Niven Postma is a strategy, leadership, and culture consultant who partners with clients in diverse industries around the world to (re)ignite the discretionary energy of people and teams, build an enabling culture, and develop meaningful strategies.

Niven has held executive positions since she was 29, spanning multiple sectors and roles throughout her career. Before starting her consultancy and embarking on her PhD in Organisational Behaviour, her positions included: CEO of the Businesswomen’s Association, Head of the South African Reserve Bank Academy, and Head of Leadership and Culture for the Standard Bank Group (the largest bank by assets in Africa).

Having started her career as a strategy consultant, Niven now coaches global executive teams in industries as diverse as financial and professional services, retail, media, transport, and manufacturing, to build what she calls “Whole System Leadership” and so doing, fundamentally transform how they are able to work together and what they are able to achieve. An expert in organisational politics, Niven is the author of the best-selling book ‘If you don’t do politics, politics will do you’ - A guide to navigating office politics ethically and successfully (published in 2020). Her articles and ideas can be found in various well-respected media and podcasts.

Niven is a Harvard Business Review and Inc. contributor, a part-time tutor at Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), and has been a guest lecturer at Stanford University. She is an expert facilitator on women’s leadership development programmes around the world and serves as the Chairman of the Board of Cotlands, an NGO that for 87 years has done cutting-edge work in the Early Childhood Development sector in South Africa and beyond. Her keynotes on organisational politics, leadership, culture, and women’s leadership have been delivered to audiences of up to 60,000 people.

Niven holds an Executive MBA in Systems thinking, Human capital development, knowledge management, leadership, and change. She also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Future Studies and a BA in English Political Science. In 2007, Niven was awarded the Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship.