She brings with her a wealth of experience in leading, managing and developing community-based programmes and social organisations. Amongst other senior roles, she was the Executive Director of Community AIDS Response (CARE), where she grew the organisation from a single employee to a staff complement of over 100.

She comes to LifeLine Johannesburg from the Reproductive Health & HIV Research Unit (RHRU) where she held the position of Community Engagement: Development Specialist/Special Services & Community Engagement Programme Manager for the last four years.



Lauren has a BA Hons in Social Work from Wits University, and an MBA from Wits Business School, where she completed a thesis titled “Managing South African Non-Profit Organisations for Accountability”. The organisation she started, CARE, was nominated as ‘Best Practice’ Model by BMS: Secure the Future Foundation after two years, and she was profiled as one of 19 South African Social Entrepreneurs in a book ‘From Dust to Diamonds’ published recently.



“To change the staff and volunteers of LifeLine Johannesburg to think like Social Entrepreneurs”, is one of Lauren’s goals. She feels that this new attitude is essential to enable the organisation to stay relevant and sustainable.



Lauren has solid experience in managing social organisations and volunteer-based NPOs. Her focus in managing people – both employees and volunteers – lies in building and managing relationships of trust. Lauren has a natural motivational leadership style and a strong people-focus, balanced by strategic thinking and a bias for development and delivery.