My throughline has always been the human question: what the future means for the person living in it.
I am a hybrid thinker — equally analytical and creative. I see the big picture and connect the dots between the details. I have a knack for asking "What if…?" and "Why not…?", and I can read the room and read between the lines.
From a Global South perspective, living and working in South Africa, plus international work experience for clients across Europe, North America, South America and Asia:
Horizon scanning is only useful if you can tell which weak signals matter and which are noise. I placed in the top 10% of more than 1,000 entries in the Bridgewater × Global Citizen 2025 Forecasting the Future challenge on modern mercantilism. I use AI to think more, not to think faster or less.
I build scenarios that hold together well enough for a leadership team to argue inside them, and to test decisions against. As part of the Human Futures team I wrote the original scenarios that informed the final published versions in IKEA's ten-year anniversary Life at Home Report, 2023.
With empathy and adaptability I conduct ethnographic research: someone's breakfast habits in a housing project apartment in Chicago, and, on other days, what a parliamentarian or a billionaire actually thinks.
I've self-published a book and been published in two anthologies. I wrote and editorially conceptualised a report on The Future of Conflict while also writing an agony aunt column for an online magazine — and took both seriously.
I love myself a good pun, and I have it in writing that I bring humour to my interactions. Experience it for yourself.
"She is simply one of the best team members and collaborators I have worked with over the years."
"Came to rely on her as a steady, cheerful presence who was always ready to engage on tough intellectual topics as well … I look forward to working with her again someday."
"Her ability to listen to our community, identify patterns, and derive recommendations assisted us in finetuning our product offerings … She is a fantastic all-rounder."
I'm looking for my next role working on interesting, complex problems where something is changing, or a system isn't working, and the answer isn't obvious.
I'm particularly interested in strategic foresight*, AI governance, geopolitical and societal risk, venture capital and venture building, and philanthropy — fields where someone has to make a judgement call about an uncertain future. My work usually sits between research, strategy and innovation. The subject changes; the way I work on it doesn't. And I'm open to things I haven't thought of yet.
* Most planning assumes tomorrow looks roughly like today. Strategic foresight is what you do when it doesn't: building several plausible futures instead of betting on one, so you can see which decisions hold up whichever way things go.
Art appreciation
Learning to look at paintings properly. And, lately, trying to make a few of my own.
New experiences
A new croissanterie, a hiking trail, a book, a country I have never been to — or ten days of silence at a Vipassana retreat. I keep a running list of things I still want to try.
Champagne stokvel
A stokvel is a South African savings club where members pool money and take turns. Ours buys champagne. Same discipline, better dividends.
Photography
Lined up Complementary Still standing Tiny humans The covenant of water Posers
I turn fragmented, early signals into something leadership can stress-test a decision against.
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Retirement was designed for fifteen years and is now being lived for thirty.
What does that life actually look like, and who's building for it?
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Somewhere in our business a model is already deciding something about a person: who gets approved, who gets seen, who gets flagged.
Which of those decisions would we struggle to defend?
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Nobody becomes senior without doing the junior work. We're automating junior work.
So where will our next senior people come from?
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Scarce electricity gets rationed by schedule, expensive electricity by wallet.
What does that mean for where and how we operate?
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The people we need can't afford to live where we need them.
What gives first: where we are, what we pay, or how we work?
- Strategic foresight
- Horizon scanning
- Scenario development
- Backcasting & roadmapping
- Qualitative & ethnographic research
- Senior-level interviewing
- Consumer & cultural insight
- Semiotics
- Applied AI
- Writing & editorial
- Innovation consulting
- Workshop facilitation
- Delphi surveys
Senior Foresight Researcher
Foresight Researcher, Feb 2022 – Dec 2024 · Senior since Jan 2025
- Led and delivered strategic foresight engagements for global brands across technology, retail, financial services, food and consumer sectors, translating early signals into long-range strategy and executive-ready recommendations.
- Synthesised complex, fragmented signals into clear themes, systemic insights, opportunity spaces and emerging risks; built scenarios and narratives that let leadership stress-test strategy against multiple possible futures and their downside risks.
- Designed and facilitated foresight engagements and workshops, online and in person.
- Managed three to four team members on foresight projects.
- De facto manager of FutureTypes, an online magazine taken from concept to launch-ready; coordinated a team of ten.
- Example clients: Chanel, IKEA, Samsung, PepsiCo, Expedia, SoFi, AT&T, Manychat.
Community Manager · Research Analyst & Writer
- Helped grow and serve the community of this global think tank.
- Elicited, gathered and analysed customer insights and feedback; supported research and consulting projects.
- Produced and co-hosted the online Living Room Sessions.
- Trained and managed ten Zoom volunteers and seven outreach volunteers, and signed and managed a network of twenty community partners for The Great Wave hybrid festival during COVID-19.
Foresight Analyst
- Co-authored a Technology Futures Report informing R&D funding priorities for a European government.
- Ran scenario projects for an international engineering firm and a global home-appliance manufacturer, including semi-structured interviewing.
- Conducted trend research and developed innovation areas for a mineral raw-materials supplier.
- Facilitated client-facing workshops; designed and administered online surveys, including Delphi method.
Academic Research Assistant, School of Management Studies
- Conducted literature reviews and contributed to articles on the social sharing of emotion and viral marketing.
Principal Strategist & Consultant — Third Space Africa
Design-maturity and opportunity assessment for a large engineering firm; brand and messaging audit for a global mining company; a prototype internal newsletter for 300 top decision-makers; blue-sky FMCG innovation workshops and strategy sessions for a development finance institution; research into the future of professional-services firms.
Pan-African Cohort Member — School of International Futures
Invited to help explore the future of data governance in Africa.
Strategist — Indeed Innovation
Supported thought leadership on beyond-human-centred design.
Cultural Insights & Semiotic Analyst — Sign Salad
Analyses on the meaning and consumption of coffee, and on femininity, in South Africa.
Researcher — Inesplorato
A research report on the future and meaning of beauty in South Africa.
Content Curator & Editor — Shaping Tomorrow
Curated daily trend and future forecasts for this horizon-scanning service.
Academic Research Assistant — Dept. of Economics
Co-authored a background paper commissioned by the World Bank.
Interviewer — Markdata
Structured, face-to-face interviewing of parliamentarians and CEOs for a development study.
Scenario Writer — Futureworld
Fictitious scenarios exploring possible futures, written to challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
Intern — Future Navigator
Created a ride-sharing proposal presented to the City of Copenhagen.
Strategist & Trend Researcher — Sense 2Solve
Analysed LEGO Serious Play models, assisted GIBS innovation-lab workshops, crafted new business offerings.
Research & Marketing Manager — Futurist Gerd Leonhard
Secondary research, writing, marketing newsletters, Keynote presentations and social media.
Interviewer — African Institute for Mentoring
Structured interviewing of managers to build case studies for a business simulation game.
Most of this work is confidential. It surfaces in investment and R&D funding decisions, product development, strategic direction, innovation priorities and risk assessment.
AI & emerging technology
- AI and modern mercantilism
- The future of AI and society
- Technology futures for R&D funding priorities
- Wearables
Geopolitics, governance & risk
- The future of conflict
- Data governance in Africa
- Supply-chain risk
Financial services
- AI strategy for a Canadian bank
- The future credit union member
- Student loan refinancing
Culture & consumption
- Coffee in South Africa
- Femininity in South Africa
- Clean beverages
- Healthy eating
Work & organisations
- The future of professional-services firms
- Home-based businesses
- Beyond human-centred design
Home, travel & mobility
- Life at home
- Travel retail
- Ride-sharing
- Chanel
- IKEA
- Samsung
- PepsiCo
- Expedia
- SoFi
- AT&T
- Bayer
- Airbnb
- Starbucks
- Stellantis
- Miele
- Manychat
- Fairstone Bank
- Anglo American
- Zutari
- DCU
- World Bank
- African Development Bank
- Irish Government, Dept. of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation
BPhil in Philosophy — cum laude
Key focus on decision-making and behavioural economics.
BA in Decision-making & Knowledge Management — cum laude
Triple major: economics, political science, and decision-making & value studies.
I wrote a report on the future of conflict while also writing an agony aunt column for an online magazine — and took both seriously.
Reality Infrastructure
On the intersection of AI and modern mercantilism: who owns the AI systems that decide, and the risk of renting them. An argument that AI has become the layer through which institutions see the world and act on it, and that states now compete to own and protect their reality infrastructure and degrade their rivals'.
173: A Survival Guide for Adult Children of Divorce
I wrote and self-published 173: A Survival Guide for Adult Children of Divorce — a subject nobody commissioned, originally written in Afrikaans because it didn't exist in the market. A booklet for people who were told they were old enough to be fine, when actually it's OK to not be OK.
"We Need to Fix Recruitment"
On algorithmic hiring and what it does to the people on the other side of the filter. Published in The Book of Beautiful Business.
Life at Home Report 2023
As part of the Human Futures team I wrote the original scenarios that informed the final published versions in IKEA's ten-year anniversary Life at Home Report, 2023.
Demand for Education in the Five Countries of the South African Customs Union — Projections and Implications
Co-authored with the Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch. The work fed into the World Bank's Forever Young country brief on South Africa.
De facto manager, FutureTypes
Set the content structure and categories, created content, coordinated a team of ten, and did the unglamorous work of getting it finished and launch-ready. It was never taken public.
Copywriter
Brand voice, website copy and marketing content.
Content curator & editor
Daily trend and future forecasts for a horizon-scanning service.
Scenarios & world-building
Fictitious but disciplined futures, written so that a leadership team can walk around inside them and have the argument before it costs anything.
Interviewing
Semi-structured and ethnographic, from housing-project kitchens to parliamentary offices.
Talks & sessions
Produced and co-hosted the Living Room Sessions for House of Beautiful Business, and presenting work to senior client teams.
Workshops
Client-facing workshops, innovation labs and strategy sessions.
Let's chat. Send me an email to marizanneknoesen@gmail.com
The fastest way to reach me is email. I read everything and I reply — even if it is only a line. It costs very little to answer someone, and I think it matters.
BasedStellenbosch, South Africa — forty-five minutes from Cape Town.
LanguagesAfrikaans (native) · English (fluent) · German (proficient)
ElsewhereLinkedIn
HoursMy working day overlaps most of the European one and the first half of the North American one. I work remotely and have done for years, long before everyone else joined the party.