She has accepted the challenge to re-establish the trust paradigm as a core value on which any successful business and personal relationship must be built.

Vanessa's business and personal experience has ignited an unstoppable passion that has made her an out-standing entrepreneur and international ambassador for trust.

Vanessa Hall travels the world, speaking with social change leaders, businesses and affected communities, raising awareness of this most powerful and forgotten value in all relationships - TRUST.

Iris is currently the Group Head : Communications and CSI (Community Development) within the McCarthy Group (Bidvest). Prior to this, her most recent role has been GM: Marketing Commu-nications for Tourism. Her primary role was to grow the Tourism industry to KZN and to change tourist perceptions of the province as a holiday destination.

During her tenure, KwaZulu-Natal became the leading Domestic Tourism destination and 2nd internationally, with Cape Town being the 1st.

She was chosen by Mr. Tokyo Sexwale to be one of 16 candidates to appear on the Reality TV Series, The Apprentice SA. She was chosen from a total of over 200 000 applicants for the show, which intended to showcase South African style Leadership principles. Mr. Sexwale recognized her potential immediately and whilst she did not win the Series, he was very vocal in acknowledging her exceptional leadership qualities and that he felt she had a great future in the SA economy.

Iris is a strategic thinker and is very results-driven. She is creative with strong analytical and problems solving abilities. She has excellent written and verbal comm-unication skills which she has developed naturally throughout her career. She is very deadline driven and is accus-tomed to working under pressure. She has a hands on approach to leadership and believes in leading by example.

She is also a team player and has excellent inter-personal skills which contribute to the effective
and efficient completion of tasks under her responsibility.

Iris serves on the Board of SEDA KZN (Small Enterprise Development Agency) and is also Chairperson of the HR Committee within SEDA. She is also a Board Member of the IPEB (Institute for Partnerships between Education and Business).

She understands the political landscape, being the daughter of one of South Africa’s struggle veterans, Morris Fynn. During her tenure in Tourism she travelled with three MEC’s within the KZN legislature to eight different countries, one of these Ministers being the current Premier of KZN, Dr Zweli Mkhize, who was MEC for Economic Development at the time. Iris understands the power of harnessing relationships and therefore has very strong networks, who have supported her and develop-ment. Mentored and groomed by Ms Hixonia Nyasulu, current Chairperson of SASOL ~ and yet on meeting Iris, she remains humble and grounded. Being born one of forty children in a
small rural village on the southern coast of KZN and having achieved success in her chosen field, she has the uncanny ability to be as comfortable with Heads of State as she is with people from the impoverished communities she serves. ‘I was born to be of service to others’, she says when questioned about her move to CSI. Iris was named one of Tomorrow’s Leaders in 2009 by Anglo American.

She was also recently chosen to be in a book; ‘Burning Bright : Extraordinary Women of KZN’! A true South African example of how someone from grass roots level can achieve enormous success and recognition by sheer hard work and incredible passion!

Harnessing careers in optometry, IT, consulting and transformation, and drawing on interests in wellness, spirituality and psychology, Alison inspires others to succeed on their own terms.

She enthusiastically pursues her vision for a world in which people have tolerance and respect for others, communicate effectively, are equipped to ‘be the very best they can be’ and truly enjoy their lives.

Alison is communicator, teacher, coach and mentor, and the founder of CanBeeDone, a personal and leadership development organ-isation. More recently she co-founded Nurture Your Future, an organization to help bridge the gap between school and the working world.

She is also a volunteer counsellor for Headway, an organisation that supports people with brain injuries and a member of the International Coach Federation (Gauteng Chapter), Toastmasters International and a committee member of WIF.

Marketing is her ‘passion’ so she spent the next 15 years in various Marketing roles (working for Glaxo Smithkline, Dairybelle, Coca-Cola, Nampak etc). In 2001, at the age of 33, she was first appointed as a Director and quickly grew to love the ‘General Management’ side of the business environment.

In 2003 Lauren joined Simba (which is a wholly owned subsidiary of PepsiCo) and in the next 4 years moved from Marketing Director to Commercial Director and then finally to CEO. She was the first ‘South African’ and the first ‘Female’ CEO for PepsiCo South Africa.

In 2010 Lauren left the corporate world and is currently on “sabbatical” pursuing to her passion - ‘The development of Female Talent in South Africa’.

She has started an initiative called GREAT (Girls Responsibly Enlightened and Trained) with the following mission:
“To facilitate an interaction between Business Women and the Youth of South Africa, in order to enable these women to share their career experiences and give advice about the challenges that the Youth might encounter in the workplace”

Lauren is Divorced and has two daughters (Lisa is 10 years old and Keila is 5). Her hobbies are reading, exploring new & interesting restaurants, travel, running and most importantly – fun times with her precious daughters. Her proudest moment in life was passing her helicopter pilot’s license in 2007 and hence seeing a childhood dream to ‘fly’, come true.