Rob Mhishi

Rob is an experienced and strategic innovator, with over sixteen years of experience in various industries ranging from retail & manufacturing, petrochemicals, financial services, and mining. In his different roles he has been involved in defining and implementing business architectures and models, leading large scale change programmes, re-engineering end to end business processes for revenue growth and operational efficiencies, and embedding risk and control management disciplines. Having led large teams responsible for sales support, operations, IT, business assurance and intelligence, as well as project management.

Rob is an experienced and strategic innovator, with over sixteen years of experience in various industries ranging from retail & manufacturing, petrochemicals, financial services, and mining

Rob was the Managing Director of Tamuka Mining, where he was responsible for all strategic, operations, business development, financial and governance functions of the company. Between January 2004 and May 2010, he was the Chief Operating Officer for the Secured Lending Cluster of Absa Bank Ltd. In this role, Rob was accountable for all of the operational activities of the division: from channel management, through to application processing and underwriting. In addition, he maintained responsibility for all credit and operational risk functions and drove the customer services strategy. He was also tasked with developing and implementing leading edge business processes and IT systems in conjunction with the bank’s specialist IT and projects divisions. He represented the division in various industry forums and Banking Council engagements. His consistently high performance levels resulted in him being selected as one of thirty young Absa executives to participate in a three year internal development programme (the ADI), where he took part in helping the organisation develop a focus on triple bottom line and sustainability in the new South Africa.

Rob started his career in 1995 with Arup Consulting Enigineers, having graduated from the University of Zimbabwe with a BSc Mechanical Engineering Honours Degree. After a brief stint he joined Shell SA as a Mechanical Engineer responsible for all aspects of plant maintenance and projects at the Johannesburg bulk fuel storage and distribution depot. In 1997, he was promoted to Regional Engineer when he assumed similar responsibilities for nine depots in the Shell inland region, a position he held until he left Shell to pursue a career in management consulting with Proudfoot Consulting.

During his tenure at Proudfoot, he gained valuable business process re-engineering experience on numerous projects in industries such as mining, pulp and paper and telecommunications. These assignments were accomplished at blue-chip companies such as Anglo American, Caterpillar, Sappi, Lucent Technologies, and Goldfields.