William (Bill) Egbe has recently been appointed the Group Sustainability Director for Coca-Cola Eurasia & Africa Group (a geographical territory that covers 91 countries).
Bill was the President of Coca-Cola South Africa from 2007-2012. Prior to this, Bill spent 2 years as the President of Coca-Cola East and Central Africa.
Bill has more than 20 years of international experience in the fast-moving consumer goods and telecommunications industries; experience obtained on 4 continents in manufacturing, finance and marketing. More than 15 years of this experience has been in general management positions.
Bill began his career in engineering, working as a power engineer for BP Alaska and DeLeuw Cather Engineering Consultants in the US. He then worked as a network engineer for AT&T in its budding mobile telecommunications efforts in the US in the late 1980s.
Bill then joined The Eastman Kodak Company in 1989 as a Financial Analyst in Rochester, New York. He held various Marketing and Supply Chain positions in the US and Brazil, before being transferred to Germany in 1991 as an Assistant Plant Manager in Kodak’s largest photocopier manufacturing facility outside the US. He moved on to finance and operations management roles in Kodak’s medical imaging business in Germany, France and the UK. In 1994, Bill was appointed the Managing Director of Kodak Dental Products Europe Inc, with responsibility for Kodak’s dental business in Europe, Africa & the Middle East.
In 1997, Bill joined The Coca-Cola Company. He started in regional general management roles for Coca-Cola West Africa, and then Coca-Cola Mid- Africa & Islands. In 2001, he took over as head of Coca-Cola East Africa. And in 2005, he was appointed President of Coca-Cola’s business in the 28 countries that make up Coca-Cola East and Central Africa. In 2007, Bill was appointed President of Coca-Cola South Africa, a global top 10 market for the Coca-Cola Company. In 2008, he took on additional pan-African responsibilities as Head of Pan-African Initiatives for Coca-Cola Africa. And in 2009 he was elected Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation (TCCAF), the Coca-Cola Company’s social investment body for the African continent.
Bill serves on the boards of 2 international beverage bottling companies headquartered in Egypt and Spain. He has served on the boards of more than a dozen non-profit and professional business organizations in South Africa and across Africa. He serves on the board of Africare, the oldest and largest African- American NGO involved in development and humanitarian assistance in Africa. Private Investors for Africa (PIA), a corporate advocacy group promoting investments across Africa. He is also active on the board of the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa (Am CHam SA), and on the Board of Trustees of Business Unity South Africa (BUSA). He is a member of the Executive Leadership Council (a professional association of African-America executives in the US) and a lifetime member of the National Black MBA Association in the US.
Bill holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and an MBA (Finance and Marketing) from Howard University in Washington DC, USA.