IPASA ANNUAL PHILANTHROPY SYMPOSIUM 2025
Stronger Together- Philanthropy in a Changing World
Philanthropy has rarely been more critical both in tackling the seemingly insurmountable problems the world, our continent and country currently faces, and in building the world we know is possible. In response to mounting global challenges and critical gaps in resourcing, philanthropy is being called to radically change in response to an escalating changing world.
Philanthropy needs to evolve in response to this rapidly changing world, with new models and approaches to address these complex social and environmental challenges. We need to rethink the traditional funding architecture and focus more on collaboration, shared leadership, and innovation, embracing a culture of deep learning and rapid experimentation, essential for these unprecedented times.
By adapting to these dynamic forces and embracing new models and approaches, philanthropy can continue to play a vital role in shaping a more just, equitable, and sustainable future. It is time to show purpose over passivity and show up collectively with coherence, courage and clarity about what’s at stake. Solidarity among funders and all key philanthropy stakeholders is vital now – we are stronger together.
Date: 28 – 29 October 2025
Venue: Asara Wine Farm, Stellenbosch
The IPASA Annual Philanthropy Symposium is the only gathering exclusively for funders in South Africa, providing a unique opportunity for private philanthropy peers to come together and connect around issues and opportunities that are most relevant to their work. The Symposium offers a curated platform for independent funders to share knowledge and learnings and to collaborate on funding practice and priorities.
As IPASA marks its 10th year, the 2025 Annual Philanthropy Symposium is being hosted at a time of profound global and local change. Under the theme Stronger Together: Philanthropy for a Changing World, the symposium will explore how philanthropy can adapt to remain relevant, sustainable, and proactive amid growing uncertainty and disruption.
The symposium programme will reflect on philanthropy’s past progress, examine the current challenges facing the funding ecosystem, and look ahead to the trends and innovations shaping the future of giving. Sessions will be structured around the past, present, and future of philanthropy, covering topics such as risk and innovation; radical collaboration, local funding resilience, youth-led change, and the role of emerging technologies.
The symposium will convene a diverse group of sector leaders, next-generation voices, and changemakers from across the continent to explore how philanthropy can not only respond to change but help drive it.
IPASA will also be running a pre-symposium Masterclass on Impact Investing for Foundations on the afternoon of the 27th October, the day before the Symposium. This masterclass is open to all delegates and will be held at the Symposium venue, Asara Wine Farm.
For more information contact: candyce@ipa-sa.org.za or louise@ipa-sa.org.za
The IPASA Annual Philanthropy Symposium 2025 is generously sponsored by:
Main Sponsors
Sub-Sponsors
Asara Wine Estate
Located in Stellenbosch, Asara Wine Estate offers a serene symposium setting just 30 minutes from Cape Town. The estate combines scenic vineyard views with modern conference facilities, and on-site accommodation, creating a focused and comfortable environment for learning and sharing and building meaningful connections.
Accommodation
Asara Wine Estate has 40 rooms available. The group rate is R4,995 per night (single, bed & breakfast), and applies to all room types.
Please note: Delegates are encouraged to book accommodation as soon as possible, as any unsold rooms will be released to non IPASA symposium attendees by mid-August 2025.
To book, please contact Asara directly and reference “IPASA” when making payment:
- Email: events2@asara-hotels.com and CC: marian@behella.co.za
- For assistance contact: Marian Louw on 083 264 9992
- Visit https://www.asara.co.za/ for more information.
Banking details for accommodation payment:
- Account Type: Agricultural Business Account
- Account Number: 63075202621
- Branch Code: 200610
- Branch Name: Stellenbosch, C.P. 375
- Swift Code: FIRNZAJ
- Payment Reference: IPASA
Please note: Delegates are responsible for booking and paying for their own accommodation. IPASA does not manage bookings or payments directly.
Under the overall theme of Stronger Together: Philanthropy for a Changing World, the symposium programme will focus on the following sub-themes:
The importance of building the South African independent philanthropy ecosystem role both locally and globally.
This theme will focus on the role and influence of philanthropy support organisations such as IPASA, in growing the local philanthropy ecosystem, and the value of building awareness and recognition for the role of South African philanthropy in the global ecosystem. More specifically we will look at the significant ways in which the local philanthropic ecosystem has evolved and matured over the last 5 years in strengthening local philanthropy, what has enabled these changes and what impact this has achieved for philanthropy in South Africa.
Philanthropy and Crises – Reflecting and Responding Collectively to Crises in times of Change.
This theme will take a critical look at the funding landscape and how philanthropy can better respond to the current and inevitable future funding crises. What have we learnt from dealing with previous crises that has deep applicability in the present and future? How are we responding to the current global funding crisis? How can we collaborate better both in preparing for future crises and in responding to them? What practices and practical interventions will help to build resilience and counter this radically changing funding landscape?
Future Planning for Philanthropy
This theme will look at what future scenarios and realities await the philanthropic sector and how we as funders prepare ourselves to respond to these possible futures. We will also explore where and how we need to strengthen, shift and evolve to make sustainable impact in these different plausible futures for philanthropy. What are the possible future outcomes and impact of this on how philanthropy on the continent can transform and progress?
How the Next Generation is Shaping the Future of Philanthropy
This theme will look at how both local and global ‘next generation’ philanthropy leaders are setting precedent for new transformative funding practices. What can traditional philanthropy learn from the next generation of philanthropists to help them respond effectively to the changing world we face? How can we ensure that we are integrating youth voices into future philanthropy planning?
How will AI and Technology Help and Challenge Philanthropy in the Future?
This theme will look at the role philanthropy can play in encouraging, funding and
accelerating the adoption of responsible AI in and for the social sector. It will also explore how philanthropy can effectively harness the power of technology in our work into the future through investing in digital skills, collaborating in technology partnerships, and helping leadership on all levels to understand the true value and impact technology can have on the future of philanthropy.
Embracing Innovation and Risk into the Future
This theme will explore the tension between philanthropic risk aversion and the need for bold change. What can we learn from those whom working with risk is key to their success? How do collectively embrace creativity in order to allow us to improve our funding practice? How do we help make philanthropy more open to risk taking in their funding vehicles and funding approaches and supporting innovative solutions to societal challenges?
Leadership for Future Philanthropy
This theme will explore how we as leaders prepare ourselves, our teams, our partners and our communities for great change in order to maximise all the opportunities that the future holds for philanthropy. It will look at the future of leadership which needs to embrace change, work with constant innovation and disruption, and create an organisational culture that encourages creativity, experimentation, and risk-taking.
Confirmed Speakers
Alan Wallis
Programme Officer : Natural Resources and Climate Change Programme
Ford Foundation
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Alan currently serves as Programme Officer for the Natural Resources and Climate Change Programme at the Ford Foundation. He is a human rights lawyer with more than 12 years of experience working across diverse socio-legal, economic, and political contexts in the Global South. His career has spanned litigation and research in the non-profit sector, management of programming, budgeting, and strategy within human rights philanthropy, and technical advisory support to civil society organisations, government institutions, and judiciaries. He previously served as Director of Legal Affairs at the Judiciary of Seychelles and as Strategic Advisor to the African Climate Foundation, where he supported strategy development, programme design, and fundraising. He also spent five years at the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, managing the Information, Expression, and Accountability portfolio.
Alan holds an LLB from the University of Cape Town, a Postgraduate Diploma in Environmental Law, and an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Michigan, where he was both the Ismail Mahomed Human Rights Fellow and a Grotius Scholar.
Alison McCallum
Independent Consultant
Social Resonance
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Alison is an accredited mediator with the African Centre for Dispute Settlement and CEDR, holds coaching accreditation from the Centre for Coaching at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, is a certified Time To Think facilitator, and is fully trained in facilitating the Theory U methodology.
Alison’s expertise lies in the design and facilitation of transformative learning journeys, dialogue spaces, and convenings that connect people and ideas while challenging conventional ways of thinking and working. She brings extensive experience in strengthening the capacity of individuals responsible for the social performance and relational dimensions of organisational portfolios. This has included developing and implementing training programmes, cultivating communities of practice, and facilitating processes for social change and stakeholder engagement across both corporate and non-profit sectors.
Current key clients include Anglo American, the International Council on Metals and Mining, the Initiative for Social Performance in Renewable Energy (INSPIRE), DataDrive2030, the UCT Graduate School of Business and Synergy Global Consulting.
Ashanti Kunene
Founder
Learning 2 Unlearn RSA
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Ashanti Kunene is an art activist, writer, slam poet, and two-time TEDx speaker whose work sits at the intersection of creativity, social justice, and systems change. She is the founder of Learning 2 Unlearn (RSA), a strategic narrative consultancy that supports leaders in reimagining organisational structures and narratives through a decolonial lens. In addition, she serves as Co-Lead of the Transforming Wealth Lab at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (UK), where she works to challenge and reshape the narratives and systems that sustain wealth inequity.
Ashanti also contributes to global governance innovation through her role on the membership committee of the Governance Futures Network (USA), where she leads the Leadership & Narrative Greenhouse programme.
Audrey Elster
Executive Director
RAITH Foundation
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Audrey Elster has over 30 years senior management and leadership experience in the NGO sector both in South Africa and internationally. For the past 17 years she has been the Executive Director of the RAITH Foundation -a private South African foundation working to advance social justice with the specific aim of empowering communities and holding those with power to account.
Prior to working for RAITH, Audrey spent 6 years working for the United Nations Population Fund in New York and Geneva, providing funding and technical support to a multi-million dollar adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights programme in 4 African countries.
Audrey has led and consulted for both local and international NGOs, has worked for and with a range of different donors and is an experienced Board member. Audrey was educated at Glasgow University, the National University of Mexico and the Harvard School of Public Health (Centre for Population and Development Studies).
Dali Tembo
CEO and Co-founder
The Culture Foundry Company
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Dali Tembo is the CEO and Co-founder of The Culture Foundry Company, a global insights and collaboration agency that builds stronger connections between brands and everyday people. Recognised for his expertise on Africa’s youth and cultural trends, Dali’s work focuses on understanding how identity, behaviour, and values are evolving across the continent and beyond.
A frequent global speaker at TED, GTR, and more, Dali draws on Africa’s deep wells of innovation and ancestral insight to reframe how we think about youth culture, research, and change. He co-authored a South African best-seller on emerging consumer trends and recently opened QRCA Berlin with a talk on Africa’s youth, one of the world’s top gatherings on cutting-edge qualitative research.
Dali has consulted leading Multinationals across Africa, the UK, the US, and the Middle East, combining strategy with cultural intelligence. He has also led landmark research in partnership with the UCT Institute of Strategic Marketing, delivering some of South Africa’s most extensive studies on youth and high-income earners. His academic background spans Organisational Psychology, Business, and Public Management, with an Honours in Marketing and an MBA in Emerging Markets from the University of Liverpool
Dzunisani Mathonsi
Project Management Officer
Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)
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Dzunisani Mathonsi is a Project Management Officer at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA). She is an experienced project manager and professional with over 13 years of experience in the NGO sector and more than a decade in consulting and project management. She has a strong track record in scenario planning, strategic planning, and monitoring & evaluation, with a particular focus on multi-stakeholder engagements and policy-related research.
She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Project Management and an Honours Degree in Psychology. She is an Executive Member of the Indlulamithi South African Scenario Trust.
Geci Kakuri-Sebina
Associate Professor
University of Witwatersrand
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Geci Karuri-Sebina is a scholar-practitioner who works in the intersection between people, place, time and technological change. She has over 2 decades of experience designing, teaching and facilitating foresight-based projects around the world.
She is an Associate Professor at the University of Witwatersrand in addition to serving as a Principal at the School of International Futures; is the ICESCO Chair on Innovation and Futures in Africa; and an Adjunct Professor at UCT’s African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town.
Geci holds Bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Sociology (Iowa); Masters degrees in Architecture and in Urban Planning (UCLA); and a PhD in planning and innovation studies (Wits University). She is a Desmond Tutu African Leadership Fellow, and part of curating the post-activist communities of The Emergence Network and Dancing With Mountains.
Joanne Harding
Executive Director
Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT)
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Joanne Harding is the Executive Director at the Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT) and has a long history of working in the social justice, gender and development sector having started her career with the Black Sash in 1992.
She has transformed SCAT’s reach and impact ensuring SCAT remains at the forefront of community-driven change and has spearheaded SCAT’s engagement in the climate change sector, driven by her deep commitment to justice, gender equality, and environmental resilience.
Joanne has a BA Social Work from NMU, a MSocSci specialising in Social Planning and Administration from UCT and a PhD in Public Law from UCT. She is a Director of Active Shareholder (NPC), the Chairperson of the Philanthropy Leadership Network and the Chairperson of IPASA.
Koffi Kouakou
Managing Director
Stratnum Futures
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Koffi Kouakou is a globally recognised futures and foresight practitioner, currently serving as a member of the OECD Expert Group on Strategic Foresight, an assembly of ten internationally renowned experts in the field. He is the Managing Director of Stratnum Futures, a strategy, scenario planning, and advisory consultancy, and an alumnus of both the Oxford University Saïd Business School Scenarios Programme and the Global Business Network’s Developing and Using Scenarios. His academic contributions include serving as a sessional lecturer at the Wits School of Governance, and as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg.
He coordinated the World Bank’s Programme on Environment Information Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa in Washington D.C. and later served as Co-Director of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) Virtual Reality Solutions in Pretoria. At Wits University, he directed the Unilever Mandela Rhodes Academy for Communications and Marketing, a partnership between the Unilever Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Rhodes Foundation, where he lectured in scenario planning and strategic communications.
A respected thought leader on African futures and governance Koffi’s insights have featured on Al Jazeera, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, France24, Voice of America, China Global Television Network, and South Africa’s leading broadcast outlets, among others. He is also a director with the South Africa Node of the Millennium Project, a global foresight network that produces the authoritative annual publication State of the Future.
Kone Gugushe
Head of Social Investing
FirstRand Group
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Kone Gugushe is the Head of Social Investing at the FirstRand Group. She has more than 25 years working experience, spanning over the financial services sector at several prestigious South African banking and international institutions, including Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank, JP Morgan and Nedbank.
She has held leadership positions in the public sector where she served as the Land and Agriculture Development Bank of South Africa Chief Risk Officer, and thereafter held the position of CEO of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
Kone is a Chartered Accountant (SA) with academic degrees and advanced qualifications from Rhodes University, University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Gordon Institute of Business Science. She is a member of various industry and professional bodies and is a fellow of the South African chapter of the African Leadership Initiative which is part of the renowned Aspen Global Leadership Initiative.
Lwando Xaso
Advisor
Moleskine Foundation
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Lwando Xaso is a lawyer, writer, curator and facilitator. Her outlook on what law can and cannot do was profoundly impacted not just by her experience as a lawyer at some of South Africa’s biggest firms, but more deeply by her experience of clerking at the Constitutional Court of South Africa for Justice Edwin Cameron.
Currently, she is an advisor to the Moleskine Foundation on its work of creativity and transformation. She is also establishing the Creativity for Social Change Hub in South Africa, in partnership with the Moleskine Foundation, which will support creative and cultural organisations vital to the advancement of social justice.
Lwando is also the founder of her own consultancy, Including Society, established to explore how we can build a society that is more constructively critical and reflective of our constitutional commitments through strategy, experience and narrative design.
She is the author of Made in South Africa; A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress published in 2020 and longlisted for the Sunday Times CNA Literary Award for nonfiction. She is a Trustee of the Constitutional Court, and she is also a 2022 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity.
Makoma Lekalakala
Director
Earthlife Africa
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Makoma is the Director of Earthlife Africa, a civil society environmental justice and anti-nuclear organisation. She has long been active in social movements tackling issues from gender and women’s rights to social, economic and environmental justice issues. In recent years, Makoma has focused on targeting environmental corruption.
Her commitment to climate justice in South Africa has led civil society to win the first South African climate change legal case against the government and the reversal of the nuclear deal by South Africa and the Russian government. For her efforts, she received: an Honourable mention by WWF; an Eco Logic Bronze Award; a Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa 2018; and a SAB Environmentalist of the year 2018 award amongst other accolades.
She serves on the Presidential Climate Commission a body tasked with advising the country to a low carbon economic development.
Mmabatho Maboya
CEO
Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation
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Mmabatho Maboya holds the position of CEO at the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation and has had over 20 years in senior management roles. Adept at navigating complex environments with strong skills in strategic management and operational efficiency, she is a recognised senior leader in the philanthropic and nonprofit sector. She has a proven track record in successful strategy development, resource mobilisation, leading significant organisational transitions, and establishing robust governance frameworks.
Holding an MBA from the Gordon Institute of Business Science, along with degrees in Geography, Environmental Sciences and Statistics, Mmabatho possesses a keen academic interest in the financial sustainability and governance of non-profit organisations, as well as in the development of secondary cities to transform communities and drive sustainable economic growth.
Having served on multiple boards and deeply experienced in leading NPOs, Mmabatho’s ambition is to extend her skills and impact beyond South Africa, contributing to progress in human development globally.
Nontando Ngamlana
Executive Director
Afesis
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Nontando has held the position for the last 15 years of Executive Director at Afesis, a social justice organisation based in the Eastern Cape. She has led Afesis for over 15 years. Before joining Afesis she worked in the private, public and academic sectors.
An activist at heart, Nontando’s leadership is characterised by a commitment to holistic impact. She uniquely integrates a scientific, quantitative focus into Afesis’ work, while ensuring its approaches and interventions remain deeply participatory and qualitative. Her deep commitment to social justice is evident in the human focus of her work. She writes extensively on good governance, active citizenship, and development, and has managed numerous development projects locally and nationally.
She is a seasoned strategic leader, a process facilitator, moderator and a curator of spaces for meaningful conversations.
Rapelang Rabana
Entrepreneur & Founder
Rekindle Learning
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Featured on the cover of ForbesAfrica magazine before the age of 30, named Entrepreneur for the World by the World Entrepreneurship Forum and selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Rapelang is an internationally lauded technology entrepreneur. From her first startup straight out of university, to Chief Digital Officer at South Africa’s largest IT company, Rapelang is a true digital native.
Rapelang is deeply committed to the transformation of the African continent, through education and skills development. Rapelang founded Rekindle Learning, a learning technology company that enables organizations to easily codify and share institutional know-how amongst their teams to enhance business performance. In 2023, Rapelang, took on the role of Co-CEO of Imagine Worldwide, an NPO supporting almost a million children year in Sub-Saharan Africa to become literate and numerate by the age of 10.
Rapelang has served as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Councils on Entrepreneurship and Education, as a Board Member of African Leadership University and of Standard Chartered Bank Botswana Education Trust. She has spoken at over 400 occasions on local and international platforms and has shared a stage with the likes of President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell.
Rene Parker
Director & Co Founder
RLabs
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Rene Parker is a pioneering social entrepreneur and the co-founder and Director of RLabs, a global social enterprise headquartered in Cape Town that has grown into a worldwide movement of hope, innovation, and economic empowerment. Under her leadership, RLabs has expanded into more than 20 countries, impacting more than 65 million lives by creating inclusive spaces for youth, women, and communities to access skills, technology, and entrepreneurial opportunities. RLabs has become a global model for community-driven innovation and systems change, enabling pathways into jobs, startups, and sustainable livelihoods.
In addition to her work with RLabs, Rene serves as a board member and interim Chairperson of AfriLabs, the largest pan-African network of innovation hubs, bringing together over 500 hubs across 60+ countries. In this role, she champions collaboration, policy influence, and partnership development to strengthen Africa’s innovation ecosystem. She is particularly passionate about creating opportunities for young entrepreneurs and women leaders to thrive within Africa’s digital and creative economies.
Sarah Binos
CEO & Co Founder
Huddle
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Sarah Binos is the co-founder and CEO of Huddle, where she leads efforts to scale a blended learning and structured pedagogy programme aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning across South African classrooms. A seasoned social entrepreneur with 27 years of senior leadership experience, she has spearheaded transformative strategies across health, economic inclusion, and education.
Her career includes serving as Head of Campaign Design and Strategy at loveLife, where she co-designed and expanded programmes that reached millions of young people nationwide. In 2007, she founded Common Good, pioneering both policy reform and an innovative school-improvement model across a network of no-fee public collaboration schools. At Valenture in 2021, she piloted a rural blended learning initiative to expand access for low- and no-fee learners in underserved communities.
Through Huddle and her broader leadership, she continues to advance scalable solutions that strengthen education systems and broaden opportunities for those most excluded.
Sarah Jane Rennie
Chairperson
Grindrod Family Centenary Trust
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Sarah is a recognised leader in philanthropy and corporate social investment, with a particular focus on advancing education. She was appointed to the Optima Board of Trustees in March 2020 and currently serves as its Chair, a role she assumed in 2024. She also chairs the Grindrod Family Centenary Trust, serves as a non-executive director of the Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation, chairs the DSV Empowerment Trust, and is a trustee of Columba Leadership.
Trained as a lawyer, Sarah practiced in London before returning to South Africa, where she took up the role of Chief Operating Officer at Tshikululu Social Investments. Her career has since encompassed senior leadership across philanthropy and development, including international experience gained during four years in Dubai.
Sarah has also played an influential role in shaping South Africa’s philanthropic landscape. She is a former Chair of IPASA and has served as trustee of the Liberty Community Trust and the Anglo American Namibia Foundation.
Sharon Munyaka
Organisational Psychologist
Sharon Munyaka Inc
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Sharon Munyaka is an Industrial and Organisational Psychologist working globally to advance transformative leadership and organisational development. With over 20 years of experience, she specialises in unlocking human potential at individual, team, and organisational levels through dialogue, facilitation, and coaching.
Sharon holds a doctorate in Industrial Psychology from Nelson Mandela University and is registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. Her career spans extensive research, facilitation, and advisory work, including leading large-scale employee engagement and social research projects for Coca-Cola Sabco, the Eastern Cape Department of Health, and Oxford University’s collaboration with the South African Department of Social Development. She has worked with leading South African institutions such as Sasol, Telkom, Primedia, Eskom, and several universities, helping them navigate transformation, diversity, and organisational renewal. Internationally, she contributes to the Presencing Institute (MIT) as an accredited Theory U facilitator, faculty member for the UN SDG Leadership Labs, and lead on the Ubuntu-Led Human Flourishing project.
A skilled mediator and accredited coach, Sharon works across Africa with organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, BCA Leadership, Citibank, RCL Foods, and Henley Business School, focusing on high-potential leadership development, conflict resolution, and organisational alignment.
She currently serves as a Council Member at the University of Cape Town, Chair of the Citizen Leader Lab Board, and trustee of the SHL Public Benefit Organisation, which advances opportunities for industrial psychology students. She is the Immediate Past President of the Society of Industrial and Organisational Psychology of South Africa.
Shingi Bimha
Head of Programmes and Partnerships
Anglo American Foundation
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Shingi has close to 20 years’ experience in development, specialising in youth and enterprise development. Currently, she leads Anglo American Foundation’s strategy in Southern Africa, as Head of Programmes and Partnerships. Shingi joined the Foundation from TechnoServe, where she was the South Africa Country Director, leading the country platform and providing strategic oversight to Anglo American Zimele’s enterprise, supplier and youth development interventions across the company’s mining sites in South Africa.
Prior to this role, Shingi was Technical Advisor for TechnoServe’s Strengthening Rural Youth through Development Enterprise (STRYDE) program, where she was responsible for building country teams’ capacity for youth economic empowerment in Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and ensuring quality control of programme implementation. Before relocating to South Africa, Shingi spent seven years in Washington DC holding various roles with National 4-H Council, the non-profit arm of America’s largest youth development organisation, 4-H. She holds an MBA and a BA from Bellarmine University, Louisville Kentucky.
Thembekile Maseko
Executive Director
African Youth Philanthropy Network (AYPN)
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Thembekile is the Executive Director of the African Youth Philanthropy Network (AYPN) where she leads a continent-wide movement connecting young leaders and organizations to drive inclusive and transformative development.
Her career spans impact-centered programming in youth development, advocacy, and community building, with previous roles at Stractiv8 Impact, where she empowered marginalized voices by crafting strategic communications initiatives, and the International Alliance on Natural Resources in Africa (IANRA), where she collaborated within the pan-African network to advocate for inclusive natural resource governance. Beyond her leadership at AYPN, Thembekile also contributes her expertise as a Board Trustee at YouthBank International, championing youth engagement and grant-making models that boost young people’s agency and transform communities globally.
Thembekile holds a BA (Hons) in Development Studies from the University of Johannesburg and is pursuing an MBA at Regent Business School. She is passionate about advancing youth agency, strategic collaboration, and building resilient philanthropic ecosystems across Africa and beyond.
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Thokozile Madonko
Manager: Public Economy Project
WITS: Southern Centre for Inequality Studies
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Thokozile Madonko is a researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she manages the Public Economy Project. She has worked in climate justice, development cooperation, and public finance, focusing on health financing, gender-responsive budgeting, national, subnational and parliamentary governance, transparency and accountability. Over the years, she has served as programme manager for Heinrich Boell Foundation, coordinator of the Budget Expenditure Monitoring Forum and organizer for the People’s Health Movement South Africa. She spent four years at the International Budget Partnership as a Programme officer for the IBP’s Zambia partnership initiative.
She holds a master’s degree in political theory and has led and contributed to research on climate justice, development cooperation, and public finance. Her work informs debates on health financing, gender-responsive budgeting, and governance at national and subnational levels, with a focus on strengthening transparency and accountability.
Tracey Henry
CEO
Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation
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Tracey Henry presently holds the role of CEO of the Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation. She has three decades of experience in the social investment and sustainability sector, including 25 years at executive and board level and 17 years in CEO leadership. She currently serves on the Board of the Sishen Iron Ore Company Community Development Trust where she is a member of the Social and Ethics Committee, the Remuneration and Nominations Committee, and chairs the Projects Review Committee. Her previous board service includes Tshikululu Social Investments, the Kagiso Shanduka Trust where she also chaired the Remuneration Committee and the African Children’s Feeding Scheme.
A Fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative and member of The Aspen Institute Global Leadership Network, Tracey is widely recognised for her thought leadership in corporate social investment, sustainability, and ESG. She has presented at international platforms including the International Finance Corporation’s Sustainability Exchange in Washington, UNICEF’s regional gathering in Nairobi, and the European Venture Philanthropy Association Conference in Oslo. She was named the 2010 CEO Most Influential Woman in Business in the financial sector category.
Yoliswa Msweli
Economic and Social Justice Expert & independent Researcher
Independent Researcher
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Yoliswa Msweli is an independent researcher and land justice scholar whose work sits at the intersection of social justice, development, and governance. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape, where her doctoral research examines the meaning of justice in relation to land from the perspective of historically dispossessed communities. Alongside her doctoral studies, she serves as an independent land researcher with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, investigating the role of the state in ensuring equitable access to land for South African citizens.
Her professional journey spans South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Hungary, covering both research and accountancy. Yoliswa has consistently dedicated her expertise and personal commitment to advancing socio-economic development, social impact, and the public good. Given her professional background in accountancy, her work has involved working across the public, private and non-profit sectors and applying a holistic lens to ensure that development efforts are undertaken in a manner that maximises benefits to society.
Vuyiswa Ncontsa
Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT)
Fund Manager : Basic Education
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Vuyiswa Ncontsa is the Fund Manager for Basic Education at the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT). The goal of the portfolio she manages is to fund innovative initiatives that unlock significant and scalable improvement in Foundation Phase teaching through new teachers and technology. Prior to working at OMT, she was the Regional Director for Southern Africa at the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance and the former CEO at BRIDGE Innovation in Learning Organisation, an NPO that connected stakeholders and innovators in education. Vuyiswa has 22 years of development experience, gained from grantmaking to education entities, programme and project management, resource mobilisation, Monitoring & Evaluation and governance strengthening.
Bethuel Mangena
Independent Cartoonist
Independent Cartoonist
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Bethuel Mangena is an established cartoonist with 20 years ago experience as a fine artist. In 2005, he was selected to study British politics in London jointly mentored by Zapiro and leading UK cartoonist Steve Bella and in 2006 selected as part of the team that created animation films sponsored by SABC, NEMISA and the Department of Arts and Culture. He has won many awards including: Vodacom Journalist of the year in 2007 and winner of the human rights prize at Cartoonmag.com’s international Cartoon in 2021. He has worked for The Star Newspaper, African News Agency, Sowetan and Sunday World.
He has participated in highly engaging Cartoonathons such as AIN RCCC, META, HumaniTech, RiseAfrica, RCCC Africa Dialogue, African Anticipatory action, 10 years of building community resilience and many more. He has participated in the Global Innovation summit in Kenya producing cartoons inspired by Climate Change engagements and participated this year in the Harare learning lab ,Zimbabwe , Kampala learning lab, Uganda and Accra learning lab, Ghana.
Eugene Pelteret
Reflective Learning
Co Founder
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Eugene co-founded Reflective Learning in 2017, an online platform which helps more than 80 000 students catch up their gaps in Maths understanding that is now being exported to other African and first-world countries. Combining his Masters degree in Business Administration from the Edinburgh Business School and deep experience in community development work, he has accumulated 15 years of experience in leading and developing high-impact social enterprises in South Africa. Most recently, he co-founded 1st Access, an innovative hardware solution to make technology-based learning accessible to more students. He is passionate about deconstructing complex problems and using first-principles thinking with technology to develop unique solutions to ultimately deliver inclusive and quality education at scale.
IPASA ANNUAL PHILANTHROPY SYMPOSIUM 2025 PROGRAMME
Stronger Together- Philanthropy in a Changing World
Date: 28 – 29 October 2025
Venue: Asara Wine Farm, Stellenbosch
The IPASA Annual Philanthropy Symposium is the only gathering exclusively for funders in South Africa, providing a unique opportunity for private philanthropy peers to come together and connect around issues and opportunities that are most relevant to their work. The Symposium offers a curated platform for independent funders to share knowledge and learnings and to collaborate on funding practice and priorities.
As IPASA marks its 10th year, the 2025 Annual Philanthropy Symposium is being hosted at a time of profound global and local change. Under the theme Stronger Together: Philanthropy for a Changing World, the symposium will explore how philanthropy can adapt to remain relevant, sustainable, and proactive amid growing uncertainty and disruption.
The symposium programme will reflect on philanthropy’s past progress, examine the current challenges facing the funding ecosystem, and look ahead to the trends and innovations shaping the future of giving. Sessions will be structured around the past, present, and future of philanthropy, covering topics such as risk and innovation; radical collaboration, local funding resilience, youth-led change, and the role of emerging technologies.
The symposium will convene a diverse group of sector leaders, next-generation voices, and changemakers from across the continent to explore how philanthropy can not only respond to change but help drive it.
IPASA will also be running a pre-symposium Masterclass on Impact Investing for Foundations on the afternoon of the 27th October, the day before the Symposium. This masterclass is open to all delegates and will be held at the Symposium venue, Asara Wine Farm.
For more information contact: candyce@ipa-sa.org.za or louise@ipa-sa.org.za
The IPASA Annual Philanthropy Symposium 2025 is generously sponsored by:
Main Sponsors
Sub-Sponsors
Asara Wine Estate
Located in Stellenbosch, Asara Wine Estate offers a serene symposium setting just 30 minutes from Cape Town. The estate combines scenic vineyard views with modern conference facilities, and on-site accommodation, creating a focused and comfortable environment for learning and sharing and building meaningful connections.
Accommodation
Asara Wine Estate has 40 rooms available. The group rate is R4,995 per night (single, bed & breakfast), and applies to all room types.
Please note: Delegates are encouraged to book accommodation as soon as possible, as any unsold rooms will be released to non IPASA symposium attendees by mid-August 2025.
To book, please contact Asara directly and reference “IPASA” when making payment:
- Email: events2@asara-hotels.com and CC: marian@behella.co.za
- For assistance contact: Marian Louw on 083 264 9992
- Visit https://www.asara.co.za/ for more information.
Banking details for accommodation payment:
- Account Type: Agricultural Business Account
- Account Number: 63075202621
- Branch Code: 200610
- Branch Name: Stellenbosch, C.P. 375
- Swift Code: FIRNZAJ
- Payment Reference: IPASA
Please note: Delegates are responsible for booking and paying for their own accommodation. IPASA does not manage bookings or payments directly.
To register for the IPASA Annual Philanthropy Symposium 2025, kindly fill out the registration form below. Once received, we will send you an email confirming your registration and provide the symposium fee invoice.
Please note the symposium is only open to grant-makers and those providing support services to grant-makers.
Under the overall theme of Stronger Together: Philanthropy for a Changing World, the symposium programme will focus on the following sub-themes:
The importance of building the South African independent philanthropy ecosystem role both locally and globally.
This theme will focus on the role and influence of philanthropy support organisations such as IPASA, in growing the local philanthropy ecosystem, and the value of building awareness and recognition for the role of South African philanthropy in the global ecosystem. More specifically we will look at the significant ways in which the local philanthropic ecosystem has evolved and matured over the last 5 years in strengthening local philanthropy, what has enabled these changes and what impact this has achieved for philanthropy in South Africa.
Philanthropy and Crises – Reflecting and Responding Collectively to Crises in times of Change.
This theme will take a critical look at the funding landscape and how philanthropy can better respond to the current and inevitable future funding crises. What have we learnt from dealing with previous crises that has deep applicability in the present and future? How are we responding to the current global funding crisis? How can we collaborate better both in preparing for future crises and in responding to them? What practices and practical interventions will help to build resilience and counter this radically changing funding landscape?
Future Planning for Philanthropy
This theme will look at what future scenarios and realities await the philanthropic sector and how we as funders prepare ourselves to respond to these possible futures. We will also explore where and how we need to strengthen, shift and evolve to make sustainable impact in these different plausible futures for philanthropy. What are the possible future outcomes and impact of this on how philanthropy on the continent can transform and progress?
How the Next Generation is Shaping the Future of Philanthropy
This theme will look at how both local and global ‘next generation’ philanthropy leaders are setting precedent for new transformative funding practices. What can traditional philanthropy learn from the next generation of philanthropists to help them respond effectively to the changing world we face? How can we ensure that we are integrating youth voices into future philanthropy planning?
How will AI and Technology Help and Challenge Philanthropy in the Future?
This theme will look at the role philanthropy can play in encouraging, funding and
accelerating the adoption of responsible AI in and for the social sector. It will also explore how philanthropy can effectively harness the power of technology in our work into the future through investing in digital skills, collaborating in technology partnerships, and helping leadership on all levels to understand the true value and impact technology can have on the future of philanthropy.
Embracing Innovation and Risk into the Future
This theme will explore the tension between philanthropic risk aversion and the need for bold change. What can we learn from those whom working with risk is key to their success? How do collectively embrace creativity in order to allow us to improve our funding practice? How do we help make philanthropy more open to risk taking in their funding vehicles and funding approaches and supporting innovative solutions to societal challenges?
Leadership for Future Philanthropy
This theme will explore how we as leaders prepare ourselves, our teams, our partners and our communities for great change in order to maximise all the opportunities that the future holds for philanthropy. It will look at the future of leadership which needs to embrace change, work with constant innovation and disruption, and create an organisational culture that encourages creativity, experimentation, and risk-taking.
Confirmed Speakers
Alan Wallis
Programme Officer : Natural Resources and Climate Change Programme
Ford Foundation
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Alan currently serves as Programme Officer for the Natural Resources and Climate Change Programme at the Ford Foundation. He is a human rights lawyer with more than 12 years of experience working across diverse socio-legal, economic, and political contexts in the Global South. His career has spanned litigation and research in the non-profit sector, management of programming, budgeting, and strategy within human rights philanthropy, and technical advisory support to civil society organisations, government institutions, and judiciaries. He previously served as Director of Legal Affairs at the Judiciary of Seychelles and as Strategic Advisor to the African Climate Foundation, where he supported strategy development, programme design, and fundraising. He also spent five years at the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, managing the Information, Expression, and Accountability portfolio.
Alan holds an LLB from the University of Cape Town, a Postgraduate Diploma in Environmental Law, and an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Michigan, where he was both the Ismail Mahomed Human Rights Fellow and a Grotius Scholar.
Alison McCallum
Independent Consultant
Social Resonance
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Alison is an accredited mediator with the African Centre for Dispute Settlement and CEDR, holds coaching accreditation from the Centre for Coaching at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, is a certified Time To Think facilitator, and is fully trained in facilitating the Theory U methodology.
Alison’s expertise lies in the design and facilitation of transformative learning journeys, dialogue spaces, and convenings that connect people and ideas while challenging conventional ways of thinking and working. She brings extensive experience in strengthening the capacity of individuals responsible for the social performance and relational dimensions of organisational portfolios. This has included developing and implementing training programmes, cultivating communities of practice, and facilitating processes for social change and stakeholder engagement across both corporate and non-profit sectors.
Current key clients include Anglo American, the International Council on Metals and Mining, the Initiative for Social Performance in Renewable Energy (INSPIRE), DataDrive2030, the UCT Graduate School of Business and Synergy Global Consulting.
Anthony Farr
Group CEO
Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropy Africa
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Anthony is the Group CEO of Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropy Africa, responsible for the execution of the Gray family philanthropy across the continent.
Anthony was the founding CEO of the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, established in 2005, growing this pipeline of responsible entrepreneurs, known as Allan Gray Fellows, to a cohort of over 1700 individuals and creating businesses to the value of approximately US$2bn.
Anthony completed his CA (SA) at Deloitte in Cape Town and Luxembourg, before working at Standard Bank in London for a number of years, in their international corporate finance team. He then co-founded the Starfish Greathearts Foundation in 2001, which now supports in the region of 12,000 orphaned or vulnerable children across South Africa.
Ashanti Kunene
Founder
Learning 2 Unlearn RSA
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Ashanti Kunene is an art activist, writer, slam poet, and two-time TEDx speaker whose work sits at the intersection of creativity, social justice, and systems change. She is the founder of Learning 2 Unlearn (RSA), a strategic narrative consultancy that supports leaders in reimagining organisational structures and narratives through a decolonial lens. In addition, she serves as Co-Lead of the Transforming Wealth Lab at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (UK), where she works to challenge and reshape the narratives and systems that sustain wealth inequity.
Ashanti also contributes to global governance innovation through her role on the membership committee of the Governance Futures Network (USA), where she leads the Leadership & Narrative Greenhouse programme.
Audrey Elster
Executive Director
RAITH Foundation
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Audrey Elster has over 30 years senior management and leadership experience in the NGO sector both in South Africa and internationally. For the past 17 years she has been the Executive Director of the RAITH Foundation -a private South African foundation working to advance social justice with the specific aim of empowering communities and holding those with power to account.
Prior to working for RAITH, Audrey spent 6 years working for the United Nations Population Fund in New York and Geneva, providing funding and technical support to a multi-million dollar adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights programme in 4 African countries.
Audrey has led and consulted for both local and international NGOs, has worked for and with a range of different donors and is an experienced Board member. Audrey was educated at Glasgow University, the National University of Mexico and the Harvard School of Public Health (Centre for Population and Development Studies).
Dali Tembo
CEO and Co-founder
The Culture Foundry Company
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Dali Tembo is the CEO and Co-founder of The Culture Foundry Company, a global insights and collaboration agency that builds stronger connections between brands and everyday people. Recognised for his expertise on Africa’s youth and cultural trends, Dali’s work focuses on understanding how identity, behaviour, and values are evolving across the continent and beyond.
A frequent global speaker at TED, GTR, and more, Dali draws on Africa’s deep wells of innovation and ancestral insight to reframe how we think about youth culture, research, and change. He co-authored a South African best-seller on emerging consumer trends and recently opened QRCA Berlin with a talk on Africa’s youth, one of the world’s top gatherings on cutting-edge qualitative research.
Dali has consulted leading Multinationals across Africa, the UK, the US, and the Middle East, combining strategy with cultural intelligence. He has also led landmark research in partnership with the UCT Institute of Strategic Marketing, delivering some of South Africa’s most extensive studies on youth and high-income earners. His academic background spans Organisational Psychology, Business, and Public Management, with an Honours in Marketing and an MBA in Emerging Markets from the University of Liverpool
Dzunisani Mathonsi
Project Management Officer
Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)
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Dzunisani Mathonsi is a Project Management Officer at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA). She is an experienced project manager and professional with over 13 years of experience in the NGO sector and more than a decade in consulting and project management. She has a strong track record in scenario planning, strategic planning, and monitoring & evaluation, with a particular focus on multi-stakeholder engagements and policy-related research.
She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Project Management and an Honours Degree in Psychology. She is an Executive Member of the Indlulamithi South African Scenario Trust.
Geci Kakuri-Sebina
Associate Professor
University of Witwatersrand
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Geci Karuri-Sebina is a scholar-practitioner who works in the intersection between people, place, time and technological change. She has over 2 decades of experience designing, teaching and facilitating foresight-based projects around the world.
She is an Associate Professor at the University of Witwatersrand in addition to serving as a Principal at the School of International Futures; is the ICESCO Chair on Innovation and Futures in Africa; and an Adjunct Professor at UCT’s African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town.
Geci holds Bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Sociology (Iowa); Masters degrees in Architecture and in Urban Planning (UCLA); and a PhD in planning and innovation studies (Wits University). She is a Desmond Tutu African Leadership Fellow, and part of curating the post-activist communities of The Emergence Network and Dancing With Mountains.
Joanne Harding
Executive Director
Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT)
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Joanne Harding is the Executive Director at the Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT) and has a long history of working in the social justice, gender and development sector having started her career with the Black Sash in 1992.
She has transformed SCAT’s reach and impact ensuring SCAT remains at the forefront of community-driven change and has spearheaded SCAT’s engagement in the climate change sector, driven by her deep commitment to justice, gender equality, and environmental resilience.
Joanne has a BA Social Work from NMU, a MSocSci specialising in Social Planning and Administration from UCT and a PhD in Public Law from UCT. She is a Director of Active Shareholder (NPC), the Chairperson of the Philanthropy Leadership Network and the Chairperson of IPASA.
Koffi Kouakou
Managing Director
Stratnum Futures
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Koffi Kouakou is a globally recognised futures and foresight practitioner, currently serving as a member of the OECD Expert Group on Strategic Foresight, an assembly of ten internationally renowned experts in the field. He is the Managing Director of Stratnum Futures, a strategy, scenario planning, and advisory consultancy, and an alumnus of both the Oxford University Saïd Business School Scenarios Programme and the Global Business Network’s Developing and Using Scenarios. His academic contributions include serving as a sessional lecturer at the Wits School of Governance, and as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg.
He coordinated the World Bank’s Programme on Environment Information Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa in Washington D.C. and later served as Co-Director of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) Virtual Reality Solutions in Pretoria. At Wits University, he directed the Unilever Mandela Rhodes Academy for Communications and Marketing, a partnership between the Unilever Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Rhodes Foundation, where he lectured in scenario planning and strategic communications.
A respected thought leader on African futures and governance Koffi’s insights have featured on Al Jazeera, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, France24, Voice of America, China Global Television Network, and South Africa’s leading broadcast outlets, among others. He is also a director with the South Africa Node of the Millennium Project, a global foresight network that produces the authoritative annual publication State of the Future.
Kone Gugushe
Head of Social Investing
FirstRand Group
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Kone Gugushe is the Head of Social Investing at the FirstRand Group. She has more than 25 years working experience, spanning over the financial services sector at several prestigious South African banking and international institutions, including Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank, JP Morgan and Nedbank.
She has held leadership positions in the public sector where she served as the Land and Agriculture Development Bank of South Africa Chief Risk Officer, and thereafter held the position of CEO of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
Kone is a Chartered Accountant (SA) with academic degrees and advanced qualifications from Rhodes University, University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Gordon Institute of Business Science. She is a member of various industry and professional bodies and is a fellow of the South African chapter of the African Leadership Initiative which is part of the renowned Aspen Global Leadership Initiative.
Lwando Xaso
Advisor
Moleskine Foundation
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Lwando Xaso is a lawyer, writer, curator and facilitator. Her outlook on what law can and cannot do was profoundly impacted not just by her experience as a lawyer at some of South Africa’s biggest firms, but more deeply by her experience of clerking at the Constitutional Court of South Africa for Justice Edwin Cameron.
Currently, she is an advisor to the Moleskine Foundation on its work of creativity and transformation. She is also establishing the Creativity for Social Change Hub in South Africa, in partnership with the Moleskine Foundation, which will support creative and cultural organisations vital to the advancement of social justice.
Lwando is also the founder of her own consultancy, Including Society, established to explore how we can build a society that is more constructively critical and reflective of our constitutional commitments through strategy, experience and narrative design.
She is the author of Made in South Africa; A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress published in 2020 and longlisted for the Sunday Times CNA Literary Award for nonfiction. She is a Trustee of the Constitutional Court, and she is also a 2022 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity.
Makoma Lekalakala
Director
Earthlife Africa
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Makoma is the Director of Earthlife Africa, a civil society environmental justice and anti-nuclear organisation. She has long been active in social movements tackling issues from gender and women’s rights to social, economic and environmental justice issues. In recent years, Makoma has focused on targeting environmental corruption.
Her commitment to climate justice in South Africa has led civil society to win the first South African climate change legal case against the government and the reversal of the nuclear deal by South Africa and the Russian government. For her efforts, she received: an Honourable mention by WWF; an Eco Logic Bronze Award; a Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa 2018; and a SAB Environmentalist of the year 2018 award amongst other accolades.
She serves on the Presidential Climate Commission a body tasked with advising the country to a low carbon economic development.
Mmabatho Maboya
CEO
Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation
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Mmabatho Maboya holds the position of CEO at the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation and has had over 20 years in senior management roles. Adept at navigating complex environments with strong skills in strategic management and operational efficiency, she is a recognised senior leader in the philanthropic and nonprofit sector. She has a proven track record in successful strategy development, resource mobilisation, leading significant organisational transitions, and establishing robust governance frameworks.
Holding an MBA from the Gordon Institute of Business Science, along with degrees in Geography, Environmental Sciences and Statistics, Mmabatho possesses a keen academic interest in the financial sustainability and governance of non-profit organisations, as well as in the development of secondary cities to transform communities and drive sustainable economic growth.
Having served on multiple boards and deeply experienced in leading NPOs, Mmabatho’s ambition is to extend her skills and impact beyond South Africa, contributing to progress in human development globally.
Nicolette Naylor
CEO & Founder
Ubuntu Global Philanthropy & Gender Justice Consulting
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Nicolette Naylor is the CEO and founder of Ubuntu Global Philanthropy & Gender Justice Consulting, an organization providing support to philanthropy organizations, civil society organizations and academic institutions. She is a senior philanthropy executive who has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of justice, feminism, and philanthropy.
Nicolette currently provides senior executive level support and strategic development assistance to Fondation CHANEL in London, the Ford Foundation in New York, the Collaborative Future Fund in New York, and Open Society Justice Initiative in New York. Prior to her consulting work, Nicolette spent 16 years at the Ford Foundation where she led the Southern Africa office and the International Program on Gender, Racial & Ethnic Justice She is the Chairperson of the Atlantic Institute Governing Board in the UK and serves on several global Boards.
Nicolette is an International Human Rights lawyer by training and spent the early part of her career litigating human rights cases in South Africa, at the African Commission, and at the European Court of Human Rights. She holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law from University College London and a B.Proc. LLB from the University of the Western Cape.
Nontando Ngamlana
Executive Director
Afesis
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Nontando has held the position for the last 15 years of Executive Director at Afesis, a social justice organisation based in the Eastern Cape. She has led Afesis for over 15 years. Before joining Afesis she worked in the private, public and academic sectors.
An activist at heart, Nontando’s leadership is characterised by a commitment to holistic impact. She uniquely integrates a scientific, quantitative focus into Afesis’ work, while ensuring its approaches and interventions remain deeply participatory and qualitative. Her deep commitment to social justice is evident in the human focus of her work. She writes extensively on good governance, active citizenship, and development, and has managed numerous development projects locally and nationally.
She is a seasoned strategic leader, a process facilitator, moderator and a curator of spaces for meaningful conversations.
Rapelang Rabana
Entrepreneur & Founder
Rekindle Learning
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Featured on the cover of ForbesAfrica magazine before the age of 30, named Entrepreneur for the World by the World Entrepreneurship Forum and selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Rapelang is an internationally lauded technology entrepreneur. From her first startup straight out of university, to Chief Digital Officer at South Africa’s largest IT company, Rapelang is a true digital native.
Rapelang is deeply committed to the transformation of the African continent, through education and skills development. Rapelang founded Rekindle Learning, a learning technology company that enables organizations to easily codify and share institutional know-how amongst their teams to enhance business performance. In 2023, Rapelang, took on the role of Co-CEO of Imagine Worldwide, an NPO supporting almost a million children year in Sub-Saharan Africa to become literate and numerate by the age of 10.
Rapelang has served as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Councils on Entrepreneurship and Education, as a Board Member of African Leadership University and of Standard Chartered Bank Botswana Education Trust. She has spoken at over 400 occasions on local and international platforms and has shared a stage with the likes of President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell.
Rene Parker
Director & Co Founder
RLabs
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Rene Parker is a pioneering social entrepreneur and the co-founder and Director of RLabs, a global social enterprise headquartered in Cape Town that has grown into a worldwide movement of hope, innovation, and economic empowerment. Under her leadership, RLabs has expanded into more than 20 countries, impacting more than 65 million lives by creating inclusive spaces for youth, women, and communities to access skills, technology, and entrepreneurial opportunities. RLabs has become a global model for community-driven innovation and systems change, enabling pathways into jobs, startups, and sustainable livelihoods.
In addition to her work with RLabs, Rene serves as a board member and interim Chairperson of AfriLabs, the largest pan-African network of innovation hubs, bringing together over 500 hubs across 60+ countries. In this role, she champions collaboration, policy influence, and partnership development to strengthen Africa’s innovation ecosystem. She is particularly passionate about creating opportunities for young entrepreneurs and women leaders to thrive within Africa’s digital and creative economies.
Sarah Binos
CEO & Co Founder
Huddle
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Sarah Binos is the co-founder and CEO of Huddle, where she leads efforts to scale a blended learning and structured pedagogy programme aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning across South African classrooms. A seasoned social entrepreneur with 27 years of senior leadership experience, she has spearheaded transformative strategies across health, economic inclusion, and education.
Her career includes serving as Head of Campaign Design and Strategy at loveLife, where she co-designed and expanded programmes that reached millions of young people nationwide. In 2007, she founded Common Good, pioneering both policy reform and an innovative school-improvement model across a network of no-fee public collaboration schools. At Valenture in 2021, she piloted a rural blended learning initiative to expand access for low- and no-fee learners in underserved communities.
Through Huddle and her broader leadership, she continues to advance scalable solutions that strengthen education systems and broaden opportunities for those most excluded.
Sarah Jane Rennie
Chairperson
Grindrod Family Centenary Trust
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Sarah is a recognised leader in philanthropy and corporate social investment, with a particular focus on advancing education. She was appointed to the Optima Board of Trustees in March 2020 and currently serves as its Chair, a role she assumed in 2024. She also chairs the Grindrod Family Centenary Trust, serves as a non-executive director of the Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation, chairs the DSV Empowerment Trust, and is a trustee of Columba Leadership.
Trained as a lawyer, Sarah practiced in London before returning to South Africa, where she took up the role of Chief Operating Officer at Tshikululu Social Investments. Her career has since encompassed senior leadership across philanthropy and development, including international experience gained during four years in Dubai.
Sarah has also played an influential role in shaping South Africa’s philanthropic landscape. She is a former Chair of IPASA and has served as trustee of the Liberty Community Trust and the Anglo American Namibia Foundation.
Sharon Munyaka
Organisational Psychologist
Sharon Munyaka Inc
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Sharon Munyaka is an Industrial and Organisational Psychologist working globally to advance transformative leadership and organisational development. With over 20 years of experience, she specialises in unlocking human potential at individual, team, and organisational levels through dialogue, facilitation, and coaching.
Sharon holds a doctorate in Industrial Psychology from Nelson Mandela University and is registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. Her career spans extensive research, facilitation, and advisory work, including leading large-scale employee engagement and social research projects for Coca-Cola Sabco, the Eastern Cape Department of Health, and Oxford University’s collaboration with the South African Department of Social Development. She has worked with leading South African institutions such as Sasol, Telkom, Primedia, Eskom, and several universities, helping them navigate transformation, diversity, and organisational renewal. Internationally, she contributes to the Presencing Institute (MIT) as an accredited Theory U facilitator, faculty member for the UN SDG Leadership Labs, and lead on the Ubuntu-Led Human Flourishing project.
A skilled mediator and accredited coach, Sharon works across Africa with organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, BCA Leadership, Citibank, RCL Foods, and Henley Business School, focusing on high-potential leadership development, conflict resolution, and organisational alignment.
She currently serves as a Council Member at the University of Cape Town, Chair of the Citizen Leader Lab Board, and trustee of the SHL Public Benefit Organisation, which advances opportunities for industrial psychology students. She is the Immediate Past President of the Society of Industrial and Organisational Psychology of South Africa.
Shingi Bimha
Head of Programmes and Partnerships
Anglo American Foundation
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Shingi has close to 20 years’ experience in development, specialising in youth and enterprise development. Currently, she leads Anglo American Foundation’s strategy in Southern Africa, as Head of Programmes and Partnerships. Shingi joined the Foundation from TechnoServe, where she was the South Africa Country Director, leading the country platform and providing strategic oversight to Anglo American Zimele’s enterprise, supplier and youth development interventions across the company’s mining sites in South Africa.
Prior to this role, Shingi was Technical Advisor for TechnoServe’s Strengthening Rural Youth through Development Enterprise (STRYDE) program, where she was responsible for building country teams’ capacity for youth economic empowerment in Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and ensuring quality control of programme implementation. Before relocating to South Africa, Shingi spent seven years in Washington DC holding various roles with National 4-H Council, the non-profit arm of America’s largest youth development organisation, 4-H. She holds an MBA and a BA from Bellarmine University, Louisville Kentucky.
Thembekile Maseko
Executive Director
African Youth Philanthropy Network (AYPN)
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Thembekile is the Executive Director of the African Youth Philanthropy Network (AYPN) where she leads a continent-wide movement connecting young leaders and organizations to drive inclusive and transformative development.
Her career spans impact-centered programming in youth development, advocacy, and community building, with previous roles at Stractiv8 Impact, where she empowered marginalized voices by crafting strategic communications initiatives, and the International Alliance on Natural Resources in Africa (IANRA), where she collaborated within the pan-African network to advocate for inclusive natural resource governance. Beyond her leadership at AYPN, Thembekile also contributes her expertise as a Board Trustee at YouthBank International, championing youth engagement and grant-making models that boost young people’s agency and transform communities globally.
Thembekile holds a BA (Hons) in Development Studies from the University of Johannesburg and is pursuing an MBA at Regent Business School. She is passionate about advancing youth agency, strategic collaboration, and building resilient philanthropic ecosystems across Africa and beyond.
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Thokozile Madonko
Manager: Public Economy Project
WITS: Southern Centre for Inequality Studies
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Thokozile Madonko is a researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she manages the Public Economy Project. She has worked in climate justice, development cooperation, and public finance, focusing on health financing, gender-responsive budgeting, national, subnational and parliamentary governance, transparency and accountability. Over the years, she has served as programme manager for Heinrich Boell Foundation, coordinator of the Budget Expenditure Monitoring Forum and organizer for the People’s Health Movement South Africa. She spent four years at the International Budget Partnership as a Programme officer for the IBP’s Zambia partnership initiative.
She holds a master’s degree in political theory and has led and contributed to research on climate justice, development cooperation, and public finance. Her work informs debates on health financing, gender-responsive budgeting, and governance at national and subnational levels, with a focus on strengthening transparency and accountability.
Tracey Henry
CEO
Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation
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Tracey Henry presently holds the role of CEO of the Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation. She has three decades of experience in the social investment and sustainability sector, including 25 years at executive and board level and 17 years in CEO leadership. She currently serves on the Board of the Sishen Iron Ore Company Community Development Trust where she is a member of the Social and Ethics Committee, the Remuneration and Nominations Committee, and chairs the Projects Review Committee. Her previous board service includes Tshikululu Social Investments, the Kagiso Shanduka Trust where she also chaired the Remuneration Committee and the African Children’s Feeding Scheme.
A Fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative and member of The Aspen Institute Global Leadership Network, Tracey is widely recognised for her thought leadership in corporate social investment, sustainability, and ESG. She has presented at international platforms including the International Finance Corporation’s Sustainability Exchange in Washington, UNICEF’s regional gathering in Nairobi, and the European Venture Philanthropy Association Conference in Oslo. She was named the 2010 CEO Most Influential Woman in Business in the financial sector category.
Yoliswa Msweli
Economic and Social Justice Expert & independent Researcher
Independent Researcher
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Yoliswa Msweli is an independent researcher and land justice scholar whose work sits at the intersection of social justice, development, and governance. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape, where her doctoral research examines the meaning of justice in relation to land from the perspective of historically dispossessed communities. Alongside her doctoral studies, she serves as an independent land researcher with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, investigating the role of the state in ensuring equitable access to land for South African citizens.
Her professional journey spans South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Hungary, covering both research and accountancy. Yoliswa has consistently dedicated her expertise and personal commitment to advancing socio-economic development, social impact, and the public good. Given her professional background in accountancy, her work has involved working across the public, private and non-profit sectors and applying a holistic lens to ensure that development efforts are undertaken in a manner that maximises benefits to society.
Vuyiswa Ncontsa
Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT)
Fund Manager : Basic Education
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Vuyiswa Ncontsa is the Fund Manager for Basic Education at the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT). The goal of the portfolio she manages is to fund innovative initiatives that unlock significant and scalable improvement in Foundation Phase teaching through new teachers and technology. Prior to working at OMT, she was the Regional Director for Southern Africa at the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance and the former CEO at BRIDGE Innovation in Learning Organisation, an NPO that connected stakeholders and innovators in education. Vuyiswa has 22 years of development experience, gained from grantmaking to education entities, programme and project management, resource mobilisation, Monitoring & Evaluation and governance strengthening.
Bethuel Mangena
Independent Cartoonist
Independent Cartoonist
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Bethuel Mangena is an established cartoonist with 20 years ago experience as a fine artist. In 2005, he was selected to study British politics in London jointly mentored by Zapiro and leading UK cartoonist Steve Bella and in 2006 selected as part of the team that created animation films sponsored by SABC, NEMISA and the Department of Arts and Culture. He has won many awards including: Vodacom Journalist of the year in 2007 and winner of the human rights prize at Cartoonmag.com’s international Cartoon in 2021. He has worked for The Star Newspaper, African News Agency, Sowetan and Sunday World.
He has participated in highly engaging Cartoonathons such as AIN RCCC, META, HumaniTech, RiseAfrica, RCCC Africa Dialogue, African Anticipatory action, 10 years of building community resilience and many more. He has participated in the Global Innovation summit in Kenya producing cartoons inspired by Climate Change engagements and participated this year in the Harare learning lab ,Zimbabwe , Kampala learning lab, Uganda and Accra learning lab, Ghana.
Eugene Pelteret
Reflective Learning
Co Founder
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Eugene co-founded Reflective Learning in 2017, an online platform which helps more than 80 000 students catch up their gaps in Maths understanding that is now being exported to other African and first-world countries. Combining his Masters degree in Business Administration from the Edinburgh Business School and deep experience in community development work, he has accumulated 15 years of experience in leading and developing high-impact social enterprises in South Africa. Most recently, he co-founded 1st Access, an innovative hardware solution to make technology-based learning accessible to more students. He is passionate about deconstructing complex problems and using first-principles thinking with technology to develop unique solutions to ultimately deliver inclusive and quality education at scale.
IPASA ANNUAL PHILANTHROPY SYMPOSIUM 2025 PROGRAMME
Stronger Together- Philanthropy in a Changing World
IPASA will be running a pre-symposium Masterclass open to all symposium delegates. The details are as follows:
- Topic: Deep Dive into Impact Investing for Foundations
- Date & Time: October 27th , 14h00 – 17h00
- Venue: Asara Wine Farm, Stellenbosch
- Cost: R2000
What the Masterclass will cover:
- Impact Investing South Africa released the seminal “Handbook for Foundations” guide in late 2024: https://www.impactinvestingsa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/Impact-investment-HANDBOOK-LINK_FINAL-VS7.pdf
- The handbook offers foundations an introduction to the journey of impact investing. Symposium delegates now have a unique opportunity to delve deeper into the handbook content though a half-day masterclass event taking place the afternoon before the Symposium . Come prepared to get practical, applying the foundational concepts of impact investing to your own organisation.
- The webinars and masterclass will be facilitated by the Impact Team from Krutham, who produced the handbook for Impact Investing South Africa, and will be joined by leading South African impact investing pioneers to share their insights and experience.
- In the run up to the masterclass, IPASA will host three webinars for members and non-members to gain an early view of the handbook with a particular focus on understanding the foundational principles of impact investing and what it means for foundations, setting an impact strategy and getting started in impact measurement and management.
For more infomation about the programme, please email louise@ipa-sa.org.za
The masterclass and webinars have been generously sponsored by the SAB Foundation.