Thabiso Blak Mashaba

Thabiso Blak Mashaba is a strategist, cultural economist, policy maker, development practitioner, and social entrepreneur whose work spans Africa and the Pacific. He is the Co-founder and CEO of These Hands GSSE, operating across Botswana and New Zealand, an organisation that sits at the intersection of creative economies, innovation, and community-led development. Thabiso brings to YSAT's Board a rare combination of private sector leadership, policy experience, and deep commitment to the kind of grassroots innovation that defines YSAT's work.

At the policy level, Thabiso serves as Chairperson of the Botswana Human Resource Development Council's Creative Industries Sector Committees, where he shapes national frameworks for skills development and creative economy growth. He was a Founding Member of the Project Working Team for the merger of the Botswana Digital and Innovation Hub (BDIH) and the Botswana Institute of Technology, Research and Innovations (BITRI), a structural reform that redefined Botswana's national innovation architecture. These roles reflect a practitioner who does not just advise on policy from a distance but builds the institutions that policy requires.

Thabiso is a Member of the Global IDIN/IDDS Steering Committee at MIT D-Lab, the same methodology that powers YSAT's ICT Innovation Hub and Creative Capacity Building programmes. He is Co-founder and Project Coordinator of the IDIN Southern Africa Consortium, extending community-centred innovation practice across the region. As an International Fellow of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship of the New Zealand Government, he is recognised as a leader whose work creates systemic change beyond borders.

In the global innovation community, Thabiso is a Science Engagement Category Winner of the Falling Walls Global Competition, one of the world's most prestigious platforms for breakthrough ideas. As Advisory Board Chairperson of YSAT, he brings strategic leadership and a global network to an organisation he believes in deeply: one where the communities facing the hardest problems are the ones building the solutions.