We are pleased to announce that Ms Linda Sing has been appointed in a contract role as the Acting Deputy Director: Marketing and Communications in the Department of University Relations (DUR) at the University of Pretoria, from 20 February 2017.

Linda has extensive experience financial services (banking and insurance), Information technology and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors. Up until October 2016, Linda was Executive in charge of Business Decision Support at Tiger Brands and prior to that was Director of Affordable Housing at the Standard Bank of South Africa. More recently, she is the Secretariat Director for the Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa - Financial Journalism Training programme, an initiative that is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Ford Foundation. Linda has also provided strategic consulting services to private companies and worked with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to develop national housing policy for governments.

Linda is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pretoria's Gordon Institute of Business Science, where she lectures in economics, strategy and innovation. She has an MBA (cum laude) from the Gordon Institute of Business Science, a MPhil (Futures Studies) (cum laude) from the University of Stellenbosch and a BComm (Honours) from the University of the Witwatersrand.

We congratulate Ms Sing on her appointment and wish her every success in her new role.

Prof Tinyiko Maluleke