Dr Ngao Motsei

Ngao Motsei began her corporate career as Manager and assumed positions of greater leadership and responsibility in the Organisation and People Management functions, culminating in being appointed Executive Director responsible for Human Resources and Transformation with responsibilities to report on talent management, leadership development, succession and culture to Exco and the Board of Directors in a Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)-listed Financial Services company. She founded Leadership Emporium t/a MyPortfolioLife, a Leadership Development Consultancy where she continues her work as a practitioner in the areas of leadership development and human resources management, as well as team and strategy development facilitation. She also serves on several boards as Independent Non Executive Director. 

On the academic front, Ngao serves as Lecturer and Lead Faculty for the MBA in Management Consulting track and the Global Executive Development Programme at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). She was part of a team that received The Aspen Institute’s 2016 Faculty Pioneer Award Recipients for the course “Human Behaviour and Performance in South Africa”. Her journey into academia was influenced by two goals, (i) to bridge the chasm between theory and practice, and (ii) to bring humanity back to organisations, this after discovering countless bullying during her PhD research, and that people did not even know that they were being bullied, and/or were bullying others because bullying is not something much talked about in South African workplaces. This shaped her aim to champion healthy work places by raising awareness about bullying in South African workplaces. Additionally, Ngao’s aim is to contribute to the generation of evidence-based research in workplace bullying with a view to providing practical solutions on what organisations can do to prevent and/or address bullying in their organisations when it occurs. These goals align with the IAWBH’s stated aims and activities and the Association’s desire to expand its presence in the “Middle” and “South” territories.