Head of PE & VC — Africa (CDO-level mandate)

Position overview

Gladwin International Leadership Advisors is representing a confidential organisation in Private Equity & Venture Capital on a senior CDO leadership mandate anchored in Africa. The remit explicitly spans USA, Canada, Malaysia.

This is a sector or practice-head mandate combining deep domain credibility with commercial ownership of a vertical P&L or global practice line.

This is a role for someone who has already led through at least one major inflection: restructuring, M&A, regulatory reset, or category shift.

Context you will inherit

• Market & sector: Speed of leadership assessment during deal due diligence — funds need rapid, rigorous management team assessment in compressed M&A timelines
• Geographic spine: Primary hub Africa with explicit corridor responsibility across USA, Canada, Malaysia.
• Organisation stage: ESG and conduct expectations from owners and regulators are now hard constraints on how growth is pursued.
• Stakeholders: Owners may include PE operating partners, a promoter family office, or public-market investors — each with different tempo and KPIs.
• Secondary lens: Cross-border talent for global PE strategies — as Indian PE companies expand regionally, finding leaders who can manage South Asian or Southeast Asian multi-geography portfolios

The mandate (12–24 month arc)

1. Executive dashboards: Replace vanity metrics with a tight set of KPIs the CEO and CFO trust.
2. Customer data: Unify identity and consent where fragmentation hurts personalisation or compliance.
3. Operational analytics: Use data to improve unit economics in operations — yield, utilisation, leakage.
4. Partnership with IT: Clarify split between CDO-owned capabilities and CIO-owned platforms.
5. Regulatory reporting: Where applicable, reduce manual reconciliation through better lineage and controls.
6. Talent: Hire leaders who can translate statistical insight into executive decisions — not only build models.

Responsibilities (representative)

• Reduce regulatory and audit pain on data lineage, privacy, and retention.
• Monetise or operationalise data assets where ethically and legally sound.
• Hire and retain data science and engineering talent in competitive markets.
• Align metrics definitions across finance, operations, and commercial teams.
• Lead MDM and reference data programmes where fragmentation blocks decisions.

Leadership profile

• Judgment: High signal-to-noise under pressure; ethical clarity; willingness to halt initiatives that break risk appetite.
• Education: Strong undergraduate grounding; MBA / advanced degree / professional qualification common at this level.
• Trusted metrics: Examples where data changed capital or operating decisions in Private Equity & Venture Capital.
• Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
• Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from Africa with regular engagement across USA, Canada.

Team & culture

You inherit a mixed-tenure team — pockets of excellence beside roles that need upgrade. The mandate is to raise the bar without demoralising the organisation: clear standards, fair process, and visible wins that prove the new pace is achievable.

Success measures (examples)

• Financial: Revenue and margin vs. plan; cash conversion; capital efficiency.
• Strategic: Share in priority segments; customer retention in anchor accounts; milestone delivery on transformation.
• People: Engagement trends; regrettable attrition in critical roles; diversity of succession slate.
• Risk: Audit and regulatory outcomes; conduct events; operational resilience metrics.

First 90 days (orientation arc)

• Days 1–30: Shadow key customer journeys or operations — paper over slides where reality diverges.
• Days 30–60: Cut or pause low-value projects freeing capacity for strategic work.
• Days 60–90: Publish first integrated forecast or plan under your ownership — even if directional.
• Build trust with risk, legal, and audit through transparency — surprises erode licence to move fast.
• Pick one cultural signal (e.g. meeting hygiene, promotion criteria) and model it relentlessly.

Stakeholder map (illustrative)

• Internal: Matrix of global product houses and local P&L; tension is normal — your role is to broker trade-offs with data.
• External: Customers who influence reference deals; government or industry bodies in regulated sectors.
• Capital providers: Banks, sponsors, or minority investors — each needs a slightly different narrative on risk.

Travel & mobility

Travel weighted to priority markets and quarterly global or regional forums; flexibility for crisis windows.

Compensation

Competitive CDO compensation for Private Equity & Venture Capital leadership: cash, incentive, benefits, and potential equity or carry (case-dependent). Discussed with finalists only.

Application status

This mandate is no longer accepting new applications. The search progressed through Q4 2025 and closed for submissions in February 2026. We retain this posting for transparency on the type of leadership work we carry in Private Equity & Venture Capital and Africa. For similar active mandates, browse open roles or submit a general profile through executive search inquiry.

Reference: private-equity-venture-capital · CDO · Africa · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors