Born and raised in a tiny hamlet outside Johannesburg, I've always found solace in wordplay and drama. I dabbled in poetry from an early age, and if you'd told young me that language would become the biggest, most ongoing love affair of my life, I'd have believed you instantly.
That love turned into a Bachelor of Arts in Languages and Literature, completed part-time while working full-time, a schedule that taught me more about flexibility than any job description ever could. I learned to welcome a curveball over predictability, which turned out to be excellent training for a career I hadn't planned yet.
That same appetite for change and challenge is what took me from writing copy to running it: from copywriter, to QA, to leading a content team that grew from 4 people to 27. I didn't set out to become an editorial operations leader; I just kept saying yes to the next hard, interesting problem, and one day I looked up and that was the job. I’ve spent the years since building workflows, training writers, and learning that transparency beats almost any process.
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People do their best work when they know exactly where they stand.
After years leading in-house, I'm at a point where I'm open to what's next, whether that's stepping back into a full-time leadership role or lending a hand as a consultant on the right project. I'm just as comfortable running a team as I am working solo, and I've learned to genuinely enjoy both.
Riebeek West is home now, and it's given me a new favourite pastime: spotting and correctly naming whatever bird has just landed in the garden, usually right as the sky turns the kind of pink you wish you'd photographed faster. It's part of a bigger love of nature and the outdoors that living here has only deepened.
Other loves: my three furry children, and animals in general — a soft spot I've had since I was small. It's part of why I enjoy working with service providers who share that passion, lending words to the kind of businesses built around caring for animals. I also try to give back where I can, including supporting causes like WAR (Woman Against Rape). Oh, and Father John Misty is what's usually playing while all of this happens.
