Airtel Africa has announced the addition of Kelly Bayer Rosmarin to its team. She joins as a Non-Executive Director on the 27th of October and replaced Arthur Lang who also stepped down on the same day.
Her appointment came as a result of nomination by the controlling shareholder. The nomination is pursuant to the terms of the relationship agreement on June 17, 2019, between Airtel Africa, Bharti Airtel, Airtel Africa Mauritius Limited, the majority shareholder and an indirect subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, and Bharti Telecom.
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An Australian, Rosmarin finished from Stanford University where she obtained an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering. She then pursued a Masters in Management Science and Industrial Engineering.
She started her career with Calico Commerce in the corporate development sector in 1998 and joined Oracle in 2000 as a director of sales, product management and strategy.
Rosmarin was named as one of the Top 10 Businesswomen in Australia and the Top 25 Women in Asia Pacific Finance. She is known for bringing in technology and data analytics to develop customer services and experiences. From 2014 to 2020, she was a special advisor in the Fintech Advisory Group for the Australian Government’s Department of Finance.
In February 2019, she joined the board of OpenPay as an independent non-executive director. OpenPay is a payments technology company in Australia listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).
Rosmarin will continue in her role with OpenPay while also functioning in her new role at Airtel. Her addition to the Airtel Board increases the number of women on the group’s board of directors.
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As of June 2020, there were 2 female directors while the remaining 9 directors were male. Rosmarin will replace Arthur Lang, and keep the number of directors at 11.
Speaking on Lang’s departure from the team, the Group Chairman, Mr Sunil Bharti Mital said Airtel is grateful for his “significant contribution to the success of our strategy to build Airtel Africa into a market-leading mobile service provider.”