Dr Lulu Gwagwa

 Dr Lulu Gwagwa is a multifaceted woman : an accomplished development planner; academic; business leader; executive coach; and philanthropist. Lulu’s career has seen her work in the public, private, NGO and academic sectors. Her roles have always included initiating, leading and driving transformation: be it supporting communities in townships and squatter settlements with their housing and related struggles ; being a Deputy Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Local Government Transformation; or serving on the 12-member Commission for the Delineation and Demarcation of Provincial Boundaries, which decided the country’s current provincial boundaries . Aside from authoring policy documents, Dr Gwagwa has also published in the fields of gender, housing, and development planning . Lulu has served as a non-executive director on several SOEs, and JSE listed companies . She is the current Chairman of Barloworld . She was a finalist in the 2001 Nedbank Business Woman of the Year awards. In 2018 she was named one of the Marie-Claire Audi Future Shapers. She is a fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative ; a keen reader of African women writers; and an aspiring photographer. It is her passion for the empowerment of women that has driven her academic research and her philanthropic work.