Early Childhood and Social Entrepreneurship in South Africa: A Conversation with Sonja Giese

The Stanford Center on Early Childhood, an initiative of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, is hosting an informal conversation with Sonja Giese on February 1st from 3-4pm in CERAS 527. DataDrive2030, where Sonja is Executive Director, is a social enterprise that aims to democratize early years data in South Africa. If you’re interested in efforts to close early childhood opportunity gaps in South Africa, please join us for this event.

About Sonja:

Sonja Giese is a social entrepreneur with a diverse career in development spanning over 30 years. She is founding Executive Director of DataDrive2030, a South African based social enterprise that supports the collection and use of high quality data to drive improved child outcomes in the first 6 years of life. Prior to this, Sonja established and led Innovation Edge, an impact first investor focused on solving early childhood challenges through seed capital and strategic support. She has consulted extensively to government, philanthropy and private sector on policy reform and systems change, led large research initiatives and demonstrated her ability to take ideas from source to scale in the various programmes that she has spearheaded. In 2023 Sonja was a recipient of the Khalifa International Award for Early Learning Research for her role in the development of the South African Thrive by Five Index. Sonja is a member of the technical advisory groups for the global Early Childhood Development Action Network and Echidna Giving and is a founding board member of the Bulungula Incubator.