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With Dr. Sizwe Nxasana,
Cost: This Leadership Journeys webinar is free to attend and is sponsored by ILA’s Committee for the Advancement of Leadership Programs
- 8 December 2025, 11 AM EST (UTC-5)
How do we cultivate visionary leaders who can navigate both local contexts and global opportunities? What happens when business education becomes a powerful tool for transformation across the African continent and diaspora?
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Dr. Sizwe Nxasana, whose remarkable journey from founding South Africa’s first black-owned accounting firms to leading major corporations like Telkom SA and FirstRand has now evolved into a passionate commitment to educational innovation. Through Future Nation Schools and Sifiso Learning Group, Dr. Nxasana is pioneering approaches that blend rigorous business education with deep cultural understanding and real-world relevance.
This webinar is presented by the International Leadership Association’s (ILA) Committee for the Advancement of Leadership Programs. It builds on the ILA’s 2021 General Principles for Leadership Programs, with a special focus on Principle Four: “Learning” in context—highlighting how leadership development thrives through real-world relevance and experiential engagement.
Participants will leave this webinar with fresh inspiration for designing culturally responsive leadership curricula that honor African values and contexts while preparing leaders for global impact. You’ll discover practical strategies for strengthening your program outcomes through engaged learning pathways that align with ILA’s General Principles, ensuring both relevance and real-world transformation.
Most importantly, you’ll gain actionable insights from Dr. Nxasana’s innovative project-based learning approaches that can help you build stronger leadership pipelines across institutional, community, and diaspora settings—empowering you to create learning experiences that truly develop the visionary leaders our world needs.
The webinar will be hosted and moderated by members of ILA’s Committee for the Advancement of Leadership Programs.
Moderators: Oliver Seale, PhD. Leadership Lab coordinator and faculty in the School of Business at the African Leadership University, Rwanda; Onyedikachi Ekwerike, PhD, lecturer, Terry College of Business, Institute of Leadership Advancement, University of Georgia.
Hosts: Trisha Gott, PhD, Associate Dean, Associate Professor, Staley School of Leadership, Kansas State University & Jay Gary, PhD, Associate Professor of Strategic Leadership, Oral Roberts University.
Renowned among reporters for his modesty, Sizwe Nxasana has, for two decades, ranked among South Africa’s outstanding business people. He was born in Lamontville, Durban, and was educated at Mariannhill and the University of Fort Hare (which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2004). After founding two of South Africa’s earliest black-owned accounting firms, Nxasana became Chief Executive Officer of Telkom SA and went on to oversee Telkom’s 2003 listing on both the Johannesburg and New York stock exchanges. The innovative public share-offering created a broad base of black shareholders; moreover, the initial share price trebled during Nxasana’s tenure. Nxasana left Telkom in 2005 to take up a position as CEO of FirstRand. Under his leadership, FirstRand’s market capitalisation between 2010 and 2014 more than doubled to beyond R230 billion. Perhaps not coincidentally, Nxasana’s ancestry includes Solomon “Soli” Nxasana, born in 1865, a mission-educated entrepreneur who founded a prosperous transport and construction business.
