Dr. Agatha Masemola

Director & Co-Founder

Dr Masemola has a PhD in Medical Biochemistry; she completed her first post-doctoral research fellowship in Molecular Immunology of HIV disease at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Baltimore, USA). She then joined the HIV vaccine research group at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (Johannesburg, South Africa) to continue her post-doctoral research. Her 10-year career in Life Sciences spans both full-time research with publications in peer reviewed journals, and managing funds invested in commercialisation opportunities and start-up businesses in the Biotechnology sector. She build up and managed a portfolio of investments in Health Biotechnology in excess of R200 million; including leading and managing international technology transfers for an anti-TB/ anti-Malaria drug leads, inactivated animal vaccine, and manufacturing of clinical doses of a bio-similar for the treatment of blood disorders associated with chemotherapy.

Dr Masemola is an Executive Director and co-founder at Vaccicorp, she is a former Director of Strategy and Performance at Coca Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA). She previously held various senior roles at Absa Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB, once known as Barclays Africa), she was Managing Principal CIB Africa Strategy and Business Transformation, where she led strategy formulation & execution, and driving strategic business transformation.

She has more than 10-years experience operating at a Senior Executive level as both a member of the Absa CIB Exco & CCBSA Exco, and Extended Leadership Teams for both organisations. Agatha brings 12 years of Management Consulting experience where she led high performance teams from diverse backgrounds to deliver executive sponsored strategic innovation (from growth strategy through to commercialisation) across various sectors including Retail Banking, Oil & Gas, Natural Resources and Construction.

She served for over 5 years as a member of the Clinical Trials Committee of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (previously the Medicines Control Council) where she was responsible for evaluating clinical trial dossiers for infectious diseases. She was previously a Non-Executive Director of Integrated Processing Services (Pty) Ltd, and a member of the Strategy Committee of the Board of the Agriculture Research Council. She is currently a Non-Executive Director of Appletiser South Africa (Pty) Ltd.