As a woman in leadership, I lead by building rather than waiting for a seat to be offered to me. I’m the Founder and CEO of Hello Aida, a multilingual AI tutoring platform I built and took from concept to a funded, school-deployed company in under two years, in a technology field where women remain significantly underrepresented at the top. Alongside running Hello Aida, I sit on the boards of UHS, where I serve as Vice-Chair, and Ben Gurion University internationally, bringing a woman’s voice into governance conversations that shape education strategy well beyond my own company.

I’m also a wife and mother, and I don’t see that as separate from my leadership, it’s part of how I lead: with resilience, hyperfocus, and an insistence on building things that matter rather than things that are easy. As a woman leading in tech, education, and governance simultaneously, I hope I’m proof that leadership doesn’t require choosing one lane.

I lead Hello Aida, transforming education access for African learners, while serving as Vice-Chair of UHS and on Ben Gurion University’s board, proving women can lead across tech and community.

As a leader, my vision is to prove that women don’t need to choose between building ambitious companies and holding real governance influence, we can do both, and do them well. I want to keep scaling Hello Aida to reach the millions of South African learners still locked out of quality education, while continuing to bring a woman’s voice into the boardrooms, like UHS and Ben Gurion University, that shape our future.

For South Africa, I want to see more women at the table where decisions about technology, education, and the economy are actually made, not as a token seat, but because the pipeline of women building and leading has genuinely widened. If I can play a part in showing the next generation of South African girls that leadership in tech, business, and governance is theirs for the taking, that’s the legacy I want to leave, alongside a country where every learner, regardless of gender, language, or background, has a real shot at reaching their potential.

In the past few years, my leadership has been tested and shaped by having to make hard calls under real pressure, and choosing people over convenience every time. When Covid shut Artjamming down, I refused to let our staff and their families bear the cost of a crisis they didn’t create, and that decision to protect their livelihoods, even while our business was on hold, is still the leadership choice I’m proudest of.

That same people-first instinct shaped how I built Hello Aida. Rather than lead alone, I built out a full executive team, a COO, Head of Education, Head of Change Management and Training, and gave them real ownership, because I believe leadership means building people up, not just building a product. I’ve taken that same approach into governance, stepping into Vice-Chair of the UHS Board and a board seat at Ben Gurion University, where I try to bring practical, entrepreneurial thinking into rooms that can otherwise move slowly.

That leadership has been recognised externally too, through awards including Women in Tech Africa’s Art & Technology win, a Global Finalist placing in the Women in Tech International Awards, and now a 2026 Women in Tech Africa Best Startup finalist nod, as well as speaking engagements on stages like the Women in Tech Global Summit, the JSE, and the GEWAL Summit hosted by the Motsepe Foundation.

I hope what inspires others is that leadership showed up for me in the hardest moment, not the easiest one, and that protecting people, even at personal cost, built more trust and momentum than any strategy document could have.

Recreational activities

I love playing bridge and going to the gym