Executive Team
Anusha Naidu, CEO, SAVCA
Anusha Naidu is a South African Chartered Accountant and senior corporate finance executive with over two decades of experience across domestic and international capital markets. She specialises in capital raising, structured finance, mergers and acquisitions, and strategic corporate development within the financial services sector. In her most recent role as Corporate Finance Executive at a boutique non-bank lender, she led capital strategy, investor relations and ESG initiatives, successfully raising capital through listed debt and equity programmes, private placements and private credit across a diverse global investor base including institutional investors, development finance institutions, impact investors, family offices and retail participants. Earlier in her career, she held advisory roles across PwC offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Dubai and London, concluding in PwC London’s M&A Advisory practice where she led complex buy-side and sell-side transactions for private equity firms, hedge funds, investment banks and retail banks.
Anusha combines deep transactional expertise with a strong focus on sustainable finance and leadership development. She completed the Executive Leadership Programme with distinction at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School in 2024 and holds the CFA Certificate in Sustainable Investing (2025). She contributes to industry advancement through her role on the South African committee of 100 Women in Finance and as the only South African member of Women in Social Finance. She also serves as a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town, bringing a practitioner perspective to postgraduate programmes in Construction Economics & Management and Development Finance.
Nicola Gubb, Interim Executive Director
Nicola has over 25 years of investment and corporate finance experience with a particular niche in BBBEE and gender lens investing coupled with 17 years of board experience in Financial Services, Media, Wholesale Fuel Supply and Private Education. In her previous role as CIO of WDB Investment Holdings, Nicola was responsible for investee strategic value-add and post deal maintenance of a portfolio with a NAV of ZAR 5 billion, where she built and managed a team of (all women) investment professionals. She is passionate about the Private Equity sector and its transformative potential and would like to add value at a strategic level on the SAVCA board.
Safeera Mayet, Head of Policy & Regulatory Affairs
Safeera is an admitted attorney and brings over two decades of providing services encompassing corporate and commercial law, financial structuring, international law, risk management, corporate finance, competition law, and company secretarial guidance. She previously held senior management roles in Tiso Group, Kagiso Tiso Holdings, Tiso Blackstar Group, Idwala Industrial Holdings and Tiso Investment Holdings. She has a track record of developing and steering legal consulting services to a diverse customer population, delivering legal and commercial guidance to manage transactions across Africa and Europe.
She has facilitated numerous M&A initiatives, redesigning internal debt and tax structures, establishing investment companies for offshore holdings, as well as negotiating and concluding new investments, disposals, and funding agreements.
She also serves as a trustee of the Tiso Foundation Charitable Trust to manage and promote programmes that support the academic and leadership development of young South Africans from underprivileged backgrounds.
She holds a BCom and LLB degree from the University of the Witwatersrand and an MBA from the Gordon Institute of Business Science
Mandlakazi Gcasamba, Head of Operations
Mandlakazi Gcasamba CA (SA) is the Head of Operations. Prior to joining SAVCA she was the Head of Operations at LEGACY AFRICA Fund Managers where she was in charge of providing inspired leadership for the business, which involves working with the board of directors in making important policy and strategic decisions. She was part of the team that set up the first Legacy Africa Private Equity Fund. She completed a year of academic articles in Financial Management at the University of Limpopo (UL) as one of the first clerks in the partnership between UJ and UL to assist UL in attaining their CTA Honours accreditation.
She completed the rest of her articles at SNG Grant Thornton where she become an audit manager in the Financial Services division.
Within the Academia, Mandlakazi was a Senior Lecturer in Financial Management at North West University. She was also a Financial Officer at Cloud Atlas Investing where she was actively involved in the application to get the SARB to amend legislation, and allow local investment schemes to issue a pioneering Pan African ETF which facilitates a more efficient manner of investing in African developed markets.
Management Team
