At Vega we're all about thinking. Bright thinking, BIG thinking, smart thinking, new thinking. Thinking of ideas that change our world. After all... ideas are the currencies of the future.
Dr Carla Enslin
Carla is one of the founding members of Vega The Brand Innovation School and heads Vega’s national academic team across four campuses. Vega’s purpose is to graduate a new breed of brand innovators and creative communicators. In this space, Carla’s passion is to navigate students through brand identity development, contact strategy and creative strategic thinking. She also conducts industry workshops and consults companies and their creative teams on the design and communication of their brand identity systems. Carla focused her doctoral research on the potential of alternative points of brand contact in breaking industry and category norms. She received her doctorate from the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of Pretoria.
Gordon Cook
Gordon Cook is a co-founder and School Navigator for Vega. In addition to lecturing full-time and part-time students, Gordon does corporate training for Vega. He has lectured Strategic Marketing Planning and Strategic Execution on two MBA programmes. Gordon is an executive member of The Think Council, part of South Africa's Design Council, and is involved on various judging panels such as Business Arts South Africa (BASA). After graduating with a focus on modern literature, Gordon launched his career in advertising as a copywriter. He proceeded to consult to the marketing and sponsorship industries both in South Africa and United States. He furthered his studies with a Higher Diploma in Adult Education from Wits and was one of the first registered Chartered Marketers in South Africa.Gordon has helped design and facilitate Creativity and Innovation workshops for the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) and clients such as Standard Bank, First National Bank, ABSA, Anglo American and Sasol. He has delivered hundreds of brand and marketing specialist workshops to various organisations such as Discovery, SABC Radio, Old Mutual, Create SA and South African Breweries (SAB).
Georg Knoke
Passionate, resourceful, talented and a born-communicator - Georg Knoke is known as one of South Africa’s PR, communications and media gurus. He is Vega’s National Brand Communications Navigator, following his illustrious career as Absa’s Group Public Relations Manager. Georg obtained a BA degree, as well as a Higher Teaching Diploma and 2 Honours degrees in German and Education Management respectively from the University of Johannesburg. He is a member of PRISA (as Chartered PR Practitioner) and was previously also a member of IPRA (International Public Relations Association), to which ranks only 14 South Africans have been accepted. Georg is constantly recognized in the media for his achievements, receiving various internal and external awards, including acknowledgement from BASA (Business Art South Africa) and the Mail & Guardian for outstanding contributions regarding PR, media and project management. He served as Deputy Chairman of the Johannesburg Press Club and has been a Board member of the Woodside Sanctuary, a home for children with extreme disabilities, for the past 5 years. Apart from writing regular national and international travel and tourism articles and presenting television lifestyle programmes, Georg also lectures Vega part-time students in PR and Brand Communications.
Anna Ptasinski
After completing an Honours in Brand Leadership at Vega, Cape Town Campus, Anna came back to Johannesburg to visit her family and decided to stay – indefinitely. With a BA degree in Film and Media Production from the University of Cape Town, as well as a post-graduate degree from Vega, Anna has a great interest in media and marketing as a whole. Right now her focus lies in online marketing and trends that occur within the social media realms. She has contributed to the Vega online presence quite a bit during her short time here and will not deny that she enjoys the company of hard-working people – “it makes you feel better!” Innovation and social and self betterment are the things that she usually tries to strive for – doing this through very good and interactive social skills, which can also be done through social networking (You gotta love the internet). Hoping to enter the big corporate world one day, Anna is the kind of person who would like to articulate an astute understanding of what it means to work in a very socially-oriented environment and expose, as well as continuously improve, her marketing and so-called corporate skills.
