Once discouraged from pursuing science, his journey through I‑Innovate and Vzable is rooted in one conviction: a young person should never be defined too early by what others believe they cannot do.
Growing up in Verulam
Shivar grew up in Verulam, KwaZulu‑Natal, in a family where community involvement was part of ordinary life. His parents consistently gave their time to community work, and their example taught him that service was not something reserved for formal campaigns or public recognition. It was a way of noticing where people needed support and deciding to become useful.
At school, however, Shivar received a very different lesson about his own possibilities. His science marks were not strong, and teachers discouraged him from continuing with the subject. The message he absorbed was larger than advice about one academic choice. It suggested that science belonged to a particular kind of learner, and that he was not one of them.
The most difficult obstacle was not a lack of curiosity. It was the erosion of belief. When adults treat a mark as a complete judgement of a child’s capacity, the child may begin to do the same. Shivar has spoken openly about being a learner who did not believe in himself or imagine that extraordinary opportunities could be meant for someone like him.
Years later, at the age of 30, he reflected that he was finally having the kinds of experiences he should have encountered at ten. By then, he had stood at NASA and Cape Canaveral, spoken with astronauts, helped connect South African classrooms to experiments in orbit and received an invitation to attend the Artemis III mission. Yet the significance of those moments was never simply personal achievement. Each one sharpened the same question: what might have changed if possibility had been brought closer to him when he was still a child?
Finding another way into the world of STEM
Shivar did not return to science by following a conventional scientific career. He found another route through communication, brand strategy and education.
His academic journey at Vega became a quiet rebuttal to the idea that early marks should determine the limits of a life. He progressed from a Higher Certificate into a degree in Strategic Brand Communications, which he completed with distinction, and received a Pencil Award. He continued into honours and later pursued a Master of Arts in Creative Brand Leadership. He also returned to Vega in new capacities, contributing to workshops, industry challenges and panel discussions.
Brand leadership gave him a language for something he had already experienced personally: the way an idea is framed influences who feels invited into it. Branding, in this sense, is not merely a logo or campaign. It shapes trust, meaning, identity and belonging. A STEM programme can be globally impressive, technically sound and filled with good intentions, yet still fail to connect if learners and educators cannot recognise their own realities within it.
This insight would eventually shape his Master’s research, titled Localising Global STEM Tools for the South African Education Sector: A Brand Identity Development Case Study. The study examines how globally developed STEM tools are perceived in South African educational settings, and how cultural relevance, language, trust and local positioning can affect their adoption.
For Shivar, the research is inseparable from practice. It asks a question that sits beneath every programme he helps introduce: how can an opportunity arrive in South Africa without asking South African learners to leave their context, culture or identity at the door?
Bringing possibility closer through I‑Innovate
I‑Innovate gave Shivar a place where his experience, academic interests and commitment to community could meet.
Over the past decade, he has grown into the role of co‑CEO and helped connect young people with global experts, astronauts, scientists, educators and emerging technologies. Working alongside the I‑Innovate team and its partners, he has helped turn subjects that can feel remote into encounters that learners can see, question and experience for themselves.
By 2026, Shivar estimated that I‑Innovate’s work had reached over 100,000 learners across KwaZulu‑Natal during the preceding ten years. For him, however, scale has never replaced the importance of the individual moment when one learner begins to see a previously distant future as something they may be able to enter.
Shivar does not believe that inspiration should end when an event does. The photograph with an astronaut matters, but what follows matters more. A learner needs routes into deeper participation, educators need tools they can use in their own environments, and institutions need programmes that make sense within local realities.
The distinction matters. Access can create a moment of excitement. Thoughtful localisation can help that moment become part of a learner’s future.
From access to insight: the path to Vzable
At the heart of Vzable is a simple principle: motivation comes before engagement.
A learner may be physically present while quietly withdrawing from learning. By the time that disengagement appears in marks, attendance or behaviour, the underlying experience may have been developing for some time. Vzable gives learners a brief, structured way to reflect on an actual class, project or activity and communicate what energised their learning, what interrupted it and what made them want to continue.
It is not a test, a performance score or a label. It does not decide what a learner is capable of becoming. It offers learner reported perspective that educators can interpret alongside their own professional judgement.
For Shivar, the connection to his childhood is unmistakable. A mark was once used to narrow his view of what was possible. Vzable asks adults to look beyond the mark and listen earlier to the experience behind it.
His role in Vzable also draws directly on what I‑Innovate has taught him about localisation. A system cannot claim to understand learners if its language, examples and assumptions exclude them. This is why multilingual access, cultural relevance and feedback from South African educators and learners matter so deeply in the way he approaches its development and introduction.
I‑Innovate brings possibility into view. Vzable helps make visible what may enable a learner to move towards it. One creates access to people, tools and experiences that once felt distant. The other helps learners and educators understand the internal conditions that can turn exposure into sustained engagement.
Returning to the classroom with a different message
Today, Shivar works at the intersection of STEM education, brand leadership, programme development and learner insight. His days can involve international partners, school leaders, astronauts, aerospace engineers, researchers, educators, funders and young people. The settings may vary, but the purpose remains consistent.
He wants learners to encounter possibility before doubt becomes identity.
That does not mean every child must become a scientist, engineer, astronaut or drone pilot. It means every child deserves enough exposure, encouragement and self‑understanding to make a genuine choice. It means curiosity should be taken seriously even when it arrives as an unexpected question. It means a learner’s present performance should never be confused with the full extent of their future capacity.
It also means nurturing young people as both problem seers and problem solvers: learners who can recognise the challenges within their own communities and believe they have the agency to respond.
Shivar’s journey is not a story about proving every teacher wrong. Educators are among the most important partners in his work, and he has seen how one thoughtful teacher can alter the direction of a learner’s life. It is a story about recognising the lasting power of what adults communicate to young people, and choosing to use that power with greater care.
The community service he witnessed at home in Verulam taught him to notice where a gap existed. His own school experience taught him what discouragement could cost. Brand leadership taught him how meaning and belonging are built. I‑Innovate gave him a platform to bring global opportunity into local classrooms. Vzable extended that work by helping educators see the person behind the performance.
He cannot rewrite the classroom in which he was once told that science was not for him. He can, however, help shape what the next learner hears.
