Cathy Smith

Cathy was appointed Managing Director of SAP Africa in March 2018. She is the first-ever female executive of an emerging markets market unit in SAP’s history. Cathy started her career in the insurance industry as an application developer. She also spent three years in the UK, consolidating her expertise, and held a number of executive roles for European and global markets, specialising in the outsourcing services business. Overall, she has more than 25 years’ experience in the IT industry, working for major industry players like IBM and Cisco. She joined Cisco in 2015, and as Managing Director, led Cisco’s go-to-market sales and digital transformation strategies for subSaharan Africa. Prior to her tenure at Cisco, Cathy spent 23 years with IBM, where she held various leadership roles in IT service delivery, HR and sales.