Managing Director, Ford South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa
Neale Hill is Managing Director (MD) of Ford South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa (SA and SSA), effective 1 July 2018. He also serves on the boards of Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa, and Ford Financial Services South Africa.
Hill was born in 1968 in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. After matriculating from Westville Boy’s High, he went on to obtain a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
In 1991, Hill joined Ford as a Graduate Trainee. Less than five months into the programme he was offered a full-time position and has never looked back.
The first 15 years of Hill’s professional career at Ford were spent in various Marketing, Sales, and Service management roles. In 2000, he also completed a Strategic Marketing Programme at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in Durham, North Carolina, USA.
In 2006, Hill transferred to Ford Asia Pacific and Africa (APA) in Bangkok, Thailand, as Regional Launch Manager for all passenger cars, before being appointed Cross Carline Brand Strategy Manager when the APA office relocated to Shanghai, China.
In 2011, it was time for yet another continent change, and Hill transferred to Auckland as MD of Ford Motor Company of New Zealand. Two years later he relocated to Melbourne to take up his role as GM of Sales at Ford Motor Company of Australia.
In 2016, after a decade abroad, Hill returned to South Africa as Director of Marketing, Sales and Service at Ford SA and SSA.
In 2018, he finally stepped into the driver’s seat as MD of Ford SA and SSA.
And in 2019, he was nominated to the position of Vice-President for NAAMSA as one of the four elected office bearers. Hill is married to Wendy. He is a keen golfer. Most holidays are spent in game reserves, with no cell phone reception, where he has a chance to indulge his passion for wildlife photography and bird watching.