Building Human-Centred Pathways that Last
Revel Harris is a builder of people, systems, and belonging. From township hockey fields to international aviation, and from corporate boardrooms to community advocacy, his journey is defined by humility in action.
As Co-Founder and Managing Director of Modern Community Foundation, Revel’s work sits at the intersection of dignity, inclusion, and human-centred leadership. In this deeply reflective piece, he shares how community investment shaped his life and why Ubuntu must move from slogan to strategy.
I was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, in a household where humility and hard work were taught by example rather than words. My mother and aunt worked as cleaners. Their quiet sacrifice framed my earliest lessons about respect for labour and the inherent dignity of every life.
Watching them show up every day, without complaint or recognition, shaped my understanding of leadership long before I had language for it. Sport opened a new world for me. Hockey gave a township boy a passport beyond the streets.
At the age of twelve, I joined the TUT first team under the guidance of coach John Wright, whose belief in me fundamentally changed how I saw myself. Community members fundraised so I could pursue that dream. Those acts of collective investment taught me an enduring truth that personal success is never individual, it is tethered to the people who carry you.
Being African to me is a celebration of rhythm, language, food, and deep community ties. It is also a reckoning with exclusion.
As a queer African man, I live with the dual experience of loving my continent deeply while not always being fully accepted within it. That contradiction shapes my advocacy. I insist that belonging must be real and not conditional.
My working life began in what many would call an unglamorous place, a call centre. In 2005, fresh out of school, I joined Wesbank. The environment was loud, demanding, and formative, the best real-world classroom I could have had. It taught me how to listen under pressure, how to convert frustration into clarity, and how empathy and process can coexist.
From Wesbank, I moved to Nedbank and later MFC, working my way through roles as an agent, data capturer, validation officer, and eventually marketing. Each step was earned. I upgraded my responsibilities by doing the small things well. Those early roles showed me that growth is incremental and available to anyone who brings consistency, curiosity, and a refusal to be limited by origin.
Financial services taught me discipline, data-driven thinking, and customer-centred design, skills that later translated seamlessly into people development and programme design. When the opportunity to work in aviation arrived, it felt like a childhood dream realised.
"Legacy is not a trophy. It is the continuity of the work you start."
I spent fifteen years in aviation, progressing into crew management and international operations. Aviation gave me freedom, exposure, and a global perspective. It also offered anonymity. You perform, you move on, you disappear into the next destination.
The distance sharpened something in me, a longing for rooted impact. I began to realise that while aviation gave me motion, it didn’t give me permanence. I wanted my work to stay somewhere. I wanted to see its effects.
That realisation pulled me into corporate strategy, advocacy, and ultimately into founding Modern Community Foundation in 2020, in honour of my late friend Evelyn De Cock, a victim of gender-based violence. Founding the organisation marked a shift from career progression to vocation. Impact mattered more than title.
Creating the foundation forced me to exchange comfort for accountability. Fundraising, programme design, and direct community engagement demanded a different kind of courage. Success was no longer measured by promotion or status, but by meals provided, dignity restored, and lives redirected.
Alongside this work, I joined Modern Centric Holdings, leading people development, advocacy, and inclusion initiatives within corporate environments. These projects foregrounded mental health, psychological safety, and belonging, influencing internal policy conversations and workplace culture.
Every phase of my career from call centre, aviation, corporate leadership, NPO founding extended opportunity to others. And each, reinforced a leadership style rooted in Ubuntu rather than ego.
My leadership philosophy is to lead with heart. Honour humanity. Practise Ubuntu. I live by the belief that leadership is service and that organisations are healthier when people are prioritised over process.
My formal education gave me a foundation, but the most transformative learning came from the field. I completed secondary schooling and pursued workplace-based training aligned to my roles, from customer service certifications to management and people-development courses. I invested intentionally in communication, leadership, and diversity and inclusion programmes.
Mentorship mattered deeply. Figures like John Wright recognised my potential early. Aviation training instilled operational rigour and crisis management. Corporate learning sharpened my stakeholder management and strategic thinking.
Education, for me, taught one essential thing: how to convert curiosity into competence. Where I lacked formal degrees, I compensated with deliberate learning, apprenticeships within roles, and constant upskilling. That mindset opened doors no single qualification could.
My career legacy will be defined by humility translated into action. I want to be remembered as someone who converted empathy into systems, who refused to treat dignity as optional, and who practised leadership as service.
For me, legacy lives in the workplaces that became more human-centred, the young people who accessed opportunity because someone invested belief, and the cultural shifts, even small ones toward inclusion and psychological safety.
I want my name associated with initiatives that outlive me, programmes that move marginalised youth into stable work, advocacy that reshapes corporate practice, and leadership that insists Ubuntu is strategy, not slogan.
One of my greatest challenges was transitioning from aviation, a life of rhythm and predictability into corporate strategy and NPO leadership. Corporate life required political literacy, stakeholder navigation, and speed. At times, I felt like a novice again.
I returned to fundamentals of humility, listening, learning. I sought mentorship, welcomed feedback, and anchored myself in values when systems felt confusing. Vulnerability became my entry point to growth.
The true turning point came in 2020 when I founded my NPO. That decision clarified everything. Leadership became stewardship. Success became collective.
I owe much to a combination of family, community and mentors. My mother and aunt modelled dignity in labour and unconditional sacrifice. Coach John Wright saw a shy township boy and invested belief that I could become more than circumstances suggested.
Community sponsors who funded my hockey revealed the power of collective investment. In professional life, colleagues and mentors who modelled courage, accountability and compassion taught me how to navigate complex organisations without losing my values.
All these people shaped a facet of my leadership from humility, tenacity, belief in others, and the conviction that privilege must be used to open doors for those behind you.
I envision workplaces where inclusion is structural, not cosmetic, where Pride flags are matched by safety, and mental health is supported by culture, not perks. I want to deepen pathways that move people from skills to jobs to entrepreneurship, especially township youth and those with marginalised identities.
Ultimately, I want to leave behind systems and people who continue the work, leaders who lead with heart, teams who practise Ubuntu, and communities that celebrate one another’s full humanity.
