Former anti-apartheid activist Colin Coleman of Goldman Sachs to speak at Yale

Colin Coleman, a former anti-apartheid activist who is currently head of Goldman Sachs Sub Saharan Africa, will give a behind-the-scenes account of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy on Monday, March 4. The Yale talk is free and open to the public.

Titled “South Africa: How It Won Its Freedom and What It’s Doing with It Now,” the talk will be held in Luce Hall auditorium at 4 p.m. It is sponsored by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.

Coleman has been head of Goldman Sachs’ South African office since joining the firm in 2000. In 2008, he was named head of the Investment Banking Division for Sub-Saharan Africa. Coleman is a member of the Growth Markets Operating Committee. He was named managing director in 2002 and partner in 2010.

In the early 1980s, Coleman was involved in bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa and later in the nation’s transition to a new constitution. From 1989 until South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, he was an executive director for the Consultative Business Movement. Coleman served in working groups of the multi-party talks, facilitated the International Mediation Forum, and helped to negotiate the agreement to facilitate all parties’ participation in South Africa’s 1994 elections.

In 1994, Coleman became a senior consultant for public affairs at Standard Bank Investment Corporation (SBIC), where he was an advisor to the SBIC chair. He was subsequently appointed director of public finance for SBIC’s Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank. In 1997, Coleman relocated to London, where he became a vice president of energy, power, and oil for J.P. Morgan’s Investment Banking Advisory Department.

In 1996, Coleman was nominated as one of the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders for Tomorrow. He also received Harvard Business School’s Business Statesman Award in 1994 and was named one of Euromoney’s World Top 10 “Financing leaders for the 21st Century.”