Dianna chairs the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF), an NPO founded by her grandfather Morris Mauerberger in 1936. Working with community based and higher education institutions, the MFF supports social justice and social cohesion by strengthening ethical leadership in the arts and heritage, health, education, sustainable environment, and welfare.

Dianna is a proud UCT alumna, passionately committed to equality, human rights and social justice. After graduating from UCT with a BA and LLB, she was admitted to the SA high court as an advocate and obtained an LLM from the University of London. She is an accredited mediator and fellow of the Chartered Institute of People Development (CIPD) in the UK.

Dianna has served two terms as a member of UCT’s Council. She has been re-elected as a member of the 2024–2028 Council, and chairs the University Human Resources Committee, is a member of UCT Remuneration Committee and chair of the Irma Stern Museum Committee.

Dianna continues to play an active role in UCT alumni affairs. She served as chair of the Alumni Association and supported transitional arrangements when the Alumni Association merged with Convocation in 2022. She serves by invitation on the Law Faculty’s Law Clinic Advisory Board and Alumni and Development Board.  

She presently serves as a trustee of ORT SA Cape, an NGO that empowers teachers and encourages initiatives that support the growth and potential of young people, and is also a trustee of the Cape Jewish Welfare Trust.

She is a former member of Cape Peninsula University of Technology Council.

While living in London (prior to returning to Cape Town in 2012), she co-founded a niche consultancy, Ionann Management Consultants, working with clients in the public, higher education, private and community sectors to translate equality, diversity, and human rights into practice: going beyond legal compliance to enacting the spirit of transformation. She has considerable experience as a consultant and educator and worked with clients to accelerate democratic policing and human rights in Northern Ireland, Ireland, the UK and 11 countries in Africa. She was a trustee of Camden Citizens Advice, chair of the Camden Race Equality Council and a founder member of Scotland Yard’s Racial and Violent Crime Taskforce

In the months leading to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, she worked with colleagues at the University of the Western Cape and chaired multinational panels on peacekeeping and transformation of the South African Police Service. She was a member of the Commonwealth Observer Group during the 1994 elections.