This year is a big one for Citizen Leader Lab, and we would like to share some exciting developments on the horizon.

Scaling Impact in Municipal Leadership

In 2024, we launched our first Leaders for Municipality pilot in partnership with Sphere Holdings and Old Mutual Foundation—bringing our proven leadership model to Municipal Managers. The response in the pilot programme has been overwhelmingly positive, with leaders gaining powerful insights and real-world solutions for their teams. A snippet of one leader’s feedback on the experience:

“It has been a joy and a privilege to participate in the Leaders for Municipality programme. Each of the elements of the programme catalyse important learning and work together in a wonderful way to take the leaders from knowledge, through insight and into practical application. One of the main reasons for this high-benefit experience is that the partnerships between business and municipal leaders ensure that each leader gets to really focus on their own growth edges, work challenges and practical real-world work projects.  Business partners have also gone into the working environment and assisted with team development, planning, innovation ideas and more.”

We look forward to working with more municipalities in 2025 and beyond!

Exciting New Programmes in Education

Education is at the heart of our work—it’s where we started, and it remains a key driver of social change. Over the years, we’ve grown from supporting school principals (Leaders for Education) to working with School Management Teams (SMT Leadership Programme). In 2025, we’re taking it even further—exploring leadership development for District Officials to drive systemic change at an even greater scale.

Along with expanding our support for education leaders, we are also actively pursuing collaboration as a key strategy to achieve sustainable and systemic change. To this end we are pleased to share that 2025 will see us collaborate with Khanyisa Inanda Community Projects (KICP) and the FEM Education Foundation to pilot a multi-year school literacy improvement programme that combines leadership development with foundation-phase teacher training.

Marking a significant milestone

And finally, 2025 marks a huge milestone for us — 15 years of leadership development impact! What started as a single person’s bold vision has grown into a thriving organisation of talented change-makers committed to building a better future for all.

Over the past 15 years we’ve been stretched, challenged, and inspired — and we’re grateful to keep making a difference in this beautiful country. None of this would have been possible without our incredible partners, supporters, and friends. Stay tuned for more on our 15-year celebration and thank you for your contribution to creating #TheFutureWeWant #TheFutureWeWant.