Dr. Zsofia Borsanyi

Zsofia is the ‘Self-Leadership Coach’ at ALA. She is based both in the L&E department and in the Wellness Team. She played an instrumental role setting up the self-leadership coaching and counselling programs at ALA. She is a life coach & executive coach (trained by RESULTS Coaching Systems, S.A.) and a clinical psychologist, as well as a trainer and a facilitator. Zsofia is passionate about helping people fulfil their potential and about facilitating positive change in Africa by enhancing leadership skills.

Zsofia has a special interest in diversity management stemming, in part, from her experiences as a refugee in Germany. Her interest in this was also shaped by attending the United World College of the Atlantic, UK, where the school motto was ‘International Understanding’. She completed her Psychology BSc at Bristol University, UK, and her Clinical Psychology PhD at David Solomons Centre, South Thames Course, London. Zsofia speaks French, Spanish, German, Hungarian and some Arabic. Her language skills help the francophone and Arabic speaking students feel more at home and adjust more easily.

As an Executive Coach in South Africa Zsofia has coached Women in Higher Education Executive Leadership positions (WHEEL Program, USAID) and ran workshops on conflict resolution, creativity, diversity and leadership skills as part of a 1 year long Leadership Skills Program. The participants ranged from Deans of Faculties to Vice Chancellors. She also coached managers with disabilities on ABSA Bank’s Nationwide Coaching Program for their employees with disabilities.

Zsofia has worked with young people from the SADC region recruited into ABSA Bank’s fast track Graduate Program. She has coached executives and employees at different levels in companies including Brunswick, Digby Wells, BHP Billiton, Brandswell, McKinsey, ABSA, AMDOCS (IT), SABC, Supersport, Dutch/SA Chamber of Commerce, Dept. of Health, Bloomberg, independent foreign journalists, etc. Her work in performance coaching include coaching free-lance photographers, painters, TV script writers & producers, singers, fiction writers, and a golfing professional.

As part of her Facilitation Work, Zsofia has facilitated strategic thinking and planning workshops around new products for the African Banking Corporation’s (ABC) executive team launching retail banking in 5 SADC countries. Most recently she worked with CSID, the alternative Economic Policy Development Unit at the University of Witwatersrand around staff recruitment, retention, conflict management and talent management strategies. She has facilitated workshops around conflict management for the PEPFAR Team in Pretoria. Zsofia co-facilitated Worldsview Consulting’s ‘9 Conversations in Leadership’ Program for teams in companies such as Discovery and AON and is trained to facilitate their ‘Purposeful Teams’ Program. As a trainer she has run product training and sales training courses in SA via ‘CIDA Learning’ for an ABSA program to reach the ‘unbanked’ markets nationwide in South Africa.

As a Psychologist Zsofia honed her research skills by working for the Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy & Childhood (ALSPAC in Bristol, & sister project ‘Birth to Ten’, Baragwanath, SA). She also worked on a study of the relationship of stress hormones to clinical depression in women in London, UK. (with George Brown & Tirril Harris). As a clinician Zsofia worked for three years with young people (16-30) in a specialist service for Early Intervention in Psychosis in the multi-cultural borough of Tower Hamlets, East London, UK. She has also worked in various Systemic Family Therapy teams for the NHS around London. Zsofia has thorough grounding in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy interventions in several settings, e.g. from the Chronic Pain Management Service at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. In SA she gained experience at the AGAPE Healing Community, Mamelodi Township, as well as at TARA Hospital, Johannesburg.