Dr Louise van Rhyn

Louise van Rhyn is a social entrepreneur. She believes the worlds’ huge intractable problems can be solved through cross-sector collaboration and a solid understanding of complex social change. Her approach to change is shaped by 30 years of working as an Organisational Change and Leadership Development practitioner. She holds a Doctorate in Complex Social Change and has founded a few entrepreneurial organisations.

Having worked in the UK, US and many countries around Europe, she returned to South Africa in 2004 to help make democracy work ‘at home’.

In 2008 she started a social enterprise with a purpose to mobilise active citizenship around the significant social issues facing the country. In 2010 she launched Partners for Possibility, an innovative leadership development process for business and school leaders. Business leaders develop their capacity to lead in a complex and unfamiliar environment by becoming a co-learning and co-action partner to a school principal. The focus of their partnership is to lead positive change in an under-resourced school.

So far more than 1,300 leaders across South Africa have benefited from the programme and they’ve won many national and international awards for their innovative approach to enable business leaders to make a significant contribution in education while developing their leadership skills. Leaders report that they learn more about leadership from working with a school in an under-resourced community than attending a course at a business school.