Columba Leadership's Rob Taylor ahead of The Sun International CEO SleepOut™: "Create the society you want to live in"
The Founding Chairman of youth leadership organisation Columba Leadership is a believer in building the future you want. As a participating beneficiary of The Sun International CEO SleepOut™, Rob Taylor walks through what the association with this initiative will do for their organisation.
As a leader in the corporate world in a previous life, Rob Taylor also saw tremendous success in the UK: “I’ve been the recipient of such enormous privilege and opportunity, when I turned 50 I figured that maybe I could use my abilities maybe to try and contribute to society rather than just to accumulate for my own benefit and that lead me down a road where I ended up establishing Columba. When I say ‘establish’, we stand on the shoulders of giants - we’ve got a magnificent team of people in South Africa that are now running this program for the development of youth from the most underserved communities in our country.”
How will the funds raised out of The Sun International CEO SleepOut™ assist Columba's work?: “The mission is to build a national movement of engaged young leaders for youth enterprise employment and how we do that is we combine experiential learning of the ethical values of responsible leadership, working in with Grade 10’s in the school system and involving the principal to see in educators, where they after they go through an immersion of understanding these values, they then get challenged to go back into school and run projects. I find that what the obstacles are in their progress are aligned with their objectives of the school and then work to recruit their peers, form their groups and work to overcome some of those obstacles.”
In addition to his leadership of Columba, Rob is also Founding Chairman of The David Rattray Foundation and prior to that was an Executive Director of Dimension Data Plc, number 32 on London Stock Exchange on listing.
Rob has worked for the Chairman of Rennies Group, was CEO at Woodcreations P.L. (winner of SA Unlisted Company of the year 1989) and prior to that was a consultant with Accenture and served articles with Arthur Andersen.
Rob's primary interest is in Columba Leadership which is a values based youth leadership program with a mission to build a national network of young leaders for youth enterprise and employmen.
He was an active member YPO for over 25 years, served on the Board of the National Business Initiative and is a Trustee of World Wildlife Fund SA.
Rob qualified as a chartered accountant with a B. Comm (Hons) degree and Higher Diploma in Taxation, his interests include philosophy, conservation, long-distance running, golf and flying.
Rob has a wife Sarah (a practicing psychologist) and three daughters Nicky (1984), Kim (1987) and Julia (1990).
Rob has called on MD of Merchants, George Todd, CEO of Webhelp, Craig Gibson and CEO of Attacq, Morné Wilken to Rise Up To The Challenge #4Leaders4Change