Cape Town, South Africa

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 Southern 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 Cape Town office on 1 November 2008. She is currently a tutor on the Anglo American Advanced Social Management programme and on CPSL’s Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business. 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. 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.

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 a Programme Manager at 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 Masters Degree in Futures Studies.

dirk.visser@cpsl.cam.ac.uk

Enos is a South African entrepreneur and investment banker who is founder and CEO of the Freetel Group of Companies. Freetel focuses on fund management, portfolio investments and investment and transaction advice to a select number of sovereign and international clients. Enos has advised in some of the seminal transactions in South Africa, including the then ground breaking partial privatisation of Telkom SA. He has served as chairman of the South African National Electricity Regulator and Chairman of the Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit of the SA Government. He was country head for Credit Suisse First Boston (a global investment bank) and later, head of Africa for HSBC Corporate and Investment Bank, after which he established Freetel. He has developed policies in ICT and drafted national laws in telecommunications and municipal finance and BEE. He is admitted to the New York law bar, and he is an Advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa. Enos is a member of the Board of MMC Norilsk Nickel and the Chairman of the company's budget committee, and is on the Board of Supergroup.

Richard Calland has for the past fifteen years been working in the field of democracy and governance in South Africa and the region. He is currently Director of the Economic Governance programme at Idasa – Africa's leading democracy Institute. He is also Associate Professor in Public Law at the University of Cape Town, where he teaches constitutional and human rights law, and heads a new Democratic Governance & Rights Unit. He specializes in the law and practice of the right to access to information and whistleblowing protection; administrative justice and public ethics; and in constitutional design. Until recently, he was part-time Executive Director of the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), a law centre based in Cape Town that specializes in the 'right to know', and which Calland founded in 2000.

Professor Calland has in recent years served as an expert consultant to the Carter Center, the foundation led by former US President Jimmy Carter, advising on various transparency projects in Bolivia, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Peru and Mali, and to CoST – the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative – and provides regular strategic advice on politics and governance to a range of local and international corporates. In South Africa. He is a Senior Associate of the Cambridge University's Programme for Sustainability Leadership and co-director of the new International School for Transparency. Before coming to South Africa in 1994, Calland practiced law at the London Bar. He holds an LLM from the University of Cape Town, a Diploma in World Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA (Hons) Law from the University of Durham.

Peet is Programme Manager: Sustainable Growth at TIPS (Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies), a government-aligned economic think-tank. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pretoria. After working in energy R&D (coal combustion) at the national utility Eskom, he joined the global environmental NGO WWF as Trade & Investment Advisor for South Africa. He was elected in 2009 as chair of the South African green industries association, the Environmental Goods and Services Forum. His areas of expertise lie in networked infrastructure (including energy, transport and ICT) and the economics of sustainability.

Edgar is holder of the DST/NRF South African Research Chair in Urban Policy, directs the African Centre for Cities and is Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, all at the University of Cape Town. He has served as a Faculty Member of the Prince of Wales’s Business & Sustainability Programme at several seminars worldwide. In earlier roles he served as Special Advisor to the Premier of the Western Cape Provincial Government and directed a number of urban policy think tanks before his stint in government. He is a founder member of Isandla Institute, serves on the Boards of the Sustainability Institute and the Cape Town Partnership; and is a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Gauteng City-region Observatory and the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. He regularly provides advisory services to international development agencies such as: UN-Habitat, African Development Bank, DBSA, National Planning Commission, OECD urban division and UNEP. Edgar holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, an MA in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies (The Hague, The Netherlands) and BA-Honours from the University of the Western Cape.

Stefan (BA LLB) resides in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a qualified lawyer, arbitrator, mediator, facilitator and trainer. He is currently CEO and founding director of SouthSouthNorth Group, which has played a leading role in climate change issues since 1999. In addition he facilitates various large projects, notably the South African Cabinet Mandated Long Term Mitigation Scenario Planning Project (LTMS). Stefan has assisted in the establishment of Designated National Authorities (DNA’s) in South Africa, Ghana, Namibia and Mozambique. He has led the facilitation of projects within the Development Bank of Southern Africa’s Sustainable Communities Program, applying development facilitation technologies which he has developed over the last 15 years. Stefan is a director of Energy Transformation cc which develops climate change projects for the private sector.

Andrew’s role as CEO of the Wildlands Conservation Trust is built on 20 years of environmental experience, ranging from wetland ecology to community based conservation. His primary leadership focus has been on forming partnerships between South Africa’s Government, Business and NGO communities, aimed at restoring and conserving our natural heritage through people based approaches. Under his leadership, Wildlands has grown to become one of South Africa’s leading environmental NGOs and a recognised leader in the Climate Change related field of Community Ecosystem Based Adaptation.

The Prince of Wales's Business and Sustainability Programme Senior Executive seminar will be held at the Spier Hotel & Conference Centre, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa. The seminar theme is Growth and Sustainability – Rethinking How?

Read more information about the seminar.

The Cambridge Sustainability Practitioner Programme will be held in Diemersfontein, Wellington, Western Cape. This three-day seminar is designed for managers in the private or public sector who have specific responsibilities relating to sustainability, whether with an evironmental, social or public affairs focus.

This Cambridge Resilience Forum event unpacked the value of ecosystems, looked at some global and local developments and discussed how South Africa, and especially the private sector, can change the way they value natural capital. Read a more detailed report.

This Forum session unpacked the current climate finance regime, looked at some global developments and discussed how South Africa, and especially the private sector, can best utilise the global climate funds to move the country towards a green economy. Read a more detailed report.

The constraints imposed by financial analysts and asset managers seeking maxium return on their invested capital are often seen as impediments to businesses that want to improve their social and environmental profile. This event posed some interesting questions: Is it a case of asset managers not fully appreciating the risks of unsustainability? Are the languages of sustainability and investment just so different that we can't find a healthy compromise? Do we have to look beyond the financial markets to solve the sustainability crisis? How do asset managers evaluate the costs and opportunities around sustainability?

The South African Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, two business leaders and one of the country's top climate policy experts shared their views on the Business Implications of Copenhagen. Read a media report on the event.

Janine Benyus, the world renowned author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature and the Chair of the Biomimicry Institute, gave a public lecture that also served as the inaugural event of our Cambridge Resilience Forum. Read a full report of the presentation.