Sustainability Professional
Strategist · Speaker
Lisl
Pullinger.
Some challenges need a report. Others need someone who has stood inside them.
About Lisl
The woman behind the work.
For more than two decades, I have worked at the place where mining companies make their most consequential decisions, and where those decisions land in communities.
I do not advise from above. I work from the inside: inside operations, inside governance structures, inside the conversations that rarely make it into reports. That is where the real work happens.
My practice, Vivid Advisory, sits at the intersection of sustainability strategy, social performance and responsible resource development. My clients are the companies and organisations that understand the difference between compliance and trust. They need to build the latter.
"She did not need rescuing. She needed partnership."
Portrait 3 · The Beneficiary
"She did not need rescuing. She needed partnership."
Portrait 3 · The Beneficiary
Experience
From major global mining houses and infrastructure companies to policymakers, my career spans world-scale mining operations, multilateral development programmes and international policy engagement. I have advised boards, led cross-functional teams and built the social performance systems that sustain operations across Southern Africa and beyond.
VIEW EXPERIENCE
Learning
A postgraduate career built on the conviction that the work demands more than what the last qualification taught. M.Com from the University of Pretoria. Land Acquisition, Resettlement, and Social Sustainability from the University of Groningen. Environmental law. Design thinking. Gender and environment. Still learning. Deliberately.
VIEW LEARNING
Impact
Social performance systems built for world-scale operations. Resettlement and livelihood programmes designed to bring the voices of the most impacted into planning. International standards shaped through global policy dialogue.
Not reports. Results.
VIEW IMPACT
My Philosophy
Trust what
unfolds.
My personal philosophy is rooted in the belief that life is not something to be solved, but something to be lived fully, courageously, and with openness to the unknown. I believe in starting where you are, even when it feels small or uncertain, and trusting that as you take each step, the path begins to reveal itself. Growth does not happen in straight lines, and neither does healing. We move in cycles through joy, difficulty, clarity, and doubt, and each of these carries its own meaning and its own medicine.
At the heart of this is a balance between agency and surrender. We are called to show up, to take up space, to create, to choose, and to act with courage. At the same time, we are asked to trust, to allow space for what we cannot yet see, to recognise that not everything is within our control, and to remain open to what life is unfolding in response to us. I believe that who we become is shaped not only by our own actions, but by our connections with others, with the world around us, and with something larger than ourselves.
Ultimately, I see life as an unfolding adventure of becoming. One that asks us to participate fully, feel deeply, and trust that meaning will emerge along the way.
