Two top women join SAARF board

The South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF), provider of research data to the advertising, marketing and media industries, has elected two vice-chairs - marketing manager, Linda Siso and media specialist, Brenda Wortley - to the SAARF board for 2010.

With resounding support for both candidates, the board decided that rather than choose between them, the industry should reap the benefits of both women's talents and so created a first in the foundation's history.

Lind Siso

Linda Siso
Linda Siso

Siso is the marketing manager at Sappi Fine Paper South Africa, a position she has held since mid-2007 when she was promoted from business development manager. She is a passionate marketer with over 19 years of marketing, business development and strategy experience in the paper, packaging and supply chain management industries.

Corporate brand management is of particular interest to Siso, who co-authored a research paper on this field for academic journal, Management Dynamics. She has also presented a paper on the critical success factors of corporate brand management in South Africa at a conference for marketing professoriate in Baltimore, US.

Another of her passions is helping people maximise their potential. On top of passing on her knowledge by regularly lecturing marketing at several tertiary institutions, she is also a certified workplace coach and leadership development facilitator.

She sits on the board of the Marketing Association of South Africa and is a member of the Vega Brand School's Regional Council.

Brenda Wortley

Brenda Wortley
Brenda Wortley

Wortley is a media specialist with more than 18 years experience in the media world, with most of this time spent on the media agency side of the business. She headed up the media department of JWT and was instrumental in the formation of MindShare, serving as the media agency's joint-MD during its first year of operation.

She has been involved in broad industry affairs, and particularly with SAARF, for a number of years. Wortley has served on the SAARF board for ten years representing both the Advertising Media Forum (AMF) and the NAB. She has also chaired the AMF and its predecessor organisation twice in the past ten years.

In 2007, Wortley joined Oracle Airtime Sales to head up the Research and Strategy division. She is currently the project leader for the MultiChoice group's DStv-i viewing panel initiative, the continent's first return path data panel audience measurement system.

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