ABOUT MYCELIUM
Mycelium is a purpose driven organisation that looks to get involved in work that changes the world for the better through inclusive growth. These strategies require empathy to understand context but must be based on sound sustainable principles and practices to be impactful and scalable.
Mycelium blends significant experience across multiple financial service organisations with a deep socio-economic development understanding to both build, and work within, innovative strategies, networks and eco-systems. These include a range of youth work readiness initiatives and the support of entrepreneurship and small business-related initiatives including urban and peri-urban projects – and rural programs including those that support emerging farmers.
The Journey
Charles worked for HSBC in London before returning to South African in 2000 working for JP Morgan.
His financial experience widened into retail and business banking as the SME Segment Head for the Barclays Africa and Indian Ocean region. Then moving into the insurance sector as the Head of Marketing and Communication for Liberty Corporate at Liberty Life and, then later, as the Head of Liberty Corporate Umbrella Fund Solutions.
Charles chose to be involved with work that has a more direct impact on changing society by joining GroFin – a multinational SME Impact Development Fund with offices across Africa and the Middle East region – as the Chief Commercial Officer for the Africa region.
He returned to Barclays Africa as the Head of Community Investment and was part of the team that designed the African Citizenship strategy transitioning it from CSI/CSR to one of ‘shared value’ as surfaced by Porter and Kramer. Within the new strategy Charles was appointed as the General Manager, Enterprise Development – Group Citizenship.
At the end of August 2019, he left what is now Absa Group Limited and founded Mycelium.