Tanya Stroh is a creative dreamer, thinker, maker, and doer who works at the intersection of design, creative industries, and innovation. She founded Turipamwe in 2011 and has since scaled it to Namibia's foremost design agencies.
Tanya is responsible for creative leadership, strategic partnerships and sprint facilitation. Beyond that, she is an awarded multidisciplinary designer and educator with 10+ years of experience in varying design disciplines.
Tanya holds a BA Honours in Strategic Brand Communication, specialising in visual communication and multimedia.
She completed an executive course in Design Thinking in Practice at the Hasso Platner School of Design Thinking in Afrika* at the University of Cape Town. Tanya advocates for design as an agent for change in business and communities.
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Sem Mandela Uutoni is an international civil servant, development practitioner and executive. Before joining the WFP,
he worked as the Chief Executive Officer of the One Economy Foundation and a deputy director in the Office of the First Lady. His work experience further includes working as the national development advisor focused on UN-Namibia relations in the Office of the President stationed at the National Planning Commission, and working on regional integration in the Office of the Chairperson at the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Sem also co-founded the African Pathfinder Leaders Initiative (APLI) in 2018, which builds bridges of opportunity by equipping youth with skills, resources and networks to achieve personal goals and contribute to societal development.
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Heike Winschiers-Theophilus is a Professor in Software Engineering at the Namibia University of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on the design of digital technologies with indigenous and marginalised communities as a means to provide alternative learning ecologies for communities and students; foster socio-economic agency of marginalised; enrich established research paradigms with indigenous and marginal knowledge, and generate inclusive tech innovations. She established long-term collaborations beyond individual projects with different communities and has received multiple national and international grants and awards.
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Renowned in the digital landscape, Brad is a seasoned Digital Marketer with over 7 years of expertise. In 2022, he transitioned to drive the strategic vision for the Digital Acceleration team at Ohlthaver & List, where he has been trailblazing transformation projects with a human-centred lens. Always willing to “fit out”, he believes in the convergence of people and technology and epitomises an unwavering commitment to innovative solutions that redefine norms. Brad’s project portfolio reflects an innovative spirit and underscores the tangible impact of design thinking in today's uncertain business world. As a Future of the Internet ambassador,  he established a Web3 Strategic advisory to develop pioneering strategies at the intersection of data sovereignty and the immersive web.
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Auri researches and designs initiatives that make startups thrive in Sub-Saharan Africa. She enables entrepreneurship as a Consultant and Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University London Institute for Design Innovation.
Auri has been a design thinking practitioner since 2016, mainly using the methodology in support programs for early-stage startup entrepreneurship. She pairs her practical work experience with the theoretical understanding of design thinking in her Doctoral studies, which include experimentation of the localising of Lean Service Creation to Namibia in partnership with Futurice and Future Females. Auri has lived in Namibia for over four years and considers it her second home. She gets excited by remarkable storytelling, the opportunities brought on by technology and large-scale societal phenomena.
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