Jeannette Safi
Board Chair President and Assistant Treasurer
Paul Kumleben
Secretary and Director
Duncan Robertson
Treasurer and Director
Roxsanne Dyssell
Director
Aisha Pandor
Director
Jihad Essop
Director
Esther Pan Sloane
Director
Andrea Walton
Board member
Kelly Chibale
Director
Jeannette Safi, Board Chair President and Assistant Treasurer
Jeannette Safi joined the Board in 2015. She is a New York admitted attorney, legal and business advisor, and strategist, with extensive corporate law experience, capital raising and management expertise, and transactional prowess.
With over 15 years of experience advising global companies on all aspects of business formation and growth in both developed and emerging markets, Jeannette currently consults on corporate transactions and strategic matters across multiple jurisdictions.
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Born and raised in Lesotho, Ms. Safi received her Bachelor of Laws (cum laude) from the University of Cape Town in 2006. Jeannette began her legal career at the world-renowned law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, practicing for over a decade in their New York, London, and Paris offices. During her tenure, she represented major financial institutions, investment banks, and global corporations, leading hundreds of deals that raised over US$10 billion in equity financing and secured over US$70 billion in debt funding. Her expertise spans public and private equity and debt offerings, including IPOs, spin-offs, and acquisition financings.
More recently, Jeannette has broadened her practice to include transactional and advisory work in the venture capital markets. She is passionate about harnessing legal and business structuring and risk mitigation strategies to overcome barriers to international capital for EM/FM start-ups, particularly in South Africa and on the continent. She has a special interest in non-traditional capital-raising vehicles and ecosystems, such as crypto-funding and blockchain regulatory regimes, and their intersection with conventional securities regulation.
Maintaining strong ties to the UCT community globally, Jeannette is committed to supporting UCT in the US, strengthening inclusion and diversity in alumni engagement and giving, and deepening the community of excellent UCT Ambassadors. As the first female chair of the UCT Fund, she aims to honour this distinction with a special focus on philanthropic initiatives addressing social exclusion and gender-based violence in the domestic law arena.
Paul Kumleben, Secretary and Director
Paul is Chairman of the UCT Trust UK Board of Trustees, having joined the Board in May 2017. He has served as its Chairman since November 2020. Mr. Kumleben is currently acting as an interim Director of the UCT Fund Board of Trustees.
He was the Managing Partner of the London office of Davis Polk & Wardwell, a law firm with offices in major financial centres in the US, Europe, and Asia, for 22 years and has been Senior Counsel at the firm since 2017.
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Before moving to London, Paul worked in the firm’s New York and Washington offices. In 2017 Paul spent a year as a Fellow of Stanford University’s Distinguished Careers Institute.
Paul received a BA from the University of Cape Town, his LLB from the University of Natal, a BA Honours in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at University College, and a JD from IIT/Kent in Chicago. His non-professional interests include various nonprofit initiatives in education and media across Africa and in the U.K.
Duncan Robertson, Treasurer and Director
Duncan Robertson is a Director and Treasurer of the UCT Fund. Duncan is partner and Chief Financial Officer of Bridger Holdings, LP, a private investment firm based in Palo Alto, CA.
Previously, he was Chief Financial Officer of OpenTable Inc., a Nasdaq-listed provider of online restaurant reservations, which was sold to Booking.com in June 2014.
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Before joining Open Table, Duncan was CFO of SnapStick Inc., a mobile application software company, and Aricent Inc., a technology services company purchased by KKR and Sequoia Capital from Flextronics in June 2005. He also worked as vice president finance and investor relations at Flextronics Inc., an electronic manufacturing services provider.
Duncan was a member of the board of directors of Care.com Inc. until IAC Inc. acquired it in December 2019 and was on the board of trustees (including board chair and chair of the investment committee) of the San Francisco Foundation for ten years. Duncan holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Cape Town and an MBA (with high honors) from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Roxsanne Dyssell, Director
Roxsanne is a Director at the UCT Fund.
She is the Managing Partner at Afamba International LLC, which specializes in the regulatory, financial, and technical management for prominent satellite companies such as SpaceX, Amazon, Apple, Globalstar, and EutelSat across Africa.
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Roxsanne is responsible for strategic direction, client relations, and fostering innovation within the team bringing together diverse teams composed of engineers, legal practitioners, financial experts, and more. She ensures that they have the systems and tools they need to push the company in the right direction.
Roxsanne, who completed a Bachelor of Science in Environmental & Geographical Science, was the first and only person to get a university degree from her mother’s side of the family. On her father’s side – they were UCT all the way: a grandmother who was in Fuller, aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins were all at UCT and a cousin lectured at UCT.
Aisha Pandor, Director
Dr. Aisha R. Pandor is a founder, investor, and former scientist building category-defining companies across health and technology. She is the co-founder and CEO of Pandora Health, an AI-driven women’s health platform and community focused on improving wellness and longevity through a gut-centric, whole-person approach, combining personalized insights, lifestyle medicine, and clinician-supported programs for digestive, reproductive, and metabolic health.
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Previously, Aisha co-founded Sweepsouth, Africa’s first and largest end-to-end platform for booking, managing, and paying for home services, raising $20M in venture capital and scaling the business across multiple markets. Sweepsouth has connected tens of thousands of under- and unemployed service providers – predominantly women – to income opportunities and is a widely recognized advocate for financial and digital inclusion and women’s empowerment initiatives.
Aisha holds a PhD in Human Genetics from the University of Cape Town and has published peer-reviewed research; she also simultaneously completed an Associate in Management at UCT’s Graduate School of Business. She began her career as a management consultant at Accenture, advising C-suite leaders on strategy and operations.
She has been recognized by organizations including the World Economic Forum and Forbes Africa for technology and innovation, and has served in mentorship and ecosystem leadership roles, including as a co-founding venture partner of one of South Africa’s most active VC firms, E4E Africa.
Aisha is based between Silicon Valley and South Africa, where she brings up her 3 children alongside her husband and cofounder Alen Ribic.
Jihad Essop, Director
Jihad Essop is a Vice President in the Investment Banking division at Rothschild & Co in New York, where he advises corporate and private equity clients on mergers and acquisitions, strategic transactions, and capital markets matters.
Since joining the firm in 2018, he has worked across both the United States and South Africa on a range of high-profile transactions spanning industrials, consumer, building products, mining, and financial sponsors.
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Prior to his current role, Jihad served in investment banking and corporate finance roles at Nedbank Group in Johannesburg and London. He is a Chartered Accountant (South Africa), and holds a PGDA and a Bachelor of Business Science in Finance and Accounting from University of Cape Town. During his studies, he received multiple academic distinctions, including placement on the Dean’s Merit List.
Jihad is also active in philanthropic initiatives through the Rothschild & Co Foundation.
Esther Pan Sloane, Director
Esther is responsible for Eyre Street Capital’s fundraising, ESG due diligence, and impact reporting.
Previously, she was a Managing Director on the Avenue Sustainable Solutions Fund from 2022-2025.
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Prior to joining Avenue, she was a senior executive at the United Nations Capital Development Fund. From 2006-2016, she was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer serving in bilateral and multilateral posts, including at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where she helped to negotiate the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Esther received a BA from Stanford University with honors in both English and International Relations (1997) and an MA in Theatre and Performance from the University of Cape Town in South Africa (2002).
Andrea Walton, Board member
Andrea Walton is a global people and culture executive, strategic advisor, and founder.
Andrea has more than 20 years of experience leading human resources, organizational strategy, and executive leadership initiatives across biotechnology, healthcare, education, and multinational organizations.
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She previously served as Chief People Officer at bluebird bio, where she led enterprise people strategy during a period of significant organizational transformation, including commercialization, workforce
scaling, leadership development, and cultural evolution. Throughout her career, Andrea has held senior leadership roles supporting complex organizations through growth, change, and operational modernization.
Andrea is the Founder and CEO of Concrete Strategies, a strategic advisory firm focused on executive coaching, organizational effectiveness, leadership transformation, and people strategy. Through
her consulting work, she partners with executive teams and mission-driven organizations to strengthen culture, leadership capability, and long-term organizational health.
She is also the Founder of The Concrete Rose Scholarship Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting young women through scholarships, mentorship, and global educational partnerships. The
foundation reflects Andrea’s deep commitment to expanding access, opportunity, and leadership development for the next generation.
Andrea’s leadership approach centers on the belief that strong organizations are built through intentional leadership, accountability, and human-centered strategy. Her growing global engagement includes
educational and community partnerships focused on strengthening leadership, opportunity, and cross-cultural collaboration.
Kelly Chibale, Director
Kelly Chibale is a full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where he holds the Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery & Development.
He is also a Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Senior Fellow, Full Member of the UCT Institute of Infectious Disease & Molecular Medicine, founding Director of the South African Medical Research Council Drug Discovery & Development Research unit at UCT, Founder & Director of the UCT Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre, and Founder & CEO of the H3D Foundation.
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Kelly obtained his PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge (UK) with Stuart Warren. This was followed by postdoctoral stints at the University of Liverpool (UK) with Nick Greeves and at The Scripps Research Institute (USA) with K.C. Nicolaou. He was a Sandler Sabbatical Fellow at the University of California San Francisco (USA), a US Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (USA), and a Visiting Professor at Pfizer (UK).
Kelly has received many notable awards and honors, which include a 2010/11 National Science and Technology Forum-BHP Billiton Award in the category TW Kambule NRF Senior Black Researcher (2011), UCT Alan Pifer Research Award (2011), South African National Research Foundation (NRF) Special Recognition Award: Champion of Research Capacity Development at South African Higher Education Institutions (2012), South African Medical Research Council Silver Medal (2013); South African Medical Research Council Gold Medal (2016); Cheney Visiting Fellowship from the University of Leeds in the UK (2017-2018); South African Chemical Institute Gold Medal (2018), Royal Society (UK) Africa Prize (2023), Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Senior Fellowship (2023), Honorary Doctorate of the Faculty of Science, University of Basel, Switzerland (2023), election as one of 10 International Members of the United States National Academy of Medicine (2024), election to an Honorary Fellowship of Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge (2024), Honorary Doctorate of Leiden University, Netherlands (2025), election as one of 30 International Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences (2025), selection as an American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Distinguished International Fellow (2025) and awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) in recognition of profound leadership and influence on chemical science and society (2026).
Kelly was also named one of Fortune magazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders (2018), one of the 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine (2019), one of 22 black biotech leaders in honour of Juneteenth in the USA on a list published by the Timmerman Report, which celebrates innovative black leaders who are change-makers in their respective fields (2021), and one of the 25 standout voices in African public health by Harvard University’s Public Health magazine (2022). After serving as an Associate Editor for the American Chemical Society (ACS)’s Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, in 2023 Kelly became the first Editor-In-Chief (EIC) from Africa of an ACS publication when he was appointed EIC of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters.
Kelly’s other roles include being member of the board of Chemical Process Technologies Pharma (South Africa); Chair of Global Health at LifeArc (UK); member of the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization Council of Scientists representing South Africa; Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of INTREPID Alliance -a non-profit consortium of innovative biopharmaceutical companies dedicated to accelerating the pipeline of antiviral treatments to help protect the world ahead of future pandemics; Member of the 100 Days Mission Science and Technology Expert Group created to support the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat; member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (Beijing, China), member of the Board of Directors of the Global Health Innovation Institute (Shanghai, China) and member of the Gates Foundation Global Health Scientific Advisory Committee.
Kelly’s research interests are in drug discovery and the development of tools and models to contribute to improving treatment outcomes in people of African descent.
