#TEDxCT: 'Pause & Effect' speakers announced

Top (l-r): Cindy Mkaza-Siboto, Sam Beckbessinger, Carryn Ortlepp, Tegan Phillips. Middle (l-r): Ndoni Mcunu, Lauren Jacobs, Penelope Cox, Nicki Spies, Ruth Hall. Bottom (l-r): Verity Price, Adewale Adejumo, Richard Mulholland, Jared Molko, Preston Jongbloed.

As a non-profit organisation dedicated to ‘Ideas worth spreading’, TEDxCapeTown continues to create a platform that enables inspiring individuals to share their incredible ideas with an engaged and open-minded audience.

The event will take place on 17 November at The Avenue in V&A Waterfront. It aims to bring together design thinkers, artists, activists, people managers, youth development workers, techpreneurs, mompreneurs, financial planners and more – young and more experienced, from all walks of life.

Pause and Effect

Charles Darwin once said, “It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change”, and John Dewey reminds us that, “We don’t learn through experience, but rather through reflecting on experiences.” Taking this as inspiration, the theme for the 2018 TEDxCapeTown main event is Pause and Effect.

The result of pausing is often a more mindful approach to what happens after, says curator Chilly Chanda. “In this pausing, there are many questions we can ask ourselves and reflect on. “What do I want to achieve and is this in line with the direction I’m heading in right now? Am I prioritising my well-being through my actions and the people I’m surrounding myself with? How are my actions affecting those around me?”

The day promises to be varied and offers inspired, insightful conversation starters with loads of opportunity to connect with fellow audience members and the speakers themselves.

Speakers

The speakers for the event have been announced and include:

Tegan Phillips
Phillips is an adventurer, avid cyclist, comic artist and the creator of Unclipped Adventure comics. She first tried her hand at drawing as a way to win a touring bike and gear in a contest. Little did she know, that by winning the bike her life was destined for a dramatic change that would set her off riding it across the globe. She recorded her travels in a comic blog, which led to a growing following, and moreover, to Phillips creating a brand of comic stories about her often disaster-filled endurance adventures during the next four years.

Sam Beckbessinger
Beckbessinger is a writer, user-experience designer and entrepreneur who is on a quest to help the emerging middle class understand how to take charge of their finances. Author of Manage Your Money Like a F*cking Grown Up, she is also a co-founder of Lettuce, an app that wants to make managing your money as simple as making toast. She also lectures extensively on personal finances and designing for behaviour change, and writes for television.

Carryn Ortlepp
Ortlepp is the chief operations officer at a Cape Town-based leadership development consultancy called Lockstep. Under the Lockstep banner, she also facilitates a dedicated leadership program focussed on NGO leaders and her side hustle/passion project is speaker and presentation coaching.

Cindy Mkaza-Siboto
Recognised as one of the 100 Brightest Young Minds in Africa, Mkaza-Siboto is the co-founder of Emagqabini Education Academy, an educational non-profit organisation operating in Site B Khayelitsha. The organisation - which was established to assist young people from the township through academic support, mentorship and career planning- started off assisting 15 learners and today supports more than 100 young people.

Gill Grose
Grose describes herself simply as a sixty-something serial volunteer who is a book, travel and tree lover, but there is far more to her story. The ex-librarian landed up volunteering 30 minutes of her time twice a week to help children who were struggling at school. Soon she realised that there was a much greater need and it wasn't long before she was volunteering four days a week at an under-resourced primary school, and providing several hundreds of children aged 6 to 14 years, from largely disadvantaged backgrounds, access to books and advice about reading. An initiative that has been life changing for a significant number of her readers, as well as giving her life profound value.

Jared Molko
Molko is an ex-Googler who has worked across Africa, Europe and the Middle East, training and educating people on Google products and delivering digital transformation programmes to top multi-nationals across the globe. During his seven-year tenure, he completed a Master’s Degree in Analytical Psychology. He is now focusing his attention on the intersection between technology and psychology, more specifically, leveraging data-driven intelligence to improve job placement and skills development.

Ndoni Mcunu
Mcunu is a PhD Candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Global Change Institute and the Founder & CEO of Black Women in Science (BWIS), a registered non-profit organisation which aims to deliver capacity development interventions that target young black women scientists and researchers.

Dr Nicki Spies
Dr Spies is a corporate coach, trainer, facilitator, gender discourse analyst and narrative practitioner. She’s inspired by observing positive change in individuals, seeing them own who they are and being more comfortable with their sexuality and in their relationships. In her PhD research, she focussed on how we construct our sexuality and how to navigate sexually unhappy marriages.

Penelope Cox
Cox is a well-established psychologist spending the past decade working in a variety of contexts, from patient clinics to private practice, and the humanitarian sector. Additionally, Cox has devoted much of her time taking part in outreaches, both in Africa and abroad including Liberia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Preston Jongbloed
Jongbloed loves people, something that shines through in every project he takes on whether it is public speaking or presenting on the radio. He currently dedicates much of his time to the Refocus Foundation, an organisation which specialises in working with youth at risk.

Ruth Hall
Hall, a professor at the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape, is an accomplished academic whose research on land and agrarian reform in South Africa spans 23 years.

Verity Price
Price is a former singer/songwriter who became one of the forerunners of crowdfunding in South Africa when she sold 2000 copies of her album that ‘didn’t exist’ in 2006. As a result, she is a sought-after speaker on innovation and the power of thinking differently, and now owns and runs TAP Results where she’s a full-time speaker and facilitator.

Richard Mulholland
Mulholland is an ex-Rock 'n Roll roadie, serial entrepreneur and renowned speaker who has presented his ideas in many countries including Canada, Puerto Rico, UK, USA, Germany, Kenya and Pakistan. Not only is he the co-founder of TalkDrawer and Missing Link, but Mulholland has also authored two books, has been voted Destiny Man’s top 40 under 40, and is one of Mail and Guardian's top 300 South Africans to take to lunch.

Adewale Adejumo
Adejumo, or Wale as he prefers to be called, is the founder and managing director of Zasttra - one of the fastest growing online retail stores in South Africa. An entrepreneur, with a postgraduate degree in marketing, finance, banking and investment, has been recognised a number of times for his business acumen and ‘forward-thinking’, this includes being selected as Destiny Man’s 40 under 40 Entrepreneurs (2017), The Young Independent Newspapers 100 Young Innovators in South Africa of 2017, and one of Nedbank’s 25 young future change-makers in South Africa (2015).

Lauren Jacobs
Jacobs is a ‘Her’storian, a word she chooses to describe herself as she is passionate about discovering and sharing women’s stories, especially from the past. She began her career as a woman abuse counsellor before spending the past decade as a Social Justice journalist. Her work focuses on gendercide, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), child brides, female literacy, theology and gender equality, as well as human trafficking and female atonement rituals in Africa. Her debut historical fiction book Yehudit Chosen by God (2016), won the prestigious ‘Desmond Tutu - Gerrit Brand Award’ 2017 for its powerful stand on justice for women. Her second historical work Shelamzion, Queen of Israel was released in September 2018.

For those that missed securing a seat, the organisers have announced that the event will be streamed live. Follow TEDxCapeTown on the following social media platforms for updates: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook.

*Globee (headline), Workshop 17 and V&A Waterfront have partnered with TEDxCapeTown in 2018 to ensure #IdeasWorthSpreading. Click here to view the full list of TEDxCapeTown partners.