Tracey Henry graduated as a social worker and started her career with the Chamber of Mines, involved with employee assistance programmes, working with families with children, and doing counselling one on one.
She soon realised that she wanted to reach a greater audience and joined Anglo American’s Corporate Social Investment Department. “That really gave me wonderful exposure to South Africa and the diversity of our people and many of the challenges as well”, she says.
When Tshikululu was formed in 1998, born out of Anglo American, Tracey, not yet 30, was part of the founding team and she felt very excited about being part of a large and important initiative in South Africa – the first of its kind, corporate social investment fund management company.
As with any new position she started at the bottom, working through the ranks, and in 2008 was appointed CEO of Tshikululu, now 15 years in this position of leadership. As an exception in many sectors, women are well represented in corporate social investment and within Tshikululu, women make up 70% of its staff.
Tracey spoke to ImpactSA, in our Women in Leadership series with Vodacom, about her perceptions of the challenges facing women in leadership.
