Patrons and Trustees

A UCT alumnus, Dr Ally started his career as a history teacher at the John Bisseker Senior Secondary School in East London. He obtained his Masters at Rhodes University and a Doctorate from Cambridge University, both in History. He then worked as a senior history researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand where he served on the Senate and Council. He is currently responsible for UCT's development and fundraising endeavours and is tasked with ensuring that the fundraising strategies yield adequate resources to achieve the university's mission at a time when higher education funding streams face significant risks. Before joining UCT, Dr Ally worked at the Ford Foundation as the Programme Officer for Southern Africa, managing their governance and civil society work in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe. He has also held the position of Country Representative and Executive Director of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in South Africa and worked for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Dr Ally served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Human Rights Violation Committee, chaired by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.

Israel is passionate about Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), including the economic transformation of South Africa. He has lectured on “BEE for NGOs” and worked with civil society, universities and non-profits to develop BEE fundraising strategies to enable sustainable income streams into their organisations. His experience has focused on developing and executing strategies which would enable companies to better position themselves in the market, and develop partnerships with companies and organizations that want to implement “business-sense” enterprise development, socio-economic development and BEE strategies. Israel also has extensive working experience in France, Switzerland, UK and South Africa in both private and public sectors. Israel studied Law and Social Sciences at the University of Warwick, UK, and pursued and completed a LL.B in Business Law at Coventry University, UK. In his previous capacity, Israel was on the Boards of the South Africa-Canada Chamber of Business (2007 to 2012) and the Bilateral Chamber Forum of South Africa. His current Directorships include; Net1 UEPS Mosomo Broad-Based Trust (Chairman), National Association of BEE Consultants (Chairman) and Micro Finance South Africa (Board member).