(Women Who Lead South Africa 2026) Beyond the Summit: How Traci Willis is Moving Mountains in Education

Having conquered Kilimanjaro, the Founder and Director of Thought Leaders are taking on an even greater challenge: transforming institutions, encouraging reflection and empowering future changemakers.

Long before Traci Willis stood at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, she had already spent years navigating somewhere far less forgiving: institutions designed to protect the way things had always been done.

Becoming the first person to plant a school flag at Kilimanjaro’s peak demanded remarkable physical endurance. Learning to keep asking uncomfortable questions in rooms that would rather not hear them required an entirely different kind of resilience.

“The mountain only fights you for a few days,” she reflects. “A mindset that resists reflection fights you for years. You learn very quickly which kind of strength you actually need.”

That distinction lies at the heart of why she founded Thought Leaders.

Much of Traci’s career has unfolded inside large, structured systems, including international schools, examination boards and corporate education brands. Progress in these environments is often measured by compliance rather than curiosity.

“Some of the hardest rooms I’ve ever stood in weren’t only boardrooms,” she says. “They were staff rooms and leadership meetings where the loudest response to a new idea was silence, or worse, a polite version of ‘we’ve always done it this way.’”

Many changemakers will recognise this type of resistance. Open hostility is not always the greatest obstacle. Sometimes, the real challenge is a quiet, structural unwillingness to pause, reflect and change direction.

Margaret Mead’s words could easily be etched above the Thought Leaders offices: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Traci has built her consultancy on precisely that belief. Transformation rarely begins with permission from an entire system. It starts with one person who is willing to ask a better question and has enough conviction to keep asking it.

Her conviction has certainly been tested. Leading the authorisation of eight new IB Primary Years Programme schools, advising more than 100 private schools across South Africa and training thousands of educators across Hong Kong, Asia and Africa have required her to encourage organisations to slow down and reflect in industries often driven by speed and output.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s reminder has served her well: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Traci has drawn on that resolve during moments when fresh thinking was met with defensiveness rather than curiosity.

Kilimanjaro, in hindsight, taught her how to carry the weight of resistance.

“Altitude has a way of stripping away everything that isn’t essential,” she says. “You stop performing resilience and you start actually practising it – one deliberate step, over and over, even when your body and your doubts are telling you to stop.”

That same discipline now shapes her work with every organisation. Reflection, in Traci’s view, is not a delay to progress; it is the only meaningful route towards it. Marie Curie captured the sentiment perfectly: “We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.” Traci has needed both in equal measure.
Years of confronting resistance have not left her cynical. Instead, they have inspired a fierce commitment to building environments where others do not have to fight as hard as she did.

Solution Seekers Solv-a-thon gives students the opportunity to practise becoming changemakers early, before the world teaches them to silence or shrink that instinct. Thought Leaders equips school leaders with the confidence to question their own systems and drive meaningful change from the inside.

“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence, and making sure that impact lasts in your absence,” says Sheryl Sandberg.

Traci returns to that idea often. Legacy, to her, has never been about becoming indispensable. True impact means empowering the people around her to lead confidently, contribute meaningfully and eventually continue the work without her.

Gratitude runs quietly through everything she does. At home in Olivewood in the Eastern Cape, surrounded by her cats and the wildlife at her doorstep, Traci carefully protects the moments of stillness that allow her to keep giving.

“You get in life what you have the courage to ask for,” Oprah Winfrey has said. Traci has built both a career and a consultancy by asking the questions that few others were brave enough to raise.

Serena Williams once said, “You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.”

Traci’s belief, however, has never centred solely on her own success. Her purpose has always been to prove that reflection, redirection and courage can find their way into even the most resistant rooms – while ensuring the next generation of changemakers will not have to fight quite as hard to be heard.

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