When you want to have one of those really good from-the-gut, side-splitting, belly-rolling-till-you-cry kind of laughs, find Lethabo-Thabo (or Thabs to her friends). Her lively personally really proves that laughter is the best medicine in any situation.
Before she joined Flow, Thabs worked in the non-profit education sector, also as a project manager. Her work focused predominantly on school leadership, and mentorship as well as connecting government and civil society organisations. She’s very excited to be at Flow.
She joins Flow as a project manager on the South African Tourism account and is “excited to be working on the social media platforms – helping to update and manage them”. Thabs feels that “it’s a great opportunity to get working on the other side of the mediums and learn more about South Africa”.
Since she really loves travelling to new countries, working on SAT is almost like “being a virtual traveller and getting to know South Africa from the outside in”. She can get all excited about this country, share cool info and gorgeous pictures, and she gets to call that work. One of the major things she’s looking forward to is the forthcoming INDABA, as well as some of the upcoming projects for SAT.
Thabs was drawn to Flow by the opportunity to grow and expand her knowledge. This has happened from day one, with her acquainting herself with Macs and some social media platforms that she has at one time or another tried to avoid.
“I like that my work here is so different. And that’s how I like to approach life – look for the new thing to learn, challenge yourself, and just learn it! I find I learn far more about myself and far more about life that way, plus I get to experience new things and then share those with other people,” she says.
“It’s like Paulo Coelho said in The Alchemist (and I’m paraphrasing here), that ‘once you make up your mind to do something, the whole world conspires to help you accomplish it’. So with a world that’s waiting for us to choose something so we can achieve it, why not follow our dreams?”
She then goes on to add: “Why not dare to do what seems impossible? If what Eleanor Roosevelt said is true – “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams” – then why not grab that future and follow those dreams? All of the greatest achievements began with ‘just a dream‘. I like that Flow seems to be all about that – supporting people in achieving what they’re passionate about.”
Tshililo Ragimana, account executive for Flow PR, describes Thabs as “bubbly, and always smiling”. Colleagues Gianluca Tucci and Gail Cameron say Thabs has “definitely brought amazing energy to the office”. When she’s not hard at work, she’s cracking jokes, laughing really loudly, occasionally moonwalking and jamming to her music.
In her spare time, Thabs likes to meet people, learn Spanish, hang out with her “amazing family”, write plays, travel and speak in different accents. She can read music and can play a few musical instruments, has been a dancehall DJ and has played a role in Twilight … that is, Twilight: Los Angeles, the play by Anna Deavere Smith about the LA riots, not the vampire movies.
It was on the set of Twilight where she met her fiancé, Byron. He thinks Thabs is “beautiful and really funny even though [he doesn’t] laugh all the time, she’s hilarious. Super-smart and really talented with singing and acting”. A week after the play he asked her out, and they’ve been together ever since.
She grew up in Jozi, and now calls herself a “Jo-Townian” because of her love for Johannesburg and Cape Town. She’s a Marvel Comics fan and says that if she were on the X-Men team she “would be an amazing super amalgamation of Wolverine, Storm, Jean, and Angel. A kind of self-healing and fearless weather-controlling flying telepath”.
Not only does she have an Honours degree in acting, loves musicals and is the only Arsenal fan in a family of Man United supporters, she’s now also officially a member of the ever-dynamic Flow team.