Dean Carlson

Dean Carlson is the Founder and CEO of BrainFarm, a South African event agency and speaker bureau, who has the privilege of working with a long list of blue chip clients in identifying and securing speakers for their events, as well as creating world class branded events.

He previously conceptualized, co-created and led the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit to become the largest multi-speaker business conference in the Southern Hemisphere with past speakers including Richard Branson, Al Gore, Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Anderson, Ricardo Semler, Dan Ariely, Johann Rupert, Rudy Giuliani, Stephen Dubner, Graça Machel and Nouriel Roubini.

Dean first gained exposure to similar large-scale events over a decade ago during his involvement in organizing trips for South Africans to attend international seminars hosted by motivational speaker, personal finance instructor, and self-help author Anthony Robbins.

In 2005, he joined Primestars Marketing, a division of Primedia Unlimited where he arranged Vodcast seminars, which featured local and international speakers presented to local audiences in movie theatres throughout South Africa. During his time at Primestars, Dean was also involved with the national launch of Unite 4 Health with Lance Armstrong as well as with numerous other events, which featured internationally acclaimed speakers such as Robert Kiyosaki, Blair Singer and Jack Welch.

Dean is also the Co-founder and MD of Smartbench, a Primedia Unlimited Company, which is focused on creating a network of strategically placed benches that provide free public Wi-Fi access. As part of the international trend of cities becoming Smart Cities, through smarter use of technology and providing public access to Wi-Fi, Dean has identified an opportunity for Primedia Unlimited to make its mark on the South African digital landscape by providing Wi-Fi in public spaces and making it free to end users through partnerships with sponsors who cover the associated costs.

He is also a Smart Cities Ambassador for the Growth and Development Strategy (GDS) 2040 Mayoral Outreach Programme for the City of Johannesburg. This programme is headed by the Mayor of Johannesburg, Parks Tau and charts the long-term strategic course of the City including some of the more significant, overarching decisions about priority actions that Johannesburg needs to take in order to accelerate economic growth and human development.