Thought Leader is a collaborative news and opinion platform owned by the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian. It was named a Webby Award Honoree in 2008, won 2008 SA Blog of the Year, and has scored a few firsts, including sending the first South African blogger, Ndumiso Ngcobo, to cover a major political event – the 2007 ANC national conference in Polokwane.

A thought leader can refer to an individual or firm that is recognized as an authority in a specialized field and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded. The Oxford English Dictionary gives as its first citation for the phrase an 1887 description of Henry Ward Beecher as "one of the great thought-leaders in America." But it was revived or reinvented by marketers in the 1980s; in a 1990 article in the Wall Street Journal Marketing section, Patrick Reilly used the term "thought leader publications" to refer to such magazines as Harper's.