About Justin

My Story

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I'm Justin Fife — an executive, coach, co-creator, and connector based in Charlottesville, Virginia, with roots firmly planted in South Africa and a passport that opens doors across the globe.

I grew up in Johannesburg, attending Craighall Primary School before making the move to Cape Town as a full-time boarder at Rondebosch Boys' High School. That early experience of independence — of leaving home and learning to find your place among others — shaped something in me that endures to this day. It taught me resilience, adaptability, and the value of community.

It was also at school that I discovered the wonders of team sport — and with it, a lesson that has stayed with me ever since: that great teams are greater than the sum of their parts. Cricket was my true love in the summer, and field hockey kept me busy through the winter, though I've always been happy to try my hand at any sport — especially if there's a ball involved. More than the competition, it was the experience of working together toward something bigger than yourself that shaped me into the collaborator and connector I am today. The field taught me what the classroom couldn't: that trust, communication, and shared purpose are what turn a group of individuals into something extraordinary.

Sport didn't end when school did. I went on to play both cricket and hockey at a high level of competitive club sport for years after, and the lessons from those teams continued to sharpen the way I think about collaboration, strategy, and performance. Today, the competitive spirit is still very much alive — it's just found new outlets. Golf feeds my love of precision, patience, and the mental game, while trail running gives me the space to think, reset, and push my limits against the landscape rather than an opponent. Sport has always been — and remains — a thread that runs through my life.

From there, my journey continued at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, where I studied Information Technology in the mid-90s — a time when the digital world was just finding its legs. That foundation in technology became the springboard for a career in strategic corporate sales that has spanned continents and some of the most significant names in enterprise technology.

But here's what my CV doesn't tell you: alongside building a career in technology sales, I've been on a parallel journey of personal growth and conscious leadership. In 2015, I formalised what had been a lifelong interest by studying Executive Coaching at the University of Cape Town. By 2020, I had earned my ICF ACTP certification through Creative Consciousness International — a programme that fundamentally shifted how I see myself, others, and the world.

Today, I hold dual UK and South African citizenship, and I carry the perspective that comes from living and working across cultures. I view the world through a lens of curiosity and with a passion for change, leaning into an optimistic view of what's possible.

Parenthood as transformation

The Greatest Teachers

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In 2020, my daughter arrived — and in 2022, my son followed. Nothing in my career, my coaching training, or my years of personal development could have prepared me for the depth of transformation that parenthood would bring. If Ubuntu taught me that we become ourselves through others, my children have proven it in the most profound and humbling way imaginable.

Early on, I encountered Dr. Shefali Tsabary's The Conscious Parent, and it reframed everything I thought I knew about the parent-child relationship. The conventional view is that we're here to shape our children — to teach them, guide them, mould them into who they should become. But Tsabary offers a radically different lens: our children arrive not as blank canvases for us to paint upon, but as fully formed souls who are here to teach us what we most need to learn. That shift changed everything.

My daughter and my son are parenting me as much as I am parenting them. They hold up a mirror to parts of myself I hadn't examined — patterns from my own childhood, reactions I didn't know I carried, edges I didn't realise needed softening. Through them, I've been invited back into my own early years, not with regret but with compassion, to understand and to heal what was left unfinished. They are, in the truest sense, my greatest teachers.

Alongside this, Becky Kennedy's Good Inside has given me a framework that I return to almost daily. Kennedy's central insight is beautifully simple: children are good inside. When my kids are struggling — when there are tears, or defiance, or moments that test every ounce of patience — it's not about me. Their behaviour is not a reflection of my failure as a parent. They are good inside, and what they need most is not correction but connection. It's about meeting them exactly where they are, not where I think they should be.

This philosophy echoes something I've always believed in my coaching work: that people are not problems to be solved. They are whole, capable beings who sometimes need someone to truly see them — Sawubona — and to meet them in their moment without judgement. My children have taken that belief out of the coaching room and planted it firmly in the middle of my living room, where the stakes feel infinitely higher and the lessons cut infinitely deeper.

Becoming a parent hasn't made me a finished person — far from it. But it has made me a more conscious one. It has taught me that growth doesn't always look like progress; sometimes it looks like sitting on the floor with a three-year-old who is falling apart, and choosing presence over perfection. It has taught me that the most important work I'll ever do isn't closing a deal or facilitating a breakthrough in a coaching session — it's showing up, fully and imperfectly, for the two small humans who chose me.