Future Readiness with Za Sizakele Marutlulle

Our guest on #FutureReadinesswithZa is South African-born and Australian-based Pearl Proud. She is a distinguished executive with a robust Psychology, Strategic Leadership, and Organizational Development background. As a proud member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (MAICD), she exemplifies dedication to corporate excellence and ethical practices.

Throughout her extensive career, Pearl has held key leadership positions across diverse industries, where she has driven transformative initiatives and steered companies in their DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) and psychologically safety sustainability.

She joins me on the podcast and we dive into her different interests and how her personal and professional journeys have unfurled thus far. We speak on her spirituality and how she balances this gift with the practicalities of being a Psychologist.


We also talk about the challenges of being the only one in a room, the only Black or Person of Colour and the confidence required to thrive in spaces where one might not be seen or heard.

She invites us to understand how to self-define, to balance duality and thrive in spaces known and unknown.  Pearl’s story is as unique as she is and is rich with wisdom.

#FutureReadinessWithZa Presents Sizakele in conversation with Glenda Venn – an award-winning creative with experience in designing and brand strategy. A new connection that already feels deep.

She is smart, explosively creative, kind, benevolent, wise, and human-centred. She has walked multiple paths from working in a challenger ad agency (at which I have also worked but our times did not overlap) to running her own design practice and in her latest pivot, she is the Senior Design Strategist at Tetris Design and Build, working with global research and industry specialists to understand how resetting the return to office culture requires creativity throughout an organisation and its infrastructure.



In this episode, we explore foundational creative concepts worth a re-fresh such as transitioning from customer-centricity to human-centred. We laugh about our early mistakes and delight in our emergent wisdom. She reflects deeply on the role of design in improving environments and then drops a magical bomb with her definition of Future Readiness…

Glenda invites us all to lean into the bits that petrify us with courage You’ll learn how to challenge socially imposed boundaries about what creativity means and is, start betting on your own ideas and become more secure from the inside out.



You can watch the interview on YouTube.

You can connect with Glenda here:

LinkedIn - Glenda Venn and Tetris Design and Build

Website: https://practise.biz/



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“.. Burnout is when you have nothing left to give, there is no bandwidth left. When we have no bandwidth, we get really impatient with the people we love, we start making mistakes… and we lose the ability to celebrate what is wonderful in life…”We are nearing that time of the year when time seems loopy and we feel tired and unmotivated, which is understandable. In our practice, we have Wellness Days to help us catch our breathe and press pause.

“If you aren’t able to commit to a full body yes, it is a lot more respectful to say thank you, you’re so kind, I’ll consider the invitation, please give me time, so that you when you do finally say yes, it is a full body yes”.When you agree to join someone in a thing they have invited you to or take on an extra assignment at work when already stretched, consider the domino effect for yourself and for the other person.

“Joy for me feels a lot more dense than happiness.”



How do you nurture your joy?

Listen. Comment. Share.



Let me know which topics you would like me to speak on.

“If you are going to wait for the perfect conditions, then your boat is never going to leave.”



A good friend of mine once said “Boats are not built to stay in the harbor”, and this remains true.

The truth is that conditions will never be perfect and you cannot control or create an excellent external condition, what you can do is build a brand/life that you are proud of.