30. Tracking What Matters: Jess & Advice on Partnership, the Wild, and True Collaboration

Today we have the delight to connect with a pair of leaders who are exceptional in their craft AND in how they are good partners for each other. Jess and Advice are not my typical guests. They don't lead non-profits or NGOs, they don't have backgrounds as educators — but they have remarkable gifts to share.

Leadership comes in many forms.

Advice Ngwenya is a tracker among one of the most elite group of trackers in South Africa and the world. Advice can spot the track of a leopard in the sand and figure out if it is fresh or 2 days old, male or female, which way it was headed and how fast. He can hear the alarm calls of birds and triangulate them to find an animal walking silently through the bush. He can find lion cubs stashed away in a thicket in ways that seem impossible. He can spot tracks in places that would seem invisible to you and me — with a genius that is a mix of seriousness and humor. He's a great man with kind dad energy; he brought our family the iridescent feather of a Greater Blue-eared starling and a porcupine quill with a quiet smile that says all you need to know.

Jess Shillaw was until very recently Advice's partner — and among the best of the best rangers at Londolozi Game Reserve — a wondrous track of gorgeously restored bushveld in South Africa adjacent to Kruger National Park. Jess has the  distinction of ranger — not merely guide — having gone through an intense selection process — testing candidates to be not only gracious in caring for guests, but resilient in the wild and essential in an emergency, and when we met, she had the .357 calibre rounds on her hip to prove it. My family had the delight to have Jess and Advice as our tracker/ranger pair.  And there could not be a better role-model for my 11-year-old daughter, who loves animals perhaps more than people, than Jess, who might say the same thing!

She can also drive a Land Rover through the bush in a mad search for wild dogs in miraculous ways that will make you hold onto your hat.

Jess and Advice were paired as tracker/ranger for almost every game drive over 6 years: twice a day, for weeks at a time.

While they've had many many adventures and encounters with wild animals, the reason I invited them is because I had the rare delight to see a pair of humans who are as close as brother and sister and collaborate in ways that were remarkable.

In a country with a fraught history of racial tension and injustice, to see Jess — a white South African, and Advice — a Black Shangaan man — have such a strong connection and deep mutual respect, well, their partnership is a story worth hearing.

They are leaders who use their many many talents and skills for social good — and who have something rare to teach us about true collaboration.

And with that… dive in!