Tabisa Mrwebi, a personal development and leadership coach, speaker and founder of This Girl Wins, grew up in Zwelitsha in the Eastern Cape with a dream of becoming a doctor. Drawn to the way doctors help people, she imagined herself bringing hope and life back to those in need.
Today, she restores hope in a different way. Her faith has anchored her through every season and helped her discover her purpose. After more than 15 years in business development and client relationships, she followed her calling to work with people’s growth. She coaches and mentors clients of different ages, helping them understand where they are, where they want to be and how to get there. Seeing people recognise their potential and begin to soar is what fulfils her.
One learner reminds her why this work matters. She met him during a school empowerment session in a rural community. Bright and the eldest child in a family facing financial hardship, he witnessed a crime committed by other learners. They attacked him, damaging an eye and leaving him partially blind, with further operations ahead. By grade 12, he was losing hope. Mrwebi has had many sessions with him since then. Although she has not been able to find help to repair the damage to his eye, she has watched his outlook change. He is optimistic, dreaming again and determined each morning to become all he can be. His courage stays with her.
Through This Girl Wins, Mrwebi works with young people facing poverty, peer pressure, low confidence and uncertainty about their futures. She speaks to about 8 000 to 10 000 learners in schools across the Eastern Cape each year. She also hosts an annual Student Career Expo, bringing more than 2 000 learners from underprivileged schools together with career information, potential employers and opportunities they may not have known existed.
She believes access to information should never determine the limits of a young person’s dreams. Her goal is for young people to know that where they come from does not dictate where they are going. Mrwebi received a Fabulous Woman Award in 2020 and the BCM Unsung Heroes Award in 2025. Yet her deepest reward is seeing people find the strength to live well. She wants This Girl Wins to be her legacy: because Tabisa was here, dreams were kept alive and visions restored.