Pumla Maswanganyi is a paradigm shifter: she break things down, before she builds them up again.
Simply put – She solves problems by merging principles from her backgrounds in studio art, management, globalisation, and development; to co-create macro (global) and micro (organisational and/or individual) systems for entities from leaders, to corporations, to INGOs and grassroots frameworks.
Risk averse would not be the term to describe her – she has lived and worked in 5 continents, and is always looking for the next opportunity to expand her horizons even further. She is most animated when she builds new systems for start-ups, and works with established companies to insert creative start-up thinking into their frameworks.
She produces results, and has the receipts to show for it:
She has lead distributed teams across 3 continents, 10 countries and 20 cities in her capacity as the youngest C-suite executive in two companies; namely as Chief Innovation Officer of Baobab Consulting (Africa focused consulting firm), and Chief Strategy Officer of Jara (building IoT EdTech hardware). She also lends her advisory expertise to international organisations, as the Vice-Chair of the Board for One Planet Tours, the Chief Strategic Advisor of Jara, and Advisor for the Roddenberry Foundation.
Pumla shares her expertise as a speaker, and has spoken to audiences of thousands, for organisations including the Clinton Foundation; Telco giant MTN; Enactus; and Stratagem to name a few. She covers topics including: inclusive innovation, globalisation and glocalisation, protopian futures, organisational systems design, and 22nd century education.
Finally, her work has earned recognition from Forbes, the Clinton Global Initiative, Cisco, the African Union, the UNLEASH Sustainable Development Innovation Lab, and the Resolution Project to name a few. Additionally, she has been nominated as one of the ‘Most Influential People of African Descent’ (MIPAD) under 40.
