Open to executive and advisory engagements

Lethabo
Machabaphala

Strategic communications leader, stakeholder engagement practitioner, and builder of the platforms institutions actually run on.

Marketing and Communications Officer at the University of the Free State. Thirteen years across higher education, the private sector and community development, working where institutions, funders and communities have to meet.

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lethabomachabaphala@gmail.com · 061 584 3780

13Years of professional practice
4Standing governance committees
6Specialists and agency partners led
2Institutional platforms designed and built

Executive profile

Where institutions, funders and communities meet

Communications was the craft I trained in. Convening is what the work became.

I lead marketing, brand governance and stakeholder relations for two academic units at the University of the Free State, holding an annual budget, a procured supplier panel, and seats on four standing governance committees including Faculty Board. I represent the faculty externally on internationalisation and report into executive structures.

Before that I directed brand and corporate communications at executive level in industry, and managed a team of four specialists and two agency partners across a mixed public and private client portfolio. My practice began in independent consulting, building communication frameworks for NGOs and small organisations that had to run them without me afterwards. That constraint still shapes how I build.

Alongside institutional work I contribute to community development, brokering the corporate partnership that established a library and reading club at a child and youth care centre, and directing a Mandela Day programme that convened four university units. I adopt AI where it raises quality or releases capacity, always with human review before anything is published.

Governance fluency

Comfortable writing for, and reporting into, structures that make decisions. Faculty Board, ICF, RMF and FESCO held concurrently.

Builder, not just briefer

I design and build the platforms rather than commissioning them. Two institutional platforms shipped in 2026 alone.

Core expertise

Ten practice areas, one integrated function

Each area maps to a documented role, committee seat or delivered project set out further down this page.

Strategic communications

Integrated strategy across institutional, corporate and community audiences, built on a standing editorial calendar.

Marketing strategy

Recruitment-aligned campaigns for community-facing and postgraduate programmes, planned by cycle rather than by request.

Artificial intelligence

Practical adoption in production workflows: research, drafting, scheduling and analysis, with human review before publication.

Digital transformation

Moving institutional functions from ad hoc effort to documented, repeatable systems that survive staff turnover.

Web development

Information architecture, build, content strategy, search visibility and accessibility. Two institutional platforms shipped.

Stakeholder engagement

Corporate, church, school, NGO, government and university relationships, brokered and held past the launch event.

Public relations

Media relations, press releases and reputational intelligence delivered to leadership before a story breaks, not after.

Brand strategy

Written brand governance protocols that designers, printers and agency partners work to, not brand guidelines nobody opens.

Project management

Budget, procurement, supplier panels and events run under institutional risk and contingency procedures.

Leadership

Teams, agency partners and cross-unit coalitions. Four university units convened as Programme Director in 2025.

Career

Thirteen years, told through what changed

Select any role to open it. Outcomes are described qualitatively; supporting documentation is available on request.

Two academic units were operating without an aligned approach to marketing, brand governance or stakeholder relations. I treated it as a systems problem rather than a run of campaigns.

  • Annual marketing and communications budget, with supplier procurement and vendor management
  • Faculty representative on the Internationalisation Committee Forum since 2023
  • Faculty Board member, Reputation Management Forum and Faculty Engaged Scholarship Committee since 2022
  • Designed and built the faculty website, relaunched 13 May 2026, and the FTR Review newsletter from Issue 01
  • Standing editorial calendar and written brand governance protocols for designers and print suppliers
  • Faculty events coordinated under institutional risk and contingency procedures

Outcome Campaigns now run to a planned cycle, publications move faster from brief to publication than before the calendar existed, and the faculty holds platforms it owns and can maintain without depending on one person.

Appointed to lead communications strategy and brand governance across a portfolio of public and private sector clients, and to embed performance management across those accounts.

  • Led four communication specialists and two agency partners
  • Held client leadership relationships across the portfolio
  • Integrated campaigns across print, digital and outdoor media inside a common framework
  • Analytics and performance reporting produced as a standing input, not a quarterly exercise

Outcome Client digital platforms grew year on year across the portfolio, and brand governance moved from case-by-case application to a documented standard the team and agency partners worked to.

Executive ownership of brand strategy, corporate communications and stakeholder engagement.

  • Wrote the brand governance standards and communication policy the organisation worked to
  • Oversaw agency relationships and the production pipeline for corporate materials
  • Reported visibility against the commercial indicators the executive already used

Outcome Brand visibility improved over the period and was reported alongside commercial performance. I describe communications as contributing to the revenue movement that year rather than causing it, since the two were not isolated from other business activity.

Programme promotion, student-facing campaigns, career expos and stakeholder mobilisation, alongside media monitoring for institutional leadership.

  • Converted media monitoring from an after-the-fact clippings record into a leadership input
  • Press releases, institutional publications and campaign reports to editorial and governance standards
  • Media stakeholder relationships and event communication

Outcome Two years of sustained campaign delivery and publication output, with reputational reporting established as something leadership received in time to act on.

NGOs, SMMEs and community organisations needed communications, branding and web development without the budget for a full agency.

  • Built governance-aligned communication frameworks for each client individually
  • Sized every framework to what the organisation could maintain once I left

Outcome A mixed client base served across a near two-year practice, each left with a framework they could run themselves. Building for handover rather than dependency still shapes how I work.

Nyukela is the standard pre-entry requirement for senior management service appointments in the South African public service.

  • Short certifications: Crisis Communication, Business Writing, Event Planning, AI in Business Communication
  • Active member, MACE, Marketing, Advancement and Communication in Education
  • Languages: English, Sepedi and Sesotho at professional level; Afrikaans fair

Featured projects

Three platforms, all live and inspectable

Nothing here requires you to take my word for it. Open any of them.

Higher education

UFS Faculty of Theology and Religion

Institutional platform designed, built and relaunched on 13 May 2026. Rebuilt around the prospective student journey, with research themes surfaced for partners and a submission route so heads of department can keep it current.

ufs.ac.za/theology
A Place of Hope
and Growth
Relaunched May 2026
RoleDesign, build, content strategy, search visibility
StackInstitutional CMS, structured content, SEO, accessibility
ImpactApplication pathway made prominent; faculty research made visible to global partners
CreditedNamed in the faculty's own newsletter, FTR Review Issue 01
Open the site
Consultancy

GoTo Communications

Strategy, communications, marketing and AI consultancy serving government, universities, municipalities, NGOs, professional firms and SMEs. Consultation-led: diagnose the business problem before designing the solution.

gotocommunications.co.za
Think before
you build
Strategy · Communications · AI
ServicesStrategy and advisory, brand and creative, digital solutions, AI and automation, learning, managed services
MethodDiscover, define, design, deliver, develop
SectorsGovernment, higher education, municipalities, NGOs, professional services, SMEs
FocusAI adoption with POPIA-aligned governance and human oversight
Open the site
Community development

Namela Development Institute

A Free State non-profit with two pillars: career navigation for learners in township and rural schools, and digital capability for NGOs and ECD centres that cannot meet agency rates. I contribute the communications and digital side.

namela.org
Clear paths
for learners
Namela means climb, in Sesotho
ContributionPlatform, resource guides and partnership framework designed, built and published
ProgrammesCareer Compass, Post-School Pathways, Digital Career Access
DeliveredCommunity library and reading club, and a community garden, at a child and youth care centre
Honesty notePilot delivery is in set-up. Published participation figures are targets, not results
Open the site

AI and innovation

Adoption with the accountability left in

I use AI where it raises quality or releases capacity for higher-value work. Nothing is published without human review, and nothing runs autonomously. In an institutional environment governed by policy, procurement rules and POPIA, that boundary is the whole point.

The value is not in the tooling. It is in knowing which part of a workflow is safe to automate and which part is the reason the institution employs a person.

Prompt designWorkflow automationContent pipelines Research synthesisAnalytics interpretationPOPIA-aligned governance Human-in-the-loop reviewStaff capability building

AI workflows

Drafting, research synthesis and scheduling built into the editorial cycle, so capacity goes to judgement rather than to first drafts.

Prompt engineering

Structured, reusable prompts with defined roles, constraints and output formats, documented so colleagues get the same result without me.

Automation

Repetitive reporting and publishing steps removed from the human path, with checkpoints kept where a mistake would reach the public.

Digital strategy

Platform architecture, content strategy, search visibility and accessibility treated as one decision rather than four separate briefs.

Technology adoption

The hard part of adoption is never the tool. It is the governance around it, the training that makes people confident, and the honesty to say which tasks should stay manual. I build all three into the rollout rather than bolting them on afterwards.

Leadership and impact

Counts I can stand behind

Matters of record rather than performance estimates. Each can be confirmed from employment history, committee minutes, event programmes or published platforms.

13Years of professional practice, since 2013
5Substantive roles across higher education and the private sector
4Standing governance committees held concurrently
6Specialists and agency partners led
4University units convened as Programme Director, 2025
3Live platforms designed, built or contributed to
2Community facilities established at a child and youth care centre
4Languages, three at professional level

Recognition

In other people's words

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Contact

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Email

lethabomachabaphala@gmail.com

Telephone

061 584 3780

Location

Bloemfontein, Free State, South Africa

Consultancy

gotocommunications.co.za

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Bloemfontein, Free StateAcross South Africa in person, internationally online Directions