Speaking

My
Voice

When a client books me to speak, they are booking a practitioner with a specific body of knowledge, a coherent philosophy, and two decades of analytical and experiential depth. I speak in three registers: 1) keynote, 2) presentation, and 3) dialogue moderation and facilitation.

As a keynote speaker I deliver the philosophy, the method, the frameworks, and the evidence in a structured intellectual address. As a presenter I bring specialist analytical content to a specific audience with a specific purpose. As a moderator I guide dialogues — reading the terrain of a conversation, holding the space, and drawing out what needs to be said with honesty and precision.

First register Keynote

A keynote with me is not a motivational address. It is a structured intellectual engagement — grounded in the Subsoil Philosophy™, the analytical frameworks, and two decades of practice across political systems, institutions, and individual lives. Each keynote address is developed around a specific intellectual proposition, adapted for the audience and context, and delivered with the precision of a practitioner who has spent twenty years turning complexity into clarity.

Available keynote addresses

Going Beneath the Surface of Everything Most leaders operate at the level of the visible: the headline, the announcement, the event. Shifting from reacting to events, developments and changing dynamics — the surface — to reading what lies beneath them, the underground, changes everything. Going beneath the surface reveals the dimensions of constraint and enables us to build what is necessary to free agency, to expand options and opportunities. This is the Subsoil Philosophy™ as a framework for leadership, decision-making, and institutional strategy. For leadership, civil society, academic, institutional, and organisational transformation audiences.
Analysis, Not Commentary: Clarity Under Conditions of Uncertainty There is a crisis in our political moment. It is not a crisis of information. It is a crisis of analysis. Commentary reads events against other events — reactive, tethered to the news cycle, rebuilt for each new development. Analysis reads events against a fixed, declared frame — built before the event, held consistently as evidence accumulates, and accountable to something more than the current of opinion. The two are not the same. The gap between them has consequences. This keynote is based on the book Analyst, Not Commentator and demonstrates that gap, and what it looks like to close it. For media, academic, professional development, policy, and analytical practice audiences.

Second register Presentation

A presentation differs from a keynote in its purpose and its audience relationship. Where a keynote delivers a philosophical or methodological argument to a broad audience, a presentation takes a specific analytical proposition to a specific audience with a specific purpose — and leaves them with concrete tools, frameworks, or knowledge they can apply. The two presentations I offer draw directly from two decades of practice and from proprietary analytical frameworks developed through that practice.

Available presentations

Politics Matters: Why Every Leader Needs to Understand Political Systems An accessible but substantive introduction to political systems, political ideology, and the architecture of democratic governance, delivered to senior practitioners who need to understand the political environment they operate in rather than simply react to it. This presentation moves from the fundamentals of what politics is and how it shapes the world we operate in, through to a structured approach for reading political systems analytically rather than reactively. For senior government officials, institutional executives, policy practitioners, and leaders who need political literacy without political science training.
The Anatomy of Power in South Africa: The Structural Configuration of Agency, Constraint and Legitimacy in the Political System A structured analytical presentation that reads South Africa's political terrain through seven distinct analytical lenses, building a composite picture of how power is actually distributed: where legitimacy is contested, where accountability mechanisms hold and where they fracture, and what the socioeconomic realities underlying political dynamics actually look like beneath the headlines. This reveals the anatomy of power: a structural reading of what is actually operating in South Africa's political system at any given moment. For investors, diplomatic and policy audiences, civil society, academic, and institutional audiences operating in or engaging with South African political terrain.

Third register Moderation

As a moderator, I see myself as a guide through a conversation. The way a guide takes you through a nature reserve or a city you do not know, I take a room through a dialogue: reading the terrain in real time, holding the space, and creating the conditions for honest, productive exchange. When clients book me to moderate, they are booking the analytical depth of a political sociologist and the facilitating presence of a practitioner who has guided some of the most consequential dialogues in South African public life.

The moderation record

2017–2018 Sowetan Dialogues Tiso Blackstar Group

2017–2018 FM Essentials Breakfast Financial Mail / Tiso Blackstar

2017–2018 Financial Mail Private Lounge Financial Mail / Tiso Blackstar

2017–2018 Business Day Dialogues Business Day / Tiso Blackstar

2021–2022 Business Day Dialogues Arena Holdings / KAS / EFSA

2022 Sunday Times Top 100 Directors Event Arena Holdings / Sunday Times

2023 New Futures Fund Launch Social Justice Initiative

2023 Seminar on New Geopolitics Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway

MyVoice

My
Voice