David Newby has worked in the social sector for over 35 years. His early years were as a Methodist minister but since 2000, David has worked as an organisational development consultant to Not for Profit (NPO) clients across the globe.
He has worked extensively with some of the largest NPOs in the world assisting them with Organisational Development processes such as facilitation, leadership development, coaching, team building, conflict resolution, change management and strategy development. His clients include international organisations such as UNICEF, World Vision and REPSSI as well as numerous South African organisations such as WWF, Habitat for Humanity, SAEP, Home from Home and the Sports Science Institute. In 2016 he was awarded the community builder of the year award by The Africa Board for Coaching, Consulting & Coaching Psychology in recognition of the work he has done in education in South Africa.
David serves as the Managing Trustee of SEED Educational Trust where he has managed leadership development programmes in education involving more than 1,000 school and District leaders across 5 provinces. He has managed a number of development projects in churches, schools and community organisations so he brings practical experience of the field to his work as well.
He is also a visiting lecturer at USB-ED, the public executive development company within the University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB) where he presents courses for leaders of non-profit organisations and for leaders in the education sector.
David’s main area of expertise is assisting organisations that are in transition. This includes:
- Leadership transitions – assisting new leaders into their roles and helping established leaders to leave graciously and without negatively impacting the organisation
- Strategy transitions – assisting organisations that feel stuck to find a way forward or helping organisations develop clarity and consensus around their new or emerging vision and strategies
- Size transitions – assisting organisations that are experiencing sudden growth or decline to adapt to their new reality
- Organisational transitions – assisting organisations that are experiencing conflict or trauma to find a way forward
Alison Newby graduated from UCT with a BSc in Occupational Therapy. After graduating, she specialised in Sensory Integration and Neurodevelopmental Techniques. After managing a paediatric neurological occupational therapy practice for a number of years, she developed a Supported Employment programme for a group of teenagers who had intellectual challenges at St Joseph’s Marist School from 2001 to 2006. In 2008 she started a non-profit called Work4You which offered training and opportunities for open labour market employment for young people with intellectual challenges.
Alison then broadened her career to personal and organizational development and has qualified as an executive coach. She is also accredited to administer the Insights Personality Type Evaluator as well as a number of other Organisational Development tools and processes.
In 2017 she graduated with an M Sc MOTI (Management of People, Technology, and Innovation in the domain of coaching) from The Da Vinci Institute SA (2017). Her Master’s thesis title was: Behavioural preferences of school leaders and the influence of these on learning and development during coaching within a leadership programme
In 2019 she conducted research funded by Old Mutual entitled: Towards more effective leadership development (including coaching and mentoring) for teaching and learning in schools: The role of leadership style within the organisational culture and context
Alison’s passion lies with coaching leaders to live authentically and to lead effectively. Over the past 17 years she has coached more than a thousand leaders in education and in the Not-for-Profit sector both in South Africa and further afield in Africa. Having had practical experience in leading an NPO, she is able to relate to the challenges leaders of NPOs experience and woman leaders in particular.
Lesedi Makhurane trained as a business consultant with Deloitte, before becoming an executive coach. He is a former Director of Organizational Development at UCT. He is a certified project manager, facilitator and business planner. As an adjunct faculty member of various universities, he has taught postgraduate and masters courses (many of them in coaching and mentoring) since 2003 and has supervised extensively. His qualifications include a BA (Economics, Philosophy, Psychology), University of Zimbabwe, 1991; MA (Communications), University of Leicester, 1995; B Com Honours (Information Systems), University of Cape Town, 1991.
Lesedi is a scientist-practitioner and world-class facilitator (qualified and accredited) with extensive experience locally and abroad. He brings a rigorous, attuned and attentive change philosophy and learning approach to facilitation that is underpinned by explicit reflective practice, research, his signature presence and a broad repertoire.
He has helped clients and partners to decode their realities by seeing themselves ‘as they truly are,’ so that they can reconstruct more empowering and embracing perspectives – and processes – that more congruently align with their purposes and aspirations.
Lesedi has experience of facilitating processes in a wide variety of contexts and situations involving various levels of complexity and ensures he consistently works across diverse platforms. These include facilitating board strategic formulation sessions; multi-stakeholder dialogues, transformation and culture change processes, conflict resolution situations, team development sessions and processing issues requiring catharsis, emotional resolution and resilience.
Associates – From time to time, as needs dictate, we also work in association with other consultants with whom we have developed relationships and trust over the years.