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Chantell Ilbury
science@netactive.co.za
Chantell Ilbury is one of South Africa's leading strategists and facilitators, working both locally and internationally. She specialises in guiding companies and other organisations through their strategic conversations on the future, and she believes passionately in the power of scenario thinking to unlock the best ideas on strategy.
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Chantell was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe on 30th April 1961. She was educated at Eveline High School before moving on to the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg where she completed her BSc. in Chemistry and a postgraduate Higher Diploma in Education. She has since completed an Executive MBA from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and has also studied Strategic Negotiation at Harvard Business School in Boston.
After university Chantell started a career in education, firstly as a teacher and then as a designer of computer-based training material for industry. At the same time she also developed bridging courses for post-matric students and accepted positions to lecture Chemistry and Education. In 1995 Chantell expanded her approach to education when she founded Scienceworks - South Africa's first science communication company. Chantell remains committed to education and has been appointed to the board of directors of Clifton School - a leading independent boys' school based in Durban.
It was while Chantell was at UCT Graduate School of Business in 2000 that she first met Clem Sunter. They shared their ideas on scenario planning that led to the writing of their best-selling book The Mind of a Fox. The second book Games Foxes Play was launched in April 2005; and their third, Socrates & the Fox, in November 2007.
She is an accomplished speaker on effective management in times of uncertainty; and has addressed audiences as far afield as England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Kuwait, Jamaica, Jersey and the Isle of Man, as well as throughout Southern Africa. Chantell is married to columnist and broadcaster Daryl Ilbury and they have two children. Her hobbies include travel and reading.
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Thabang Skwambane
thabang@kaelo.co.za
Thabang Skwambane is an ex-investment banker who left the rat race behind to become a committsed social activist. The youngest of four children he has always done outrageous things, the greatest of which was making the Lonely Road Challenge a reality in 2007. This challenge involved cycling alone and unsupported to Mount Kilimanjaro and then climbing up the summit. For him this challenge wasn’t just about recognition it was about having a purpose in life. He believes that upon finding your purpose, life becomes more fulfilling.
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Thabang is certainly living life to the full and has since set up The Lonely Road Foundation which supports children orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. Thabang, who regards himself as greatly privileged in the South African context, feels compelled to make a difference in the lives of those unable to help themselves, and to offer them a chance or at least show there is hope in this world for all of us.
"The world has found itself faced with many social, environmental and other challenges and it is the people in it who can make changes for the better. So if it’s fighting HIV/AIDS, Global Warming or our Orphan and Vulnerable Children (OVC) problems, we all have a role to play in making our environment better. If we don't, what reason do we have to be a part of this society? But ‘doing something’ doesn't mean we all have to get on a bike to raise money - we can volunteer our time and skills, donate and participate in movements of change" says Thabang.
"If you want to complain about anything, you need to have tried to do something about it before you complain. Until you offer credibility to your arguments or complaints you are just hot air ", Thabang continues.
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Peter Willis
Peter.Willis@cpi.cam.ac.uk
Peter is the director for the Southern African Senior Executives seminar of the Prince of Wales’s Business and the Environment Programme that forms part of the University of Cambridge Programme for Industry. He is also involved in designing sustainability learning programmes for multinational corporations in and outside Africa |
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. Previously Peter was Executive Director of The Natural Step in South Africa, an international NGO consulting to businesses and local authorities around sustainability strategy. Peter has degrees from Oxford and London Universities and has lived in South Africa since 1993.
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Mark Drewell MA (Oxon)
mark.drewell@gmail.com
Mark Drewell is a business leader with a track record of making a difference at the interface between business and society and is a passionate advocate of creating a sustainable future through tackling the challenge of creating a new generation of globally responsible leaders across the world. Born in England, he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University and moved to South Africa in 1989. Since then Mark has worked for South African industrial company Barloworld Limited (www.barloworld.com) where he is now a member of the executive committee.
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In the early 1990’s he was co-creator of a business initiative that became the role model for broad-based engagement by business behind the scenes in the political transition in South Africa. He is a co-founder of a global movement of leading business and business schools focused at developing a new generation of globally responsible business leaders; chairman of the Endangered Wildlife Trust (Africa’s largest environmental non-profit organization), deputy chairman of the advisory board of the Centre for Corporate Citizenship at the University of South Africa and serves on the advisory council of Accountability (an international institute working to make companies and other organisations properly accountable for their impact on society and the environment).
In the early 2000’s he served as a board member of International Association of Business Communicators, the professional association for 14 000 of the worlds business communicators and will chair their global conference in 2009. Mark is the editor of a newly published book of examples of sustainable business in Africa (Africa Leads, UNISA Press, 2006). He is married to Yolanda and they have four children, Francesca (elegantly 6), Christopher (nearly 5), Cassandra (totally 2) and Nicholas (sub one).
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Mike Russell
mrussell@redhill.co.za
Mike Russell was born in St Andrew’s in Scotland and immigrated to South Africa with his parents in 1968. His teaching career began at his alma mater, Rondebosch Boys’ High in 1978 in the school’s English and French Departments. Eighteen years later, having coached 1st XI cricket, soccer and rugby and served as Deputy Principal, Mike left RBHS to join Nasou.Via Afrika educational publishers. |
He worked for there for two and a half years as an education consultant and trainer, designing and delivering workshops on a wide range of educational issues, from OBE to change management, to team-building, to school leadership and management. All of this during a prolonged period of rapid change on the country’s education landscape. This was followed by a short spell at Abbott’s College, Milnerton, as head, and then eighteen months back in the classroom as an English teacher at Pinelands High School. Mike’s move to Johannesburg and Redhill came pretty late in his career, but he feels that the move was well worth the wait, as there are strong bonds between his own views on education, and the traditions and ethos of the school. Mike is married to Liz, a diagnostic radiographer, and they have two daughters, Kirsty and Kate, both following creative careers in interior and fashion design and both living in the Cape.
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Derek Wood
Derek@derekwood.net
Derek Wood is, in essence, a teacher and a counsellor; he is also a husband and a father. His background, for 20 years, was in education in both classrooms and private counselling within schools. Over the past five years he has practised privately as an Education Consultant and a Life Coach. Originally, educated at UCT in both Earth and Human Sciences, his Post Graduate work has been more singularly focused on Education and Psychology, both at UCT and UNISA.
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His Life Coaching practice, and the emergence of his first book “Fine… Cheers!” Our Dialogue with Our Adolescent, are both predicated on a lifetime of work with adolescents and young adults, first as a teacher at the South African College High School in Newlands, Cape Town; and latterly as Head of Guidance and Counselling, first at Westerford High School in Rondebosch and then at Herschel Girls School in Claremont before he moved, during 2002, into full-time private practice.
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Alan Ramsay
alan@rsp.co.za
Alan Ramsay has been at the helm of Ramsay, Son & Parker for more than four decades, joining the family-run business in 1963. Under his leadership it has grown to become one of the most highly regarded publishing companies in South Africa, the magazines in its stable being market leaders in their respective fields.
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Alan learned the ropes through involvement in the business’s many facets. He became managing director of the company as well as publisher of its flagship title, CAR, in 1976, adding the office of chairman to his responsibilities with the passing of his father, Norton, in 1986. In his current capacity as chairman he continues to steer the company to continued growth and success.
During his tenure, Getaway, WINE and Compleat Golfer magazines have been added to the stable and, more recently, Popular Mechanics, Wegbreek and WIEL. The company also recently added to its bouquet of motoring titles by acquiring a share of Leisure Wheels.
Alan received the Western Cape Marketing Man of the Year Award in 1995, while Ramsay, Son & Parker was awarded the Specialist Press Association’s Publisher of the Year Award the following year.
He is an OD, having spent five years at the Prep and five years in Founders House. He was Western Cape chairman of the 1984 Bishops fund-raising campaign and has since served on the OD committee, College Council and the Bishops Trust.
Alan is married to Thea and has three children: Scott (who is group editor of the company’s Digital Publishing division), Elize and Marie.
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Anthony Costa
anthonyc@nedbank.co.za
Anthony Costa read history and law at Wits University, before going on to complete his PhD in History at Trinity College, Cambridge. He taught in the Wits History Department and Law School, completed his pupillage at the Johannesburg Bar, and his MBA at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
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Anthony has spent several years working in financial services, and is currently responsible for the Nedbank branch network in the Western Cape. He has a keen interest in the impact of technology on society, and the development of strategic responses to socio-economic changes. He lives in Cape Town with his family."
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