Meet The Innovators
Meet The Innovators
Ayanda is a social entrepreneur, strategist, and McKenzie trained management consultant with over 9 years’ experience working in the private and public sectors. He has previously held the position of Head of Advisory Services at New Leaders Foundation and now heads the Data Innovators entity as CEO.
In his commitment to transforming the South African Education system, Ayanda developed a dashboard solution on the state of Early Childhood Development readiness in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to inform decisions and support. Currently, Ayanda also holds the position of Treasurer for the South African Monitoring Evaluation Association (SAMEA).
Jerusha is an entrepreneur, data creative, and Monitoring and Evaluation specialist. She has worked extensively in promoting the use of information for decision making and experiential sharing in the African public sector and across the globe.
Jerusha has previously been featured as an entrepreneur in publications such as, Insight Success, Entrepreneur Magazine SA, Destiny, and Destiny Man Magazines. She is passionate about telling stories with data, and teaching others to do so and is a legacy board member of the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association.
Khotso Tsotsotso is a Strategist, Evaluation theorist, Skills development specialist, and Systems thinker with over 12 years working experience. He has worked in various sectors including corporate, education, social justice and citizen participation, enterprise development, and social development. His career history geographically spans through Southern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, Asia, North and South America.
Khotso has presented at the American Evaluation Association Conference as a panelist in the presidential strand on evaluating impact investing and published in multiple peer-reviewed international journals on evaluation and theory in practice. Amongst his many notable career highlights, he has also been recognised by the South African Monitoring & Evaluation Association (SAMEA) for outstanding contribution to the practice of M&E as a young and emerging evaluator in Africa.
Mary-Grace is a strategist and Technical Director for the Strategy and Business Development unit at Data Innovators. In her career that spans over 20 years, she has developed functional expertise in research, monitoring and evaluation, and policy development and implementation. She has also managed various projects involving key education sector stakeholders within the South African and international public sector.
In 2010, Mary-Grace was awarded the Institute of Education Sciences Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in Science Education where she was instrumental in leading a randomised controlled trial in the United States of America.
Jerusha is an entrepreneur, data creative, and Monitoring and Evaluation specialist. She has worked extensively in promoting the use of information for decision making and experiential sharing in the African public sector and across the globe.
Jerusha has previously been featured as an entrepreneur in publications such as, Insight Success, Entrepreneur Magazine SA, Destiny, and Destiny Man Magazines. She is passionate about telling stories with data, and teaching others to do so and is a legacy board member of the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association.
Noluthando is a trained Social Worker with experience in data analytics, consulting, facilitating, and partnership and relationships management. She has a strong background of working in the public sector and NPO space.
In 2016, Noluthando joined New Leaders Foundation with her background in social work and from that period, transitioned from training and coaching School Management Teams through data analytics to a management role. She is currently in the process of completing Project Management Professional course through PM-Ideas.
Sharlan is an analytically inclined individual with a curious nature. His passion resides in data analysis, problem solving as well as effective visualization. He aspires to make a positive impact by providing insightful information to stakeholders.
Sharlan has functioned as a Data Analyst over the past couple of years having previously graduated with a Bachelor of Science Honours degree in Statistics. His noteworthy endeavours include work for the Department of Basic Education focusing on National Senior Certificate (NSC) performance.
Mmapela is an experienced data analyst with a demonstrated history of working with complex and large data sets. Her experience includes analysing the South African national basic education data.
Mmapela is skilled in various data processing and manipulation tools including Python, Microsoft excel and Power Bi. She is passionate about extracting valuable insights from data sets, exploring relationships between variables, learning new data management tools and statistical software. She also has a strong mathematical and analytical background with a data science certificate from the University of Cape Town.
Teboho is a researcher, data analyst and a health demographer. She has worked with organisations in various sectors including government, and health to promote the use of data to inform policy and decision making.
Teboho has published two research journals with the South African Journal for Child Health and the Africa Health Sciences Journal. She is passionate about digitising health sectors and ensuring that data is used to improve healthcare services. In a world full of misinformation, she believes that better use and accessibility to data as well as good data storytelling can help people stay informed and hence make better decisions about their lives.
Nceba is an analytics Intern who completed his Master of Science with a publication (journal article). He also extensively used R, Stata, Excel, Power BI, Google data studio and SAS program with SAS Certificate.
He is interested in extreme value theory, quantile regression, econometrics, time series, and survival analysis. His research was based on mentioned interests. As he enjoys conducting research, he finds it interesting when transforming, Inspecting, and modelling the data with the aim of discovering the useful information for decision-making.
Martin is an experienced IT professional, a technology enthusiast and and solutions driven. He has worked in the private sector and has experience in project roll- out, configuring and testing various systems and providing end -user support.
Martin has been part of the roll-out of bio-metric time attendance systems and onboarding of users on payment systems project for SSETA, where he coordinated and supported users and devices. He has previous experience in disaster recovery solutions where he provided software support and monitoring of back-ups for some private and public originations. He also has deep knowledge of desktop support and software troubleshooting.
Majda is the Creative Director at Data Innovators With over 20 years’ experience in the design industry, as an entrepreneur, freelancer and in-house designer she has had the privilege to hone her skills at various agencies across a plethora of amazing brands. Majda has worked with various government and non-government entities and with various tertiary institutions.
Shilpa is a product manager who loves designing delightful digital experiences and products. She has had the fortune of working with some leading digital and technology businesses over the last 14 years.
Shilpa’s experiences have been predominantly in digital and product design and development and these experiences have spanned across various business functions and industries.
Olwethu is an engagement manager, with experience covering managing teams, financial management, organisational planning, and programme planning. She has played lead roles in monitoring and evaluation projects and managing research processes. She has also facilitated multiple programme evaluations and played a key role in providing monitoring, evaluation and documentation support.
Olwethu is incredibly passionate about education in South Africa and seeing the inequality gap closing through successful programme implementation.
Khotso Tsotsotso is a Strategist, Evaluation theorist, Skills development specialist, and Systems thinker with over 12 years working experience. He has worked in various sectors including corporate, education, social justice and citizen participation, enterprise development, and social development. His career history geographically spans through Southern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, Asia, North and South America.
Khotso has presented at the American Evaluation Association Conference as a panelist in the presidential strand on evaluating impact investing and published in multiple peer-reviewed international journals on evaluation and theory in practice. Amongst his many notable career highlights, he has also been recognised by the South African Monitoring & Evaluation Association (SAMEA) for outstanding contribution to the practice of M&E as a young and emerging evaluator in Africa.
Zinhle is a researcher and monitoring, evaluation and learning (MERL) Manager, with experience working in the legal, education and non-profit sectors. She is passionate about doing work with meaning and impact, and applies her multi-discplinary background to strategize solutions, using multiple lenses and intersectional approaches. As a critical thinker and creative problem solver, with an innate ability to understand and interpret complexity, Zinhle helps organisations and teams to develop knowledge and learning systems, which support evidence-use and systemic interventions.
In her continued pursuit for mastery, Zinhle is also an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation THInK doctoral fellow, currently conducting research on the effects of philanthro-capitalist investment in girls’ education in sub-Saharan Africa.
Masego is an international development practitioner and emerging evaluator. She has worked in the public sector promoting the use of Socio-Economic Impact Assessment System to improve policy development processes in South Africa and utilising her Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning skills to improve Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) capacities across civil society organisations and government sectors in Anglophone Africa.
Masego is passionate about community development and utilising her research skills to address socio-economic injustices. She has been featured in various conference presentations within social anthropology, M&E, public administration and management, and development research. She is a member of the Africa Evidence Network, South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association and the Anthropology Southern Africa.
Rebecca Mbaya is an achievement-oriented individual with a deep interest for learning, growth and development and a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist. She has contributed to the development and implementation of various monitoring, evaluation, research, learning and planning activities helping clients build more effective and impactful interventions, which recognize the role of context, structures, and systems in shaping results.
Viwe Kutu is a young aspiring M&E specialist, who is passionate about helping poor communities drive their development. With her background in development studies and anthropology, Viwe seeks to use her indigenous knowledge to promote development in the African context. She believes that data and constant monitoring and evaluation of programmes is the main key to ensuring development across poor communities.
Viwe was part of the UJenius Club 2019, wherein she was recognised for her academic performance as one of the top students in the University of Johannesburg. Viwe is in the progress of writing her life story as a M&E specialist and development practitioner.
Taryn is the Head of People and a change management specialist at Data Innovators, with the experience and skills to enable effective transformation with clients, focusing on people readiness and technology adoption.
Her expertise spans work in both private and public sectors, helping clients in multiple functional areas through their strategic change journey, business processing and project management. She has worked in various leadership roles, having the ability to address core organisational and operational changes to drive key outcomes.
Mabale is a self-motivated, Ambitious, and skilled Finance Officer. She is very passionate about Finance and Accounting. She possesess functional expertise in business process improvement, day-to-day management of accounts payable and receivables, cash forecast management, providing accurate financial report and variance analysis.
Mabale is a dedicated and resilient individual and aspires to be an author.
Mary-Grace is a strategist and Technical Director for the Strategy and Business Development unit at Data Innovators. In her career that spans over 20 years, she has developed functional expertise in research, monitoring and evaluation, and policy development and implementation. She has also managed various projects involving key education sector stakeholders within the South African and international public sector.
In 2010, Mary-Grace was awarded the Institute of Education Sciences Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in Science Education where she was instrumental in leading a randomised controlled trial in the United States of America.