Three distinct talks. One central invitation: to live deliberately, rebuild courageously and own the story of your life.
Three distinct talks. One central invitation: to live deliberately, rebuild courageously and own the story of your life. Each keynote is adapted for corporate, leadership, women’s, healthcare, faith-based and university audiences.
A keynote about what becomes possible when we stop waiting for life to feel certain and start choosing how we will live it.
A powerful exploration of identity, reinvention and the courage to become someone new without abandoning who you have always been.
A keynote about voice, identity and the power of refusing to let labels, circumstances or other people become the final authority on your story.
A keynote about what becomes possible when we stop waiting for life to feel certain and start choosing how we will live it.
What do you do when the life you planned disappears? Drawing on her experience of a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, divorce, motherhood and rebuilding, Tebele Makhetha explores the space between what happens to us and what we choose next. Blending deeply personal storytelling with research on post-traumatic growth, resilience and meaning, Choose Life reframes courage as something far more practical than fearlessness. It is the repeated decision to keep participating in your own life, even when the future is uncertain. This is not a talk about denying pain or forcing positivity. It is an invitation to recognise the choices that remain available to us and to live with greater intention, agency and presence.
42–45 minutes | TED-style keynote | Story-led, research-informed and reflective
A powerful exploration of identity, reinvention and the courage to become someone new without abandoning who you have always been.
After major loss or transition, one of the hardest questions is often not “What happens next?” but “Who am I now?” Using the Japanese art of Kintsugi as a central metaphor, Tebele explores what happens when the roles, relationships, careers or certainties that once helped define us fall away. Through her own experiences of divorce, illness and reinvention, she challenges the idea that rebuilding means returning to who we were before. Instead, Gold in the Cracks invites audiences to examine what loss has revealed, reconnect with what has always been true about them, and move toward a more integrated and authentic identity. The cracks are not evidence that the story is ruined; they can become part of what makes it credible, distinctive and whole.
42–45 minutes | TED-style keynote | Story-led, research-informed and reflective
A keynote about voice, identity and the power of refusing to let labels, circumstances or other people become the final authority on your story.
Over time, life gives us names we did not choose: patient, divorcée, single mother, the strong one, the one who failed, the one who survived. Some may be factually true, but none is the whole story. In Say My Name, Tebele Makhetha explores what happens when labels harden into identity and when the stories told about us become louder than our own interior truth. Drawing on narrative therapy, the danger of the “single story,” and her own journey of remembering the woman beneath the roles, Tebele invites audiences to reclaim authorship of their lives. The keynote moves beyond personal healing into voice and legacy: telling the truth in our own language not only changes how we understand ourselves, it can give other people permission to name and own their stories too.
42–45 minutes | TED-style keynote | Story-led, research-informed and reflective
For conferences, leadership programmes, women’s events and corporate partnerships – or to order I Choose Life for your team.