Fred Swaniker | Founder and CEO of African Leadership Academy
Keynote Title: “The moment of obligation—fulfilling your destiny as a leader”
Fred is an entrepreneur with deep experience in education and leadership on the African continent. He is currently based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is the Founder & CEO of African Leadership Academy, a world-class, pan-African secondary school that aims to develop future generations of African leaders. He has extensive experience launching and managing private educational institutions of excellence in Africa. Fred helped launch and was a director of Mount Pleasant English Medium School, one of the top-performing private elementary schools in Botswana.
More recently, Fred founded and led the launch of Global Leadership Adventures, a leadership development program for youth with sites in 10 countries. Fred also gained entrepreneurial experience when he was founding Chief Operating Officer of Synexa Life Sciences, a biotechnology company in Cape Town that today employs 30 South African scientists.
Fred brings a unique pan-African perspective to African Leadership Academy. He grew up across the African continent, living in Ghana, the Gambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, and he has lived as an adult in South Africa and Nigeria. During his time as a consultant for McKinsey and Company, Fred provided strategic advice to the management teams of large companies in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, and South Africa.
Fred is an Africa Leadership Initiative Fellow and was recognized by Echoing Green as one of fifteen “best emerging social entrepreneurs in the world” in 2006. He was chosen as one of 25 TED Fellows in 2009 and is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leadership Network.
Fred holds an MBA degree from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was named an Arjay Miller Scholar, a distinction awarded to the top ten percent of each graduating class. Fred also holds a B.A. degree magna cum laude in economics from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.
Watch the Connect+ Keynote video here: Keynote speaker
