JOHANNESBURG - Social Entrepreneur Thuli Sibeko is the brains behind a non-profit organisation aimed at teaching young people much-needed IT skills and how to solve the world’s mounting problems.
Sibeko, 39, from Soweto, is the founder of consulting firm TS Management Consultancy, based at Craighall in Johannesburg.
A public speaker and master of ceremonies, Sibeko says she matriculated from St Anne’s Diocesan College, a boarding school in Pietermaritzburg, many years ago.
Her passion of identifying and trying to fix social ills saw her establishing her first company Anglo-African Events at the age of 27 in 2006.
The marketing and events company, which has since folded, was aimed at addressing the scourge of youth unemployment in the country. As a result, its staff was mostly made up of youth, says Sibeko, a former member of the Community Youth Empowa’ment, an organisation committed to social upliftment through community-based initiatives.
'Follow your passion.Listen to your https://t.co/2sHbSYi33P the process.Be grateful.
Life is magic and your dreams matter. #WednesdayWisdom pic.twitter.com/cQDC7AYVm4
— Thuli Sibeko (@Thulilo) August 30, 2017
After closing down her marketing and events company in 2016, Sibeko established a consulting firm TS Management Consultancy based in Craighall. Before venturing out on her own, Sibeko worked for corporate companies including the JSE-listed Naspers-owned Multichoice, Nashua Mobile, a wholly-owned subsidiary of JSE-listed Reunert, and Exclusive Technical Services.
This gave her an inkling of how the IT industry operated. Now through her company, they run events and activations for their clients.
“We are able to pay our bills at the end of the month,” says Sibeko, who was a director at Ideology Agency but left after realising that fundamentally their goals were not aligned. “We are growing. We are busy building a brand here,” she says, adding that she would like to grow the company to a “manageable size” because she does not want to be overwhelmed, as there is another programme she runs on the side.
Through her non-profit organisation, Girls Invent Tomorrow, Sibeko runs a programme aimed at equipping high school girls with much-needed IT skills, as the world embraces the much-touted Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Johannesburg businesswoman Thuli Sibeko is founder of consulting firm TS Management Consultancy, based in Craighall. Image: Supplied.
“We teach them basic computer skills and how to solve the world’s problems,” she says, emphasising that her consulting firm is not about chasing profits.
She says they are concerned about community uplift and would always avail themselves of making a difference, no matter how small.
But that’s not all for Sibeko, who has won numerous awards for business excellence. She also founded theNEXTgen Leadership programme, which serves as a network helping young people share their experiences and motivate and empower each other.
Besides that, Sibeko also runs career days and a Saturday school in Soweto.