Meet the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation's Ann Lamont

Ann Lamont, in her three and a half years as the executive chairperson of the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation, has ticked off many items on her ‘to do’ list, and there’s more to come.

In established organisations, sometimes new leaders come in, sweep out the old, populate the top jobs with buddies, have a short-term plan and then head out the door before the real efficacy of their work can be measured. But that’s not who Ann is, despite her very corporate beginnings.

Like the Foundation’s work to protect the ocean and conserve some of its special species, Ann is in this for the long haul. Her tenacity and foresight were recently recognised in the Financial Mail, which is read by South Africa’s most influential decision-makers in the corporate and government spheres.

This is hardly the first time Ann has achieved such accolades. It doesn’t take long when you’re talking with her to know that Ann’s drive and determination is something innate and no doubt started long ago.

Both of her teachers were parents, with her father dedicated to working in under-resourced areas – so yes, some of her dedication to education and outreach was role-modelled, and it’s little wonder these are enduring passions. Her mother was also an Olympic swimmer (how cool is that?) who won a bronze medal before South Africa was barred from participating in international sporting events. But that rubbed off too, and Ann had her Springbok colours for swimming at an early age.

Champion swimmers have to train for about four hours a day almost every day of the week. To keep up with a rigorous academic schedule at the same time isn’t easy, but Ann managed that too and was accepted to study law at the University of the Witwatersrand. Thankfully, she didn’t go on to practice law in a colourless, faceless firm in a high rise in Sandton – the world, and especially its ocean, would have been a lesser place for it if she had.

But what a grounding in law does do is give leaders a solid understanding of the way the world works, a level of professional prestige and a plethora of job options to choose from. For Ann, it was a long and winding road to the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation, but every step along the set the scene for what was to come.

Ann’s first meaningful job was in corporate finance – and she was South Africa’s first woman to hold a high-powered position in the typically macho world of mergers and acquisitions. She worked for RMB in its early years and was lucky enough to spend time with the founders who became titans of industry, including co-founders GT Ferreira (whose Tokara wine farm is a Stellenbosch hit) and Laurie Dippenaar, whose scholarships and philanthropic giving have helped many South Africans have equal opportunities in education.

The financial world has a language of its own – one that Ann didn’t know at first. The mergers and acquisitions scene is very tied up in law, but it also involves complex financial structuring. Not one to be cowed by something new, Ann went home to study finance most nights. This is how the first layer of her professional career was built, in a tough environment where she wasn’t held back by glass ceilings and where the corporate culture was one of learning and recognising peoples’ potential.

Next up was management consulting with a company called Monitor in the more golden days of management consulting. Ann was, excuse the not entirely unintended pun, thrown in the deep end – having to carefully analyse companies, listen to their staff, examine their processes and work with a team to come up with ways that could truly make these clients’ businesses work better and smarter. More skills were added to Ann’s growing basket of knowledge, but she was also starting to listen ever more closely to what her gut was telling her was her purpose. “I did have a level of self-belief, and I think I was very clear that I wanted to reach large numbers of kids and wanted to change their reality. I was very clear on the purpose. I didn't know anything, but I think management consulting taught me that if you’re logical and you take the time to understand and you keep that as the basis and you understand how everything fits together, you can shift,” Ann says. “What I've also learned is that your purpose shifts and changes. It’s not the same purpose throughout your life, and I think that that's important for young people to know.”

So it was off to SMC Kidz, first as the marketing director and later as the CEO, where she oversaw the production of publications for global players Disney and Marvel. This became the stepping stone to being CEO of the Learning Channel, which broadcasts an educational channel to countries in Africa.

It was a whirlwind of work and high-profile jobs, including being the acting executive director of Greenpeace Africa (this is another one of those ‘how cool is that?’ moments) but it’s not like Ann didn’t have a personal life. She married Len Pienaar, who is a well-known name in business circles, and they have two sons, one of whom was adopted by the family. Len loves Cape Town, and the deal was that when the boys were ready for high school, they’d leave Johannesburg. Ann wasn’t keen and says she made the move doing some kicking and screaming.

But 16 years later, she can’t imagine what her life would have been like without living in what’s often voted the world’s most beautiful city and being surrounded by the ocean. While pools and laps are no longer her thing, Ann swims as many as 10 times a week in the ocean and through the kelp beds – so much so that she knows which animals live where and their daily routines. Is she the female version of “My Octopus Teacher”? Maybe.

At first, it was about finding her feet in Cape Town, and Ann was EY’s (formerly Ernst & Young) executive director in the Cape Town office, focusing on leadership development and organisational and societal transformation. Although that was a five-year job, Ann was fomenting ideas and building relationships. Between 2017 and 2019, she was a founding partner for The Field Institute, a leadership organisation, diiVe, a global education initiative, and SOLVE@Waterfront, an initiative of the V&A Waterfront’ to “build back better.” Ann has also worked with the leadership team of the V&A Waterfront to facilitate the V&A Waterfront’s shared value strategy and provide ongoing support in the implementation of their blue vision.

With all of this going on, it wasn’t like Ann didn’t have a lot to keep her busy during the COVID-19 pandemic. But it was also when she was offered the top job at the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation. How could she say no? As an ocean lover, a fervent swimmer, a person dedicated to making a positive impact, and someone passionate about education, there wasn’t a thing about Ann that didn’t gel with running the Foundation. Oh, and she’d wanted to be a marine biologist all her life. It was a fit.

“Caring for the sea is absolutely fundamental, especially given the urgency of the challenges facing us as humans and the ocean, our life support system,” Ann says.

What’s already been achieved in the past three and a half years? It’s hard to know where to begin. From education to conservation to research, the Foundation is humming. It’s been expanding its reach and building up a passionate, skilled team awash with people who aren’t just thinking of the here and now but who are dreaming big about what they want to achieve in the future.

When she started, one of Ann’s first moves was to ensure that staff at all levels were given career paths and opportunities to take on new roles. Ann also helped the Turtle Conservation Centre grow beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings, from little loggerheads in baskets to many large tanks, complex life-support systems, lots of top-notch equipment and a sizeable team to offer the best care possible. With this dedication, the Turtle Conservation Centre is moving into a new building in phase one of the V&A’s expansion into Granger Bay. There’s little doubt it will be one of the biggest and most popular attractions.

The due date to break ground is December 2026, with this vital project planning to open its doors a year later. After accidentally receiving a record 606 turtle hatchlings needing care in 2024 (six times the average), with more than 500 of them suddenly being stranded on the coast at the beginning of April because of an unprecedented storm at an unprecedented time of year, it’s clear that with climate change supporting keystone species will be crucial and that a much bigger and specially designed turtle centre is necessary.

It’s likely that instead of a steady intake of turtles during the four or five months that the hatchlings coming from KwaZulu-Natal are most likely to be inadvertently blown off course from the warm Agulhas Current, there will be another flood of turtle babies at some point in the future.

For these ancient and graceful animals, “there’s not just the empathy, but I think very fundamentally the elevation of our whole network and now the commitment by the Waterfront to build a standalone facility for the turtles where these beautiful animals can be ambassadors. Where humans will have the space to share that sanctuary and connect,” Ann says.

The Foundation’s education department has morphed into a modern Ocean Campus with a range of offerings that continue to grow. And then there’s the Marine Wildlife Management Programme, which has been so instrumental in mitigating the conflict in the relationships between humans and marine animals in the harbour that the city wants the MWMP, as it’s known, to support Cape Town more broadly.

Then there’s the People and Oceans Initiative, which is already involved in a number of projects, bringing interdisciplinary researchers, activists and practitioners together to address the relationship between humanity and the ocean. Changing the way people think about the ocean is the only way to save it, and that’s this initiative’s mission. Ann believes a sense of community and an emotional connection to the ocean are going to be crucial, but she’s also a realist and expects that global warming will worsen beyond 2°C. She knows that environmentally, we’re too far gone to stop all of the damage to the sea and the impact it will have on human beings.

But that doesn’t mean Ann doesn’t have hope or that she isn’t deeply committed to fighting for the ocean. Quite the contrary. Instead, practically, it’s now about teaching resilience, showing care, reconnecting to nature, supporting the youth and continuing to hold the people, governments and companies at the heart of climate change to account.

And this dedication is despite the fact that it’s still all too often labelled as “woke” or “radical” to care about the suffering of animals and the future of the planet. It’s much easier, and also intellectually lazy, to throw labels around than for people to face their own cognitive dissonance about the world they live in, Ann says. One chance for change will come from trying to get corporate boards more exposed and involved with the ocean, she believes, which is similar in concept to Craig Foster's most recent work, advocating for Mother Nature to have a seat in the boardroom.

In her striving to stay connected to what she is fighting for, and for her own wellness, Ann returns again and again to the ocean where the calm and the light and the animals provide solace, where she’s had experiences like stopping to watch a small octopus pluck a kelp limpet off the stipe of a sea bamboo and slowly pick out the inside for a meal. In between these profound and intimate moments under the water and the frenzy of juggling many projects at once, Ann has guided the Foundation from its infancy to breaking boundaries with bigger, broader goals always in sight. And that’s what makes her a phenomenal woman.