Dr. Mamphela Aletta Ramphele
Former MD of World Bank

Dr. Mamphela Aletta Ramphele is a South African academic, businesswoman and medical doctor and was an anti-apartheid activist. She is a current trustee on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. While at university she became progressively more involved in student politics and anti-apartheid activism and was one of the founders of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). As a member of the BCM, she was especially involved in organizing and working with community development programmes. Due to her political activities, she was internally banished by the apartheid government to the town of Tzaneen from 1977 to 1984.

Ramphele received a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cape Town, a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Administration from the University of South Africa as well as diplomas in Tropical Health & Hygiene and Public Health from the University of the Witwatersrand. Ramphele has also authored and edited a number of books.

Ramphele joined the University of Cape Town as a research fellow in 1986 and was ellected as one of its Deputy Vice-Chancellors in 1991. She was appointed to the post of Vice-Chancellor of the university in September 1996, thereby becoming the first black woman to hold such a position at a South African university.

In 2000, Ramphele became one of the four Managing Directors of the World Bank. She was tasked with overseeing the strategic positioning and operations of the World Bank Institute as well as the Vice-Presidency of External Affairs. She is the first South African to hold this position.

Ramphele has served as a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, as the director of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA) and as a board member of the Anglo-American Corporation and Transnet. She also serves as a trustee for The Link SA fund, a charitable organization that raises money to subsidize the tertiary education of South Africa's brightest underprivileged students.She was voted 55th in the Top 100 Great South Africans in 2004.