Meet the South Collective Team

Eduardo Shimahara
Eduardo Shimahara A.k.a. Shima is Brazilian and currently lives in Cape Town. He has lived many different lives in many different countries.
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Sandra Chemin
Sandra is a Brazilian living in New Zealand. An internet pioneer, she was the founder of Hipermidia, the first digital agency in Brazil.
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Camilla Buenting
Camilla is a Brazilian that also found her way to Cape Town. She’s an active citizen, having lived in Germany, France, Brazil, and now South Africa, and having visited over 30 countries, always engaging with the local culture and projects.
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Andrew Cole
Andrew is a corporate communications expert with almost 20 years of experience consulting to, or working in, various blue chip companies in Canada and South Africa.
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Woon Peng Ziady
Woon believes we can live our purpose and make a positive difference in the world.Read More

Samuel Chevallier
Samuel Chevallier vision is to build a life into the future that holds a strong value system of both people and Planet.
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Elenice Tamashiro
Elenice is Brazilian and lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Time and change have served as a stage for Elenice to craft her life path.
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Alistair Daynes
Ali is a Capetonian who lives through adventure, conservation, wildlife and the ocean.
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Eduardo Shimahara
Eduardo Shimahara A.k.a. Shima is Brazilian and currently lives in Cape Town. He has lived many different lives in many different countries. Having worked as an engineer and a global team leader in multinationals for more than a decade, he changed his life completely when invited to start a company that became the 6th largest group of private universities in Brazil – Anima Educação.
He left this behind when he decided to investigate alternatives to education and started educ-acao.com, travelling with three other friends through 9 countries, interviewing over 300 people and visiting 14 different schools around the planet. This journey became a book which was shared for free in Brazil. Now, living in South Africa, he believes that the Southern Hemisphere keeps looking to the North for inspiration and forgets to look upon itself.
This is how the South Collective was born, with the purpose of connecting the Southern Hemisphere (starting with Brazil, South Africa and New Zealand) through transformative and immersive journeys that will build bridges in the South.
Sandra Chemin
Sandra is a Brazilian living in New Zealand. An internet pioneer, she was the founder of Hipermidia, the first digital agency in Brazil. After selling the business to WPP, a big global advertising network, she was responsible for the internet operations of Ogilvy in Latin America.
A wrong cancer diagnosis in her family was the beginning of a deep personal transformation that included living aboard a sailing boat with her partner and daughters visiting over 30 countries, moving to a small village in the coast of Brazil and co-founding a school based on social inclusion and Steiner education.
Sandra has been exploring new ways of working, living and being for 14 years. Recently, she helped with the expansion of Mesa&Cadeira, an innovation consultancy that prototypes solutions for big challenges in very short period of time. TEDx speaker, she shares her journey in talks about the future of work and how to develop a new perspective in the way we look into the world. She works wherever she has good internet connection as consultant, mentor and advisor. She is a member and ambassador of Enspiral, a global network of 250 entrepreneurs and start-ups that is a pioneer in decentralized and non-hierarchical models of work, and for the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, a program that created the Global Impact Visa to attract entrepreneurs and incubate global impact projects from New Zealand. Sandra runs FutureYou, a program to help individuals find meaning in work and life.
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Camilla Buenting
Camilla is a Brazilian that also found her way to Cape Town. She’s an active citizen, having lived in Germany, France, Brazil, and now South Africa, and having visited over 30 countries, always engaging with the local culture and projects.
She has been involved with alternative ways of learning since she was a child, through the international NGO CISV and various other projects throughout her life. She dedicates herself to creating a just world, encouraging diversity.
Andrew Cole
Andrew is a corporate communications expert with almost 20 years of experience consulting to, or working in, various blue chip companies in Canada and South Africa. Born in Cape Town and raised in Ottawa, he moved back to the Mother City in late 2006 where he has established a large network of contacts.
Apart from assisting companies, brands and individuals with their PR needs, Andrew is the MC and city organiser for PechaKucha Cape Town, which is part of a network of more than 900 cities worldwide. PechaKucha is a succinct and highly visual format of presenting that features 20 slides, each displayed for 20 seconds.
Alistair Daynes
Ali is a Capetonian who lives through adventure, conservation, wildlife and the ocean. Born a surfer, trained as a Divemaster – he’s holds a deep love for our seas. Alistair more recently spent the better part of a year 360* mapping South Africa’s best hiking trails and National Parks with Sam Chevallier and the #TrekSouthAfrica team, using Gary the Google Trekker. His role was the Lead Google Trekker, heading up the technical side of capturing all data, photographer and videographer, as well as completing the majority of hikes.
His real journey began after completing a Bachelor of Science Degree and Postgraduate in Port and Coastal Engineering, where he left South Africa to spend 2 years travelling and working around the world. Along the way he’s crafted his skills with a camera, and transformed from a passionate photographer to a professional videographer. He is now a director at ReWild, which creates positive impact through film and VR, through working with innovators and change makers (such as the South Collective) who value people and our planet.
Explore South Africa’s National Parks with Google Street View
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki7mhJjpAI8
ReWild TV
Samuel Chevallier
Samuel Chevallier vision is to build a life into the future that holds a strong value system of both people and Planet. This quest so far has lead him to building a company called Sustainable Brothers and Sisters, built with his friends at Unniversity, which was a platfrom to build knowledge on our relationship to food and integrating with people from other diciplines. Following this, Sam lived in the bush (Kruger National Park) as a game ranger and presenter, as his thirst for experiencing wildlife was essential to his learning. After this he has travelled England and South America, both teaching and exploring how nature might influence the way in which we may design for more intergrative systems within human development, and better practises in conservation Ecology.
Sam did his undergraduate in Development and the Environment at Stellenbosch University, An honours at the Sustainability Institute, focusing on Biomimicry for Innovation. In England he studied his Masters in Ecological Design Thinking at Schumacher college, which then lead him to Brazil where he taught at universities, was a journalist for complex stories, Lived with indigenous tribes on the Amazon and tracked Jaguar in the Pantanal. Coming back to South Africa, he joined forces with his best friend and current Business partner. Sam and Ali Hiked around South Africa for google maps, and then started their venture Rewild which has recently taken them to Patagonia with NASA to film the story of MU69 (New Horizons), and worked with South Collective, helping to uncover the hidden identies of the Southern hemisphere, this is where the journey continues…
Elenice Tiemi Tamashiro
Elenice is Brazilian and lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Time and change have served as a stage for Elenice to craft her life path. The convergence of transformative processes that derive from those elements materialize through her pottery practices, urban farming as well as her work at Blossom, a consulting firm of strategy and innovation to mobilize and engage people and businesses in causes of positive impact. She is Cofounder of Together and worked as its Director of Operations and Strategy. Elenice was part of Ashoka’s global team, responsible for implementing the Changemakers program in Latin America developing the market and communities of entrepreneurs in the region.
Over the last 10 years, Elenice has been working with global communities of innovators and interdisciplinary and multicultural teams to boost innovative social initiatives around the world. She has participated as a local representative and curator of global challenges promoted by the 100 Resilient Cities – Rockefeller Foundation; World Economic Center; WomenChangemakers Brazil Program, Womanity Foundation, among others. She has bachelor degree in Public Administration by FGV-SP with a master’s degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Woon Peng Ziady
Woon Peng Ziady believes we can live our purpose and make a positive difference in the world. She brings cross-generational and multi-cultural knowledge, diverse business expertise and energetic approach to life and wellbeing into all that she does. Her coaching and facilitating experience covers the Digital Mobile Industry, Singapore Public Institutions, Health Sector and SME coaching which is close to her heart, being a current owner of multiple businesses herself.
Woon has 6 years as a multiple business owner following 15 years corporate experience living and working in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East leading cross cultural and multi-location teams. Her roles have included sales, marketing and business management of mobile solutions used by tens of millions of users as well as sales of over US$150million annually.
Her clients are encouraged to live authentically and discover new useful insights that not just improve their lives but also add value to workplace transformation towards the “good society”.