Our Trustees
A bit more about the people behind our NPO
Dephney Mhaule
Board Chairperson; Director of Sibonile Daycare Center
Dephney Mhaule is the former Principal of Funjwa Primary School and currently the director of Sibonile Daycare Center, an NPO supporting young girls and mothers who want to work. Dephney is a visionary and exceptional community leader in Acornhoek, known for changing many peoples’ lives. Responsible for turning the dilapidated Funjwa Primary School (nicknamed “gwagwavuka”, meaning “broken down”) into a model primary school with additional buildings, a library, computers and vegetable garden, she is currently building Sibonile Daycare to successfully offer Grade R as of January 2018, and Grade 1 as of 2019. Dephney has also developed a large scale community garden on the Orpen Road and mentors a variety of young people in the community.
Nomsa Thibela
Trustee & Principal of Ntsoelemolodi Primary School
Jane Burt
Trustee and Director of realife learning
Dr Jane Burt is the Director of realife learning and a founding member of Valuing International Activists Stories (VIAS). Jane sees herself traversing edges and boundaries to bring diverse people and organisations and, more than human beings, closer together. She uses change-oriented processes and approaches to learn, shift, refocus, relook, research, review, evaluate, and transform (sometimes transgress). This is why she is committed to Zingela Ulwazi as one of the few organisations that dances this dance – with its roots in the ground and its ambitious and luscious branches reaching up to the sky. It is an organisational manifestation of what it means to live a real life.
Tracey van den Brand
Trustee
Tracey worked for 20 years at a senior level in multi-national companies (DuPont, Lucite International, ICI) as well as running her own successful businesses for 15 years.
An Honours graduate in Economics she has worked around the globe leading teams of up to 100 people in: business and marketing strategy, corporate and product branding, market development, Corporate PR, supply chain, sales, new product development, and mergers and acquisitions.
After graduating in the UK she worked in South Africa for the Industrial Development Corporation before returning to the UK with Imperial Chemical Industries. Within 6 months she was running a business unit and had P & L responsibility for $80 million. Continual increase in responsibility led to this increasing to $500 million and to a Director position.
At CEO level she had the opportunity to gather wide experience within large organisations which included re-engineering DuPont’s Supply Chain in Europe. Based in Geneva, she worked alongside CAP Gemini gaining insight and experience in their renowned methodologies. She then trained in Paris’ prestigious Business School, INSEAD, in Advanced Business Management.
Tracey is experienced in running teams and has a strong track-record in delivery and team motivation. She is a natural in developing people to their full strength and unleashing their full potential. Knowledge and experience in both Human Resources and Performance Management have underpinned this.
She is a visionary and lateral thinker who also possesses the ability to work through the detail – an absolute necessity in heading up Mergers and Acquisitions.
Her cultural awareness and sensitivities have enabled her to successfully work with employees and customers across many cultures and countries. She managed teams in 26 countries throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Her extensive experience and training at a multi-national level has been further enhanced by running her own businesses. In one of these she and her partner created an entirely new market with a new South African product throughout Europe achieving over $2million in 4 years. Whilst financially successful her main motivation was to support the South African economy post-apartheid and especially women. Over 200 women were employed in South Africa as a result.
Tracey chose to leave the corporate world in 2006 to focus on socially oriented organisations including Non-Profits and Social Enterprises. She put herself through 4 years of self-development in Brennan Healing Science in Germany and Austria.
She has worked with the charity “The Global White Lion Protection Trust” for 10 years including setting up and managing every aspect of their UK organisation. She is currently the Trustee of a UK registered charity and runs her own healing practice and her own coaching business, Conscious Business Coaching.
Stella Horgan
Trustee & Director
Stella Horgan (BA, Dip. Higher Education (UCT), Dip. Counseling & Human Services (U.La Trobe), Dip. Social Enterprise, (SSE)) is the Founder and Director of NPO Zingela Ulwazi. In 2012 she returned home to South Africa after 12 years in Australia where she had a private practice specialising in individual and group psychotherapy (Registered ACA 6252). Stella has a background in workshop design, facilitation and training, leadership and personal development, coaching, project management and film and television production. A year after being back in South Africa she launched Zingela Ulwazi. She works closely with communities neighbouring wilderness spaces; launched and co-ordinated the Acornhoek Leadership Forum (ALF) and brought together 130 rural organisations to participate in AWARD’s Civil Society Support Initiative. Stella is a Senior Facilitator of the Hoffman Process (UK) and a board member of Australian wildlife advocacy group For the Love of Wildlife. Her meditation and artistic practice inform her engagement with life. Stella considers her main mission to find ways to rebalance human life with nature in an effort to create a regenerative way of living where all may thrive.
