Credible voices.
Practical perspectives.

In her role as Chief People, Culture and Purpose Officer for KFC Africa, Nolo drives the people and culture agenda across the region, ensuring franchise partners uphold the brand’s values while unlocking human potential for sustainable growth. With over two decades of leadership in retail across Africa, her passion for the QSR industry began during her university years when she worked to support herself and pursue self-development.

Starting as a team member in a male-dominated space, she champions youth career development, female leadership, and inclusion. Nolo has pioneered initiatives like Women on the Move and Streetwise Academy. With an MBA from GIBS, she fosters purpose-led leadership, creating jobs, growing communities, and ensuring business success and people’s potential rise together. In 2025, she was awarded the Transformation & Empowerment Award at the CHRO Awards, recognising her leadership in people, culture, and empowerment.

Dr. Mamello Patricia Masia is a strategic and visionary HR leader, currently serving as Chief People Officer at McDonald’s South Africa. With a proven track record in transforming HR systems to drive business performance, she is a catalyst for cultural change, leveraging data and inclusive practices to build high-performing environments. Her expertise spans talent management, leadership development, and succession planning.

Mamello’s career includes impactful roles at Pareto (and Mowana Properties), Protea Chemicals, Evonik, Emerson, Nedbank, and Toyota SA, where she consistently delivered measurable results. Academically accomplished, she holds a PhD in HR Management and contributes to governance boards, shaping ethical and strategic HR practices.

Passionate about purpose-driven leadership, she champions education, inclusive culture, and HR analytics as levers for sustainable transformation. Her notable achievements include overhauling performance systems, launching leadership programs, and embedding agile frameworks that have significantly enhanced organisational capability and engagement across industries.

Hannah Karuru is the Chief People Officer at Capwell Industries and a member of the Executive Committee, where she leads the people and organisational agenda for a workforce of more than 700 employees. With over 15 years of HR leadership experience across East Africa, Hannah has built her career at the intersection of people strategy, organisational transformation and business performance.

Her experience spans FMCG, manufacturing and other complex operating environments, giving her a broad perspective on leading people across diverse organisations. Her work has focused on strengthening organisational capability, shaping culture, building leadership and talent pipelines, elevating employee experience and translating people strategy into organisational effectiveness.

Before joining Capwell Industries, Hannah served as Head of Human Resources at Chloride Exide and held progressive HR leadership roles at Kenafric Industries and Del Monte Foods.

Hannah is particularly interested in how African organisations can build high-performing, inclusive and future-ready workplaces while navigating technological, workforce and business transformation.

Nomfundo Vilakazi is the People & Culture Director at Dis-Chem Pharmacies, where she leads the evolution of the HR function into a people-centred, strategic driver of business performance.

Since joining Dis-Chem in 2019, she has played an important role in developing the organisation’s people agenda across talent acquisition, organisational development, and learning and development. Her work is grounded in the belief that when people feel valued, supported and challenged to grow, the business performs at its best.

In her current role, Nomfundo focuses on aligning people strategy with business strategy, strengthening leadership capability and embedding a culture that enables operational excellence and long-term growth. She is passionate about developing leaders, unlocking potential across every level of the organisation and creating workplaces where individuals can build meaningful and sustainable careers.

Her leadership approach is rooted in accountability, empathy and a deep understanding of the South African workforce context. She is particularly committed to mentoring young professionals and empowering women to step into leadership with confidence and purpose.

Nomfundo brings a practical, grounded perspective to the future of work, with a focus on building organisations that are both high-performing and human at their core.

Mbithe Wambua's career in Human Resources is anchored in a clear conviction: organisations do not outperform the quality of their people and culture. Over more than seventeen years, she has led people and culture strategy across globally respected luxury hospitality brands, shaping high-performance environments where service excellence is deliberate.

At Serena Hotels, she aligns people strategy with ambitious business goals across diverse properties in Africa. Her work with senior leaders and boards focuses on strengthening capability, engagement and a culture where employees are supported to deliver extraordinary guest experiences.

Her earlier leadership experience across Fairmont and Accor, together with her foundation at Sankara Hotel, shaped an approach grounded in clarity, empathy and strategic thinking. Her academic and professional qualifications span Human Resource Management, executive leadership, organisational development, coaching and change management; she is currently pursuing a Doctor of Business Administration specialising in Leadership and Change Management.

Nthabiseng Thaba is the Human Resources Director at Leroy Merlin South Africa and a member of the Executive Committee. She is an accomplished people and culture leader with broad experience across retail, manufacturing, organisational transformation, talent development and business expansion.

Nthabiseng works closely with executive leadership and the Board on people strategy, remuneration, succession planning, organisational design and workforce capability. She is passionate about creating inclusive, high-performance cultures where employees are placed at the heart of business success and share in the value they help create.

Her leadership approach combines commercial insight with a strong commitment to employee growth, meaningful transformation and sustainable business performance. Nthabiseng is currently an MBA candidate at Wits Business School, further strengthening her strategic and commercial leadership capabilities.

Mangla Haripersad is Head of Human Resources at Expert Stores Africa and a confirmed speaker at the Africa Retail HR Summit & Awards 2027.

Elvis Sibusiso Vilakazi is the Human Resources Lead at MLP Foods, a multi-site quick-service restaurant business operating the Pizza Hut brand in South Africa. His career combines extensive operations leadership, human resources, employee relations and labour relations experience within service-driven environments.

He holds an Advanced Diploma in Business Administration and is currently completing postgraduate studies in Labour Law and Risk Management. He has also applied for the University of Johannesburg’s MPhil in Employment Relations, where his proposed research examines the relationship between workplace dispute-resolution effectiveness and employee performance within South Africa’s quick-service restaurant industry.

His professional interests include employee relations, organizational performance, frontline leadership, dispute resolution, people capability, and translating HR practices into measurable operational outcomes. His practical experience across both restaurant operations and HR enables him to approach people challenges from both an employee-relations and commercial-performance perspective.