Annual Careers Event

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Biographies of Speakers


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Cathy Mohlahlana

Cathy is an award-winning broadcast journalist. She co-hosts, with Stephen Grootes, “The Pulse” and “Newz@Prime both on Newzroom Afrika. On radio, Cathy is heard daily on SAfm, anchoring “The Talking Point.” 

Cathy’s career in national broadcast-journalism spans over 12 years. She started as a reporter and radio anchor for Talk Radio 702’s Eyewitness News and Kaya FM. In 2009 she won the National Press Club Radio Journalist of the Year Award. In 2012, she was selected to take part in the CNN Journalism Fellowship and in 2014 was selected as a fellow for US President Barack Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). A year later, she was named by Destiny Magazine as one of the “Top 40 Women under 40.”

During her time at eNCA, Cathy hosted the eTV evening primetime bulletin and covered high profile stories including the life of Nelson Mandela and the Oscar Pistorius murder trial. She has also hosted weekly programmes including ‘#Africa’ and ‘Week-In-One’. Passionate about youth, education and current affairs, Cathy enjoys facilitating workshops and conferences which tackle issues of socio-economic development; particularly those impacting young girls and women. She is also part of an NGO that builds schools in rural areas and conducts youth development programmes for empowering and up-skilling young people.

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Ronak Gopaldas

Ronak is a Director at Signal Risk, a fellow at GIBS and the co-founder of Mindflux Training. He was previously the Head of Country Risk at Rand Merchant Bank, where he worked for almost a decade. He is a political economist, “pracademic”, writer and speaker. His work focuses on the intersection of politics, economics and business in Africa.  A prominent voice in print, radio and television in both the local and international media, Ronak has made frequent appearances on the likes of CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and CNBC Africa, and publishes regular opinion and analysis pieces.

Ronak is a 2019 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow, an alumnus of the Asian Forum on Global Governance, as well as the young African Leadership Initiative. In 2016, he delivered a powerful TEDx talk entitled Embracing Africa: Beyond the Binaries. He also serves in a number of advisory roles, most notably the Institute of Security Studies’ ENACT programme, which builds knowledge and skills to enhance Africa’s response to transnational organised crime.

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Farai Mubaiwa

Farai is a Partner Management Lead at the Youth Employment Service (YES), a business-led NPO works in partnership with government and labor to initiate policy changes which incentives the creation of jobs for youth. She is also the co-founder of the youth-led organization Africa Matters, which empowers young Africans to lead through leadership skills, capacity building and community-impact projects. 

Farai was a Queen’s Young Leader for South Africa for 2017, a TEDx speaker, a One Young World Ambassador and a King’s Principal’s Global Leadership Award Recipient. In 2018 she was named as one of the top 100 Mandelas of the future by Media24. She is a Dalai Lama 2019 Fellow and was rated as one of the top 100 Influential Young South Africans. Prior to YES, Farai served as a project manager at The Aurum Institute, a leading African TB and HIV research and implementation institute, and Deloitte as a Strategy and Operations analyst. She was also an intern at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and achieved a distinction for her MSc in the Political Economy of Emerging Markets at King’s College London. 

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