Chantell Ilbury

Chantell Ilbury

Cape Town-based Chantell Ilbury speaks on strategic thinking and the structure of a strategic conversation, business scenarios, global scenarios, global climate change and other South African and African scenarios.

After meeting Anglo America’s Clem Sunter and sharing her ideas on scenario planning, the duo wrote their best-selling books ‘The Mind of a Fox’, ‘Games Foxes Play’ and ‘Socrates and the Fox’. The three books were later published together as ‘The Fox Trilogy’.

Also an independent scenario strategist, facilitator and top-selling business author, Chantell specialises in guiding organisations through strategic conversations, especially in times of uncertainty.

Her new talk is “Backwards and in High Heels – a Woman in a Businessman’s World”. Her fascinating and high-level career has seen her working predominantly with businessmen and this has given her surprising, some would say controversial, opinions on women in business.

In this talk Chantell speaks candidly about steering the strategic decisions of executive teams. Still almost exclusively male, this includes dealing with physical threat, controversy and reputational risk; and the dangers of a woman travelling the world alone. She also provides refreshing perspectives on entrepreneurism, balancing the demands of family and business, and on women in the corporate working environment.

It is a talk loaded with strategic insight, but also rich with humour and entertaining anecdotes.

She holds a BSc in Chemistry, a post-graduate Higher Diploma in Education, an Executive MBA from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and has studied Strategic Negotiation through Harvard Business School in Boston.

Chantell also lectures on strategy and scenario planning at a number of top business schools. Her work as a facilitator of strategic conversations has taken her as far afield as the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Ukraine, Australia, Jamaica, Kuwait, Singapore, India, Réunion Island, as well as throughout Southern and Central Africa.