Lesedi was born and bred in Dobsonville, Soweto. Her passion for the natural environment was sparked during visits to her father’s side of the family, in Limpopo, where she saw beautiful landscapes filled with amazing and scenic woodlands and historically significant mountains.

Lesedi did her Diploma in Nature Conservation through the University of South Africa, where she got her introduction to the conservation world. During her studies, she volunteered at Telperion Nature Reserve for a couple of weeks, then worked at Rondevlei Nature Reserve for a year, under Nature Connect, where she gained experience in urban conservation and came to understand the importance of community engagement in conservation.

Shortly after completing her diploma, she joined the Hot Birds Research Project team as a research assistant on the babbler project in the Kalahari, and this is where her interest in birds started; this was an impactful experience for her career! Lesedi stayed on with the Hot Birds Research Project through her BTech studies in Nature Conservation at Tshwane University of Technology, where she had the amazing opportunity to do her BTech project looking at hormonal responses to heat stress in Southern Pied Babblers. During her time working with the babblers, she came to understand how research contributes to conservation solutions.

Lesedi then joined the Sociable Weaver Project in Kimberley as a field assistant. She later moved on to become the field manager for this project, and in this role she helped to collect cooperative breeding behaviour data on Sociable Weavers and gained experience in long-term data collection and project management. She also had a lot of fun working with the chicks and learning to understand the birds’ behaviour during the breeding season.

Lesedi was part of the 2024/5 MSc in Conservation Biology cohort, and for her thesis, she investigated the ecological role of sparrow-weaver structures in the Kalahari by examining both their role as resources to other bird species and the potential thermoregulatory benefits during periods of increased temperatures by comparing the ambient temperature with that of inside the structures. Her study showed that the presence of sparrow-weaver structures increased avian abundance and diversity and the structures are able to buffer against external temperature fluctuations and help maintain a stable microclimate.

Lesedi will continue to explore more questions from her MSc into her PhD, where she will explore the lifespan and design features of sparrow-weaver structures and how these influence the diversity of local birds, invertebrates and reptiles. She will also assess the heterospecific use of these structures for breeding and roosting, while investigating how the thermal qualities of these structures shape roosting patterns of heterospecifics across seasons. 

Thesis: White-browed sparrow-weavers as ecosystem engineers (Supervisors: Robert Thomson, Benjamin Ashton, Inês Braga Gonçalves)