Head of Advisors and Consulting Services - Africa

Our Purpose

We work to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. We cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences enable us to be a better team – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation and delivers better business results.

Title and Summary

Head of Advisors and Consulting Services - Africa

The Services organization drives Mastercard's growth by providing innovative services to customers. Services focuses on customer needs by integrating our data, technology, insights, and expertise and boosts business growth. Representing over a third of Mastercard revenues, services are crucial to our success.

We are looking for someone to lead the growing Advisors and Consulting team in the Africa Division. The ideal candidate will be an inspirational, experienced leader with a strong record in leading high-performing, cross-functional teams. Consulting experience is required, and familiarity with payments or financial institutions is preferred.

Location: Johannesburg

As the head of Advisors and Consulting Services lead for Africa, you will be a trusted client business advisor, and oversee client engagements across various domains; consulting services, data and analytics and marketing services.

1. You will lead engagement teams to get best-in-class insights and project deliverables.
2. Leading the work of the project team, you will provide subject matter or industry expertise, be a resource to others to identify creative and efficient solutions and guide the team to business-focused solutions and recommendations that drive client value.
3. Responsibilities within project management will include owning mid- to senior-level client relationships and proactively engaging in the client agenda, internal culture, and relationship risks.
4. As a strong people manager, you manage a sizable and a growing team across Africa (mainly concentrated in South Africa). You will mentor and coach junior teammates outside of direct engagement teams and engender effective contribution to Mastercard’s knowledge management and best practices.
5. At Mastercard, you are expected to not only have a tremendous impact in transforming our clients, but also have a leading role in shaping the organization’s future.
6. As a thought partner to clients and all stakeholders you will support nurturing Mastercard Advisors and Consulting Services brand internally and externally.

All About You

We recruit for and value the following core competencies:

1. Passion: Actively seeks responsibility and takes pride in guiding project teams towards delivering the highest quality results and recommendations to our clients.
2. Problem Solving: Leads teams to identify the most critical aspects of a problem, and guides team to business-focused solutions and recommendations that drive client value. Initiates changes to project direction where required, and able to decide and act without the total picture.
3. Analytic Excellence: Demonstrates a strong aptitude for structured problem solving and quantitative skills and leads team to effective and efficient technical capability usage regardless of context.
4. Project Management: Clear interest in project delivery with business clients, and intuition for the way that companies make decisions.
5. Client Management: Inspire client confidence through timely and reliable execution and develop stakeholder management plans to align priorities and address support and resistance.
6. Communication and Presence: Leads composition of complete deliverables and other written communication and demonstrates an ability to communicate verbally in a wide range of complex scenarios and up to senior management levels.
7. Teamwork: Motivates medium size teams or key workstreams on large engagements to produce superior quality deliverables while creating an open collaboration environment for all levels, with a will to win attitude.
8. Commercial Orientation: Ability to identify strong opportunities to leverage internal capabilities, including identification of cross-sell opportunities beyond direct project work, and partner with broader services teammates on contracting activities, leveraging knowledge of services capabilities and how they fit together to create relevant solutions for clients.
9. Leadership: Instill a sense of urgency, ownership, and empowerment and thoughtful risk taking into leaders at all levels. Structures work so it aligns with team members’ goals and motivators.
10. Integrity: Models Mastercard's values of honesty and integrity. Follows through on commitments and makes others do the same.
11. Diverse Perspective: Brings a unique skillset or approach to the table in every client engagement or internal activity.

Qualifications:

1. Undergraduate or master’s degree and tenured work experience after completing degree
2. Experience in a consulting organization as a senior-level manager
3. Advanced experience directly managing multiple people across multiple projects
4. Experience as a people manager
5. Exceptional analytical and quantitative problem-solving skills and ability to guide project teams to structure ambiguous client challenges
6. Exposure specifically in payments and / or retail banking or merchants is preferred
7. Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively – both verbally and in writing – in English and the local office language(s)
8. Demonstrated ability to own and develop relationships with both mid- and executive-level client contacts and inspire confidence in Mastercard as a sought-after partner
9. Ability to multi-task in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment, and balance thought with action while getting the most out of limited resource
10. Advanced Word, Excel, and PowerPoint skills required; data expertise preferred

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.