About me
I am a facilitator, complexity practitioner and researcher, based in Cape Town and helping organisations navigate complexity through collective sense-making and organisational learning.
“You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” Rabindranath Tagore
My career has never followed a straight line. Each step came from saying yes to the opportunity in front of me and letting curiosity, my core value, lead the way. From my earliest days, I have worked across boundaries, industries and disciplines. In a field that prizes narrow professional identities and neatly defined roles, I have always held dual roles and occupied the spaces in between. Crossing boundaries is where my strength lies, and it is what lets me offer perspectives that are innovative rather than cookie-cutter.
Emergency care and experience
My ability to span boundaries began when I crossed the specialised world of the critical care ward whilst also working on helicopters, ambulances and oil rigs. From there I moved into teaching, as a paramedic instructor and clinical skills educator for undergraduate medical students, while also lecturing consumer science students in business management, consumer behaviour, communication and entrepreneurship. Most boundaries I crossed meant applying a beginner mindset and willingness to start again at the bottom of a new, steep hill. It taught me why Socrates said: “I know that I know nothing“. Yes, the world needs narrow expertise, but it equally needs generalists (like me) who can broker knowledge and innovate across fields.
Complex problem-solving and systems work
I first learned to make sense of genuinely complex problems while working as a remote medic on an oil rig. Working with a process coach, I set out to understand a pharmaceutical supply chain that crossed international borders and legal systems, and through iterative experiments I reduced its turnaround time from 24 months to one month. I went on to redesign referral and patient follow-up processes. That work convinced me this kind of problem diagnosis and intervention is badly needed, and nearly two decades since I have honed the craft through undertaking lean programmes, stuyding complexity-informed methods and becoming a design-thinking coach, each offering different ways to rethink problems and create safe, brave spaces for change.
Leadership
I have led teams throughout my career, usually across hierarchical lines rather than within them: teams in out-of-hospital care, an ambulance service, a primary care setting, an emergency department and a critical care unit. As an educator, I have convened programmes and liaised with international faculty, as manager, I have been responsible for group minimum standards, best-practice policy and product assessments across a region.
Education and research
Above all, I am a passionate educator, with particular strengths in conceptualisation and innovative learning design. As one example, I initiated and built a recognition of prior learning programme to open equitable access to higher education for vocationally trained emergency care providers. Over four years, I supported 238 paramedics through the process single-handedly, and more than 70 went on to be accepted into postgraduate study, potentially allowing career progression.
I also strongly believe that teaching should be deeply embedded in practice, and I have a preference to designing such programs. During my tenure as academic , I designed two programs within the acute care spectrum where leaders within the health system were coached (similarly to how I was coached) to implement an improvement. This has resulted in more than 80 improvement projects across Africa. I also work as a design thinking coach with the Hasso Plattner D-School Africa (the first of it’s kind in Africa), and in one of the programs I coach on, we combine students with a business partner, and we coach the students through a creative problem-solving process over 9 weeks to offer suggestions to the business partner.
For my PhD, I applied a complex adaptive systems lens to explore operational decision-making and adaptive capability in state Emergency Departments in Cape Town.
Here is a link to a promotional video regarding one the programs with an improvement arm in healthcare. And here is a link with generic information on what happens at the D-School.
Social responsiveness and community work
Giving back matters deeply to me. I volunteered for over a decade with the Red Cross Air Mercy Service, on both rotor and fixed-wing aircraft, and I have served for 15 years with the Hout Bay Volunteer Ambulance Service, a community-driven service, in various roles on its executive committee. First responder work is close to my heart: I have helped develop and implement first responder programmes, which has taken me to projects in Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the DRC with a range of organisations.
I also serve as a Director of the Collaborative for Emergency Care Africa, a not-for-profit organisation that builds local and global partnerships for collaborative research in austere environments. I provide strategic oversight, and as we run the organisation as a flat structure with no middle-management layer, I coach our team leads and help with the development of new business.
Academic qualifications
My curiosity spans academic boundaries too. I hold bachelor’s degrees in business studies, social science and nursing, with vocational training as a paramedic and health and safety officer (SHEQ), and postgraduate qualifications in critical care nursing and educational technology. I completed a master’s in business administration (MBA), followed by a PhD.
Beyond work
I am happiest outdoors: hiking, in nature, and in the sea. I swim in the Atlantic most days and cannot imagine living far from the ocean and the mountains. I also love red wine and peanut butter, though not together.
Work with me
If you are wrestling with a complex problem in healthcare, education or organisational change and want a fresh perspective rather than an off-the-shelf answer, I would love to hear from you.
Get in touch at Charmaine@cunningham.web.za or connect with me on socials via the links below.