Nomfundo Mphuthi Marketing Director, Hotels, Skyscanner

Company

A household name, Skyscanner is a metasearch engine and travel booking platform that is available in over 50 markets, 30 languages and is used by over 100 million travellers per month. Having started off as a platform focused specifically on flights, Skyscanner have since grown their product lines to enable consumers to also book further travel options for their trips including hotels and car hire.

Search Background

Skyscanner were looking to hire a strategic, dynamic marketing leader to own the audience growth strategy for the hotels and cars verticals, setting the long-term growth vision for the verticals in collaboration with cross-functional leaders, and driving the operational delivery of this strategy.

Requirements

While the job title is Marketing Director, and the role reports into Clive Peoples, the Group CMO, Clive and Skyscanner were very keen to hire someone without a marketing skillset, and who came from industries outside of travel, to bring greater diversity of thought to the Marketing Leadership Team. We focused the search around candidates who came from a strategy consulting background, but who had then moved into consumer digital businesses.

Result

We successfully placed Nomfundo Mphuthi into the role. Nomfundo started her career in Finance at Goldman Sachs in London. After a brief stint at entrepreneurship, she decided to join Bain back in South Africa where she worked across Africa on both strategy and implementation projects, typically with consumer facing clients on projects such as customer strategy, product positioning and customer success. After three years she returned London to do an MBA at LBS, before joining Lyst as Chief of Staff. As Chief of Staff, she reported into both the CEO and COO, and worked on a range of different projects with them, which included working on their successful £85m Series B fundraise. After 18-24 months, she transitioned into the Strategy Director role.