Talent Spotlight: The Unconventional Thread - How Curiosity Carved Zinhle Phakathi’s Career Path
Have you ever felt pressured to have your whole life figured out, yet you only just became an adult?
Do you ever feel like you are expected to have all the answers when you are still trying to understand the questions?
We hear you. You are not alone.
Long before she became the Head of Marketing and Business Development at Lucha Lunako, Zinhle didn’t have a corporate master plan. She simply had an insatiable curiosity about people and meaningful participation.
That curiosity kicked off a journey full of unexpected twists, proving that the best careers don’t have to follow a straight line.
Stepping into the Unknown
After high school, she spent a gap year in the UK to gain life experience outside of what she knew. Returning to South Africa, she trained as a cosmetologist and worked on cruise ships.
This was Zinhle’s first masterclass in human behaviour. She learned customer service and cross-cultural communication.
Driven by a growing interest in the human body, she sought advice on studying rehabilitation. Two academics she knew recognised a strength in her that she hadn’t yet claimed: her natural gift in communication. They suggested an undergraduate degree in sports communication, which was a field she entered almost by accident, but one that set a greater plan into motion.
In her Honours year, sports management proved to be about far more than athletics. It taught her how to bring different stakeholders: athletes, media, sponsors and communities together around a shared objective.
Building, Pivoting and Learning the Hard Lessons
By this time, Zinhle had started her own business BUFF, a company rooted in recreation as a mechanism for building connection, networks and community. BUFF ran a social hiking club, team-building activities and non-traditional recreational programmes for schools. The vision of the company was centred on inclusion, the understanding that not everyone is athletic, but everyone should have a way to participate.
Her Master’s research became an extension of that thinking, where her research focus was on the Optimal Delivery of Sport and Recreation for Students at an Inner-City University in Gauteng Province. Zinhle was looking to explore how institutions could think differently about sport and recreation to create more inclusive ways for students to participate.
Then 2020 happened.
For a small business whose model depended on people physically coming together, COVID was devastating. However, it forced her to come to terms with the hard lesson that she had built a great community, not a business designed for scale.
Zinhle’s part-time role at Impact Hub Johannesburg as a Community Builder came from this period. It was an important chapter in her development, exposing her to the power of structured programmes, mentorship and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
From there, she moved into international development with DAI, as Communications Manager of a trade programme supporting women entrepreneurs across six Southern African countries. She later joined Founders Factory Africa to explore tech innovation and investment on the continent.
Each step wasn’t a random pivot; it was another layer of perspective on markets, technology, and economic systems. Today, Zinhle brings every single piece of her puzzle to Lucha Lunako.
Refining Her Personal Brand
Zinhle would describe her personal brand as curious, strategic, candid and people-centred. She is interested in the intersection between people and strategy: why people behave the way they do, how communication influences behaviour, how organisations grow and how we create opportunities for people to participate meaningfully.
Her personal brand wasn’t something she sat down and deliberately designed at the beginning of her career. It emerged from what she consistently found herself doing and talking about. The common thread was always there.
Zinhle’s Advice for the Next Generation
1. Focus on Substance Over Visibility
2. You Don’t Need a Linear Path
3. Youth Development is Economic Growth
