Who we are

Judy Bekker spent ten years working as a journalist in South Africa, before entering the consulting and faciltation arena in the early 1980’s. Her work ranges from corporate programmes to the more spiritual, personal development processes.

Leadership development, communication and conflict resolution work, diversity and visioning have been her four main areas of endeavour.

Judy is inspired by the willingness of so many South Africans, to understand the past, heal and mend, and to negotiate and navigate our present and our future with courage. She is completely committed to the African Renaissance.

In her teaching and facilitation career, she has worked with a large number of companies and institutiions from banks and hotels, to universities and colleges, oil companies, churches and publishers, mostly in Southern Africa, but also in Australia, England and Egypt.

She has a deep love of wild places and in 1993, after training in the USA at The School of Lost Borders, she introduced the 11-day Vision Quest process in South Africa and together with her partner, Valerie Morris, facilitates up to five of these every year.

She has travelled widely for both work and recreation, and her lifescope includes building (Valerie and Judy created and built by hand, a "cob" house in the Grootwinterhoek mountains) writing, singing, reading, learning, parenting, mentoring and laughing! She is mother to two daughters and lives alongside the Indian Ocean in Cape Town.

Valerie’s professional life has included managing an electronics company and hotels in both England and South Africa. She founded RBA in 1985. She is a networker by nature and a visionary, whose long-term view and can-do approach has launched many a project in this country. She is considered the South African expert in Open Space Technology (OST) - a large group process for the enhancement of dialogue and deep listening which is used for strategic planning, restructuring, releasing creativity and involves as many people as possible in an organization.

“In Open Space, I work with groups of twenty five to six hundred people, wherever there is a need to come collaborate to discern the way forward or initiate new projects. I love to facilitate the synergy between people and to draw forth the expertise and innate intelligence in the room, in order for the group to do the job at hand.”

Her approach has served government agencies, corporates, NGO’s and grass roots organizations and included CEO’s, middle management and staff in South Africa, Britain, USA, Australia and Slovakia.

Valerie has served on several boards over the years and was responsible for the creation of Educo Africa, an organisation dedicated to leadership development of youth and youth-at-risk work in the wilderness. She chaired the Board for eleven years.

In 1994 she received a Peacemaker award for her work with youth in South Africa

Another great love is wilderness. Valerie spends much time in natural settings as, together with Judy Bekker, she guides those ready to do the deeper personal transformational work, in the eleven day Vision Quest process, that has at its core, a four day and night solo fast.

Together with Judy, she hand-build a totally natural cob house in the mountains which is used as a retreat for personal and group work.