About Speaker
Niven is an advisor to global executive teams, lecturer, keynote speaker and author.
After starting her career as a strategy consultant with Monitor Company, she held various executive and leadership roles, including:
- Head of Leadership and Culture for the Standard Bank Group (the largest bank by assets in Africa),
- Head of External Strategy at the South African Reserve Bank (SARB),
- Head of the SARB Academy, responsible for the delivery of all learning programmes and leadership development across the central bank,
- Chief Executive Officer of Nurturing Orphans of AIDS for Humanity (NOAH), and
- Chief Executive Officer of the Businesswomen’s Association (BWA), the largest association of business and professional women in the country.
She now works with global executive teams to build what she calls “Whole System Leadership” and so doing, fundamentally transforms how they work together and what they can achieve. Niven is a tutor at Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and the Programme Director for the Archbishop Tutu Fellowship (the pre-eminent programme for pan African leaders under 40 years old). She is also a guest lecturer at London Business School and Stanford University. Niven is invited to speak on topics ranging from organisational politics to leadership and purpose and particularly enjoys facilitating and lecturing on women’s leadership and development programmes.
She is a contributor to Harvard Business Review and Inc. Africa and the author of the book “If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Do You – A guide to navigating office politics ethically and successfully”. She is pursuing her PhD in Organisational Behaviour and her thesis question: “Are organisational politics different for women?” will form the basis of her second book. Prior to undertaking her undergraduate degree, she backpacked around the world for four years. She has completed an EMBA and a PG Dip in Futures Studies, been an inaugural Fellow of the International Women’s Forum (IWF) Leadership Programme and an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow. Niven has also served as a volunteer police reservist and a board member of several charities, including Chair of the Board of Cotlands, an 87-year-old organisation that for decades has done cutting edge work to improve children’s lives.
She lives in Johannesburg and enjoys being married, reading, travelling, and slowly attempting to learn to play bridge.
