Engen's Melissa Graham on sisterhood, grit and breaking petroleum's glass ceiling

JOHANNESBURG — There is a particular loneliness to being the woman who walks into a boardroom where every other suit is cut for a man. Melissa Graham knows it well. The Engen marketer, who climbed from cold-calling in a call centre to one of the most visible roles in South African petroleum, has a message for the women watching her: clap louder for each other. In a sector where proving yourself can feel like a daily audition, she argues that the only sustainable way up is to bring someone else with you.

Graham's path was never a straight line. She started answering phones and making cold calls — "old school" sales, as she puts it — then moved through finance, broadcast and consumer electronics before petroleum came knocking. Her rule, repeated like a mantra, is to never say no when opportunity knocks. That openness landed her at Engen, the South African fuel giant that is a household name across the continent, with its green and yellow branding on service stations from Cape Town to Lusaka. For outsiders, it helps to know that Engen is not just a petrol retailer; it is a piece of the region's industrial backbone, refining and distributing the energy that keeps mines, trucks and commuters moving.

What makes Graham's story notable for anyone tracking capital and wealth in Africa is not the title she holds but the philosophy she espouses. She is explicit that mentoring and teaching — not commanding — are how she wants to empower the next generation of women. She speaks of having both female and male mentors, insisting that success is not a one-way street. The stereotypes, she says, are best dismantled by courage: stick to your word, deliver, own the good and the bad, and know precisely who you are without being boastful. That inward certainty, she believes, is what lets a woman show up as her true self in rooms that were not designed for her.

Her call for "a sense of sisterhood" is not soft rhetoric. In an economy where women still carry far too much weight on their own shoulders, as she puts it, the idea that your rise does not require another woman's fall is quietly radical. The wheel will turn, she says, and the same women you cheered for will cheer for you. That ethos is particularly resonant in South Africa, where corporate transformation remains a live and contested issue, and where the petroleum industry — historically dominated by a few powerful players and their male-dominated leadership tiers — is still working out what genuine inclusion looks like beyond the policy documents.

Graham is also clear-eyed about the wider landscape. Asked about South Africa's future, she rejects the idea that the country is doomed, but she does not sugarcoat the present. The economy, she says, needs committed, smart people investing time and money back into it. She describes a resilient economy as one built for the long term — able to anticipate shocks, tolerate disruptions and recover while keeping operations stable. It is, in her telling, not so different from a strong business strategy. For a correspondent watching capital flows on the continent, that framing matters: it suggests that the people running Africa's most established energy companies are thinking less about extraction and more about endurance.

Her advice to her younger self is the kind that makes you pause. She admits it brings a tear to her eye. Women place so much weight on their own shoulders, she says, and always carry far too much. She would tell that younger woman to trust her gut, to not be afraid of the hard things, and to remember that empowerment comes from within. Nobody can take that away from you. For the young women in Lusaka, Lagos or Nairobi who look at Engen's pumps and wonder if there is a place for them at the top, her message is simple: go boldly, sharpen your pencil, learn what makes people tick, and when things get tough — bite down and show some grit. The journey is your own, but you do not have to walk it alone.