Alisa Amupolo to lead Namdia
The board of directors of Namib Desert Diamonds (Namdia) announced the appointment of Alisa Amupolo as chief executive for the next five years, effective 1 October 2022.Amupolo is a Namibian citizen and holds a Master of Arts degree in International Communications from the University of Leeds (UK) as well as a Bachelor of Media Studies from the University of Namibia, and is an Alumni of the London Business School of Emerging Leaders Programme and Stanford Seed Transformation Programme. At the moment she is a Doctor of Business candidate with the Namibia Business School.
Amupolo has more than 15 years of work experience, having begun her career in the media and communication industry, serving as a trainee/intern at NBC in 2004. She went on to become a Public Relations Officer in the marketing and communications department of the broadcaster until she left in 2005 to join the Global Fund/Ministry of Health as a Senior Liaison Officer.
In 2008, Amupolo moved to Leeds to pursue her master's degree and subsequently found work at the Commonwealth Secretariat as a Research and Support Officer based in London. She returned to Namibia and joined the NCC which was succeeded by CRAN as a strategic and transformation project advisor from 2009 to 2012. She also worked as a governance consultant, reporting to the CEO of the Namibia Statistics Agency transformation from 2012 to 2013, and on an ad-hoc basis in 2014. In the same year, Amupolo was enlisted as a full-time consultant for Pact Namibia and subsequently joined PowerCom (Pty) as the chief executive officer, where she served until May 2021.
Until recently she worked as a full-time consultant on a special service agreement with the International Telecommunications Union which is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
In addition, Amupolo serves as an independent non-executive director at Energy Utilities Assets (Pty) Ltd and The Namibian. She is also the President of Stanford Seed Southern Africa Chapter Network and was recently appointed as a Commissioner for the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology (NCRST).