Mpumi Madisa

When Mpumi Madisa became CEO of Bidvest in October 2020, she made history as the first Black woman to lead a top 40 company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Since then, Madisa has run the South African conglomerate with margin discipline and surgical acquisition strategy—deploying capital into bolt-on deals across facilities management, hygiene services, and freight logistics, among other sectors. Bidvest spans services, trading, and distribution with 130,000 employees across approximately 750 branch locations in more than a dozen countries. It reported about $7 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ended June 2025, and delivered a resilient first-half fiscal year 2026, with revenue growing 4% to roughly $4 billion and trading profit rising 7% to $375 million. Madisa’s straight-talking leadership style—once distilled into the line, “There comes a time when you need to teach the system how to treat you”—has made her a prominent voice on corporate transformation in South Africa.