Steve Giddings qualified as a wildlife biologist and then spent most of the first fifteen years of his career facilitating community and agricultural development in South Africa and the second fifteen years as an entrepreneur building a number of businesses. Today he combines the two through his understanding of development and his passion for empowering others to build their own businesses.

His experience in both the development and private sectors has enabled him to better understand public-private partnerships and how to design and run transformational initiatives that result in inclusive growth. More specifically, he has worked on programmes in Africa (16 countries), the Caribbean (4 countries), the Middle East (3 countries) and Asia (1 country) with organisations such as The World Bank, UNDP, FAO and numerous private consulting companies. Much of this work has focused on the design and implementation of incubation and acceleration programmes for food processing and ICT companies.

He lives in South Africa and remains active on the boards of two of the companies he started. He holds a B.Sc degree from the University of Cape Town, an M. Sc degree from the University of Pretoria and an MBA in Strategic Marketing from the University of Hull in the UK.