Based: Cape Town
Gabi Lowe is a Cape Town-based inspirational speaker, author, professionally qualified life and leadership coach, and co-founder of The Resilience Factory. Her extraordinary personal journey has shaped her into a powerful voice on authentic resilience, courage, navigating change and finding purpose through adversity.
After a successful 27-year career in media and marketing, Gabi’s life changed dramatically when her daughter, Jenna Lowe, was diagnosed with the rare and life-threatening lung disease Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. The Lowe family’s four-year fight for Jenna’s survival took them into the complex worlds of rare disease, transplantation and organ-donor advocacy, ultimately becoming a story that touched people across South Africa and internationally.
Jenna became the face of the groundbreaking #GetMeTo21 organ-donation campaign, which resulted in more than 20,000 new organ donors registering in just three months and generated enormous national awareness around organ donation. Following Jenna’s death in 2015, Gabi established the Jenna Lowe Trust to continue her daughter’s legacy and support work around Pulmonary Hypertension, transplantation and rare diseases.
AUTHOR & STORYTELLER
Gabi is the author of Get Me To 21, the deeply personal account of her family’s journey and their determination to save Jenna’s life. The story was subsequently developed into the 90-minute documentary Get Me To 21 – The Jenna Lowe Story, which has received multiple international film-festival awards, including Best Feature Documentary at the Cannes Arts Film Festival and Best Feature Film at the Toronto Documentary and Feature Short Film Festival in 2024.
THE RESILIENCE FACTORY
Gabi transformed her lived experience into practical work around human resilience. Together with fellow coach Pippa Shaper, she co-developed The Ten R’s of Authentic Resilience, a grounded-theory model drawing on their experiences, client work and research across areas including positive psychology, logotherapy and cognitive behavioural approaches. They subsequently established The Resilience Factory, delivering talks, workshops and programmes designed to help individuals and organisations move beyond simply surviving adversity towards genuinely thriving through it.
Their Authentic Resilience work has been delivered to thousands of participants and provides practical tools for dealing with change, uncertainty, crisis, stress, vulnerability and leadership under pressure.
SPEAKING
Gabi brings an unusual combination of powerful personal storytelling and practical leadership tools to the stage. Her presentations are deeply human while remaining highly relevant to corporate audiences facing constant change and uncertainty.
Her key speaking themes include Authentic Resilience, Leading Through Change, Courage & Vulnerability, Navigating Adversity, Purpose, Personal Leadership, Mental & Emotional Resilience, and Moving from Surviving to Thriving.
Rather than presenting resilience simply as the ability to “push through”, Gabi explores how individuals and leaders can acknowledge reality, understand their responses and develop sustainable strategies for navigating difficult circumstances.
Gabi is particularly well suited to leadership conferences, corporate wellness programmes, women’s events, executive retreats, healthcare conferences and organisations navigating significant change. Her combination of lived experience, professional coaching expertise and compelling storytelling makes her an authentic and memorable speaker on the human capacity to adapt, rebuild and thrive.
