Founder
Built from experience. Designed to stay practical.
Thabiso Naleli founded Naleli Innovations in 2023 after years in community development, entrepreneurship support, digital skills, programme delivery, business systems and governance. One problem kept appearing:
People and organisations are often given information, systems or plans without enough help to actually use them.
Understand what people need. Help them put it into practice.
A career that looks like many things is really one question, asked again and again.
Youth leadership. Public health information. Business plans. Coding and digital skills. Community technology. Business systems support. Governance, risk and compliance.
In every one of those environments the work was the same: understand what is happening, simplify it, help implement the next step, support the people doing the work, and see whether things improved.
The journey
From Katlehong to a practical model for making things work.
Founder and key-person experience, held before or alongside Naleli Innovations. It is the background to the company’s thinking, not a list of Naleli Innovations contracts.
- 01
Katlehong beginnings
Matriculated in 2004 with no clear professional path. Learned by opening computers to see how they worked, and built a first machine from spare parts.
- 02
Community development and youth leadership
Peer education, facilitation and programme delivery. First lessons in leading people from different backgrounds.
- 03
Public health information systems
TB data quality, clinic reporting and readiness preparation. The origin of a simple instinct: information is only useful if people can understand it.
- 04
SME business development
Business models, customers, costs and full business plans for small businesses. The lesson that a plan is not a working business.
- 05
Community technology programmes
From digital-skills facilitation into programme design, facilitator development, systems, partnerships, monitoring and reporting. Then moving whole programmes online during COVID-19.
- 06
Naleli Innovations, 2023
A formal home for those experiences, alongside the learning identity that became Katlehong Computer School and the NIBS vision.
- 07
Business systems, then governance
Software support in operational environments taught that a system problem is often a process problem. Information security, privacy, risk and compliance followed as the most recent layer.
Founder visible. Company scalable.
Thabiso stays visible in the work because it is shaped by his experience. But Naleli Innovations is built to grow beyond one person: depending on the assignment, we bring in consultants, facilitators, technical specialists and partners with the right experience.
Where I am now
Let's understand this properly. Then let's work out what needs to happen next.
Not a company that claims to know everything. A company that can sit with someone facing a difficult problem and help them move.