Dr Sizwe Nxasana is the founder and CEO of Future Nation Schools and Sifiso Learning Group. He is the chairman of Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme (ISFAP) which funds and supports students pursuing occupations in critical skills from ’missing middle’ backgrounds.   He founded Sizwe & Co, KwaZulu-Natal’s first black audit firm, in 1989, and in 1996 he became the founding partner of Nkonki Sizwe Ntsaluba, now SizweNtsalubaGobodo (SNG Grant Thornton). He is the co-founder and chairman of the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) as a response to the call by the National Development Plan (NDP) for increased collaboration among stakeholders to improve educational outcomes. He was the chairperson of NSFAS between 2015 and 2018.  Nxasana was the CEO of the FirstRand Banking Group for 10 years and before that the CEO of Telkom SA for 8 years.   He is the director of the Solidarity Fund and chairs the Fundraising Committee.

In May 2025, Dr Nxasana was awarded a PhD, with a focus on Project-Based Learning, from Aalborg University’s UNESCO PBL Centre in Denmark. He also holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Fort Hare, the Durban University of Technology, the University of Johannesburg and the Walter Sisulu University.