PEOPLE

Peter Willis is Director of Cambrige Programme for Sustainability Leadership’s Southern African office. He is responsible for the Southern African Senior Executives Seminar of The Prince of Wales’s Business & the Environment Programme. He is also involved in designing sustainability learning programmes for multinational corporations in and outside Africa. Previously Peter was Executive Director of The Natural Step in South Africa, an international NGO consulting to businesses and local authorities around sustainability strategy. Peter has degrees from Oxford and London Universities and has lived in South Africa since 1993.

Magda de Kok is Senior Project Manager of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership’s Southern African office. She joined CPSL in May 2002 as Seminar Coordinator of the Prince of Wales’ Business & the Environment Programme. In this capacity she coordinates seminars for senior executives in sustainability. Previously she worked at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business for 5 years. There she ran a research programme in entrepreneurship and was instrumental in sourcing the funding and setting up of the UCT Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Magda holds degrees in anthropology and languages from Rand Afrikaans University (now Johannesburg University) and the University of South Africa.

Elspeth Donovan joined CPSL as Development Director in the Southern African office on 1 November 2008. From 2003-2006 she was the director of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School MBA. She was instrumental in the introduction of the Modular MBA programme and introduced ‘The Role of Business in Society’ as an integrating course on the MBA with a strong emphasis on sustainable business practice being the underpinning philosophy of the programme. From 2006 she was an independent executive education consultant. At UCT she co-taught an MBA elective called ‘Social Entrepreneurship’, which exposes the students to hands on experience of working with enterprises creating social and financial value. She regularly supervises MBA theses in the broad area of Social Enterprise. She designed and directed various leadership programmes for companies through the UCT Graduate School of Business, including the Executive Leadership Programme (an open programme), senior leadership programmes for Anglo Platinum and a Women in Leadership programme for Johnson & Johnson (Europe, Middle East & Africa). Elspeth also led the design of the entire curriculum for TSIBA Education, an innovative Cape Town business school for students from impoverished backgrounds and is Chair of the Board of Christel House South Africa, a privately run school for children from impoverished backgrounds. Elspeth has a BSc and an MBA from University of Cape Town.

Dirk Visser is a Project Manager at Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership’s South African office. His responsibilities include the local website, the Cambridge Resilience Forum and working on tailor made programmes on risk and innovation. Prior to joining CPSL he has worked on a wide range of projects in the construction, film, technology and education industries. This included developing an accredited seminar series on Green Building in 2007, co-founding a Robotics Academy aimed at school children and co-creating the Open Innovation Studio in Cape Town. Dirk was a co-founder and executive director of Brightest Young Minds, a leading youth driven social entrepreneurship initiative, and has chaired three BYM summits, most recently in July 2009. Dirk is a graduate of Stellenbosch University and is currently busy with a Masters Degree in Futures Studies.