Ann Lamont

CEO, Convene Venture Philanthropy

Ann Lamont is passionate about supporting individuals, organisations, and society to find solutions to the complex challenges of our times, thus enabling a more abundant future. Her focus is on developing conscious future facing leadership and systems innovation.

Ann studied law at the University of Witwatersrand and commenced her career in the business sector. She has experience in all aspects of business, having been an investment banker, management consultant and an entrepreneur. She worked as an Executive Director at EY where her responsibilities lay in developing the Cape-based People Advisory Service Practise in South Africa. She focused on organisational development, purpose led transformational work, leadership development for a digital future, innovation, and culture change primarily in the Health and Financial Services Sector.

Ann has spent a significant part of her career as a social entrepreneur, working in the development sector both in South Africa and other countries in Africa. She was the Executive Director of the Learning Channel and co-founded Mindset Network which uses multimedia technology to deliver educational content to 15 countries in Africa. Mindset reached directly into thousands of schools and clinics, receiving the prestigious International Development Gateway Award, as well as the South African Department of Science and Technology Health Innovation Award.

She then founded Convene, an organisation focused on multi-stakeholder collaboration to drive systemic change in the Children and Education Sectors in South Africa. Within Convene she designed, led, implemented, and ensured the sustainability of the LINC , Kago Ya Bana and Bridge projects. LINC is a national collaboration between government, civil society and business, focused on addressing the systemic challenges around orphaned and vulnerable children in South Africa. For her work at LINC, Ann was a laureate of the McNulty foundation. LINC went on to be nominated for various prizes. Kago Ya Bana is focused on ensuring the delivery of children’s rights at a municipal level, with a focus on early childhood development and has gone on to create a model for early childhood development which is being rolled out nationally. Bridge is focused on connecting innovators who were already making impact in education, into multi-stakeholder communities of practise to scale impact and ensure knowledge sharing. Ann together with Synergos convened and facilitated a learning process on multistakeholder innovation laboratories form around the globe. On leaving Convene, Ann worked as Interim Executive Director of Greenpeace Africa and served on the Board of Greenpeace Africa for many years.

Ann is currently working with partners on building The Field: a global transformational learning organisation to equip individual leaders, organisations and society with the necessary tools, skills and capabilities to make more conscious future facing choices. As part of her work with the Field, she serves as Interim Executive Director of the Africa Leadership Initiative. Ann collaborates extensively with the Presencing Institute and is an experienced facilitator of Theory U, Deep Democracy and various dialogic approaches; design led thinking and innovation laboratories as well as leadership development.

She is a Synergos Senior Fellow and Aspen Global Leadership Network Fellow; Facilitates learning on multi stakeholder collaboration for University of Stellenbosch- Executive Development and is in the process of working with the McNulty Foundation to develop various leading with purpose, social innovation case studies and a book on leading with purpose.