Trustees
A bit more about the people behind our NPO
Stella Horgan
Trustee & Chair
Stella Horgan (BA, Dip. Higher Education (UCT), Dip. Counseling & Human Services (U.La Trobe), Dip. Social Enterprise, (SSE)) is the Founder and a Trustee 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 Global Executive Director of Project Biome 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.
Sboniso Phakathi
Trustee
I am Sboniso Ryan Phakathi, hailing from Pietermaritzburg, Kwa Zulu-Natal province in South Africa.
I work for a local organisation as a Project leader on initiatives rooted in the Greater Kruger spatial region (Mozambique and South Africa) focusing on the social dimensions of conservation.
My passion for the natural environment and community enrichment is rooted in the awareness of the indivisibility of the two. My curiosity about humans and their relationship to the spaces/ environment/ ecosystems they form a part of is linked to my main interest, which is Social, and Developmental Psychology and generally ‘decluttering complexity’.
After 2 years of working as a yachtsman in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, my entry into the field of community and conservation was somewhat unorthodox, and conceived out of the idea that “I want to work in the real Africa”. In retrospect, it’s laughable, because I am African, yet this thinking set me off on a now 15-year stint working in the Lowveld. I started my career as an anti-poaching guard, later establishing environmental education initiatives, to managing Expanded Public Works Programmes focused on youth, and now managing larger projects focused on social-ecological systems.
I am honoured to play a small part in the story of Zingela Ulwazi, as we collectively seek out knowledge and add tangible value to society!
Tracey van den Brand
Trustee
Tracey worked for 20 years at a senior level in multi-national companies (DuPont, Lucite International, ICI) and ran her own successful businesses for 15 years. An Honours graduate in Economics she has worked globally 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.
Her extensive experience at multi-national level has been enhanced by running her own businesses. She and her partner created a new market with a new South African product throughout Europe achieving over $2million in 4 years. While 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 left the corporate world in 2006 to focus on socially oriented organisations including Non-Profits and Social Enterprises, and completed 4 years of self-development in Brennan Healing Science. She is currently the Trustee of a UK registered charity and runs her own healing practice and coaching business, Conscious Business Coaching.
Nomsa Thibela
Trustee & Vice Chair, Principal of Ntsoelemolodi Primary School
I, Nomsa Precious Thibela, am a teacher by profession and principal at Ntsoelemolodi Primary School since 2014 to date.
I hold a Bachelor of Education (Honours) and am also qualified in mentoring, coaching, facilitation, and as an assessor and moderator.
I am a junior pastor of Shekina Christian Fellowship and the first to facilitate Girls’ Club in our school. I introduced and taught teenagers about Mina cups to use during their periods.
I am a permaculture teacher at school where we plant various organic vegetables to supplement the school nutrition programme and to assist the needy.
Advisory Council
A bit more about the people behind our NPO
Dephney Mhaule
Director of Sibonile Primary School
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 has built Sibonile Daycare to successfully offer preschool and Grades R-4.
Dephney has also developed a large scale community garden on the Orpen Road and mentors a variety of young people in the community.
Jane Burt
Advisory Council 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.
