Natalie van Wyk levels the playing field at Network Sport Hub

Championing Namibian sport
For the NSH executive director, the goal is clear: to showcase Namibia's breadth of sporting talent by giving a platform to all disciplines, even those beyond the mainstream.
Chris Kaukemua
  • 21 Hours Ago
Natalie van Wyk, executive director of Network Sport Hub (NSH), says her passion for sport inspired her to pursue a career in sports management.

She leads the brand under Emeraldsand Platforms (ESP), which manages sports projects across Namibia, and took up the role on 1 July 2024.

Van Wyk, a former learner at Jan Möhr Secondary School in Windhoek, told Network Media Hub (NMH) that she has been involved in sport for more than seven years.

Her experience as a sports broadcast executive at Network Television (NTV), she said, played a decisive role in her move to NSH.

“I live with a mentality that Namibian sports can be so much more in terms of how it is represented across the media, and that is what motivates me to run NSH every day,” she said.

Her career kicked off on 14 June 2014 as an invoicing clerk in the finance department at Namibia Media Holdings – now Network Media Hub – at the age of 19.

In February 2016 she transferred to the company’s events department, working on the Namibia Tourism Expo and other projects.

She later joined NTV as a sports broadcast executive when the channel launched on 8 February 2022.

In July 2024 she was appointed executive director of NSH.

Van Wyk is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She has also completed a certification in management, majoring in finance, and is in the final stages of completing a certificate in transformational leadership (Level 5).



Multitude of skills

Van Wyk credits her brother with encouraging her to study finance.

“However, through personal circumstances, I came to realise that finance wasn’t something I enjoyed wholeheartedly,” she said, adding that as someone who thrives on challenges and variety, sport was a better fit.

Even so, her stint in finance, she said, was immensely valuable, teaching her discipline and analytical skills that she now applies in sports management.

Working with people is not always easy, she admits, but she relies on her problem-solving and management skills to deal with challenges.



A wealth of talent

Her proudest achievement, she noted, is bringing all sports into the spotlight, including chess, cue sports and futsal. On managing stakeholders, she said: “The most important thing is keeping everyone realistic in their expectations and making sure that people understand that there are limits to everything.”

Van Wyk underlined that sport is important for young people because it gives them a stage to showcase their talent.

“A lot of underprivileged young Namibians have multitudes of talent, but they often aren’t given the platform for these talents to come through, and as NSH, many times in collaboration with our sister company My Zone, we pride ourselves in creating that platform,” she said.

Looking to the future, she said NSH is growing, which will bring bigger projects. She advised young people who want to work in sports management that “the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”