Toby Shapshak

Shapshak attended Higlands North high school and graduated from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa in 1992 with a BA in journalism.[4] One of his first jobs was to shadow Nelson Mandela when he was president,[5] and to report on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

He worked at the Mail & Guardian from 1998 to 2000 in the positions of Sports editor, Technology editor, News editor and Acting editor.[6] Shapshak was senior writer and section editor at ThisDay newspaper, from its opening in October 2013 until it closed a year later owing to financial difficulties experienced by the owner. This was followed by a short stint as contributing editor at BestLife magazine.[6] For 8 years he was contributing editor and South African Bureau chief at GQ South Africa.[6] He also worked at Avusa media, Business Day and The Times.[6]

In 2001, Shapshak started Maven Media and in 2007 started publishing the South African edition of Stuff Magazine, of which he is owner and managing director.[6] In 2013 he started contributing to the Financial Mail, with a technology column called Pattern Recognition[1] and a column for Forbes magazine in 2017.[6]

Shapshak and Aki Anastasiou hosted TechBusters, a weekly TV show on CNBC Africa from 2013 to 2016.[6][7] In 2018 he was co-curator of the Creativate Digital Arts Festival in Grahamstown.[8]

Shapshak is a recognized thought leader and speaker in the worlds of African technology and business, speaking at events such as TED,[9] SxSW, Intel’s IDF conference in San Francisco,[10] Tech4Africa,[11] Sweden’s The Conference,[10] AfricaCom in Cape Town and Germany's Zukunftskongress.[12]

Shapshak has appeared on CNN[13], was included in the Mail & Guardian's list of Young South Africans in 2009,[14] was listed as one of GQ's Top 30 men in media[10][15] and was the ICT Journalist of the Year in 2002.[16]