Nokuthula Khumalo is a strategic global People & Culture leader with experience spanning humanitarian and development, corporate, and academic environments. She currently serves as Technical Director for Global Humanitarian Surge within the Humanitarian and Development Capacity & Capabilities (HDCC) team at World Vision International. In this role, she oversees the governance, digitisation, and optimisation of the Partnership’s global surge capacity function, enabling rapid deployment and technical assistance across humanitarian and development contexts.

Her work strengthens how the Partnership mobilises and supports talent, balancing speed with compliance, accountability, and duty of care. She led the revamp and global rollout of Surge Central, the Partnership’s digital system of record for roster management and deployment tracking. By consolidating previously fragmented processes, the platform reduced processing time, increased transparency, and enabled real-time visibility of surge demand and capacity. Surge Central has elevated workforce readiness and positioned surge management as a strategic, data-driven capability.

Across her career, Nokuthula has operated at the intersection of organisational design, workforce strategy, and talent and leadership capability strengthening. Her leadership approach combines systems thinking with operational realism. She is particularly focused on strengthening how global organisations mobilise and sustain talent across borders, recognising that trusted, well-governed people systems are foundational to effective, accountable humanitarian action for children.