We tried really hard to be able to make this monthly meeting an in-person one but unfortunately we could not get a facility capable of hosting such an event with current COVID protocols. So this meeting will be on Zoom again.
However, Laura has lined up a great speaker: Nick French was born in 
Zimbabwe and attended the University of Cape Town where he qualified in Business Administration. His working career covered marketing and general management, both in South Africa and a 20 year stint in Singapore.
In 2011 Nick took early retirement and settled back in South Africa (yes, Laura has truly gone global!!) and since then he has pursued his passion of giving talks to companies, clubs and associations and providing training and workshops, especially as it relates to ‘cross-cultural intelligence’ - how to succeed in business by getting along with other cultures.
He has been a passionate Toastmaster, rising to the top rank of Distinguished Toastmaster in 2012. He is currently the Chairman of The PROBUS Association of The Western Cape.
Finally, he is an historian and his presentation to us will be about something uniquely South African “The advent of open heart surgery”:
From the mid 50’s to the late 60’s tremendous progress in heart surgery was made possible through pioneering work done at the University of Minnesota. This is where Chris Barnard received his training and background in heart surgery. From there huge strides were taken in developing techniques to work on the heart, leading to the world’s first heart transplant by Dr. Christiaan Barnard and his team at Groote Schuur, Cape Town in December of 1967. In this talk Nick will share how heart surgery evolved during those halcyon days and the challenges facing the transplant team and how they were overcome.
