The Southern African Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (SAVCA) has appointed five directors to its board, with immediate effect.

These new directors, Craig Beney, Craig Dreyer, Lungile Mdluli, Samantha Pokroy and Lelo Rantloane, are senior members of private equity or venture capital fund manager teams, and will be part of a board of 13 directors who are tasked with serving the private equity and venture capital industry.

Beney is Chief Operating Officer at Convergence Partners, where he is responsible for all operational aspects of the firm, with a particular focus on governance and risk issues at fund and investee company level.

He has significant expertise in treasury and risk management in the financial services sector, having worked for regulatory and financial institutions in the UK and South Africa.

Dreyer joined Ethos in 1998 as the firm’s chief financial officer and has served as a SAVCA committee member ever since.

Mdluli is a principal in the Metier private equity team and is a director of Metier, where she is integrally involved in preparing investments for funds and fund raising.

After serving her articles at KPMG, she joined WipCapital as a manager in the debt products team after.

Thereafter she joined De Beers, where she was a project accountant before moving to the corporate finance department.

Pokroy is the founder and CEO of Sanari Capital, a private equity firm specialising in founder-run businesses.

She is also a fund manager for Section 12J fund, Sanari Growth Partners.

Pokroy has over eleven years of private equity and venture capital experience in South Africa and in the US, having worked for a Chicago-based private equity firm and in investment banking and consulting in New York, before returning to South Africa and joining Ethos Private Equity.

Rantloane is the founding CEO of Ata Capital, prior to which he was Head of Debt Capital Markets and structured debt at Deutsche Bank AG.

He began his career at RMB as a transactor in Debt Capital Markets and later became a transactor in Acquisition and Leveraged Finance, where he focused on private equity firms.

Commenting on the announcement, Erika van der Merwe, CEO of SAVCA, said: “We warmly welcome these new directors and look forward to benefiting from the wealth of strategic and industry knowledge and experience that they bring to the Association.”