The first time Ann Lamont, who is a champion swimmer, swam a long stretch in Cape Town’s glacial waters, she was so cold and close to hypothermia that she had to call her husband to come and unlock her car for her.
The extreme cold didn’t put her off, however. This is a woman who has fought through bad health and broken corporate ceilings, founded a number of start-ups and taken on giant projects.
She is a daughter of two teachers; her mother won a bronze medal for backstroke at the 1956 Olympics. Lamont attended Jeppe High School for Girls and thereafter studied law at Wits, but in the end a legal career was not for her. She worked on mergers & acquisitions at RMB in 1989, when founders GT Ferreira and Laurie Dippenaar were still there. Law was the easy part, Lamont says, “but I had to go home every night and learn” when it came to financial structuring.
She went on to management consulting, where she learnt to really listen. But after one too many mining company project assignments, Lamont joined the education field.
I want to, every day in my life, model deep care for humans and animals and our ocean. We have to support each other
— Ann Lamont
“I’ve always loved kids,” she says. “I just kept on having this feeling that I wanted to do work that was more caring and more impactful.”
She became the marketing director and later the CEO of SMC Kidz, producing publications for Disney and Marvel. Next was being CEO of The Learning Channel, which broadcasts to Africa.
A move from Joburg to Cape Town led to an array of complex top jobs, a lot of learning about multistakeholder relationships and being a founding partner for strategy adviser The Field Institute, educational consultancy diiVe and the organisation SOLVE@Waterfront.
It was during the height of Covid that Lamont was approached to head the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation, the not-for-profit conservation, education and research arm of Cape Town’s aquarium. She’d once wanted to be a marine biologist so it didn’t take long for her to say yes. “I wanted to support both the ocean and people because they’re completely integrated,” she says.
Lamont is surrounded by top scientists and dedicated staff. She gave people the chance to change roles, develop and grow. One of them, Talitha Noble-Trull, is head of the foundation’s Turtle Conservation Centre. She started at the aquarium and took courses as a teenager, went on to study at the University of Cape Town and returned to build what has become Africa’s biggest and most successful turtle rehabilitation centre.
The foundation’s education department has grown under Lamont and has been rebranded the Ocean Campus; it offers courses online and in person. The foundation’s Marine Wildlife Management Programme, which involves negotiating humans’ interactions with marine animals at the V&A Waterfront, now has an agreement to extend its support across the city.
Coming soon will also be the official launch of a People & Oceans initiative that is delving into research and effecting behaviour change to help mitigate humans’ negative impact on the ocean and the climate.
For that change to happen “an emotional connection is fundamental. Community is fundamental, [because] young people feel lost or hopeless,” Lamont says.
“I no longer believe we’re going to stop at global warming of 2°C. I no longer believe we’re going to fully protect or care for our ocean or our land. I no longer believe we can stop the immeasurable human suffering that’s going to come from this. And I no longer believe that those with vested interests will give up their power or that there’s enough regulatory input to stop what they’re doing,” Lamont says.
“And that acceptance is not about giving up. It’s been freeing. We have to model new ways of being and caring that will hopefully survive and provide resilience into whatever is left of the future,” she says.
“It sounds absolutely awful, but in the last great extinction about 90% or 98% of the life in the ocean died. And it’s back, and I have to believe in the bigger cycles. So I want to, every day in my life, model deep care for humans and animals and our ocean. We have to support each other. We have to create different modalities. We have to do everything we can. And we have to support our young people and older people by continuing to do everything we can and hold those to account who need to be held to account.”
Lamont was in the ocean, swimming in the kelp beds with the sea temperature a not-so-balmy 8.7°C the morning of this interview. Of all the places in the world she’s been lucky enough to have dived and swum in, Cape Town’s coast and kelp beds remain her favourite.
“I’m still chasing the concept of balance and self-care and wellness and wellbeing,” she says, adding that she’ll swim even when gales are howling and storms are looming. “The ocean is so nurturing. There’s something just remarkable about being in water. It has a life and an energy. But I also feel it dying.”
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