Nicky Newton-King

Advisory Council, Member

Nicky Newton-King has played a key role in building South Africa’s capital markets through her leadership role in its stock exchange and, using that platform, has advocated for more than a decade on the key role that corporates can and should play in building more sustainable communities by embracing ESG and conscious capitalism rather than simply the pursuit of profit.

Nicky was the Chief Executive of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for eight years, with 23 years of total experience at the JSE. During the pandemic, she worked in South Africa on the case for state grants for vulnerable workers. In parallel, while state schools struggled to remain open during the pandemic, she drove the launch of educational content on free to air television, assisting children and schools in the poorest areas of South Africa to obtain academic support to prepare for their final school exams.

Prior to stepping down from the JSE, Nicky was appointed as the co-chair of the UN Global Investors for Sustainable Development CEO Alliance by the UN Secretary General to co-ordinate global businesses around the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. She has now retired from that role. Nicky now serves as a non-executive director of Investec, a South African bank with offices in South Africa and the UK.

Nicky was a World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow and subsequently a WEF Young Global Leader and was South Africa’s 2003 Businesswoman of the Year.

Nicky serves on the Board of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre and Chairs Somerset College, an independent private school in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Nicky has law degrees from the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Cambridge and spent 5 months at Yale University as a Yale World Fellow.