Zoë Karl-Waithaka

South Africa

Occupational Information

Job Title: Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Nairobi

Professional History

Zoë Karl-Waithaka joined Boston Consulting Group in February 2021. She has more than ten years of experience in management consulting, advising multinational and African businesses on strategy and operations in a range of industries including agriculture, telecommunications, mining, and oil and gas. Zoë works with clients on customer experience, change management, and delivering large-scale organizational transformations.

Before joining BCG, Zoë was a Principal in the Johannesburg office of Bain & Company where she focused on business transformations including change programmes, helping design strategy and operational solutions, and implementing mechanisms to sustain results. After joining Bain, Zoë worked across the African continent, advising companies in South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo Brazzaville, Rwanda and Swaziland.

Outside of project work at Bain, she led the Black Leadership Program initiative at her workplace, including helping to spearhead a decision by the company to formalise Employment Equity targets, which is a national priority in South Africa.

Prior to joining Bain, Zoë worked at Bloomberg LP in New York. There she held several roles, including Analytics Team Leader and Product Specialist for Bloomberg’s application programme interface (API) for Excel. Her responsibilities in the latter role included the sales, promotion and development of Bloomberg’s Excel add-in product with a focus on client relationships across large banks in the U.S. In 2008, Zoë was nominated for the Sale of the Year Award for her expertise in this area.

Qualifications

B.A. (magna cum laude) in French and Economics from Bryn Mawr College
MBA from The Wharton School.

Programme

2018 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow

 Additional Tags: Economics, Consulting, Leadership, Human Resources, Analytics, Sales, Banking