Nazeema Mohamed currently serves as the recently appointed executive director of lnyathelo: The South African Institute for Advancement. She joined lnyathelo after working as a consultant and a stay-at-home mom for four years while her daughter had open-heart surgery, spine surgery and eye surgery. When time would allow, she worked as a diversity and inclusion facilitator for Emutihini and the Wits Institute for Cultural and Diversity Studies. She has run workshops for the National Research Foundation, Standard Bank’s Information Technology Division and ABSA Corporate Investment Banking. She was a Fellow of Universities South Africa (now known as USAf) and conducted research for the University of Cape Town, and consulted on policy matters to several universities. Prior to this she has been a consultant and AirBNB Superhost, and has worked at the Ford Foundation as a progamme officer in the field of higher education and social justice.

Ms Mohamed has a master’s degree in higher education management with a specialisation in gender equity from the University of London. She has several education certificates linked to education policy analysis and employee wellness. She is a qualified coach, a trained diversity and inclusion facilitator and has a foundation level ombuds certificate.

She was appointed to the first Ministerial Transformation Oversight Committee. She is one of the founding members of the Anti-Racism Network in higher education and held a position on the executive. She served as a committee member on the Apartheid Archive. She has represented Wits University in Higher Education South Africa’s (HESA’s) Transformation Directors’ Forum. Other national activities have included being an auditor for the Council on Higher Education (CHE) in the Cape Peninsula University of Technology quality assurance audit and being drawn on by many higher education institutions for advice on the transformation of higher education.

Ms Mohamed is the founder of the Facebook page Universities in South Africa: Decolonising the mind, which has over 9 000 followers.

She was appointed to several ministerial committees during her career as a higher education policy analyst and equity expert. She has worked in government as the director of higher education policy and development support. She was also acting director of constituency affairs in higher education and served on several national task forces. When she worked at the Centre for Education Policy Development, she provided support for the Education White Paper 3 process in the ANC education study group in parliament. There (1996) she argued for the white paper to include a clause on gender-based violence and institutional culture. Nazeema is a committed human rights activist and has actively worked in this arena in the field of education. She has a political history as a youth activist and led action on gender-based violence in the South African Youth Congress in 1990. She was appointed a part-time commissioner to the first National Youth Commission by former president Nelson Mandela.