2026 Challenge
Hello I’m
Lisl Pulinger
Most of what I know about this work came from doing it, not from reading about it. The 100 Day Challenge is my way of making that visible.
Every entry is a fragment from the field: a question I could not answer cleanly, a principle I had to test against the real situation, a moment when the frameworks held and one when they did not. The people in situations in these entries are composite portraits, drawn from more than two decades of work across multiple engagements. No single entry reflects any one client, project or individual. I do not tidy it up after the fact. What you read is what I was actually thinking at the time.
That is the point.
Portrait 10: The Shared Bowl
She saw them first with bowls of pale, squirming worms in their hands. Two young mothers walked slowly through the dilungu, toddlers trailing behind them. Cream-coloured sand clung to the fingers that held their dinner tightly. Their colourful…
Portrait 9: The One Who Stayed
She always fancied herself a bit of a philosopher. A free spirit with an environmental degree and lofty plans. If she could just secure a role at a respected engineering consulting firm in Europe — ensuring infrastructure projects did not damage…
Portrait 8: Papa Pierre
I met Pierre Mutambwe relatively early in my career. Within months, he became “Papa Pierre” to me. He was about five years from mandatory retirement when we first worked together — a community relations manager with the kind of quiet authority that…
Portrait 7: The One Who Came To Teach
He was young. An intern consultant on his first major out-of-country assignment. Fifty-two stakeholder meetings in remote central Africa for a greenfields mine not yet built. A public participation process that moved from village to village in…
Portrait 6: The Sandwich
She is in her mid-forties and permanently on the move. Her car is her second office. The passenger seat carries a laptop bag, tangled chargers, and a large tub of jelly babies. They spill easily when she brakes too hard. She eats them when she is…
Portrait 5: The Data
It arrives as a spreadsheet. Neatly arranged columns.Indicators grouped into categories.Units of measurement.Dates.Geographies.Descriptions. On paper, it looks obedient. Captured and reported, it provides executives with management insight and…
Portrait 4: The Translator
In the army-like hierarchy of large mining companies, distance is measurable. Head office and operations may share the same logo, but they do not always share tempo. I have met her in several guises over the years. The job title shifts with each…
Portrait 3: The Beneficiary
I have seen it in different forms over the years. Soup kitchens.Early childhood centres.Plant nurseries. Projects started with enthusiasm and generous budgets by mines and corporates. Launched with ribbon cuttings and photographs. Designed to…
Portrait 2: The One Who Stood in the Gap
I have seen them on resettlement projects over the years. Sensitive souls who studied anthropology or social sciences because they wanted to understand people and the systems in which they exist. To do good. To make a difference. Somehow, they find…
Portrait 1: The Woman in Colour
She never blended into the boardroom. While the rest of the table arrived in navy and charcoal, she entered in colour — bold prints that refused to apologise for themselves. Turquoise against dark wood. Ochre against glass and steel. The fabric…