South African Office Team

Peter Willis is Director of the South African office of CPSL, which was established in 2002 to design and run executive seminars in the region. In this role he organises and chairs the Cape Town seminar of The Prince of Wales’s Business & Sustainability Programme. He is also involved in designing sustainability learning programmes for multinational corporations in and outside Africa. From 1999 to 2002 Peter was Executive Director of The Natural Step in South Africa, an international NGO consulting to businesses and local authorities on sustainability strategy. Prior to that he was Programme Manager at the Environmental Monitoring Group in Cape Town, focusing on setting up dialogues between legislators, industry and affected communities, particularly in the mining sector. Peter has a degree in Modern History from Oxford and in Education from London University. During the 1980s and early 1990's he ran a number of businesses in the UK. He moved to Cape Town with his South African-born wife in 1993.

peter.willis@cpsl.cam.ac.uk

Magda de Kok is Operations Manager of CPSL's South African office. She joined The Prince of Wales's Business & Sustainability Programme in May 2003, after being with the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business for five 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. Previously she played a pivotal role in the setting up of the Language Facilitation Programme at the University of the Free State. Magda holds degrees in languages from the Rand Afrikaans University and the University of South Africa.

magda.dekok@cpsl.cam.ac.uk

Elspeth Donovan joined CPSL as Development Director in the South African office in November 2008. She is currently a tutor on the Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business and the Anglo American Advanced Social Management Programme. In South Africa she directs the Sustainability Practitioner programme. From 2003–2006 she was the director of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School MBA during which time she introduced sustainability into the core curriculum. She still regularly supervises MBA theses in the broad area of sustainability. From 2006 she was an independent executive education consultant, designing and directing various leadership programmes for companies through the UCT Graduate School of Business. She is on 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.

elspeth.donovan@cpsl.cam.ac.uk

Gary is the Deputy Director of CPSL's Cape Town office, having been working on projects with the Cape Town office of CPSL since January 2011. He previously led SustainAbility’s London-based think tank function. Gary has advised several leading companies on how to approach and tackle sustainability challenges, including Coca-Cola, Ford, Nestlé, Novo Nordisk, Rio Tinto, A.P. Møller-Maersk and Shell. Previously, Gary spent two years working in WWF’s Global Climate & Energy program, where his main interests were the causes of – and solutions to – the challenges associated with society’s addiction to hydrocarbon fuels. This followed nine years in the oil industry with Mobil and ExxonMobil, spanning diverse roles from Research and Product Development to Sales, Marketing, and Business Development. Working across Europe, the US and Asia offered Gary first-hand insight to the strategic and day-to-day sustainability challenges posed by one of the world’s most problematic sectors. Gary is the author of the WWF publication 'Plugged In: The End of the Oil Age'. He regularly contributes articles in the media and speaks at international conferences.

gary.kendall@cpsl.cam.ac.uk

Dirk is based in CPSL's Cape Town office. His responsibilities include the Cambridge Resilience Forum and designing and delivering tailored corporate programmes on risk and innovation. He also serves as faculty for the Cambridge Sustainability Practitioners Programme. At recent conferences he has presented on 'Sustainable Infrastructure Investment', 'Open Innovation' and 'Business and the Common Good'.

Prior to joining CPSL, Dirk worked on a wide range of projects in the construction, film and education industries. This included developing an accredited seminar series on Green Building in 2007 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. Dirk is a graduate of Stellenbosch University and is currently busy with a Master's Degree in Futures Studies.

dirk.visser@cpsl.cam.ac.uk