The Board
NVT’s Board of Directors consists of experienced senior executives, some of whom are well-known experts in conservation and the business world. The Board maintains high levels of governance and financial management and supports the Executive Director who works with the fulltime Project Managers, volunteers and interns on the various thematic programmes and projects. NVT also subscribes to the Inyathelo NPO Code of Governance.
Des Mahony
Chairperson
Des’ family is one of the new Valley families, having bought their place nearly twenty years ago. Des and Karin drove into the Valley while doing the Garden Route, saw a bushbuck in the road, found a place to rent got the estate agent’s number, and looked at all the places on the market (when they weren’t exploring the area), put an offer in for an empty stand and carried on towards the Cape. Their offer was rejected, and so they bit the bullet and offered more for a house near the church. This is the place where some of the family’s best memories were made. Besides his love for nature, Des has a background in law and finance and hopes to make a contribution to protecting Nature’s Valley for his and other families to appreciate for generations.
Cindy-Lee Cloete
Education
Cindy-Lee Cloete is the General Manager of the Schools and Youth Unit at WESSA (Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa), coordinating the Eco-Schools, Learning About Forests (LEAF), and Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE) programmes in South Africa. Cindy spent 7 and a half years at NVT building the foundations for our environmental education and community outreach programmes.
Cindy completed her MEd: Environmental Education from Rhodes University in South Africa in 2016. Shortly after joining the environmental sector, Cindy grew an immense passion for Environmental Education within rural communities and to date has 12 years of experience in this sphere. It is her commitment to bridging the gap between our natural surroundings and everyday lives that encouraged her to enter the Civil Society platform. Passionate about social and environmental justice, Cindy prides herself on engaging South African youth on a journey of self-emancipation through the work she does.
Tanya McKenzie
Education
Tanya McKenzie, was born in Johannesburg where her father, Ted Steyn, instilled a deep passion for the African wilderness in her. Ted was the founder of the Northern Tuli Game Reserve in Botswana, which has developed into one of the success stories of game reserves in Botswana. After studying archaeology at Stellenbosch and Pretoria Universities, she lived in The Northern Tuli Game Reserve with her late husband, Dr Andrew McKenzie who was a wildlife veterinarian. Tanya assisted Andrew with his research on Black-Backed Jackal to complete his doctorate and later in publishing “The Capture and Care Manual”.
Tanya founded the Children in the Wilderness programme in the Bobirwa district of Botswana and has been the coordinator since 2009. She is a trustee of the Tuli Conservation Trust and she has served on the executive committee of the Northern Tuli Game Reserve (Notugre) since 1995. Along with other Notugre Exco members, Tanya is a Botswana delegate on the conservation committee of the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area. She is a very keen mountain biker and has participated in the Tour de Tuli mountain bike event every year since 2008. Tanya and her husband, David Evans, have moved permanently to Nature’s Valley, where she hopes to continue playing a role in wildlife and environmental conservation.
Pippa Reyburn
Legal
I am a practising attorney living in Johannesburg. My practice area focuses on public law, including structures of government, governance of state-owned entities, constitutional and administrative law, public procurement and public finance. I strongly support the work of the NVT and hope to be able to apply some of my corporate governance and legal experience as a board member. I’ve been coming to Nature’s Valley on holiday since I was a child, and about thirteen years ago bought a house here jointly with my husband and my brother.