After 11 years with The Noakes Foundation, it’s both humbling and emotional to pause and reflect on a journey that has shaped not only my career but my purpose. What began as stepping into the unknown quickly became a mission far greater than any one individual, a shared vision to challenge the status quo and change lives through better health.

From the earliest days of building the foundation to co-founding Eat Better South Africa and evolving into my role in advocacy and strategy, this path has been filled with growth, courage, and deep meaning. As I step into my next chapter, I do so with immense gratitude for the people, the lessons, and the impact we’ve created together.

 

Meeting Prof Noakes and seeing the potential our work could have, and building our vision of change together, brick by brick, over the years. In my first week or so in my new role at the foundation, finding my feet very slowly, we hosted the launch of Cereal Killers 2. Sami Inkinen was in town at the exciting launch at the Sports Science Institute. We had a huge audience and a full house, and the media were there. The professor introduced me as the new Foundation Manager and then asked me to speak about my vision impromptu. I slunk into my seat for a millisecond, Gideon, next to me, gave me a nudge, and then got up and did it. My first lesson about this journey that I have tried to impart on my team over the years: as much as we may want to, there was to be no hiding. No staying small. No option but to step up and strongly into the mission ahead!

• Setbacks? Many.
• Learning curves? Many are still ongoing.
• Courage required: 100%.

We did not fully know it at the time, but we were an army that was heading into an unexpected and carefully curated battlefield over decades.

 

Project Ground Zero, later known as Eat Better South Africa! This is the project I am most proud of and believe has the potential to have the biggest impact on our country. I was honoured when it broke away into an independent non-profit, to have chaired its passionate and amazing new board for a few years. Its shrunk in funding over the pandemic like so many non-profit projects and presented a huge challenge to get the funding it so well deserves, but it’s still alive and going strong thanks to those that have seen its huge potential and come back offering it new fresh funding that is now seeing it grow from strength to strength that cannot fail because of the simplest of truths: its effect and evidence speaks for itself. So it’s now well on its way into a stronger presence in state clinics and is finally growing in the direction it needs to. Its work has an impact and has a lot to teach the nutritional world, far beyond South Africa’s borders, about supporting underserved communities in lifestyle medicine on a budget. My huge respect and credit here goes to the other two minds that sat with me in my first week at the foundation and brought this project to life: Euodia Samson and Dr. Hassina Kajee.

 

 

My Standing ovation at the first Low Carb USA summit, just a few months later, when I presented our first vision of EBSA, then still called Project Ground Zero, in a talk called: How to save a country on USD6,000. Then the many stages and places yet to come! Some highlights being:

• Prof’s extended standing ovation at the Public Health Collaboration (PHC) in 2017, which felt like a landmark moment. Talking on a panel about the future of healthcare at the PHC last year, already planning our group’s stand at its 10-year anniversary this year in May!
• Being a guest at the CrossFit Games and the first CrossFit Health Summit, followed by a visit to Virta Health in its very early days, to visit the team in San Francisco
• Food for thought in Switzerland hosted by Swiss Re: seeing the global impact, growth, and ripple effect of our collective work felt like a triumphant celebration.
• Presenting the work of TNF at the opening of the Keto Live Sports Summit last year after missing my first invite to give a lecture there and being quarantined in a hotel room with COVID a few years earlier.
• Invited to present about diabetes and our solutions to it to a group of high-level governmental friends by our first lady at the time, Madame Zuma
• Being invited by our governmental departments to share our work, finally, after years of knocking, thanks to Minister Fritz and Dr. Keith Cloete for their vision and open-mindedness

 

HPCSA Trial and the double win for Prof Noakes and our global community: the science being finally settled, so we could all get to work with what we knew was needed! A tipping point for us all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were not at all alone: Nutrition Network and its global community of practitioners were born almost overnight and have never stopped. To the extent that the board ‘seconded’ Candice and me to sort out and focus on its unexpected early success and growth. Shortly after that, Candice moved there full-time and, with the board’s support over the past eight years, moved most of my time into its leadership and growth. What it was created for was to fund the important work at TNF and EBSA through its placement as a social enterprise. It’s doing its job and growing in ways we did not expect or hope. My focus now, stepping fully away from the operational team of the foundation, is to make sure this continues in the right ways as our global community grows and the world seems to be catching up with the science. As we have seen from the MAHA movement in the USA this year, and the final arrival of a long-awaited update to the antiquated previous dietary guidelines. System change is coming, and we have a big role in this to come as a group, of course, supported by the..

 

Research and its impact at TNF over the years, which has been a highlight for me as a closet research and data geek:

Key highlights: UCT Study and funding five researchers over four years; Georgina arriving as an intern and growing into a heavyweight postdoc researcher and fellow of TNF; breakfast study, which led to the Macadamia study, which led to many more to come into the future

 

 

 

 

 

World Nutrition Summit: three successful remote summits, having booked our largest conference venue to have the first live summit in 2020, but it has been endlessly delayed due to the pandemic. Then NN’s great decision to pass the baton of this amazing summit onto TNF, who are the logical flag flyers of this key African-originated summit. Finally, in real life last year, we all came together in a celebration that truly embodied our Ubuntu spirits and vision. Many more to come as this grows in impact and the team takes it to new levels, and already counting down till we celebrate again in Cape Town this October: join us and me!

 

 

 

 

 

The extraordinary and exceptional humans on our various teams: finding the right people to take our mission far and wide as we grew and having the great honour of watching them grapple, grow, and flourish in their careers and also lives over the past 11 years. Most have stayed the course, beating the stats in terms of staff retention. From our first employee, Candice Egnos, whose first job it was, and who is now in a leadership role at Nutrition Network. Tamzyn Murphy, who has grown with us all from day one as a researcher, now thrives as the in-house Dietitian and Head of Content at NN. Later, Jana Retief, who is now at the helm of the foundation and growing it and its exceptional team with courage and passion. Aside from the core team that are now leaders I do want to mention the many others that have dropped in and been a small but important part of our journey through many avenues: generous donations, generous contributions of time and effort to our cause, valued insights into the work we do and how its impact can be raised, pro bono work or reduced rates in the years when funding was challenging. It’s no small feat establishing and growing a not-for-profit into success because it relies heavily on generosity, trust, passion, and asking for help along the way. So much of which has been generously given by so many, which leads to:

 

 

 

The local and global community that has become family with a shared cause far greater than ourselves and the unique communities that we work in, has the big work of system change on a community level to face. School meals, schools, guidelines, local food systems and access to food, faith-based eating biases, big food and pharma dominance. The work is Huge and will take everyone changing what has come our way against health in the past fifty years to give the next generations a better, fair shot at health than we have had.

 

 

 

Our board members have tirelessly offered their knowledge, brains, time, and expertise to the work we do to keep it compliant, ethical, and sustainable. It’s not an easy edge, and this last point ties into this:

 

 

 

 

 

Prof Noakes and the Noakes family for quietly holding an ambitious yet also calm, positive, open space for this extraordinary foundation to grow and evolve into what it’s become today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last year when we announced that I was stepping away as COO and working in a strategic capacity, I had a frenzy of anxiety and emotion: I want to re-assure you that I am still here fighting the good fight and working on the Nutrition Network side of things to grow and make our global community a huge success into the future in ways that will fund the foundation, its community work and its research for decades to come. I would love you to join me in celebrating the amazing team that is growing and evolving its work into the future alongside Prof Noakes and his family. The best is yet to come!

 

It has not all been smooth sailing: no good ship is built for smooth, calm waters.

We should all be so very, very proud. I know for sure, I am.

Let’s celebrate in October!