While the organiser, Duane Raymond of FairSay, has been organising and facilitating Open Space type events for over a decade, he also has campaigning expertise he can share with the group - and trying to both facilitate and participate means neither get done well. So this year facilitators will be involved to improve the quality of the event even more.
Sofia Bustamante
Sofia has a Masters in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College, London. She started her career at British Airways, where she moved from systems analysis and project management to learning and facilitation. She then left BA to move more fully into people and organisational development, and, after a number of small roles across various industries, has run a business as a coach, facilitator and change agent since 2002. She has a balance of analytical and intuitive skills and experience, straddling engineering and business analysis, to personal and team development.
In organisations and networks, Sofia's strength is in building a collective vision and tapping into the collective intelligence of the team or network to turn that vision into reality. She has pioneered techniques to help teams to do so, such as the online facilitation of the core volunteer leadership team of Pioneers of Change and the co-creation of Evolution Lounge (with Helga Brueggemann), a facilitation technique that uses the environment as an intervention and which is a constant feature now in Dusseldorf Airport in Germany. She works with diverse audiences primarily in the field of social change; running workshops for groups of potential youth leaders to employing open space as the structure to the Duisburg Social Forum. Her mission is to create organisations and communities that are powerful and supportive places for people to move into flow and achieve all they could dream of. Amongst her current projects is the design and delivery of engagement programmes for informal traders in South London.
Lesley Williams
Lesley obtained her BCom? (Industrial Psychology) degree from the University of Johannesburg, and is an accredited trainer with the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).
She worked for the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) for four years, where she had developed the concept of a leadership programme called Young Professionals Forum, which facilitates the transition from tertiary education to the world of work and builds proactive young leadership with an awareness of societal and organisational issues. She was elected to the national steering committee of Young South African Women in Dialogue, which was formed by the First Lady, Mrs. Zanele Mbeki.
Prior to Young Professionals Forum, she used to be one of the coordinators of a leadership alliance called Nexus at the GIBS. Nexus consists of top young people in leadership capacities and aims to build relationships across diversity, and develop the leadership capabilities of South Africa's future leaders.
Lesley has a background in AIESEC and Toastmasters and has done work for Common Purpose SA, Siyavuma, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children as well as The Hub, London. She now runs the Secretariat of the South African Business club in London and is part of the core leadership team of Pioneers of Change in the role of Membership and Participation.
