Sinazo Sibisi has recently been appointed as Wyzetalk’s Managing Director of Africa, Canada and Australia. Her role is to oversee Wyzetalk’s current business in South Africa as well as spearhead the expansion of its footprint across Africa and other new markets. With over 30 years of senior-level executive experience, Sibisi has worked in a number of top-tier organisations in both the private and public sectors, as well as serving on numerous boards.
“I joined Wyzetalk because I wanted to be part of an innovative, fast-growing international organisation that shared my commitment to social entrepreneurship,” Sibisi says. “I can’t wait to steer Wyzetalk’s expansion across the region as we help our clients engage, innovate and digitise to unleash the full potential of their workforce.”
Founded in South Africa in 2012 and currently headquartered in The Netherlands, Wyzetalk is a leading global employee engagement company that offers a mobile-first digital solution connecting large organisations with their dispersed, frontline workforce to improve communication, unleash innovation, and boost business performance. With a presence in 18 countries across five continents, there are 650 000 employees currently making use of the Wyzetalk platform in the mining, retail, FMCG, manufacturing, energy, automotive and shipping sectors.
Before joining Wyzetalk, Sibisi served as an elected politician as well as an executive at the City of Cape Town and South Africa Local Government Association. In 2000, she was appointed as a Member of a Special Ministerial Task Team on the Establishment of Municipalities.
As a Director of Deloitte Southern Africa, she led the Public Sector Industry cluster and served on the Global Public Sector Management Board and the Management Team for Consulting. She was also the first African black woman to be appointed on to the Deloitte Executive Committee, heading up Corporate Affairs. At the Development Bank of Southern Africa, Sibisi inter alia served as the Chief Investment Officer of the Local Economic Development Fund, the Divisional Executive: Planning, the Group Executive: Strategy, Marketing and Communications and as Group Executive: Infrastructure Delivery.
In 2017, Sibisi established SI Global Pty Ltd, a collaborative intermediary organisation dedicated to scaling up social innovation and infrastructure productivity in Africa. She has also provided expert input into a number of key initiatives, including the World Economic Forum’s Africa Strategic Infrastructure Initiative and the African Development Bank’s African Economic Outlook 2016, as well as authoring a number of research papers, books and thought leadership articles.
Sibisi has a BA Honours degree in Economic & Social History, a Post-Graduate Diploma in HRM, an EMBA and has completed executive leadership courses at IMD Business School in Switzerland as well as the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
Sibisi explains that the global pandemic has only enhanced the adoption of employee engagement. “Companies are experiencing increasing difficulty in keeping their employees informed, and even getting them back to work. Especially in industries that employ workers from other provinces and countries, the existing travel restrictions and distancing protocols are making their operations increasingly difficult to manage. Many of these businesses are now accelerating their communication strategies by bringing partners on board who can provide the right solutions,” she adds.
See video below where Sibisi appeared on Morning Live on SABC in August 2020, discussing women in tech.