Contributors

Dion Chang is an innovator, creative thinker and visionary. He is a sought-after trend analyst, and while his feet remain firmly planted on African soil, he uses a global perspective to source new ideas, gauge the zeitgeist and identify cutting-edge trends. Local and international corporations have turned to him as a consultant, because of his ability to think outside the box. For fifteen years he has worked in various fields in the magazine and fashion industries, and currently operates as a trend analyst, freelance journalist and columnist, specialising in social commentary. He has written a book based on his popular cartoon character, Gloria, has sat on the judging panel of South Africa’s premier magazine awards, and has faced the nation as a TV presenter.

Damon Stapleton is Executive Creative Director at TBWA Hunt Lascaris. He had an eclectic childhood that included sixteen schools (only expelled twice). This has been matched by his career, which has seen him being a photographer, writer, film director, bad bartender and, finally, doing the respectable job of advertising. He has won many awards including a D&AD Yellow Pencil and the Cannes Lion Grand Prix. They now sit in a beautiful cardboard box.

He is passionate about the need to eradicate people with five-year plans, Tuscan villas and anyone called Craig who wears chinos. He is also passionate about where advertising is going and if it will still be called advertising. It is this that made him get off the couch and write ‘Where word of mouse rules’.

Gary Bailey is crazy about football. He is a former goalkeeper for Manchester United (373 appearances), Kaizer Chiefs and England, and has been to the world cup as both a player (in 1986 with England) and as a TV commentator (Germany, 2006). He was an ambassador for South Africa’s 2010 world cup bid. He currently works for SuperSport TV (and has done for the past twenty years) as a guest and presenter. For the past three years he has given presentations on the business opportunities related to the world cup to companies around southern Africa (www.GamePlan2010.com). Besides his vast football qualifications and experience, he also holds a Bachelor of Sciences (B.Sc.) in Physics and an MBA from Henley in Oxford.

Irwin Manoim worked in the media industry for 35 years before taking time off for a sabbatical near Silicon Valley, California, where he watched the online media revolution from a front-row seat. He was co-founder and editor of the Weekly Mail (now Mail & Guardian) and of the Electronic Mail & Guardian, the earliest online news operation in Africa. Manoim was also the first person to work online as a journalist in South Africa. For the past decade he has been a partner in the web development agency Big Media and a newspaper consultant helping to conceptualise new titles and advising on design and content strategies. He is a frequent public speaker on media issues and also teaches post-graduate students at the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Italia Boninelli’s interest in talent management and skills pipelines arose out of a realisation that traditional Human Resources (HR) approaches to strategic skills shortages in South Africa were woefully inadequate. Boninelli has headed up HR functions in banking, healthcare and mining, and is now Senior Vice-President, Human Resources at mining company Gold Fields. She entered the industry at a time when the company faced tremendous challenges around cost containment, high labour turnover, international expansion and archaic HR systems. She evolved the HR function beyond administratively focused delivery, introducing an HR Shared Services Centre while simultaneously developing HR practitioners to be able to apply business knowledge at Gold Fields.

Her commitment to uplifting skills in the profession has seen her lecture at business schools and for professional bodies. Some of her findings have been published in two books used as university set works, Building Human Capital and Conversations in Leadership: South African Perspectives. A founder member of the National Human Resources Research Initiative of the South African Board for Personnel Practice – setting the research agenda of strategic HR practices – Boninelli has received much recognition in her field and was awarded ‘HR Director of 2008’ by the Institute for People Management of South Africa. She is a registered industrial psychologist with a Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand and a post-graduate diploma in labour relations from the University of South Africa (UNISA).

Dr Marlene Wasserman is a Clinician in Private Practice, a sexual medicine consultant, a couple and sex therapist and an activist for sexual and reproductive health and rights. She began her career with a BA Honours in Social Work from the University of the Witwatersrand, after which her interest turned to family therapy and she gained a Master of Social Science degree in Clinical Social Work, cum laude, from the University of the Orange Free State. She has been awarded certificates from institutions in Canada and the USA, among them a Doctorate in Human Sexuality, and accreditation as a Couple and Sex Therapist from the AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counsellors and Therapists), the most highly recognised accrediting society in the world.

During family therapy sessions her attention frequently focused on the interaction between parents, instilling in her a passion for understanding intimate relationships and sexuality. Today she continues to pursue further training in sexual medicine and couple and sex therapy.

Wasserman passionately shares her knowledge by lecturing part-time at the University of Cape Town’s Medical School, presenting papers at scientific meetings and forums around the world, and by using radio, TV and writing as educational platforms. Her books include Dr Eve’s Sex Book: A Guide for Young Adults, Pillowbook, and Ageing and Sexuality, and she also devotes time to her website, www.dreve.co.za.

Mike Stopforth is an entrepreneur, writer and public speaker who helps companies extract value from Web 2.0 trends and technologies to create smarter, more profitable businesses. He heads up Cerebra, South Africa’s leading social media company, which enjoys relationships with numerous local and global brands, including Toyota, Standard Bank, Rand Merchant Bank, Samsung Mobile, ABSA, Converse, ASCO (Calvin Klein), Zurich, Hollard and Telesure. These and other companies have used Cerebra to connect more meaningfully with their consumers outside the corporate firewall in an era that has reinvented the rules of marketing.

Stopforth is a technology commentator for popular business and marketing websites. He lectures at the Vega School of Branding and features as a guest lecturer on executive programmes at the Graduate School of Business, the Gordon Institute of Business Science and the UNISA School for Business Leadership. He is a popular fixture on the local and international business-to-business speaking circuit and has appeared on numerous radio and TV programmes.

He co-founded web start-up Afrigator, Africa’s social media aggregator, and the 27-dinner social networking movement. He blogs at www.mikestopforth.com and can be found on Twitter.

Mondli Makhanya is the Editor-in-Chief of The Sunday Times, the most-read weekly newspaper in South Africa. He is a regular commentator on current affairs and also sits on the council of the South African National Editors’ Forum. Makhanya previously served as Editor of the Mail & Guardian and as both Deputy Managing Editor and Political Editor of The Sunday Times. He has worked in a variety of journalistic capacities on a range of newspapers including the Weekly Mail, The Star and Sunday World. Makhanya is married and lives in Johannesburg.

Paul Verryn is the Bishop of the Central District of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and the Superintendent of the Central Methodist Mission located in downtown Johannesburg. Over the past six years the church has become known as a place of safety and shelter for the city’s dispossessed. Most recently, following a spate of xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals in South Africa, this accommodation has primarily sheltered Zimbabweans who have fled that shattered country.

Verryn is the Chairperson of the Church Unity Commission in South Africa and of the South African Council for Theological Education. He also serves as Chairperson of the Ecumenical Refugees Centre, on the national executive of the South African Council of Churches and works in close alliance with organisations such as the Legal Resources Centre, Wits Law Clinic, Médecins sans Frontières, Lawyers for Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission. All of these organizations are committed to the protection of and advocacy for human rights in Africa.

Verryn obtained a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree from the University of South Africa in 1973 and a Bachelor of Divinity from Rhodes University in 1979. More recently, he received a Doctorate in Education honoris causa from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

Randall Abrahams was the Station Manager at Good Hope FM in Cape Town in the mid 1990’s. He then moved to Johannesburg where he helped establish the youth radio station Yfm as an important new player in the commercial market. From 2002-2006 he was the General Manager of Commercial Radio at the SABC responsible for the success of 5fm, Metro FM and Good Hope FM. He is currently developing an electronic marketing platform aimed at the SMME/SOHO sector for PostNet while also judging his fifth season of the highly-rated MNet reality show Idols.

Rutger-Jan (RJ) van Spaandonk has been described by The Sunday Times as ‘a Dutch professional entrepreneur whose pet challenge since 1998 has been to make African businesses profitable’, and as ‘Nintendo’s larger-than-life representative in South Africa’. Since co-founding the Mitchell Madison Group office in Johannesburg, Van Spaandonk has worked in Africa for more than eleven years, representing a variety of companies across industries and working for both public and private-sector organisations predominantly in West, East and Southern Africa. He is currently the Executive Director in charge of strategy and new business development at Core Group, representing some of the world’s premier personal technology brands, including Apple and Nintendo. Van Spaandonk is also the founder and Managing Director of Rand Carlton Partners, a Johannesburg-based investment and advisory firm specialising in market entry, venture development and business expansion in frontier markets. He recently turned his widely acclaimed ‘49 Bullets for Killer Presentations’ training into an executive academy for public speaking and presentations, running corporate and individual training programmes. Finally, as the Epicurean Sybarite he comments on luxury lifestyle matters, contributing to a number of publications, including Wanted and GQ. Van Spaandonk holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (USA) and a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) from Nijenrode University (Netherlands.