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- By Wits University

Gillian Marcelle is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation at the Wits Business School and the Assistant Dean for Postgraduate Affairs for the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management.

She was the guest speaker at the graduation ceremony for students in the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management on 27 June 2013.

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Short bio:

Prof. Marcelle is an active policy and academic research scholar with a well established reputation in innovation management and policy in South Africa and internationally. She trained as an economist at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad, and the Kiel Institute of World Economics, Germany.

She earned an MBA at George Washington University and read for her doctorate in Science and Technology Policy at SPRU, a preeminent research institute based at Sussex University in the United Kingdom. Prior to joining Wits, Marcelle held teaching and research positions at City University in the UK, the University of East London also in the UK, the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago and the University of Sussex.

At Wits, she focuses her research and teaching on innovation for sustainability, innovation policy and management, firm-level capability building and learning, industry dynamics in the telecoms and information technology sector, contemporary South African business and investment climate issues, and sustainable development. She supervises numerous postgraduate students and is widely published in accredited journals. She led the design and development of an interdisciplinary Masters of Management in innovation studies at the Wits Business School.

Marcelle has led programme teams within international organisations, and has worked as a self-employed consultant for national governments, multilateral bodies, cities, companies and non-governmental organisations like the World Bank, the European Union, the IDRC, the UK Department of Trade and Industry, the South African Department of Science and Technology, the City of Johannesburg, JP Morgan and several UN bodies.

She contributes actively to policy processes in South Africa, serves on a South African Academy of Science ASSAf Panel on the national innovation system and has provided invited submissions to the National Planning Commission and the Ministerial Review Committee that conducted a study of the national innovation system in South Africa. She is active in academic networks, is widely published and holds numerous editorial advisory positions.

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