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#WomensMonth | Character is built in the difficult seasons

At her core Tanya Van Tonder is a builder. Campaigns are launched, presentations delivered, brands positioned, but what she is most proud of is what sits underneath all of it: the teams she has shaped and the operating models she has built that allow creativity and commercial thinking to work together.

Issued by Provantage

12 Aug 2026

Tanya Van Tonder, Group head of marketing, Provantage.

"The best marketing happens when talented people have the clarity, trust and environment to do their best work together. That behind-the-scenes work probably says more about me than any campaign I've ever launched."

She has been part of the Provantage story twice; once building the mother brand from the ground up and again now, aligning fourteen specialist business units behind a common commercial strategy. Her role, as she frames it, is not to market the business but to help shape the business that the market experiences.

Between her two chapters at Provantage, she ran her own consumer and health research business, working with global organisations on large consumer panels. It was exactly the preparation she needed for a media landscape now shaped by data, measurement and audience insight.
What has changed most over time is how she holds responsibility. For a long time she carried too much of it herself, believing that good leadership meant having all the answers. Experience taught her otherwise.

"If you invest in capable people, clear expectations and trust, you gain capacity. That's allowed me to spend more time thinking strategically instead of simply reacting."

She has spent much of her career saying yes before she felt ready, and she would have done it sooner if she had trusted herself earlier. Confidence, she has learned, follows action.

Her mother taught her resilience before she had a word for it; that integrity is not something you switch on at work, but something you live every day; and that character is built in the difficult seasons, not the easy ones. It is a lesson Van Tonder has carried into every room she has walked into since, ready or not.

Provantage is one of the largest and most innovative end-to-end integrated marketing solutions and media businesses in Africa, extended over multiple key consumer touchpoints and covering a range of environments and audience segments. Operating across the MEA region, Provantage offers a comprehensive range of products, services, and integrated solutions, including brand activation, in-store and trade media services, field sales and compliance auditing, transit media, mall media, billboards, street furniture, golf course media and airport advertising. The company is a Black-owned, B-BBEE level 1 contributor, and proud member of the ACI, DPAA, OAAA, WOOHO, OMC and POPAI.