Professor Flavia Senkubuge is currently the Deputy Dean of Stakeholder Relations in the Faculty of Health Sciences and has earned her under- and postgraduate qualifications from UP. She is a Specialist in Public Health Medicine with a PhD in Public Health and an MBA from the Edinburgh Business School and is currently appointed in the role of Deputy Dean Stakeholders at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Pretoria. She is also currently the Immediate President of the Colleges of Medicine South Africa (CMSA). Her election was historic in so many ways as she is the first black woman and only the third woman in the CMSA’s sixty-five (65) years to hold the position. 

Professor Senkubuge is the current chair of the WHO/Afro region African Advisory Council on Research and Development (AACHRD), President of Women in Global Health (WGH) South Africa, and Vice-President of the African Federation of Public Health Association (AFPHA, current African Ambassador of the International Medical Educators Leaders Forum (IMELF). She is well respected on the African continent and globally. She was recognised as one of the fifty (50) Powerful Women in South Africa by the Mail & Guardian’s Power of Women in 2021 and is a Fellow of the Kofi Annan Global Health Leadership Program. In 2022, Harvard Public Health recognised Professor Senkubuge as one of the twenty-five (25) standout voices in African Public Health.

Professor Senkubuge holds a PhD in Public Health, Master of Medicine with Specialisation in Public Health Medicine, Fellowship of the College of Public Health Medicine (FCPHM) and a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB). She joined the University of Pretoria in 2011 and has lectured at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and her research has been mostly on African health matters.

I want to congratulate Professor Senkubuge on her appointment and wish her well in her tenure as Acting Vice-Principal: Student Life and further request all campus stakeholders to give her support in her new role.