Comedian, Content Creator and Former Adman
Donovan Goliath is an award-winning content creator, sought after MC, television presenter and celebrated stand-up comedian.
A respected creative, Donovan has delivered several master classes on marketing, design and creativity. He was the host and an ambassador for the Loeries for 3 consecutive years.
CELEBRITY OPENING SPEAKER
Miles innovatively trademarked the Vuyo’s brand and opened the first Vuyo’s restaurant in Braamfontein which later branched out to the iconic Vilakazi street in Soweto . In 2018, Miles sold the business and semi-retired. Taking all his learnings from running Vuyo’s he went on and founded Wakanda Food Accelerator. Taking from his previous experience, he trademarked the name from the globally successful movie, The Black Panther.
Wakanda provides business development services to upscale up-and-coming food & beverage businesses. Wakanda scouts for these food creatives and foodpreneurs that have a passion for creating innovative solutions along the entire value chain.
Miles is a system engineer by training, and worked for Microsoft for close to a decade before co-founding an IT company which Microsoft went on to invest in. He is an alumnus of both Wits University and GIBS . He is also a qualified Chef, Author, Public Speaker and above all a serial entrepreneur. Miles life’s mission to achieve “ zero hunger in my lifetime”. He sits on the board the food reduce organisation, SA Harvest in addition to being the chairperson of SA Chefs Association.
Founder, Institute for Real Growth
My role as a thought and sparring partner has afforded me the privilege of working closely with CEOs and CMOs, guiding them on humanized growth journeys across diverse companies such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, AkzoNobel, GSK, Mondelez, Arla, ING, and WD-40.
In 2019, I co-founded the Institute for Real Growth—an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to empowering senior growth leaders. Through innovative live-action programs inspired by thought leadership, we connect these leaders with peers and experts, fostering an environment conducive to more humanized growth strategies.
My contributions extend beyond the boardroom, having co-authored two cover articles in the Harvard Business Review. The 2016 piece, ‘Building an Insights Engine,’ and the 2014 best-selling issue, ‘The Ultimate Marketing Machine,’ have left a lasting impact. Additionally, my most recent work, the Da Vinci CMO article, was featured in FAST Company.
I am also an accomplished author with several books to my credit, including the bestselling ‘The Global Brand CEO.’ Recognized as an inspirational keynote speaker, I have been invited to address prestigious events such as Cannes Lions, BrandWeek, ESOMAR, the MMA, the ARF, and PMRG.
Beyond my professional pursuits, I serve as a non-executive Board member for Fresh Forces, contributing to the strategic direction of the organization. My home is in the Amsterdam area of the Netherlands, where I reside with my family.
CEO Mediology
Expert/Adviser/Consultant – Strategic Communication, Advocacy and Social Change
CEO and Co-founder of Sea Monster.
Group Chief Executive Officer of the SABC
Ms Nomsa Chabeli is a dynamic and transformational leader who has demonstrated consistent growth and excellence in all the roles she has held in her illustrious career.
She is a strategic leader who will be able to interpret and execute the SABC’s public mandate while she ensures its financial sustainability. She joins the Public Broadcaster with invaluable experience from Multichoice where she successfully and profitably led SuperSport across various markets in the world. Armed with an MBA from Henley amongst her qualifications, she will be able to lead the SABC to much needed commercial success.
Ms Chabeli is also a serial marketer who has achieved success with multiple corporations including Edcon, Multichoice, MTN and government institutions such as Brand South Africa and Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) IS. Her role at the SABC is a worthy culmination of the strategic roles she has played in the various proudly South African corporations. The SABC is set to benefit from her extensive leadership experience and vision.
She has been involved in the evolution of marketing in this country, including marketing strategy, digital and social marketing, as well as growth hacking which make her an innovative leader who is constantly searching for tools and methods to achieve optimal success.
She is currently pursuing a Masters in Management: Digital Business with Witwatersrand University and stands to gain a skill that the SABC will need in the realm of digital revolution, currently underway across the world. She strives to continue to give back to the country, through lending her skills for the betterment of current and future generations.
Group Chief Executive Officer of Brave Group
Technologist, strategic Marketer & Brand communication Specialist; Public Speaker
Musa Kalenga is the Group Chief Executive officer of the Brave Group, an independent, multidisciplinary communications agency. Kalenga is also co-founder and shareholder of Bridge Labs. Musa currently serves as the Chairman of the University of Johannesburg School of consumer intelligence and information science. Kalenga was recognised as Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans and was a member of the World Economic Forum Johannesburg Global shapers. Musa is a former Meta (Facebook) Client Partner for Africa. He’s been the Group Head of Digital Marketing at Nedbank.
Country Director for Google South Africa.
Founder of SoloUnion
You can call him Bull.
One of the world’s foremost creative leaders (bear in mind he wrote this himself).
For the past seven years he’s been Global Chief Creative Advisor to both ABINBEV and Kraft Heinz and a board member of Skullcandy.
Bull was an integral part of the transformation of ABINBEV into the world’s premier creative marketer (Cannes Marketer of the Year 2022 and 2023, and ranked Number one at Effies 2023 and 2024) and Kraft Heinz into the USA’s most innovative CPG marketer and No 4 overall (AdAge)
Previously founder of Lowe Bull Group South Africa, CEO of Lowe London, Global CCO of Lowe.
Ex President of Cannes Jury and juror on numerous awards panels. Also received a Lifetime achievement award from Financial Mail in 2003. Which was weird. But he was grateful.
Also editor and sole star of Bull-Bytes. Loved by many. Ignored by many more. Available on that hip and cool social media channel, LinkedIn.
Executive Marketing & Communications: Nedbank Africa Regions
Maseda is a seasoned marketer, part-time broadcaster, entrepreneur, and motivator. His motto is ‘Touch people, live fully and die empty’.
Maseda has more than 25 years’ experience in the marketing & communications field having worked in various leading companies: Lever Pond’s (Unilever), Kimberly-Clark of South Africa and Nedbank. During that time, he was worked on many leading brands including Vaseline Intensive Care, Dawn, Huggies, Carlton and Kleenex, Cutex and Nedbank.
As the executive for marketing & communications for Nedbank’s Africa Regions (NAR) business, Maseda has responsibility for marketing & communications for all Nedbank’s businesses outside South Africa, but on the African continent. These are primarily the businesses in southern and East Africa and with the added responsibility for the managing the relationship from a marketing & communications perspective – the Ecobank-Nedbank alliance. (Nedbank is the major shareholder of Ecobank and has a formal working alliance with Ecobank. The Ecobank-Nedbank alliance is the widest banking network in Africa spanning 39 countries.)
His previous responsibilities within Nedbank included managing the Nedbank Cause Marketing area which included the Nedbank Affinity portfolio, Sustainability (Green) and CSI Marketing. In that role he managed Nedbank partnerships with organizations such as WWF-SA, the conservation organization, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, The Sports Trust and the Arts & Culture Trust.
Maseda is a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and part of the management committee of the WWF-Nedbank Green Trust.
Diversity Advocate, Writer, Speaker and Cultural leader at the World Economic Forum
Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Retroviral
Group Executive: Group Marketing and Corporate Affairs
Khensani Nobanda is the Group Executive for Marketing and Corporate Affairs at Nedbank Group. As both the executive in charge of marketing, and a member of the Nedbank Group executive leadership, she ensures the cohesive and consistent alignment between marketing messaging, brand positioning and business objectives across the group, while also providing strategic input into various Nedbank structures, committees, and partnerships.
Khensani joined Nedbank in September 2017, as Executive Head of Group Marketing, before being promoted to her current role, and the Nedbank Group Exco, in May 2018. Her more than 20-year marketing career has afforded her invaluable experience in several leading South African and multinational organisations. After starting out as an assistant brand manager at Unilever, she rose through the ranks to eventually head up the Skin Category for Unilever in Africa, Middle East, and Turkey. This was followed by various leadership and executive roles in Diageo, South African Breweries and Vodacom, before joining Nedbank.
She is passionate about brands and the potential they have to deliver tangible value to consumers, and more broadly to society, by being purpose led and value driven.
Khensani has a BCom from the University of the Witwatersrand, an MBA from GIBS and Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School. She is a member of the board of Effie Awards South Africa, a regular member of the judging panel for the Loeries and Bookmarks Awards, and a sought-after public speaker. Kensi has amassed several accolades in recognition of her contribution to the industry, including top honours as winner of the Loeries 2021 “Marketing Leadership & Innovation” award and the “Marketing Industry Leader of the Year” by AdFocus.
Chief Creative Officer of TBWA Hunt Lascaris and Creative Circle Chair
Carl is the Chief Creative Officer of the pirate ship TBWA Hunt Lascaris and is currently serving as the chairman of the Creative Circle, a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting creativity as a business resource that maintains high levels of creativity in the South African advertising industry.
He’s also a recently appointed to the Loeries board.
CEO of Kantar South Africa
His key expertise in insight and strategic marketing has been honed by a career that formally started at British American Tobacco (BAT), working across the entire marketing value chain. This was followed by the introduction to consulting at Added Value (now Kantar Consulting), where he led strategic marketing projects for a list of blue-chip companies across diverse industries in Africa. Ivan has since held strategic and business leadership roles at Lowe Bull, Yellowwood Future Architects and TBWA Hunt Lascaris. He later founded the marketing insights and strategic consultancy, Co-Currency.
In helping develop the industry, Ivan has served as chairperson of the jury for the APEX Effective Awards, receiving the Apex Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as chairperson of Brand Council South Africa (BCSA) and was vice-chairperson of the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA). . He continuously serve on the jury panel of Lories Awards (Shared Value, Creative Effectiveness, Service Design) and is chairperson of Marketing Achievements Awards South Africa (MAA)
Managing Director of Adtherapy. Founder of The School of Thought
Gillian’s background is a mix of marketing, strategy, advertising, and leadership. She obtained a Business Science (Honours) degree in Marketing from UCT and consulted in marketing strategy before entering the creative world, holding account management and strategy roles for various agencies, before becoming a shareholder and Group Managing Director of two globally aligned agencies (Hercules DMB&B and Lowe Bull).
In 2007, she started Adtherapy, a Communication and Management consultancy whose clients are both marketers and advertising/communication agencies, across the globe. Adtherapy aims at improving the quality of outputs for enhanced ROI, through better strategic thinking, creativity, processes, structure, and team alignment. A key foundation for this is enhancing skills and understanding on both sides: simply put, “better skills, better relationship, better results”. Adtherapy consults on barriers to optimising the full potential of companies and teams and then works to cocreate
strategies that are measurable and hold key people to account. As well as consulting on optimal partnerships, Gillian offers strategy consulting and coaching and pitch advice. Gillian has also had a keen interest in education and capability building in the marketing & advertising sector, running hundreds of corporate and agency training workshops, lecturing at UCT and all the ad schools, and launching The School of Thought: an online knowledge sharing, talent building platform for the marketing & advertising community. She has recently taken on the mantle of Interim Executive
Director of the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA).
She is a public speaker on various aspects of marketing, strategy, creative, integrated communication, and reputational risk, and is consulted widely as a respected communications industry and strategy expert in South Africa.
Marketing Lecturer/Entrepreneur
Her diverse academic portfolio has introduced her to both public and private sector industries, with a special focus on service-related sectors. Mbali has been recognized and has been nominated for prestigious business competitions such as Standard Bank Small Business Awards, Standard bank Women of the Year Awards, Rising star South Africa and the SAB kickstart awards. A seasoned and serial entrepreneur, with companies in the Marketing and the Beauty and health industry – She published her first book in 2020 called SELF – ISH: Mastering self in a selfish business world and the book was a resounding success.
Mbali has delivered an international paper in Dubai in 2023 on the influence of green entrepreneurship and her lecturing passion is centred on inclusivity and sustainability of brands in Marketing. She currently has a MBA from the Graduate School of business and leadership in KwaZulu – Natal and aims to begin her Doctorate in Business Administration soon.
As a Spoken Word Artist, I have a decade’s worth of stories and poems that are meant for personal and public spaces. With the right story, any project can be brought to life.
I am also quite the agent for transformation, both on a societal level and on an individual level. South Africa has an abundance of human potential. Sometimes all it takes is a transformative conversation to start unlocking the possibilities.
My aim is to help people see the world through a creative lens, communicate their own value, challenge social norms, share our African narrative and add a bit of hope to society.
Founder & CEO
Faith founded Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve (FPBR), the futurist marketing consultancy, in 1974. The New York Times has called her “The Trend Oracle,” Fortune Magazine named her “The Nostradamus of Marketing,” and she is recognized globally as the original and foremost Futurist. She has identified such sweeping societal movements as “Cocooning,“ “SOS,” “AtmosFear,“ “Anchoring,“ “99 Lives” and “Vigilante Consumer.”
As the key strategist for Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve, Faith and her esteemed team apply their insights to cultural and business Trend Truths, opening the vision of FPBR clients, repositioning their brands/companies, developing new models and innovating for sustainable growth. She is a trusted advisor to the CEOs of The Fortune 200 including such companies as American Express, Apple, Campbell’s Soup, Citigroup, Chipotle, Colgate, Comcast, Constellation Brands, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg’s, KFC, Mars, Pfizer, SC Johnson, Tylenol, Unilever and The USPS.
With a documented 95% accuracy rate, Faith predicted the demand for fresh foods, home delivery, telemedicine, enhanced entertainment and home schooling, as well as capturing the spiritual tenor of the millennium with Cocooning and its impact on the COVID-culture. Additionally, she predicted the rise of Social Media, The Metaverse, and has a significant following on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
She has been invited to speak all over the planet on subjects such as The Future of Masculinity, Child-Free by Choice, Five Future Forces, EVEolution: The Rise of Females & Gender Fluidity, and The “Fake” Food Explosion. Among her engagements: Cannes Lions, SXSW,
WSJ: The Future of Everything, The Beverage Forum, ANA (The Association of National Advertisers), Advertising Women of New York, CECP (Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose), NYU, Fordham University and Dubai’s Arab Innovation Summit.
She is a best-selling author of four books: The Popcorn Report, Clicking, EVEolution, Dictionary of the Future and the upcoming, Popcorn Report 2030: A Leap of Faith.
Heralded for her extraordinary ability to forecast emerging consumer patterns, Faith is frequently interviewed and cited in the media by The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Fast Company, The Today Show, Face the Nation, and CNN as well as all the Social Channels.
She has recently launched a podcast entitled Jolty, co-created SPACED, a 7 Episode series being considered by HBO, and recorded an album about The Future.
Faith was raised in Shanghai, China, is a sixth generation New Yorker from the now chic East Village and a graduate of New York’s High School of Performing Arts and New York University. She is a single mother of two daughters, Georgica & Clara-Cecil (both adopted from China), and two Japanese Chins, MochiKo and Rei-Rei Kawakubo, all residing in Manhattan and Wainscott, New York.
CEO / Chief Creative Officer of X3M Ideas
Steve’s unyielding belief in looking challenges in the eye and staring them down has attracted the best talents to his firm and pulled in clients from around the world. This has led to setting up of offices in South-Central Africa, via Lusaka and Johannesburg. His next stop? Congo Brazzaville, Kenya and United Arab Emirates, where he recently opened independent offices for X3M Ideas.
Before starting X3M Group, which has now grown to include X3M Music, Media 100 and Zero Degrees Productions, Mr. Babaeko was the creative director at 141 Worldwide. Over there, he sparked the fire of creativity that made that agency the trendiest for many years.
Steve began his advertising career at Mc&A Saatchi & Saatchi and later moved to Prima Garnet Ogilvy. For more than 23 years, he has been helping to create some of the most iconic marketing works on the continent. You might remember the “Proudly Nigerian” campaign for British American Tobacco, the “Now You’re Talking” campaign for Etisalat, “You Need A New Bank” campaign for Diamond Bank and so many others.
He continues to represent Africa on the global stage, having been a member of the jury at the New York Advertising Festival, the Loeries, African Cristal Awards, D&AD Awards, Pitcher Awards Festival and AD Stars. He has also been a speaker at the Cannes Lions Festival, Nigeria & West Africa’s First Cannes Lions Award winner and also one of Adweek’s Top 100 Creatives in the world, 2019. He was also conferred with the “Visiting Fellow” honours at the Henley Business School, University of Reading.
Steve holds a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts from the esteemed Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. He is currently the President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) and President of The International Advertising Association (I.A.A), Nigeria Chapter. Outside advertising, he was the former Chairman, Public Relations Committee of the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Steve has attended several international Leadership trainings, including some in Harvard Business School, Columbia University, New York and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
IMC CEO
Dale is a former SA Businesswoman of the Year, a highly awarded marketer, a bestselling author and a prominent still life artist.
After selling her ad agency Chillibush, Dale bought and re-launched the IMC as the Nedbank IMC in 2018. Under her leadership it has become Africa’s largest and most respected marketing conference.
www.dalehefer.com
