Our Team
About Karabo
Karabo has intentionally chosen a career path that combines the logistical needs of organisations with an ambition to assist and support others in their life journeys.
Karabo joined the Relativ team in 2020, expanding our capabilities through her valuable combination of organisational skills and multi- media experience.
Marsé van der Merwe
About Marsé
She leverages her experience in education and languages with her unique expertise in accounting and mathematics.
Marsé joined the Relativ team in 2020, bringing her multi-dimensional mind and personality to strengthen our team.
About Edith
Edith is a curious scientist, specializing in waste water remediation and waste to energy. Edith has continued to build her experience across a range of areas to enable her to pursue her passion, through innovation and hard work.
Her expertise ranges from chemical engineering and biotechnology, to seeking an understanding of how these things apply in the ‘real world’ and complementing her academic pursuits with roles in research and data analytics.
Edith joined the Relativ team in 2020, strengthening our team with her knowledge of the environmental ecosystems.
About Colin
His client engagements include executive level negotiation and project completion with enterprises, SMEs, government and civil society organisations. He has played a role in key stages of the tech business lifecycle from startup through scaling growth in the finance, property, marketing and media sectors. Colin has focussed his career on serving organisations with one common feature – clear intent to create positive social and/or environmental impact.
He has contributed to a variety of industry and media reviews and presented at conferences across the world on investment, analytics, fundraising, and strategic communications and the perspectives they bring to business and social systems.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa, a member of the South African Institute of Fundraisers, and serves on the boards of a number of for-purpose organisations.
Gabrielle Habberton
About Gabrielle
Gabrielle completed her formal education, which culminated in a Master of Philosophy in Development Studies, at the University of Cape Town. Gabrielle has since played leading roles in a number of pioneering organisations and projects primarily operating in Southern Africa.
Gabrielle’s work has included areas such as research and analysis; government policy co-creation and design; development of impact management and measurement processes and practices (from theory of change to impact reporting and learning); impact assessment and due diligence of social and impact investments (including a number of evaluations of Jobs Fund investments); deployment and management of impact capital; strategic and product development and planning; and guest lecturing on Masters and Executive education courses.
About Damon
Damon is a purpose-driven social entrepreneur with an interest in creating positive change. He is resourceful, passionate, and has the ability to speak to a diverse audience through original content, storytelling, and experiences.
Gabrielle Habberton
About Gabrielle
Gabrielle completed her formal education, which culminated in a Master of Philosophy in Development Studies, at the University of Cape Town. Gabrielle has since played leading roles in a number of pioneering organisations and projects primarily operating in Southern Africa.
Gabrielle’s work has included areas such as research and analysis; government policy co-creation and design; development of impact management and measurement processes and practices (from theory of change to impact reporting and learning); impact assessment and due diligence of social and impact investments (including a number of evaluations of Jobs Fund investments); deployment and management of impact capital; strategic and product development and planning; and guest lecturing on Masters and Executive education courses.
About Colin
His client engagements include executive level negotiation and project completion with enterprises, SMEs, government and civil society organisations. He has played a role in key stages of the tech business lifecycle from startup through scaling growth in the finance, property, marketing and media sectors. Colin has focussed his career on serving organisations with one common feature – clear intent to create positive social and/or environmental impact.
He has contributed to a variety of industry and media reviews and presented at conferences across the world on investment, analytics, fundraising, and strategic communications and the perspectives they bring to business and social systems.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa, a member of the South African Institute of Fundraisers, and serves on the boards of a number of for-purpose organisations.
About Damon
Damon is a purpose-driven social entrepreneur with an interest in creating positive change. He is resourceful, passionate, and has the ability to speak to a diverse audience through original content, storytelling, and experiences.
Advisors and Associates
Melanie Jackson
Fundraising and Communications Specialist
About Melanie
Her experience has ranged from philanthropic corporate and trust fundraising, to the more challenging individual giving arena, working in several aspects of individual fundraising. She has worked with traditional direct mail programmes, and more recently with face-to-face fundraising teams.
Through numerous client engagements Melanie spends much of her time guiding organisations in their development strategy and measuring the impact of their interventions. She also is a successful trainer and mentor.
Melanie is also a trustee of Positive Vibes, a Namibia-registered non-profit organisation and a council member of Northlink College
Impact Investing
Specialist
About Stephen
He is passionate about using business to transform society by utilizing private and public finance through impact investing. He also completed the Oxford University impact measurement and management programme in 2018.
Currently Stephen is Senior Analyst at Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Prior, he was a lecturer at Stellenbosch University in the Business Management department and provides impact strategy, measurement and management consultation services. Some of the entities he’s worked with include: WWF-SA, Ukubavimba, SocioNovus, and Adaquo
Specialist
About Sophie
As Head of Strategic Communications at GreaterGood SA and GreaterCapital, Sophie lead the Trust’s advocacy and dialogue work and headed up its NGO Consulting Services providing strategic communications and social investment advice.
Sophie currently heads the Strategic Communications and Business Development function for NACOSA – a national civil society network of organisations and principal recipient of the Global Fund
Marcel Henry
About Marcel
In addition, he has past teaching experience at the Architectural Department, University of Kwazulu-Natal (UKZN) and currently the University of Cape Town (UCT) Department of Landscape Architecture and Geomatics.
He is the founding member of Urban Architects CC, Urban Landscape Studio and recently HenryDesign Architecture + Landscape.
About Sydney
Sydney has often worked in environments where resources are constrained, such as when she lead the roll out of a UK-wide youth work intervention and supported just under 100 Youth Organisations’ to demonstrate and improve the quality of their work. As a result, she is well versed in applying creativity and innovation together with a structured and methodological approach which optimises the evaluation process. She currently works with Firdale Consulting and 1000 Women Trust, as a qualitative evaluation and fundraising consultant.
About Sarah
She studied fundraising management and international development, and has been involved with many organizations, both local and international, in Canada and across Southern and Eastern Africa. Sarah has has worked with funders from all over the world, and has experience in direct marketing, peer to peer fundraising, major gift solicitation, grant writing, event planning, corporate partnerships, and legacy giving.
In her current role Sarah aligns the mission and grows the impact between a for-profit company and a non-profit organization while coaching and supporting various teams and departments on donor relations and community engagement.
Governance Specialist
About Marcus
He has a BA in Human Movement Studies and Psychology from the University of the Western Cape and qualifications in Educational Design Programming, Integrated Solid Waste Management Planning through the USA Environmental Protection Agency, Planning and Management of Special Events, Management Programme for NPOs, Project Planning, Corporate Social Investment Programmes, Health and Safety and Labour Relations amongst others.
He was held a number of senior roles over his 20 years of professional experience including Founding Chairman of Mthunzi, COO for Youth For Christ South Africa. He has also served as Project Lead for the UNHCR Social Cohesion Project in SA. As Consultant to the South African Council of Churches (SACC), Marcus provided protocol and logistical support for the 2013 State funeral of former President Nelson Mandela.He has also served as Advisor to the Chairman of the South Africa Dutch Chamber of Commerce and has extensive interaction as a Relationship Manager for various enterprises in liaising with all three tiers of Government, Political Parties, Private Sector and Civil Society.
Directors
Gabrielle Habberton
Executive Director
About Gabrielle
Gabrielle completed her formal education, which culminated in a Master of Philosophy in Development Studies, at the University of Cape Town. Gabrielle has since played leading roles in a number of pioneering organisations and projects primarily operating in Southern Africa.
Gabrielle’s work has included areas such as research and analysis; government policy co-creation and design; development of impact management and measurement processes and practices (from theory of change to impact reporting and learning); impact assessment and due diligence of social and impact investments (including a number of evaluations of Jobs Fund investments); deployment and management of impact capital; strategic and product development and planning; and guest lecturing on Masters and Executive education courses.
Executive Director
About Colin
His client engagements include executive level negotiation and project completion with enterprises, SMEs, government and civil society organisations. He has played a role in key stages of the tech business lifecycle from startup through scaling growth in the finance, property, marketing and media sectors. Colin has focussed his career on serving organisations with one common feature – clear intent to create positive social and/or environmental impact.
He has contributed to a variety of industry and media reviews and presented at conferences across the world on investment, analytics, fundraising, and strategic communications and the perspectives they bring to business and social systems.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa, a member of the South African Institute of Fundraisers, and serves on the boards of a number of for-purpose organisations.
Executive Director
About Damon
Damon is a purpose-driven social entrepreneur with an interest in creating positive change. He is resourceful, passionate, and has the ability to speak to a diverse audience through original content, storytelling, and experiences.
Non-Executive Director
About Therese
After completing her Masters degree in Research Consulting at Unisa, Therese started her career in market research at one of South Africa’s leading research houses. Her work included the design of data gathering instruments, quantitative and qualitative data analysis and project management for a vast amount of research projects in different industries.
She entered the financial services market in 2004 and her field of expertise includes conducting primary & secondary research, evaluating new trends and market adjustments to make recommendations for strategy, developing market segmentation models and competitive analysis and benchmarking in terms of products, marketing activities, distribution forces and strategies.
She has further experience in customer relationship & loyalty management, product development, understanding market dynamics and identifying new marketing opportunities.
Her registration with professional memberships/bodies include: registration as Research Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA); Investment Analyst Society (IASSA); South African Market Research Association (SAMRA); PsySA; Black Management Forum and Honorary Ranger of South African National Parks (SANParks).
Non-Executive Director
About Chris
Computational thinking is a powerful problem solving strategy which has the power to unlock the door to gritty problem solvers who will impact the future by addressing world problems.
Chris believes in looking at a problem and identifying a solution that can be implemented at its grass-root level. This is why he focused on creating an educational strategy that starts at the earliest level of schooling. He spent time researching, developing and sourcing tools that will supplement the teaching of computational thinking across all year levels which culminated in the establishment of a hands-on research project call ‘incode’ in 2017.
The incode project is designed to bring computational thinking to children’s foundational learning and to develop a clear path of progressive development throughout their schooling career through professional development for teachers and outsourced after-school programmes.
Outside of education, Chris has developed a number of full-stack solutions to address specific needs within schools and businesses. He enjoys creating computational solutions for everyday problems by combining his expertise in software development and database architecture.
Partners and Memberships
