Meet Award winning journalist Taweni Gondwe Xaba Taweni’s career over the past 16 years has been primarily in the advertising and publishing industries in South Africa. With content generation and production as her key forte, she has worked across all media platforms from print to radio, television and online. She has edited leading international magazines and has been published internationally. She has a passion for promoting the rights of children and nurturing the potential of women as contributors with equal share of voice in the public arena. Taweni was appointed launch editor of the first international edition of the widely successful O, The Oprah Magazine in January of 2002. In her tenure, she was responsible for advancing the creative and social vision of the magazine’s founder, Ms Oprah Winfrey. Starting with a team of three, she was tasked with recruiting a creative production team, co-conceptualising the launch and laying the foundation for the magazine’s creative/ editorial and commercial direction in the SA context while retaining the brand’s international values and appeal. As brand ambassador, she raised awareness and created excitement in the target readership and advertiser base through a marathon series of speaking engagements with numerous women’s and business groups, television appearances and radio interviews. She co-conceptualised and hosted advertiser and reader events and won many firm supporters for the brand in both constituencies. In 2003, O won the Mondi Award for Best Magazine Feature and the Marketing Mix Award for Best Women’s Magazine Content. It also became the only women’s magazine to be published in Braille in SA. Prior to this, Taweni was Founding Editor of Design Indaba Magazine, a special interest industry publication aimed at the marketing, advertising and design industries. In 2001, it won a PICA Award for Best Business-to-Business Magazine and the Phillip Tyler Award for Innovation in Publishing conferred by the Magazine Publishers Association of South Africa. It garnered a special mention for Best Cover Award and won a Gold Ozzie for Best Design New Magazine at the Folio Show in New York. The Tate Modern Art Gallery in the UK was one of the early subscribers to this original magazine offering insight into African creative arts. She has contributed to Vodaworld, Elle (SA), Marie Claire (SA) and Cosmopolitan (SA) magazines. Taweni was Founding Editor of The Deal magazine, a business lifestyle title aiming to inspire and assist young African professionals in navigating their way to success in style without sacrificing substance. The magazine was produced bi-monthly throughout 2007 to critical acclaim. After she spearheaded the repositioning of Christian Living Today Magazine in Cape Town it went on to win the CBSA Gold Award for Excellence in Magazine Publishing. Taweni’s popular column “Home sweet home”, a weekly commentary on Cape Town’s social landscape, appeared in the Cape Argus newspaper every Monday for a year until March 2008 when she took time out to give birth to her second child. Throughout 2009, she was media consultant to Nation Publications Limited in Malawi and took its brands through their first formal repositioning process after 15 years on the books market. The Nation, Weekend Nation and Nation on Sunday are the company’s three newspapers that were strategically re- conceptualised, re-designed and re- packaged under her creative direction. She re-conceptualised the editorial direction of existing NPL supplements and also conceptualised and introduced Every Woman, a supplement for women readers of the Nation on Sunday. She was appointed the group’s Executive Editor on a fixed term contract in October 2009. Her function included developing product personality profiles, working tools for the newsroom, training and development of editors and newsroom staff (three bureaus), re-launching mwnation and conceptualizing and launching FUKO, NPL’s free-distribution, bi-lingual vernacular, development-focused newspaper for the rural market. She deputised and acted for the Editor in Chief when called upon. A sought-after speaker, Taweni is regularly called upon to host events and address teams in South Africa’s blue chip companies such as Standard Bank, Metropolitan, Old Mutual, MTN, Cape Times, Ernst & Young as well as parastatals Eskom and Metrorail. She has addressed media industry organisations such as The Association of Advertising Agencies, The Public Relations Institute of South Africa, and the Media Workers Forum. She is a regular speaker/lecturer on media industry issues at leading academic institutions including The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, University of Stellenbosch, University of the Western Cape, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape College, AAA School of Advertising, Louis Group International Business Academy, Old Mutual Business School and the UCT/ Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing. Her presenting style has been described as “professional yet friendly, and intellectual yet accessible.” She has interviewed a wide range of personalities and has often been commended on (and thanked for!) her innate ability to put people from diverse backgrounds (political, business and entertainment) at ease. She was the recipient of the Toastmasters International Leadership and Communication Award for 2006 (previous winners include Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu). Taweni has facilitated leadership training and developed training materials for the following, among other prominent organisations: University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (Cape Town, South Africa) Ernst and Young (Cape Town, South Africa) Nation Publications Limited (Blantyre, Malawi) Charter Insurance (Blantyre, Malawi) Alliance Capital (Blantyre, Malawi) Women Managers’ Conference (Lilongwe, Malawi) Louis Group Business Academy (Cape Town, South Africa) At the age of 26, she worked as speechwriter and presentation coordinator in South Africa’s bid for the Soccer World Cup 2006. The 42 speeches and technical presentations she worked on were aimed at establishing South Africa’s readiness-to-host to FIFA’s Technical Evaluation Team. She was also responsible for prepping all speakers for their presentations on the big day. Taweni’s writing career began as a copywriter for the renowned Jupiter Drawing Room in Cape Town in 1996. She developed creative campaigns for scores of clients in her advertising career and worked on marketing campaigns for some of SA’s blue chip companies. Her work has appeared in Creative Review Magazine and Lurzer’s Archive, the industry’s international bible of excellence. She won several international awards including a Clio Certificate (1995), SPADA Award for Best Poster Design (1997), a Loerie Finalist Certificate (1997) and a Finalist Certificate in Film from The Cannes Advertising Festival (1997) along with several Creative Director’s Circle Ad of the Month honours. Taweni was inaugural Chief Judge in the Magazine Publishers Association of South Africa Pica Awards, and has judged numerous modeling, fashion and talent awards including the V&A Waterfront/Cape Times Woman of Worth Awards, the Donna Claire Model of the Year Awards, the Anglo Gold Riches of Africa Award, the Cape Town Fashion Week Young Designers Awards, and the Inyathelo Philanthropy Awards, among others. Taweni has served as communications consultant and newsletter editor (2004, 2005 and 2006) for Non Governmental Organisation SAWID (South African Women in Dialogue) by special appointment of South Africa’s former first lady, Mrs Zanele Mbeki. This publication reached out to rural poor, semi-literate women encouraging them to engage in commercial enterprise and introducing them to relevant and appropriate tools to achieve this. It also served to document annual conference activities. Along with her mother, Dr Loveness Kaunda (Director of Internationalisation at UCT), she co-founded Africa Book Connection, a non-profit organisation that sourced textbooks, academic journals and industry publications for needy university students. The highlight of ABC’s work was the coordination of the donation and delivery of R3,5m worth of textbooks to the Cape Peninsula University of Technology from VSB, the largest academic book distributor in South Africa. Taweni has served on the organising committee of The Night of 100 Stars, a project of the Adele Searle Foundation that annually raises millions for charities in Cape Town. She has also served on the boards of the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra, Education Resources Network, OIL and other charitable organisations. Taweni was the initiator and co-organiser of the Stop Violence Against Women in Malawi campaign that brought 3,000 women and men together to protest against the notorious “trouser attacks” that terrorised Malawian women in January 2012. Media coverage of the event went as far as CNN, BBC, CBS News, SABC, eTV and other international media houses. Taweni has contributed strategy as well as media consulting and liaison services to Rotary Club of Blantyre on the “Clean Mudi River” Campaign, a cause close to her heart. She is Founder and Project Manager of the Faith Memorial Children’s Hospital, a recently initiated project to fundraise and build a state-of-the-art children’s hospital in Mzuzu, Malawi. Taweni most recently was Marketing and Communications Director for Viacom across Africa where she was custodian of six key brands. MTV, MTV Base, VH1 Classic, BET and Nickelodeon. She has been featured on numerous South African radio shows on CCFM, Khaya FM, Metro FM, Yfm and Good Hope FM as well as regular monthly slots on The Tim Modise Network on 702 and Nancy Richards’ Otherwise on SAFM. For a brief spell, she was a stand-in presenter for The Lisa Chait Show on SAFM. She was also one of the regular hosts of the hugely popular Estee Lauder Looks- to-Live-By television reality show. From mid 2007 to early 2008, Taweni co-hosted the highly popular women’s TV show The Power Within on SABC3. In addition to hosting, Taweni has been consulted primarily as a communications expert on AM Live (SABC2), the Evening News (SABC 3), 3Talk and Street Journal. She researched “Cape of Rape,” a documentary flighted on eTV and screened at the 1998 International Film Market in Cape Town, and voiced “Born Free,” a 13-part documentary also flighted on eTV in 2007.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 14:18:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015