Inspiring Woman of the Month

Italia Boninelli is Senior Vice President, Human Resources of Gold Fields.  Gold Fields has +47,000 employees with mines in South Africa, Ghana, Australia and Peru.   She is also the Chairperson of the Gold Fields Leadership and Business Academy.  Prior to that, she was Group Human Resources Director of Netcare, the largest private healthcare organization in South Africa.  She has had more than 20 years experience in Human Resources, Marketing, Communications, Customer Relationship Management and Business Transformation in a variety of industries.   

She is a registered industrial psychologist with a Masters in Psychology from Wits University and a post-graduate diploma in labour relations from UNISA.  She is a founder member of the National Human Resources Research Initiative of the South African Board for Personnel Practice, which is setting the agenda for research into strategic human resources practices.  She has lectured at business schools and for national bodies such as the Institute for Personnel Management. 

She is passionate in her support for women’s leadership development programmes and the development of strategic business skills in HR practitioners and in November 2008 received the “HR Director of 2008” award from the Institute for People Management of South Africa.

She is the author of numerous publications including two books Building Human Capital and Conversations in Leadership: South African Perspectives which are used as set works at various universities.

Italia is married with 2 children.

Her message to Inspiringwomen subscribers:
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass.
It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.
It’s about getting the storm clouds to move.
Women need to become their own ‘Rain Queens’ ”

Italia, we salute you!