SOUTHERN AFRICAN ASSOCIATES

Richard Calland is Executive Director of the Open Democracy Advice Centre in Cape Town and Programme Manager of the Right to Know programme at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA). He is a member of the International Task Team on Transparency of the Institute for Public Dialogue at Columbia University, directed by Professor Joseph Stiglitz, focusing on Corporate Transparency. He also consults extensively around the world: he has advised on transparency policy, access to information law and anti-corruption strategy to President Mesa of Bolivia, Prime Minister Patterson of Jamaica, President Toure of Mali, as well as the governments of Nicaragua and Tanzania. He is currently working on transparency in the oil and gas sectors. His has published works on whistleblowing, access to information and Thabo Mbeki’s World: The Politics and Ideology of the South African President. He is a political columnist for the Mail and the Guardian. Prior to coming to South Africa in 1994 to work with the ANC’s election campaign, Richard practised law for seven years at the London Bar.

Mark Drewell was until recently Group Executive, Barloworld Limited. Mark is a passionate advocate of creating a sustainable future through creating a new generation of globally responsible leaders across the world. Born in England, he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University and moved to South Africa in 1989. From then until 2007 he worked for South African industrial company Barloworld Limited, spending the last decade as a member of the executive committee. In the early 1990s he was co-creator of a business initiative that became the role model for broad-based engagement by business behind the scenes in the political transition in South Africa. He is co-founder and chairman of the Globally Responsible leadership Initiative, a global movement of leading businesses and business schools focused on developing a new generation of globally responsible business leaders. He is also chairman of Africa’s largest indigenous conservation organisation, the Endangered Wildlife Trust.

Jonathon Hanks is a founding director of Incite Sustainability (www.incite.co.za), an independent consultancy that specialises in promoting sustainable development practices in the public and private sectors in Southern Africa. He is also a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, where he lectures MBA students on corporate sustainability strategy. Jonathon worked for Eskom (South Africa’s power utility) and AECI (chemicals) before pursuing academic and consulting interests. He has lectured and published widely on corporate sustainability policy and law, and has represented South African industry on various local and international representative bodies. He has a Masters in Law degree from the London School of Economics (UK), and a Masters in Environmental Policy from Lund University (Sweden).

He is currently the convenor of an international working group responsible for developing the new ISO standard on social responsibility (ISO 26000), which addresses issues relating to environmental management, human rights, labour, organisational governance and consumer protection. He chairs the multi-stakeholder negotiations, comprising representatives from more than 60 countries across six different stakeholder groups, aimed at drafting text on the new standard.

Stefan Raubenheimer (BA LLB) resides in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a qualified lawyer, arbitrator, mediator, facilitator and trainer. He is currently CEO and founding director of SouthSouthNorth Group, which has played a leading role in climate change issues since 1999. In addition he facilitates various large projects, notably the South African Cabinet Mandated Long Term Mitigation Scenario Planning Project (LTMS). He has assisted in the establishment of Designated National Authorities (DNA’s) in South Africa, Ghana, Namibia and Mozambique. He has led the facilitation of projects within the Development Bank of Southern Africa’s Sustainable Communities Program, applying development facilitation technologies which he has developed over the last 15 years. He is a director of Energy Transformation cc which develops climate change projects for the private sector.

Nicola Robins, an Associate of Incite Sustainability, is a sustainability coach, facilitator and adviser, working with individuals and some of South Africa’s largest corporations. Entering the emerging field of industrial environmental management in the early nineties, she established the consultancy Groundwork Environmental which focused on developing and implementing sustainability strategies primarily in the industrial sector. An interesting moment whilst on contract to a mining operation in the mountains of Western Australia led her into retreat from the corporate world for five years. This process of personal development was guided by teachers from the Venda-Shangaan Sangoma tradition in South Africa and Botswana. Having re-entered the corporate sustainability field, she is pursuing a more integrated approach to this work, informed by Western theorists such as Ken Wilber, complexity theory and the African Nature traditions.