In her spare time, Kyra is also a CREW member and a committee member of the Thicket Forum. Her interests are in landscape ecology, land cover change, land degradation, social-ecological systems and knowledge management. She has served in her current role with the UNDP since 2019. Prior to this, she worked in two roles with the Rhodes Restoration Research Group as a GIS and Knowledge Manager for the Tsitsa Project, and as a researcher on thicket-related work. In her role, she co-authored the Subtropical Thicket Research and Praxis Strategy and in earlier years worked mapping illegal deforestation and conducted carbon and biodiversity baselines for a long-term thicket monitoring project. Kyra has also worked as an independent consultant, contributing to specialist botanical assessments of EIAs for citrus and wind farms in the Eastern Cape.

She is well travelled, and spent time exploring Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, working for a river expedition tour group. Here her interest in the natural world and people’s relationship with their environment was piqued.  

Murray is the co-owner of Part Time FD and DoughGetters Accounting. He provides part-time financial director services and uses his strategic abilities and love of technology to design and implement financial systems and business strategies for clients, a role he has undertaken since 2011.

Prior to this, he served as Financial Director of Strategic Insurance Systems, an insurance underwriter, and before that he was Group Financial Director of the X-PLOR Group, a subsidiary of the Dimension Data Group, where he was based in the United Kingdom. X-PLOR provided network testing and revenue assurance solutions to clients such as O2, Orange, Vodacom and MTN.

Between the mid 1990s and 2000, he represented Country Escapes Premium Leisure in South Africa as Group Financial Manager, and moving to London in 1999, he joined Delta UK Land Developments PLC as Director of Finance.

Murray earned the leadership position of Bombardier in the Anti-Aircraft Corp during his national service. He is also a member of MENSA.

He brings a wealth of financial and general business experience to the BotSoc team.

Sabelo completed his Bachelor of Technology, Nature Conservation in 2011 from the Nelson Mandela University. He is also currently completing a Conservation MBA from the African Leadership University in Rwanda.

Aside from running the Contour Enviro Group, Sabelo serves as a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), one of the commissions of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and serves as deputy vice-chair under the regional leadership of the East and Southern Africa Region. He also provides a leadership role on the capacity development group steering committee of the commission and has worked as the regional leader for East and Southern Africa, developing young professionals under the WCPA.

Sabelo is trained as an Incident Commander (IC) Type 3 in fire management, and is an experienced trainer and CATHSSETA-registered assessor. He is also the winner of the Tholoana Award of the SAB Foundation Tholoana Enterprise Programme – which rewarded his commitment to his business.

Michele lived in the Kruger National Park for 17 years. During this time she worked for SANParks Scientific Services as the science communication manager. She then joined the SANParks Conservation Management team as manager of the Skukuza Indigenous Nursery for 10 years. This work included research and propagation of endangered plant species such as the Pepperbark (Warburgia salutaris) and critically endangered Swazi Lily (Adenium multiflorum) and various cycad species. The work in the nursery included community outreach programmes, school greening projects, Working for Water projects, botanical research projects and field work to collect plant material for research and propagation in the nursery. This also allowed her to work with a number of key partners, such as the  SANBI, Agricultural Research Council (ARC), SAPPI, local and international universities, local stakeholders and community organisations.                                                                                                                 

Michele spent two years in Botswana based in Maun working with the Great Plains Conservation as their environmental officer for their concessions and lodges in the Okavango Delta and Zimbabwe. Through this role, she could assist in ensuring environmental compliance and sustainability in all sectors of the company’s operations and future developments including community outreach work and environmental audits.

She is also working at Twinstreams Indigenous Nursery and the new Eco Estate under development – Salta – in Umhloti as the botanist assisting in alien plant removal and coastal dune forest rehabilitation. Michele is committed to plant conservation and rehabilitation of habitats and degraded landscapes through innovative mechanisms that recognize the role of communities in all aspects of ecosystem services restoration.

Charles started his career at the Botanical Research Institute in Pretoria in 1972 until 1982, during which time he spent three years as the South African Liaison Botanist in London at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. He returned briefly to South Africa for two years but then went back to London to assume a new post at Kew Gardens, serving as the Krukoff Botanist for Neotropical Legume Research. After a two-year stint he returned to his alma mater at the University of Natal as Associate Professor at the Department of Botany, but once again headed to Kew Gardens as research co-ordinator in NE Brazil, and later as Deputy Director and Director of Science and Horticulture at Kew until 1996.

He then became the Founding Director and CEO of the National Botanic Garden of Wales, a £50-million Landmark Millennium project. The garden opened in 2000 – and through Charles’s leadership, it introduced sustainable principles such as generating its own energy, organic farming, and effluent purification. He worked under the principle that ‘Gardens are great places to grow people’. He says, “My approach was to implement a cradle-to-cradle approach where a parent would bring their child to the garden and they in turn would bring their own child. The time it takes for cultural change to take place”.

After leaving the garden Charles ran a business consultancy until 2007 when he became a Mellon Foundation mentor and then later an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cape Town. This has allowed him to travel regularly to his home country.

Charles has had a life-long service as a board member or Trustee of many social enterprises, and charitable and scientific trusts in the UK and South Africa, including the European Botanic Gardens Consortium, Species Survival Commission of IUCN, European Botanic Gardens Consortium; Tropical Forest Resource Group and currently as Research Advisor to the Overberg Renosterveld Conservation Trust.