2021 IBSC Virtual Conference
Speakers for June 15
4:00 - 5:30 PM SAST
(10:00 - 11:30 AM EDT)
Craig Wilkinson
Craig Wilkinson is a South African author, speaker, and social entrepreneur who is passionate about the crucial role men play in the lives of their children and society. He is the author of two books on fatherhood: the best-selling DAD: How to Be the Father Your Children Need and It’s a DAD! Every Man’s Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, and Becoming a Father. Wilkinson founded and runs the nonprofit company Father a Nation (FAN), which restores, equips, and inspires men to be great fathers, role models, and mentors. To support his work with men in the fight against gender-based violence, he authored a booklet called No Excuse for Abuse and another on authentic masculinity called The 6 Pack of Champion Virtues. This material is used extensively to equip and inspire men and boys to live with positive, healthy masculinity.
For his work with men in communities, Wilkinson was awarded the GQ Humanitarian Man of the Year award in 2019.
Andri Barnes
Andri Barnes was appointed the first female principal of Glenwood High School (South Africa) in 2018. A member of the academic staff at Glenwood since 1997, she headed the history department and served as a head of department for many years. For 10 years, she served as deputy principal and was appointed acting principal in 2016.
David Ferguson
David Ferguson is the headmaster of Westlake Boys’ High School (New Zealand), a school for 13- to 18-year-old boys in Auckland that currently has almost 2,500 boys on its roll. He also serves as chair of the Association of Boys’ Schools of New Zealand and as a member of the IBSC Board of Trustees for the last six years. Ferguson has spent his whole career working in boys’ schools in the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
Jakes Fredericks
Jakes Fredericks is an educational leader with 29 years teaching, management, and leadership experience. Since 2001, he has served three leading boys’ preparatory schools in South Africa, currently as the sitting headmaster at St. Stithians Boys’ Preparatory (South Africa) in Johannesburg. Fredericks is passionate about growing young boys into good men by providing them with educational opportunities that enable them to develop their mental, physical, social, and emotional capabilities. His academic and professional qualifications include a higher diploma in education from Hewitt College of Education, a bachelor’s education honors degree in educational management from the University of South Africa, a leadership development program certificate from WITS Business School, and the art of leadership certificate from Harvard University. Additionally, he currently serves as a member of the IBSC Recognizing, Acknowledging, and Addressing Inequities in the Lives of Young Men of Color Task Force and also as the vice chairman of the Southern African Heads of Independent Schools Association.
Chris Luman
Having worked in boys' schools for more than 30 years, Luman was appointed headmaster of the Maritzburg College (South Africa) in 2013, after returning from 16 years in New Zealand. He has taught in both primary and secondary, public and independent boys’ schools in South Africa and New Zealand.
Luman is passionate about mentoring young boys into good men—being the best they can be—through a positive and proactive mentorship program that includes character education. This relationship between educator and learner extends into parenting, with fathers in particular playing an essential role during the teenage years, ensuring they are present in their sons’ lives.
He earned his undergraduate bachelor’s degree from University of Cape Town and his master’s in education from the University of South Africa. Luman serves on the IBSC Board of Trustees representing Africa and on the Membership Committee and has presented at various IBSC conferences since 2018. He is also one of the founding members of the Association of Public Boys in South Africa (APBSA), established in 2020.
Allan Magubane
Mbongeni Allan Magubane was born in Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He is the deputy headmaster: transformation and community engagement at St. John's College (South Africa). Magubane has worked in the corporate, basic, and higher-education sectors as a leadership, strategy, and diversity consultant.
Along with Julie Nxadi and Athambile Masola, he co-founded the Centre for Being & Belonging, an organization of social justice practitioners that seeks to creatively build institutional cultures of higher consciousness.
An alumnus of the Mandela Institute for Development Studies (MINDS), Magubane was a summer 2018 fellow at Drew University’s Center on Religion, Culture, and Conflict in Madison, New Jersey. A teacher of social justice he has research interests in diversity, equity and belonging, social justice, education, systematics theology. His master’s in philosophy will examine love as a social, political, and theological ethic to building justice in the world through education.
Jack Johnson Pannell
Jack Pannell is the founder and president of the Five Smooth Stones Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of a generation of boys deserving the finest education possible. He founded Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys (United States) with a mission to become a national model for the education of Black and Brown boys everywhere; 75% of the school's teaching staff are teachers of color. The school has nearly tripled in size within five years, with state test scores that consistently outpace the school district. With 485 boys, Baltimore Collegiate is the first college-prep public charter school of its kind in Baltimore, with a unique focus on college-prep education during the critical developmental stages of the elementary and middle school years.
Nontraditional educator Pannell established Baltimore Collegiate through an intensive self-funded study of nearly 50 schools, adopting and adapting the best practices for moving the needle on the urban male learner. He previously held several positions in politics and government, including serving as the communications director for the late civil rights icon, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). Pannell also led the largest charter school network in Maryland for one year before launching Baltimore Collegiate. A graduate of Amherst College and Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, he is an IBSC trustee. Pannell also wrote a semi-biographical, coming-of-age novel, Lunch Money Can’t Shoot, with an old friend, Michael Levins.
Tony Reeler
Tony Reeler is the current principal of Bishops Diocesan College (South Africa), an independent boys’ school in Cape Town, having started there in July 2020. He has worked in education for more than 35 years—28 in boys’ schools.
Educated at Rondebosch Boys’ High School, Reeler went on the study at UCT where he obtained a bachelor’s of science degree and his post-graduate certificate in education (PGCE). His career began at Grey High School in Port Elizabeth where he headed the Mathematics Department and coached sport at the highest level. A brief stint at his alma mater as deputy head was followed by his first headship at Pinelands High, a coeducational school in Cape Town. Reeler was appointed head of Pretoria Boys High School (South Africa) in 2010, a position he held for 10 years before relocating to Cape Town to take up the position at Bishops.
A committed educator, Reeler comes from a family of teachers and educational leaders. He is married to Rose, a teacher, and has two children, one of whom is studying to become a teacher! Reeler also enjoys playing golf, fishing, reading, and travelling in his spare time.
Shaun Simpson
Although born in Johannesburg, Shaun Simpson did most of his schooling in Durban and attended high school at Northlands Boys’ High School. He moved to Johannesburg in his grade 9 year, enrolling at the King Edward Vll School for Boys (South Africa) where he matriculated in 1981. Simpson completed his teaching degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1987 and moved to Cape Town where he spent 14 years teaching at several public schools. He moved through the ranks from English educator to subject head to HOD, taking a short break in 1990 to study for a B Ed honours degree at the University of Cape Town. In September 2002, he was appointed deputy principal at an independent school, Cornwall Hill College, in Irene, Pretoria. In 2005, Simpson participated in the inaugural ISASA Leadership Development Programme for Heads of Schools through Wits Business School. In January 2007, Simpson became principal of the high school at Cornwall Hill and remained in this position until 2011. In January 2012, he was appointed headmaster at Rondebosch Boys’ High School (South Africa). Simpson is a member of the District Principal’s Forum and chairman of the recently formed Association of Public Boys’ Schools of South Africa (APBSA). He has two daughters, both at university, and his wife, Paddy, is a school counselor at a Cape Town independent school.