Game Changers - Inclusive Innovation With Tashmia Ismail & Colin Iles

Tashmia Ismail is one of South Africa’s most impressive leaders. Her career in business, government and academia has centred around developing innovation systems that benefit individuals, companies and even countries. She is perhaps most well known for taking on the challenge, laid down by President Cyril Ramaphosa and the CEO Initiative, to create thousands of new job opportunities for youths in South Africa. YES, The Youth Employment Service she started, certainly delivered on the promise as during her tenure they were able to create some 65,000 jobs in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country.  And her successors have continued the good work with almost 100K young adults now having been placed in work.

Tashmia left YES in 2021 and is currently working with the well-known global NGO Mitacs to accelerate industry innovation in Canada.

In this session on inclusive innovation, Colin and Tashmia will discuss what South Africa can do to fuel a new generation of entrepreneurs. And as the conversation is being held during women’s month, they will give special focus to exploring what still needs to be done to truly empower women within the workplace and #breakthebias once and for all! We hope you can join.