The Team
Board of Directors
JANE SIMMONDS - EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER
Ms Simmonds holds a MA in Public Health. She has been involved with NGOs and community upliftment programmes around South Africa for many years. She is currently working at the South African Medical Research Council on a project to screen for hypertension among people over 60 in grant queues. She is a project manager in the Office of the Vice President of the SAMRC. She runs a second NGO called Khulani Creatives focused on income generation within economically marginalised communities.
TEMBINKOSI BONAKELE - DIRECTOR
Mr Bonakele holds a BJuris and LLB, as well as an MBA. An admitted attorney, Mr Bonakele started at the Competition Commission in 2004 and held the position of Commissioner from 2013 to 2022. He holds positions at a number of academic institutions including WITS Law School, Nelson Mandela University, Athens University and University College, London. He has published widely in academic journals, newspapers and business magazines and co-edited a book on competition law. He is also a member of the 2020 Cohort of the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity.
DALISU JWARA - DIRECTOR
Mr Jwara serves on the board of Common Purpose South Africa, a leadership development organisation and works as an Associate at MFS Africa, a FinTech company focussed on digitizing mobile payments in Africa. He believes that we can all contribute in small meaningful ways to craft society into what we believe it should be.
PROFESSOR LISA MICKLESFIELD - DIRECTOR
Professor Micklesfield is a Research Professor and Deputy Director in the SA-MRC/Wits Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand and leads the Adulthood and Ageing research programme. She completed her PhD in 2004 followed by a post-doctoral fellowship (2004-2007) at the University of Cape Town focusing on early life and current determinants of bone health in children of different ethnicities. She received a research fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand and was appointed as a Senior Researcher in DPHRU in 2011, promoted to Reader in April 2017 and Research Professor in April 2022. Her research addresses four major themes: (i) Epidemiology of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in African cohorts; (ii) Measurement of physical activity and other risk factors for NCDs; (iii) Aetiological understanding of mechanisms of NCDs; and (iv) Health messaging and impact. She has published 163 papers in peer-reviewed journals and co-authored 3 chapters.
PRECIOUS MATSOSO - DIRECTOR
Precious Matsoso, is the former Director-General of the South African National Department of Health. She was the World Health Organisation Director of Public Health Innovation and Intellectual Property. She was the Head of the medicines regulatory authority of South Africa for six years. She has served on various advisory bodies both nationally and internationally and was Chair of the WHO Executive Board. She served as a member of the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Health Technologies, Chairperson of the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. She was the member of the Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems. She was the Co-Chair of WHO Digital Health Advisory Group. She was appointed as the member of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. She is currently the Director of the Health Regulatory Science Platform, a division of the Wits Health Consortium and an Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of the Witwatersrand. She is the Cochair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body for the development of a legal instrument, a Pandemic Convention, or Treaty. She is appointed Adjunct Professor at Sunway University, Malaysia.
Patron
PROFESSOR THULISILE MADONSELA - PATRON
Professor Thuli (Thulisile) Madonsela is a professor of law occupying the Law Trust Research Chair in Social Justice at Stellenbosch University. She is also a member of the African Academy of Sciences and founder of the Thuma Foundation for Democracy Leadership and Literacy a Member of the African Academy of Sciences, a 2017 Harvard Advanced Leadership Fellow and a One Young World Counsellor. The former Public Protector of South Africa and full-time Law Commissioner, Professor Madonsela was one of the drafters of the South African Constitution and a co architect and drafter of several constitutionally-mandated laws, including the Equality Act, Employment Equity Act and Promotion of Administrative Justice Act. She has an extensive background in applied constitutional and administrative law principles mainly based on her public service years and her investigation of improper conduct in state affairs as Public Protector. She helped draft several international human rights instruments and country reports. She currently teaches Constitutional Law, Social Justice Law, Administrative Law, and Constitutional Governance and Ethical Leadership and has written and published extensively on these matters. An advocate of the High Court of South Africa, Professor Madonsela holds eight honorary law doctorates in addition to her normal law degrees and over 70 awards including the German Africa Award, A French Knighthood and Time 100 Most Influential People in The World (2014). Professor Madonsela is a mother of two, an avid mountaineer who has summited Mt Kilimanjaro twice under the #Trek4Mandela campaign and for the Social Justice M-Plan and regularly hikes for the #Action4Inclusion campaign, a quest to end student debt.
iGOGO
BRADLEY CHAUKE - RESEARCHER AND TRAINING FACILITATOR
Bradley has a degree in Health Sciences from the university of Witwatersrand and is studying biotechnology at the University of Pretoria. Bradley has been with goGOGOgo since the first pilot of the iGOGO program at Itlhokomeleng Home for the Aged in Alexandra, Johannesburg, in 2021. He has been involved in many other training programs including those around health and wellness, bullying, sexual and reproductive health education talks, and literacy projects.
SIYASANGA MTAYI - RESEARCHER AND TRAINING FACILITATOR
My name is Siyasanga Mtayi. I hold Bachelor of Arts in Law and Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Witwatersrand. I started working for goGOGOgo last year in April after struggling for months to get a job in the legal fraternity. I enjoy working with elderly people who are so eager to learn and better themselves. I also assist in other projects including, inter alia, health and wellness talks, blanket making, bullying and reproductive health talks.