Peter van Kets is one of South Africa’s top adventurers and international conference speakers and has just returned from an unsupported race across Antarctica to the South Pole to commemorate Scott and Amundsens race 100 years ago.

As part of a two man South African team with Braam Malherbe they made South African history becoming the first Africans to ever race to the pole. His story is one of survival, courage, perseverance, passion, loneliness, tenacity, amazing team work and the will to win. In his new talk “Cold Sweat – Impossible is Nothing” he takes his lessons learned from the expedition and relates them to the business environment. It is totally inspirational!

In 2008 Peter made his name known in the world of extreme adventure by winning the unsupported Woodvale Trans-Atlantic Rowing Race together with friend Bill Godfrey.

In  2010 Peter spent  76 days alone in a 7 meter rowing boat crossing the Atlantic. His epic 5438 Km unsupported row across the Atlantic was a first for any African. With this he was awarded the S.A. OutThere Adventurer of the Year 2011.

Peter writes an inspirational column for the Leadership Magazines – Leadership in Sport. He also writes an inspirational column for the business magazine “Blue Chip”.

Themi Stergianos has owned and operated over 8 businesses in various industries since his early twenties.  He has a good franchising background in Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Real Estate franchise and has owned two Online Social Networking websites.

He is ranked 24th on the Top 100 list amongst 1000 coaches in the world and is a Top ranked South African coach who is also 2nd ranked in Europe, middle East and Africa. He has also built up a significant property investment portfolio.  Themi has been involved in the Fresh Produce industry with exposure to the Export and Import of Perishable Goods.  

He studied an Entrepreneurial MBA while running his businesses to ground practical experience. What makes Themi unique is his hands on experience in building and selling businesses.

Itumeleng Mahabane has worked in media and communication for more than 16 years. He is currently a partner at Brunswick where he has advised a number of major South African corporations and institutions, has worked on major Merger & Acquisition transactions, listings, corporate defense projects and corporate positioning mandates.  

Before joining Brunswick he was partner at a public affairs and communication firm in Johannesburg where he provided end-to-end communication advice to a number of state owned enterprises, including Transnet, South African Airways and Eskom.  Itumeleng also spent two years working as a communication consultant for the City of Johannesburg and was also managing editor of the Financial Mail with nine years experience as a journalist. 

He is a multiple award winning journalist, including the Sanlam financial journalist of the year, has written for the Mail and Guardian, the Sunday Times, Business Day and the Financial Mail and has contributed to a number of books including a Human Science Research Council book on black economic empowerment.

It has been said that people born blind grow and mature with an intellect absolutely void of the  pre-conceptions or judgments of those with sight. Their minds become formidable think tanks… platforms from which they develop razor sharp insights into life’s everyday problems & challenges.

Sibusiso Vilane is the first black person to summit the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, which he has done twice & on two different routes. He has also summitted Mt. Kilimanjaro & became a member of the Seven Summits Club by summitting Mt. Delani in 2008 (only 6 South Africans out of 198). He was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga by Thabo Mbeki and is an inspiration to all South Africans. In 2008 Sibu became the first South African to walk to the South Pole completely unassisted.

Come hear more about his expeditions but also how you can apply his experiences and principles to your life and your business

SPEAKER : Sheryl Ozinsky has been involved in making things happen in Cape Town for over 20 years.  She headed up Cape Town Tourism for many years and  helped to establish the City as one of the worlds favourite tourism destinations. Sheryl, as a qualified marine biologist,  has been involved in establishing the Two Oceans Aquarium and the Whale Well at Iziko Museums of Cape Town. She was part of the management team that established Robben Island as a heritage site for visitors and more recently, was involved in Greening 2010 an initiative that helped to reduce the impact of the 2010 Soccer World Cup™ on the environment, with particular focus on transport, water, energy and waste. Sheryl was involved in the establishment of the Green Point Park, a magnificent new community facility in the heart of our city.  Of late, Sheryl has been assisting the City of Cape Town with their Electricity Savings and Climate Smart Campaigns.

 **COP17 - the 17th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on climate Change

TOPIC: The New Consumer Protection Act and how the new consumer legislation will impact business and the consumer.  

  SPEAKER: Ms Mamodupi Mohlala is the Commissioner for the National Consumer Commission since November 2010. She was previously Director General at Department of Communications and also Pension Funds Adjudicator and Councilor at ICASA. She is an admitted attorney and holds a masters degree in law, an MBA and numerous other qualifications.

Whilst she was the Pension Funds Adjudicator, she made various ground breaking determinations that had the impact of advancing the rights of women in relation to their entitlement to their deceased spouses’ benefits.

Ms Mohlala has served on a number of boards and has chaired several committees.

Topic:  How Engen Petroleum has embraced the Dinokeng Scenarios transformation initiative

Speaker:  Dave Wright, Director of Corporate Planning Engen Petroleum Ltd, previously held other General Manager/Director positions in Engen.  He trained as a chemical engineer and was an academic and researcher at the University of Natal in Durban. He worked for Karbochem running their Process Development group from Sasolburg.  He then joined Engen where he became the Technical Manager before moving into strategy development.