Corporate Social Responsibility
Has his personal philosophy on educational philanthropy influenced CEO Mark Lamberti’s human capital development practices in business? The answer: “Absolutely and directly.”

As a young man, Lamberti’s social conscience was stirred by the multiple social ills of apartheid South Africa. High among these was a very poor, racially biased public education system. Despite this, in the lead-up to the country’s democracy in 1994, educated individuals emerged from very disadvantaged backgrounds to assume leadership positions in politics, commerce, industry, and the union movements. It was obvious that talent was abundant and that education ranked high among the long-term solutions to the unemployment, poverty, and inequality experienced by the majority of citizens.

“In a developing country like ours there are thousands of legitimate demands on the generosity of more privileged citizens and established corporations. As a family, we chose to focus our philanthropic investment exclusively on education. As a CEO of public companies, I emphasized investment in education and skills development as the major pillar of our corporate social investment,” Lamberti explains.

When building a successful business, common wisdom is that the CEO’s prime responsibilities are to set the strategy and choose the team. While Lamberti agrees, he believes that the CEO must be deeply involved in identifying and nurturing talent at all levels to inspire the best possible performance with a supportive work environment in which personal growth, individual performance, and corporate progress are acknowledged and rewarded.

Eudaimonia, a concept proposed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, equates to the highest human good. While Aristotle’s focus was on a general view of human nature in which being drawn by nature toward a higher good or a “flourishing life” was considered to be the source of genuine happiness, it’s a principle that’s been adopted in the corporate world by enlightened management as a means to create a nurturing environment that fosters peak productivity and one which Lamberti has long championed in the workplace.

“Leaders often bridge working conditions and meaningfulness because they play a key role in the design of work and how it is lived day-to-day, make sense of organizational culture, and help workers connect daily tasks to a greater purpose. Leaders model eudaimonia when they emphasize ethical values and congruently behave with those values, thereby linking work, organizational ethical goals and standards, and broader societal outcomes,” explained study authors Andrew Soren and Carol D. Ryff in a study titled “Meaningful Work, Well-Being, and Health: Enacting a Eudaimonic Vision,” published in an August 2023 edition of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

How Educational Philanthropy Became a Cornerstone of Mark Lamberti’s Career

A CEO thrice over, Mark Lamberti knew from his own experience that the road to success was paved with educational opportunities. While he could well afford the cost of advanced learning for himself (he holds a Bachelor of Commerce, an MBA, and a DBA in business administration, plus ongoing annual certification in the Harvard Business School’s Presidents in Leadership Program), it was all too clear — especially with the deeply rooted systemic socioeconomic divide still lingering in South Africa — others could not.

Rather than let talent languish and potential go untapped, early on in his career as his own star began to rise, Lamberti set out to level the playing field by ensuring deserving individuals got the make-or-break education they needed to excel. “When my family and I acknowledged the obligations of our privilege, we started to say, ‘Where do we invest?’’ Lamberti recalls. Again, the answer was elemental: “Education.”

Two decades ago, he and his family established the Lamberti Educational Trust, which provides financial assistance to high-performing, economically challenged individuals pursuing tertiary education. The fund has served as a vital steppingstone for a number of talented scholars, with an emphasis on young women in recent years. However, it’s only part of the larger tapestry of giving this former CEO extraordinaire has woven throughout his stellar business career.

Answering the Call of Higher Learning, One Company at a Time

In 1988, Mark Lamberti was appointed CEO of a failing six-store warehouse club chain. He parlayed those assets into the group that became Massmart. By 2007, it was Africa’s third-largest retailer of consumer goods and the leader in general merchandise, home improvement, liquor, and wholesale food, employing 25,000 people and operating 238 stores in 13 countries. Lamberti acknowledges that leading this growth from small beginnings allowed him to easily shape Massmart’s charitable outreach in education, consistent with his personal approach to philanthropy. However, he notes that when he moved on, he took his ethic of philanthropic education with him and set it in motion in his subsequent leadership roles. “I was privileged to be in a position where I could impress my commitment to education on the companies I led,” he reveals.

When taking the helm of a new company, the initial action Lamberti routinely undertook was to establish the competence and capabilities of employees. “Staff training and development was always a big deal,” he notes. When a worker was identified as having beyond the standard skill set required for their job as well as possessing an ambition to better themselves by attending training school or university, Lamberti’s philanthropic efforts were there to support them.

The Business of Balancing Fiscal Responsibility With Social Responsibility

In each of his CEO positions for a trio of multinational public companies in the retail, financial services, and industrial sectors, Mark Lamberti initiated scholarships and tuition programs for children of low-wage earners. In his final CEO position, with Imperial Holdings Limited, Lamberti took no salary and instead channeled his generous executive compensation into an educational fund to benefit the company’s employees and their children.

One accomplishment from his last days as a CEO Lamberti reflects on as particularly gratifying was accelerating the opening of a network of primary school libraries to give young learners access to reading material that’s typically not a part of their home life. “[The libraries] were located next to township schools, so the kids would have a place to come in, [find] books, and enjoy a quiet reading environment,” he says. “When I left the organization, we had 18 of these little libraries in township schools.”

Lamberti believes that corporate social responsibility demands focus and a careful evaluation of investment and impact. “It is easy to write cheques for today’s most desperate request and measure one’s success on the amount donated. The inevitable result of this approach will be dissipated low impact. I came at [philanthropy] from a strategic point of view,” he explains. “What is the South African context, [the] skills and education deficit coming out of apartheid and a deficient public school system — and what is the opportunity?”

But for Mark Lamberti, identifying opportunity was only the first part of the larger equation. “Personally and in all three companies [I led], I was very, very focused and involved in the identification and development of talent.”