Climate 360 | 18-19 November, 2021

Vusi Thembekwayo is an acclaimed business leader and global speaker. He is the CEO of a boutique investment and advisory firm.

Vusi has been featured in the likes of Entrepreneur magazine, Forbes, and Inc500. He has a large social media presence.

Emiley Vollmer is an entrepreneur and a banker by profession, with an amazing life story to share. She will speak about her passion: the circular economy and job creation.

Her business assists with access to finance in order to get start-ups off the ground.

She believes in using and exchanging money that strengthens communities and benefits local economies.

Khanyi Mlambo-Chaba is a passionate advocate for driving shared value between business and society.

In her distinguished career, she has championed business to purposefully and ethically pursue sustainable growth and investment that has a meaningful impact on customers, society and the environment, and delivers on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

She coaches, advises, writes, speaks and mentors on responsible business, impact investing, personal leadership and shared value.

Crispian Olver is the executive director of the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), responsible for running the Secretariat of the PCC and its various policy and research programmes. He has served in the South African government in various capacities, including as director general of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (1999-2005), in which position he crafted much of the country’s climate policy and environmental legislation, as well as leading South Africa’s hosting of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002).

He has subsequently worked as a policy expert and author on environmental sustainability and local government issues. This has taken him up close to the mechanics by which regimes are governed and the way in which good governance can be eroded, which has given him ample material for writing up his experiences. His first book, titled How to Steal a City (2017), documented patronage-based systems in Nelson Mandela Bay and how the metro was captured by factional interests. His subsequent book, A House Divided, published in October 2019, documented the nature of the relationship between the City of Cape Town and landed property interests, and how this fuelled a factional split in the Democratic Alliance.

Crispian is a medical doctor by training and holds BSc (Med) (1983), Psychology Honours (1984) and MBChB (1988) degrees from the University of Cape Town. He is completing a PhD through the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, and is a research fellow at the Public Affairs Research Institute.

As the executive director of the Presidential Climate Commission in South Africa, Crispian leads the detailed planning of South Africa’s climate transition and engagement between social partners on a just transition.

Anne Lammila is the Ambassador of Finland to South Africa and began her term of office in November 2020. She is also the non-resident Ambassador of Finland to Botswana, Lesotho and Mauritius.

Lammila is an experienced diplomat whose previous ambassadorial postings were: Consul General of Finland to Saint Petersburg (2017-20), Ambassador-at-Large for Gender Equality in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (2015-17), Ambassador of Finland to Mexico, Central America, Cuba and Haiti (2011-15).

Before this Lammila worked in senior diplomatic posts in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

Raul de Luzenberger is the Deputy Head of Delegation, at the European Union Delegation to South Africa. He moved to South Africa in 2017. Before that he held senior diplomatic posts in Belgium, Morocco and Armenia. He has also taught economics at the University of Oriental Studies in Naples, Italy.