South Africa

Dorothie studied at Tygerberg ( Sarleh Dollie College) and graduated in 1998. She worked at Tygerberg Hospital for the Year of 1999 and moved to Victoria Hospital (high care unit) in 2000. In 2001 she moved to City Council Clinics where she was a registered nurse and also worked as assistant clinic manager over several… read more »

Avril Masters qualified as a Nursing Sister and Midwife in 1970. She joined the City of Cape Town Health Department as a Clinic sister where she worked in family planning, immunisation and TB clinics. In 1988 she left the Department to work as an Occupational Health Nurse for 8yrs.Thereafter she joined Prof Greg Hussey at… read more »

Doerieyah Reynolds studied at Nico Malan Nursing College and graduated in 1991. She worked for two years at Mowbray Maternity Hospital as a Registered Nurse. She then moved onto to the private sector of Kingsbury Hospital and worked for 3 years in the Neonatal ICU. From Kingsbury she moved onto the Local Authorities and worked… read more »

Christie Heiberg has over 10 years of experience in clinical research, starting as a data capturer for Merck Sharp & Dohme in 2000. She was promoted to a clinical research associate in 2001 and developed a passion for all aspects of implementing and monitoring clinical trials. She relocated to Cape Town in 2004 to work… read more »

Laura Myers is a socio-behavioural scientist, specialising in qualitative research and health communication. She has a strong interest in improving adolescent access to health care services and is a lead researcher on the Power, Girl Power, 3P and Youth Voices studies that form part of DTHF’s adolescent research division. Before joining DTHF, she was a… read more »

Philip Smith is a Socio-behavioural Scientist and the mobile services programme manager. He received his M. Soc. Sci. from UCT in 2011 and is currently investigating behavioural economics towards a Ph. D. in behavioural medicine. He was awarded the Department of Science and Technology Innovation Award for his PhD work. He has worked at the Desmond… read more »

Thola Bennie is a Research Psychologist/Socio-behavioural Scientist with a focus on issues related to finding HIV prevention solutions for  young people. Her previous work includes HIV and alcohol prevention work in schools, HIV vaccine and microbicides clinical trials, and HPV in young women. Thola is currently working as project manager on various socio-behavioural studies mainly around… read more »

Sabine Hermans is a Dutch Infectious Diseases physician and epidemiologist. She joined   the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation as a postdoctoral fellow in October 2013. Dr Hermans trained as a medical doctor and infectious diseases specialist in the Netherlands. From 2008 to 2012 she was based at the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), part of Makerere University… read more »

Nyaradzo Chigorimbo-Tsikiwa joined the DTHC as an NRF early career fellow. She completed her post- doctoral fellowship in 2013 in Drug Discovery in which she was part of the multidisciplinary team that developed the first African clinical candidate, MMV390048 an antimalarial which was developed using modern drug discovery paradigms. She is passionate about home grown… read more »

Dr Middelkoop received her MBCHB from the University of Cape Town in 1999. She has worked at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation for over 10 years and during this time she has been involved in a number of projects including clinical trials for HIV vaccine candidates and antiretroviral treatment options. Over the past eight years… read more »

Millicent Atujuna is a sociologist/population scientist with a focus on issues relating to social and behavioral aspects of health. Her previous research has focused on maternal health seeking behavior, Adolescent perceived risk behavior and HIV prevention, church-based social space and HIV prevention as well as issues relating to barriers to ART uptake. Other areas in which… read more »

Catherine Orrell is a clinical pharmacologist and clinical trials specialist who has worked as principal and co-investigator in clinical research at the DTHF since 1998. The studies she has worked on include the DAIDS-funded CIPRASA studies and both SMART and START INSIGHT Network studies. She has been principal investigator on 10 clinical trials and sub-investigator… read more »

Linda-Gail Bekker is Deputy Director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM), UCT and Chief Operating Officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. She is a physician scientist with a keen interest in HIV, Tuberculosis and related diseases. Her doctoral work focused on the host response… read more »

Robin Wood was educated at King Edward VI school, Birmingham UK, and received a BSC (hons) in Biophysics from University of London in 1970 and a BM BCh from Balliol College, Oxford University in 1974. He completed various UK training posts and worked as a medical officer in Peru, Afghanistan and Zambia before completing a… read more »

Peter Njonjo is President of The Coca-Cola Company’s West Africa business unit. Previously, Njonjo was General Manager of the East Africa franchise. Since 2011, Njonjo led Coca-Cola’s franchise bottling system in East Africa, overseeing 13 bottling companies that directly employ more than 7,500 people across six countries. In this role, he stewarded system investments of more than $1 billion… read more »