The people
behind the work.

Dr Jerry Gule is the CEO of the Institute of People Management (IPM) and founder of Gule Executive Coaching. He is an experienced human resources executive, coach and mentor, with senior leadership experience across transformation, human capital and organisational development. He previously held senior roles at TOTAL, including General Manager: Transformation and General Manager: HR and Transformation, where he helped guide major transformation and procurement initiatives.

Dr Gule has also served as Chairperson of the South African Employers for Disability and Love Trust, supporting disability inclusion and education for vulnerable children. He holds qualifications from the University of Botswana and Swaziland, the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard University, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors.

Adjunct Professor Dave Clark is the Group Chief Executive Officer and an executive director and board member of The Aurum Institute. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He holds an MBA, and an AMP from Harvard Business School.

Prof. Clark is strongly involved in the health programmes, corporate services and strategic leadership of the company. His activities include oversight of the financial, human resource and data management services to support the work of the scientific and clinical departments. His strengths include an analytical mind with emphasis on lateral thinking as well as the ability to draw operational teams together and motivate them to implement projects that deliver results. He has a particular interest in programme systems design and implementation and the development of managerial leadership for NGOs and government.

Prof. Clark qualified in medicine at Wits University in Johannesburg. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Commerce Degree, as well as a Diploma in Health Services Management. He was the Operations Executive for the hospitals and health services of the gold subsidiary of the Anglo-American group up until 2004 before moving to Aurum. He is also a non-executive director of several other health NGOs in South Africa and Chartered Director of the Institute of Directors of SA.

Ms Paula Fray has worked in media for more than three decades as a journalist, editor, trainer and media manager. She was the first female editor of the Saturday Star newspaper in South Africa. She is currently the managing director of the pan-African media training organisation frayintermedia, which she founded in 2005. The organisation has trained journalists, media leaders, civil society organisations, government officials and corporate leaders during its decade-long existence.

She is President of The New Humanitarian news agency, a board member of Africa Check and of Accountability Lab SA. She is a Print and Digital Media SA fellow and a public representative on the Press Council of South Africa.

Ms Fray graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Rhodes University and has a Woman and Law Certificate from UNISA. A recipient of the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, she is a former member of the Nieman Foundation Advisory Board at Harvard.

Advocate Zondo has worked as a General Counsel at South African Airways for 5 years.

She currently serves as Chair at Barloworld Empowerment Foundation. She previously served as head of secretariat for the National Education Crisis Forum; CEO of the Public Protector South Africa; CEO of the Bertha Gxowa Foundation; general manager: Legal at Sasol; general counsel at SAA; CEO of the National Nuclear Regulator; secretary to the PrepCom of the CTBTO in Vienna; CEO of the SAHRC and deputy executive director of the Constitutional Assembly Secretariat. She also held non-executive roles at the National Research Foundation and National Advisory Council on Innovation.

Louisa holds an LLB from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, an LLM in public law from the London School of Economics, and a BProc from the University of Limpopo. She has always had a strong enthusiasm for education and how it can change people’s lives, particularly the lives of women and children.

Mr Hassim is the Group Chief Financial Officer and an executive director and board member of The Aurum Institute. He brings over 20 years of experience in financial leadership at various blue-chip corporate organisations. He has held various posts in External Audit at Arthur Andersen/KPMG Johannesburg, Financial Management at Sanlam Life and supporting the Debt Capital Markets team at Sanlam Capital Markets in capital raising, debt structuring and other complex structured finance deals.

Mr Hassim has also played an integral part in a number of bank wide initiatives across the Nedbank Capital, Corporate and Retail Operations as CFO of Group Risk as well as taking Executive lead of the Nedbank Group Insurance Captives, the second largest in South Africa. He has previously been the Chief Financial Officer at Chrysler South Africa and the Group Chief Financial Officer at MAN Truck and Bus South Africa, a division of Volkswagen AG. More recently he was the CFO of the largest revenue division at Alexander Forbes Limited viz. Corporate and Employee Benefits.

He has an excellent track record with the implementation of change management processes, legal entity restructures, championing compliance, expanding into the rest of Africa and has been successful in inheriting teams, building teams, improving morale and achieving success.

Mr Hassim is a registered Chartered Accountant and has completed several courses at the Wits Business School, University of Oxford – SAID Business School, London Business School and Rotman School of Management (University of Toronto).

Ms Luthuli has 27 years broad global human resources experience at all levels in different sectors, of which 19 years have been at executive level. Ms Luthuli has 15 years Board experience as a Non-Executive Director for listed and multinational companies.

She is currently an Executive Director at MAN Automotive (South Africa). Ms Luthuli completed her MBA in 2012, and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management, and a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree.

Additionally, she has participated in leadership programmes at Stanford Business School, IMD Business School in Switzerland, and INSEAD.

Mr Darko is a director at Nkululeko Leadership Consulting – a consulting firm specialising in organisational culture, leadership, change management and strategy.

As a management consultant, he has assisted several organisations and leaders (public and private) to develop and implement strategies and organisational effectiveness, manage change and transform their organisational cultures. He mentors leaders and teams, both locally and internationally.

Mr Darko has over 30 years’ global multi-industry experience in Europe, the USA and Africa. He held a number of senior management positions at Dun & Bradstreet Corporation while based in the UK. He was the CIO of AngloGold Ashanti and chairs the IT committee at Absa Group and is a member of the Audit and Compliance and the Directors Affairs (Nominations) Committees.

Mr Darko is also a non-executive director of Reunert and Chairman of Senscare and previously served on the Boards of Business Connexion, Consolidated Infrastructure Group and The Mazor Group.

Mr Gary Tamblyn is the Group Treasurer of Discovery Ltd and a key executive in Discovery Bank Ltd. He has extensive experience in financial markets at the highest level as well as a keen interest in corporate governance and leadership.

With years of executive responsibility at Nedbank Ltd and as a graduate of the Executive Leadership Program at INSEAD in France, Mr Tamblyn is well versed in strategic thinking and planning, communication, presentation skills, risk management, people development and effective management.

Yaw Peprah is a qualified chartered accountant with Private Equity/Venture Capital experience as well as experience in evaluating and analysing business plans and financial information and the preparation of financial models.

Mr Peprah has previously worked for Price Waterhouse Coopers, Standard Bank and the National Empowerment Fund. In December 2015, he was appointed as the Chief Business Officer at Wesgro, the tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape.

Mr Peprah was previously a shareholder in an advertising agency, which focused on below the line marketing and was involved in setting up the business’ online advertising presence in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. In 2015, he was part of the team that set up the Silibona Educational Trust to sponsor young women from previously disadvantaged backgrounds to attend university. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The St Dunstan’s Association for South African War-Blinded veterans.

Associate Professor Salome Charalambous is the Group Chief Health Officer at The Aurum Institute. She holds a medical degree from the University of the Witwatersrand and an MSc and PhD in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She has vast experience in medical research in the fields of HIV and TB. She was involved in HIV programme implementation prior to antiretroviral therapy implementation in the mining industry and was instrumental in the first large antiretroviral implementation project in the Anglo-American companies. Following that, Professor Charalambous was the main recipient of a large PEPFAR grant which involved HIV programme implementation in settings with private practitioners, public sector hospitals, such as Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, and Tembisa hospital, and the Department of Correctional Services.

As part of programme implementation, she also conducted research studies and published articles on TB-HIV integration, HIV programme evaluations and other topics related to HIV and TB. She is currently the Principal Investigator on a number of clinical trials and large cluster-randomized epidemiological studies.

Adjunct Associate Professor Violet Chihota has been a researcher in global health for over 20 years designing and managing conduct of clinical research studies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Cameroon, Georgia, India and Malaysia.

She has previously worked as a Senior Scientific Officer at Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), Switzerland. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Medicine in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a Senior Researcher at University of Witwatersrand, School of Public Health.

Prof Chihota holds a BSc Honours Biological Sciences from the University of Zimbabwe, an MSc Medical Microbiology from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a PhD in Medical Biochemistry from Stellenbosch University and has training in Epidemiology and Statistics from the Johns Hopkins University. She has straddled both the basic science, epidemiology and implementation research fields.

Her work has focused on epidemiology of tuberculosis, evaluating tuberculosis diagnostic tools and strategies for improving health outcomes in people with TB in Southern Africa region. Her current interests include diagnosis and treatment of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) and resistance to TB infection. She is also a skilled manager of complex interventional implementation research projects having managed and worked with diverse teams at both Aurum Institute and FIND. Prof Chihota has published widely on HIV/TB coinfection particularly focusing molecular epidemiology of drug sensitive- and resistant- TB, diagnosis, case finding and linkage to care.

Mr Hassim is the Group Chief Financial Officer and an executive director and board member of The Aurum Institute. He brings over 20 years of experience in financial leadership at various blue-chip corporate organisations. He has an excellent track record with the implementation of change management processes, legal entity restructures, championing compliance, expanding into the rest of Africa and has been successful in inheriting teams, building teams, improving morale and achieving success.

Mr Hassim is a registered Chartered Accountant and has completed several courses at the Wits Business School, University of Oxford – SAID Business School, London Business School and Rotman School of Management (University of Toronto).

Mr McMillan boasts over 32 years of work experience, with the majority of those years spent in senior human resource strategic management. He has worked in large complex organisations, covering a full spectrum of HR related functions. Michael holds a Master of Business Administration degree and a number of other Human Resources, Strategy, Business and Employment Relations qualifications.

In his current position, Mr McMillan oversees and is responsible for all of the people functions and provides the direction and design necessary to align them with the business needs, organisational philosophy, policies and practices. He is responsible for ensuring the delivery of the organisation’s HR strategy, and ensuring the support of business strategy in the successful implementation of culture change initiatives while embracing the organisation’s business and financial objectives.

Alongside this, Mr McMillan leads a team responsible for the delivery of a full range of Human Resource functions, including employee onboarding; employee value chain; employee engagement; talent management; remuneration-and-benefits; employee development; organisation design; change management; mergers and acquisitions; management of diversity; HR administration and policy, governance; and compliance with relevant and applicable legislation.