Marise Mackay
Marise Mackay is a global brand and learning leader turned identity and resilience coach who supports leaders navigating change. With over a decade of experience leading global brands and driving learning and development in the beauty industry, she now empowers purpose-driven leaders to reclaim their voice, clarify their identity, and lead with audacity. As a coach, speaker, and facilitator, Marise specialises in identity, resilience, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She works at the intersection of personal transformation and leadership, helping individuals rise through transition, loss, burnout, or reinvention with clarity, conviction, and a deeper sense of self. Her work is rooted in the belief that when people anchor into who they truly are, they lead themselves and others differently, and in doing so, change the world, one imperfect and striving human at a time. As the founder of the DreamGirls Academy Mentoring Program, Marise brings together strategic insight, a heart for service, and hands dedicated to helping and healing in community. Her approach continues to have a lasting impact.
Raleshaba Moeng
Raleshaba Moeng was a co-founder of CVC Africa, a company which specializes in assisting entrepreneurs to grow their innovative ideas into viable business ventures and startups. He is currently a director of Bayhead Capital – leading teams that provide transaction support services to the mergers and acquisitions industry globally. Raleshaba has been previously exposed to a number of industries in his capacity as a consultant for the Johannesburg office of McKinsey & Company including mining, oil and gas, financial services and energy. Raleshaba has vast technology sector experience – notable roles include IBM South Africa in the area of software support; and DELL-EMC in the role of pre-sales and consulting. He was also a software developer for First National Bank in their ATM network. Academically, Raleshaba has completed a BSc in Computer Science, Informatics and Finance and he has also completed an MBA with a specialization in Entrepreneurship. More recently, he has completed the Executive Development Programme (EDP) with the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. Raleshaba has corporate governance experience and expertise, serving as a member of the Board of the Automotive Industry Development Centre (AIDC). He also served as a member of the Social and Ethics Committee (SEC) of the Gauteng Growth and Development Agency of South Africa (GGDA). He also has public sector experience with the Trans Calledon Tunnel Authority (TCTA), a division of the South African government’s Department of Water Affairs. Raleshaba continues to serve as a mentor and facilitator for a number of entrepreneurship programs and other clients. He was a part time faculty member of the University of South Africa (UNISA) and adjunct faculty at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) enterprise development academy where he lectures on the topics of entrepreneurship, business models and problem-solving methodologies including design thinking. Notable facilitation clients he has served recently include USAID; the Mastercard Foundation; the Young Africans Leadership initiative (YALI); as well as the Allan and Gill Gray Philanthropies.
Lesley Donna Williams
Lesley is a practitioner of inclusive innovation. She facilitates participatory leadership dialogues and processes for collaborative action across multi-stakeholder innovation ecosystems. She has worked across diverse industries including academia, mining, banking, animation and energy. Lesley was the founding CEO of Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct and founded Impact Hub Johannesburg in 2010 to advance social innovation in Africa. She currently serves on the boards of the Innovation Foundation for Democracy (Treasurer), Power Grids Education Trust (Chair), Hitachi Energy South Africa, South African Women in Dialogue, Gauteng Premier’s Office: 4IR Advisory Panel, Civic Tech Innovation Network, and Amis de l’IFAS/Friends of the French Institute of South Africa. She is a sought after international public speaker, including a TEDx alumni. Her work has been recognized through various awards, including bestowment of Chevalier de l’Ordre national du mérite (Knight of the French National Order of Merit), recipient of the InspiringFifty award by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and recognition as an Obama Leader by the Obama Foundation. In 2009 she was selected on a BP Antarctica Expedition to design solutions for Climate Change and in 2019 as part of the Mandela centenary celebrations, she moderated a dialogue on Nelson Mandela’s legacy and the Future of Africa between President Barack Obama and Graça Machel at the African American Museum in Washington DC. Her work is regularly presented in South African and international media as well as conferences, including, Afreximbank’s Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, Egypt; the World Incubation Summit, Qatar; the New Africa-France Summit, Viva Tech, and Annecy International Animation Festival, France; UNDP Africa Youth Conference, Kenya; African Union, Ethiopia; Forum for Innovation in African Universities, United Kingdom; Africa Business Media Initiatives by Bloomberg, Zambia; Creative Industries Expo, Nigeria; Mandela 100 USA Gala; Durban International Film Festival, Gauteng Provincial Government and the South African Presidency’s Commission on the 4th Industrial Revolution. Along with fellow Obama Leaders across Africa, Lesley contributed to the published poetry anthology “A Better World, Hope from Africa”. She is completing her MPhil in Inclusive Innovation and the title of her master’s dissertation is “The Influence of Cultural Diplomacy on South Africa’s Animation Industry”.
Marianne Montalvo
Marianne Montalvo is an international education and youth expert with 18 years of experience in designing and managing programs and facilitating learning for staff and participants globally. Ms. Montalvo has facilitated in-person and virtual meetings, design sessions, workshops, and training for individuals across the world for strategy, program design, training of trainers, staff engagement, and staff upskilling. She has facilitated the design of projects in workforce development, entrepreneurship, education, gender, social inclusion, and monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning. Ms. Montalvo has extensive experience facilitating virtual meetings and regularly uses tools such as Miro, Mural, and Mentimeter. She is dedicated in her facilitation practice to creating spaces where people can think clearly and creatively about the big problems facing their organizations, lives, and our world. Ms. Montalvo’s background in education has led to the development of curricula and tools for youth development, literacy, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and work readiness programs, as well as professional development within organizations. She has managed USAID-funded, youth-focused programs in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and in Washington DC. Ms. Montalvo has worked across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. She holds an Ed.M. in International Education Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in History from Yale University.
Nellie Cabane
Nellie Cabane is a Registered Facilitator with ETDP and SETA as a Constituent Assessor and SDF, Coach and Mentor, that specializes in facilitation of learning, Job coaching, assessment of learning, training and development, project management, team and business change processes, Coaching and Mentoring Entrepreneurs. Nellie has been involved in learnership programmes for over 10 years as a coach and assessor. She has developed young graduates, supervisors, team leaders in all aspects of the industry. Nellie offers experiential learning that makes her learners or candidates want to learn more when they are in the class. Nellie facilitated in many different industries and very big organizations like a Arcelor Mittal, Clover, Mtn, Absa, Std Bank, Fnb, Anglo American, Dept of Justice, Wesbank, Nedbank and Blake International and many more. In all these industries Nellie has excelled! As a result Nellie in 2007 & 2008 she was awarded Trainer of the year in 2 Provinces KZN & Eastern Cape. In 2008 she was nominated as a finalist External trainer/Facilitator of the year in South Africa. Duke Corporate Education nominated her as one of the BEST top 5 facilitators out of 21 facilitators in South Africa. Nellie has a lot of experience in the Call center field where she developed young graduates that have never worked before to be successful employees that ended up to be leaders in their field. Nellie has done a lot of customer service training and leadership development programmes. She has empowered employees that have been working as managers for many years without qualification. Nellie was able to coach them to cover the gaps up to a stage where they can get a management certificate; she does that through a programme called RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning). This programme has helped many managers to bring up to speed and help them to have a qualification so that when they leave the organization they can be employable as managers because of their experience. Nellie was nominated by Anglo Platinum as one of the top 5 Educators for the Leadership Academy programme she ran for Duke Corporate Education. Nellie had very good feedback from the participants and received very high scores. Nellie is a member of Dukece Global Learning Resource Network. The experience she gained during the years has helped Nellie to get results from her training. Nellie has contributed her skills to the South African market by making the young graduates to be more marketable and be successful leaders. When training leaders, Nellie makes sure that leaders transfer skills to their employees and the organization benefits by getting ROI. Nellie always makes sure that after training clients call her back and participants -and they do! Nellie Cabane is very passionate about skills development and working with Duke has helped her to gain more experience and sharpen her skills as a result Duke Clients are happy and learners achieve results. Nellie has done work for different organizations and that has made Nellie always up-skill herself all the time. Nellie is a Diversity specialist, call center, leadership and is more passionate in empowering women in Leadership. Nellie assisted many organizations in assessing their employees in what they do and excel. The knowledge that Nellie has gained through the years has opened many doors in her career. She has worked for various community based youth organizations, facilitating life skills and has mentored a number of youth in terms of life skills in general and youth in business. Nellie has pioneered skills development participation to more than 120 companies in various sector Education and Training Authorities as a skills development consultant . Nellie has facilitated generic courses and ensured compliance with skills development processes as laid by the Ministry of Labour in the National Skills Development Strategy. Nellie has assisted a number of organization with skills development facilitation process, ensuring effective skills development planning and implementation, management of learnerships, skills programme, bursaries, ABET, Artisan and internship programmes, advising management of skills development legislation compliance, designing training quality management systems and policies and procedure in the SDA, SAQA, SDLA.