Roberta Brzezinski, our Chief Executive Officer and a director, leads Capitalworks Emerging Markets and has 23 years of direct private equity investment experience across Asia, Latin America and Central Europe. Prior to joining Capitalworks, Roberta served as emerging markets private equity lead at Canadian pension fund CDPQ, where she spent five years leading investments in Latin America and India. She previously served as the CIO of TAU, an Asia-focused impact investor and was one of the original partners of Abris Capital, a Central European growth buyout firm. Earlier in her career, she was an Asia-focused investor at Emerging Markets Partnership, the manager of the AIG Infrastructure Funds. Prior to that, she was an Eastern Europe-focused investor at New Century Holdings, and an investment officer at the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group). Currently based in New York, Roberta is a multilingual (French, Russian, Spanish, Polish) U.S. national and holds an AB magna cum laude from Harvard College and an MBA with honors from Georgetown University.
Herman Kotzé, our Chief Financial Officer, is a Capitalworks executive and a non-executive director on the board of Finbond Group, a fintech and bank-holding company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. For over 15 years, Herman served as the CEO and previously the CFO of Net1, a Nasdaq-listed diversified payment technology and financial services firm with a focus on emerging markets. As CFO of Net 1, he project-managed preparation of the company’s primary listing on Nasdaq, together with Capitalworks’ founders, who were private equity owners of the business prior to their launch of the Capitalworks platform. While at Net1, Herman was responsible for sourcing and executing more than 20 strategic investments worth $1 billion, spanning multiple geographies across Asia, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, and served as a director of many of these acquired companies. Based in Pretoria, Herman is a multilingual (German, Afrikaans) South African national. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting with honors from the University of Pretoria, and has completed additional studies in taxation and treasury management. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant (SA).
