A river winding between folded mountain slopes

FOUNDER & PARTNERS

Why we climb.

Four women. Four very different journeys. One shared conviction — that a mountain can teach a young person something no classroom ever will. Before we were founders and partners, we were mothers. That is where My Ascent begins.

FOUNDER: Fazlin Swanepoel
CO-FOUNDER: Eunamia Fleshman-Muller
PARTNERS: Pinkie Pitikoe · Toni Samuels

BEFORE WE WERE FOUNDERS

We were, and we remain, mothers.

Between us we have raised children through every season a parent can know — the triumphs, the fears, the door slammed and gently reopened, the quiet 2 a.m. worries that never make it into a company profile. Everything we build at My Ascent is built from that place first: not as programme designers, but as mothers who know exactly what it costs to raise a young person in this world.

We have sat on school benches and in boardrooms. We have packed lunchboxes and led teams. And in all of it we kept meeting the same truth: young people do not need another lecture about who they should become. They need an experience that shows them who they already are.

IN MEMORY OF ANEES

My Ascent was created in memory of Anees, whom our founder, Fazlin, lost in 2025. His life is part of the foundation of this work.

Fazlin brought her experience in leadership, wellness and financial education to a new purpose: helping young people discover their own strength, with people beside them who believe in what they can do.

That purpose takes shape in shared trails, new friendships, first summits and practical skills for the life beyond them.

A life remembered by helping other lives move forward.

WHAT PARENTHOOD TAUGHT US

That a young person rises to the belief you hold in them
That resilience is learned in experience, not in theory
That being truly heard changes a child's trajectory
That the time to equip them is now — not one day

WHAT WE BRING TO THE MOUNTAIN

Between the four of us: decades of executive leadership across health, wellness, financial services, risk and governance; a pharmaceutical and wellness career of nearly thirty years; an avid mountaineer's summits; a creator's eye for confidence and identity — and four mothers' worth of conviction. The mountain provides the classroom. We bring everything we have learned into it.

A hiker with trekking poles at a mountain lookout railing

We do not send young people up a mountain to prove something. We walk with them until they discover they never had to.

FOUNDER & CHIEF ADVENTURE OFFICER

Fazlin Swanepoel

Founder · Mother · Mountaineer

Fazlin has spent more than 28 years in executive leadership across health, wellness, financial services and strategy — including managing director and executive roles in leading South African organisations, with executive education at UJ, UCT GSB and GIBS. She has built teams, turned businesses around and sat at tables where futures are decided.

She founded My Ascent to bring that experience into the outdoors: a place where young people can practise leadership, build confidence and begin to shape their own futures.

WHY THE MOUNTAINS

Because the mountain does not care about marks, titles or followers. It asks only: will you take the next step? Fazlin has watched that question transform young people who had stopped believing in themselves.

WHAT SHE HOPES FOR EVERY YOUNG PERSON

That they discover, early, that their greatest limitations are so often the ones they placed on themselves — and that they leave the mountain with proof it can be done, a first investment in their name, and someone who believes in them.

CO-FOUNDER

Eunamia Fleshman-Muller

Co-Founder · Mother of two

Eunamia holds a BSc Honours in Computer Science (UKZN) and has built her career across banking, financial services and international consulting — in strategy, risk, governance and transformation. She currently serves as a senior risk and compliance leader.

A wife and mother of two, she is passionate about sport, outdoor adventure and youth development — and about giving young people the structured, honest grounding in money and self-leadership that most only encounter decades too late.

The mountains remind her that the best systems in the world still come down to people taking one honest step at a time.

PARTNER

Pinkie Pitikoe

Partner · Mountaineer · Mother of two

Pinkie has spent more than 28 years in South Africa's pharmaceutical and wellness industries. A mother of two, she is an avid mountaineer who has summited numerous peaks, and has spent over a decade supporting educational and developmental initiatives.

She has stood on enough summits to know exactly what they do to a person — and she wants young people to feel that force early, before life convinces them it is out of reach.

Nature strips away the distraction and reminds us what matters. Young people deserve that clarity early — not once life has already asked too much of them.

PARTNER · CREATOR OF WEARAPY

Toni Samuels

Partner · Creator of Wearapy

Toni is the creator of Wearapy — the practice at the heart of My Ascent's confidence work, exploring how the person we project meets the person we are within. Through what we wear, how we carry ourselves and the identity we choose each morning, Wearapy turns confidence from an accident into an intention.

With young people, she begins with two questions — “How do I want to feel today?” and “Can you see the future you?” — and builds from the answers a presence they can put on and keep.

Confidence is not something young people wait to find. It is something they intentionally create.

HOW THE FOUR OF US FOUND EACH OTHER

We found each other the way climbers do — one rope length at a time. Careers crossed in boardrooms and on trails; friendship grew on early-morning hikes; and when the hardest year came, the four of us kept walking together. Somewhere on those mornings, My Ascent stopped being an idea and became a promise.

WE KNOW THE WORKPLACE TOO

We have sat on both sides of the desk.

Between us are decades as executives, leaders and employees in South African business — hiring, managing, mentoring and being managed. We know what organisations carry, because we have carried it.

That is why our corporate work rings true: it is built by people who have lived the pressure, not consultants describing it from the outside.

WHAT EMPLOYERS CARRY

Teams stretched thin and running on reserves
Absenteeism and burnout that budgets never fully capture
The struggle to make wellness more than a poster
CSI mandates in search of credible, measurable impact
The pipeline question: where do resilient young leaders come from?

WHAT STAFF CARRY

Pressure that follows them home and back again
Health quietly deprioritised for years at a time
The sense of being a resource rather than a person
Financial stress that no salary alone resolves
The wish that someone would invest in them — not just their output

WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOUR BUSINESS

A workforce that is seen, equipped and believed in performs — that is not sentiment, it is every year of our combined leadership experience speaking. The same tools we give young people on the mountain steady the people in your building.

And the connection runs deeper than a wellness day: the young people we take up the mountain become the workforce you will hire, the leaders you will promote and the customers you will serve.

The young people we take up the mountain become the employees, leaders and business owners of the next decade. Investing in them is not charity. It is the longest-term talent strategy there is.

THE FOUNDERS, TOGETHER

Nature is one of life's greatest classrooms.

Everything we teach — voice, wellbeing, leadership, financial independence — the mountain teaches better. It rewards preparation, punishes shortcuts, insists on teamwork and hands every climber, sooner or later, a moment where the only way forward is to believe in themselves.

We simply make sure no young person meets that moment alone.

“Our mission is to help young people discover who they are, what they are capable of, and how they can create lives of purpose, resilience and impact.”
FAZLIN · EUNAMIA · PINKIE · TONI

To every parent reading this: we know what it is to hand your child to someone else's care. We hold that trust the way we hold our own children's hands — and we will walk beside yours as if they were our own.

TAKE THE NEXT STEP

Come and meet us.

We would be honoured to walk beside your young people

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