise,” Sane says.
She holds a BCom (Hons) and MA in industrial psychology from the University of Witwatersrand, and is a qualified industrial psychologist registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).With a passion for coaching, is currently working on acquiring her ICF coaching certification.
Even with her extensive experience in HR leadership, which spans over 18 years, Sane has an endless thirst for knowledge and continues to pursue her education while being a force of transformation in the workplace.
“The grounding that my parents gave me was one of privilege, where I could get a good education. Education has been the key to unlocking my potential, my dreams, and has enabled me to achieve everything that I want.”
Unlocking her future career
It was at MultiChoice that she commenced her career journey as an HR intern, before landing several roles from 2006 to 2010 within the company, including being a human resources specialist consultant specialising in talent management, an organisational development specialist, and a human resources business partner.
She recalls starting out as a talent management specialist, but quickly realising that she also enjoyed the breadth of opportunity that HR business partnering offered. Still at the beginning of her career there was still plenty of room to grow and explore the world of behavioural science, and so began her new journey expanding into organisational development within the banking sector.
Tapping into racial disparities
From 2012 to 2016, Sane worked at Nedbank in the wealth cluster, serving within the wealth management division as the head of human resources for wealth management, Africa. She then joined Rand Merchant Bank’s global markets division from 2016 to 2019 as head of human capital.
While making great strides as often the youngest and the only African female on the business unit leadership teams during this point in her career, she also witnessed how untransformed this industry was. “There was very little representation in revenue-generating roles, and no African females in those leadership roles. Specialised financial teams were even more untransformed. People of colour were in support functions such as HR, finance or operations.”
As Sane looked further into executive roles that led to the CEO, there seemed to be a consistent pattern in racial and gender hierarchy. This stark realisation inspired her exploration of the ‘Perceptions held toward African female leaders’ for her PhD, specifically within the financial services sector. She would later leave RMB and focus on completing these studies, earning a PhD in leadership in performance and change from the University of Johannesburg.
Sane would also get into advocacy for diversity and inclusion, and make it her mission to transform workplaces. This resulted in her exco role at the Society of Industrial and Organisational Psychology of South Africa (SIOPSA), where she volunteers. Rather than sitting on the sidelines, she took up the challenge to be an agent for change and has led the marketing, communications and branding function, as well as making contributions to SIOPSA through mentoring, supervision of emerging IOPs, the internship programme, the Black IOP Caucus (BIOP) and SIOPSA transformation portfolio. She is president-elect for SIOPSA 2024/2025 and her presidential year will be 2025/2026.
Shifting from corporate to consulting
After completing her PhD, Sane served as principal at Heidrick & Struggles, where she worked with leaders to create a world better led. Here she was able to work with organisations across Africa, the Middle East and Europe on leadership assessment for development, accelerating team performance, assessing boards for effectiveness and coaching leaders.
Heidrick & Struggles gave her exposure to executive search and opened up her exposure to the development sectors and meaningful work within that space. As her interest in NGOs grew, a regional HR lead for Africa vacancy was advertised at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Sane admits that she was somewhat sceptical, but eventually applied on LinkedIn. “The role was shared with me and I was a little hesitant that applying via LinkedIn would lead somewhere,” she remarks. However, she took a leap of faith and applied to join the team, knowing that this was the perfect role to enter the development sector.
Being part of a greater cause
Sane is in her third year managing the HR function for Africa at the foundation. Her move from the corporate world to the NGO space was inspired by the resilience of the human spirit to overcome incredible adversities. Sane affirms that this was her chance to create a meaningful impact and commit to Africa.
“I feel really blessed to be working with really talented people who have an intense amount of passion, in an environment that tries to solve problems that seem insurmountable and make significant change systematically.
“Seeing the real impact of the work done by the team has been inspiring,” she adds.
Working with African communities
The foundation’s African footprint includes South Africa, Ethiopia, Nigeria and, more recently, Kenya and Senegal. Since Sane’s appointment, the African footprint has grown significantly, and she has navigated the challenges of working across multiple countries to support her growing network, while instilling the foundation’s philosophy and values. Her role requires her to ensure that the foundation has the right talent, culture, structure and HR processes to deliver on its mission in Africa.
“The HR complexity of working with smaller teams across five different countries, five different economies and currencies who ultimately have accountability for the African continent of 54 countries, navigating different HR practices, and trying to understand the nuances of each of these environments, while trying to create a consistent employee experience that also recognises the uniqueness of each of these environments has been a great learning curve for me,” she says.
Sane’s impact, she believes, is enabling the team’s growth and success through partnership with both business and the wider HR function to create and implement global policies and practices that represent a true global perspective.
“Having oversight for HR for Africa requires that I am able to engage on partnering with the business to enable their strategy, understand the global HR strategy and how that is implemented in Africa, align on what strategically HR wants to do specifically for Africa with our global centres of excellence (COEs), be able to tailor fit-for-purpose HR delivery for the different environments, and also manage the operational detail to execute effectively,” she shares.
Building and gaining from her community
Sane believes that community is imperative in the ability to share, learn and grow. She is part of a Community of Practice (COP) comprising leaders stemming from various global foundations who connect to leverage their shared expertise. She finds strength and wisdom in this community because they allow her to share her views and challenges and gain insight into the market.
Similarly, within the HR community she has CHRO communities she is a part of that convene regularly to navigate the complexity of evolving HR demands and sharing on relevant topics. “I have also had the benefit of being part of several communities of women coming together to enable shared learning experiences,” she says. “I find tremendous value in that I have leveraged working with the other foundations and HR leaders: people in a similar environment to share, learn, and leverage each other’s expertise.”
