Elaine Rumboll

Elaine Rumboll
BA Joint Honours (with distinction); MA (with distinction); MBA (Wits)
Elaine Rumboll was appointed director of the UCT GSB’s Executive Education portfolio in 2005. Elaine is an award-winning poet whose work has been published in South Africa, France, the United States and the United Kingdom. She has performed her poetry in Johannesburg, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, London, Sao Paulo and Le Paz. Elaine is the developer and coordinator of Poems in Prison, a ground-breaking series of poetry and performance workshops held weekly (August 1995 – August 1997) at the Johannesburg Women’s prison and the Johannesburg Ultra Maximum Security prison. She has also run poetry and performance workshops for the Chiawelo Community Arts Festival in Soweto and for Young People in Care in the Newham borough of London.
She has performed and sung in a variety of performance art pieces with Echoes Performance Art Company and for a number of arts festivals including Arts Alive, the Dance Umbrella and the Dance Factory. She has lectured at both UCT and Wits and presented a number of academic papers at local conferences.
After having immersed herself in the world of Art, Elaine reskilled herself and entered the world of Business and went on to become Dean for Damelin Management School. She has served in an advisory capacity for a multiplicity of organisations on leadership development including Johnson & Johnson, Massmart Holdings, Nestle, Animation SA, Metropolitan Holdings, Western Cape Education Department and the Cape Film Commission. Elaine is currently also the programme director for the UCT GSB Business Acumen for Artists Programme. Her fields of expertise are in the arenas of new programme development, programme design, strategic innovation and leadership development in the 21st Century.
She is currently working on a PhD, looking at the role of curiosity in an attention scarce economy. As well as heading up the Executive Education unit, she also teaches on a number of customised leadership programmes for UCT GSB. Elaine writes an independent blog elainerumboll.com/ on the synergies between art and business and also for Thought Leader, the Mail & Guardian online blogging platform www.thoughtleader.co.za/elainerumboll .