Nevashnee Naicker
Head of Corporate Communications, Anglo American
Nevashnee Naicker leads group corporate communication for Anglo American, based in South Africa, where she is responsible for external communication and reputation, digital and social media, internal communications and employee engagement, and marketing communication (which includes advertising and sponsorships). South Africa represents around 60% of the profit of the Anglo American group and around 40% of its employee base globally.
In this role, Nevashnee actively leads positioning and engagement efforts to support Anglo American’s global ambitions, which includes achieving net zero carbon neutrality by 2030. She works closely with C-suite and communication leads and teams across the Anglo American group (with two businesses separately listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa). Part of this included delivering the multi-stakeholder global launch of the world's first hydrogen-powered mine haul truck in 2022. This is the first time that a 500-tonne vehicle has been operated by hydrogen, and once rolled out to the broader Anglo American fleet, will be the equivalent of taking over 80 000 vehicles off the road.
Nevashnee is a seasoned results-orientated senior business executive with a proven track record as a reputation, PR, and communication strategist consulting to boards, CEOs, and executive leadership on a variety of organisational and societal issues – often beyond just where they impact reputation.
Under her leadership, she has refocused Anglo American’s reputation-building efforts on building greater resonance with its diverse stakeholder base, with an emphasis on developing unique and tailored stakeholder listening and reputation analysis capabilities.
She understands the business and its environment beyond the communications function and actively balances where she is able to help motivate direction for an organisation or create the context in terms of its reputation. Her experience includes managing significant crises, stakeholder issues management, business-wide transformation initiatives, corporate marketing, CSR, and strategic projects, including the sale of international and local businesses across some of the biggest companies on the African continent.
Prior to joining Anglo American, Nevashnee was Corporate Communications Director for Tiger Brands - the largest food producer on the African continent. In this role, she acted as the central point of integration for the management and co-ordination of all high-profile issues between the company and its internal and external environment.
This included executive accountabilities for all strategic communication (crisis management, divestment/ unbundling projects, major business transformation initiatives); employee engagement, external engagement with all stakeholders, managing the media, corporate marketing, and corporate digital assets as a Centre of Excellence for strategic stakeholder engagement, crisis mitigation and management, and communication best practice and governance. Most notably, Nevashnee played a critical role in steering Tiger Brands’ reputation recovery after the 2017-2018 listeriosis outbreak and class action. This resulted in her being recognised as one of 25 innovators in PR and Communications in EMEA by PRovoke Media in 2020.
She has held senior communication, stakeholder engagement and public affairs roles at Sasol Limited, one of the largest listed petrochemical organisations on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.