Cape Town - The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation has named its new CEO, appointed to carry on the late archbishop’s bridge-building and healing work.
Former Mandela-Rhodes Scholar and Rhodes University alumni Janet Jacobs will be taking over the Foundation’s reigns from Piyushi Kotecha, who served in the position for three years.
Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation chairperson Niclas Kjellstrom-Matseke said Jobson’s appointment as the CEO was an exciting development that the board was looking forward to as it spoke to the foundation’s development moving forward.
“While the foundation is well-established and administratively sound, it is ready to make real and tangible social impacts.
“In an era of global existential crises, the Archbishop’s calming voice of reason and compassion is already sorely missed.
Kjellstrom-Matseke said Jobson will have the mandate to respond to the human challenges of today by developing programmes and partnerships infused with the archbishop’s wisdom, courage and morality.
“What we are most excited about is where Janet’s lived experience has positioned her, and that is at the crossroads of what is often perceived as a generational divide.
“She understands the inter-dependent obligations of young and old, and wealth and poverty, women and men, black and white, Christian, Jew and Muslim.”
“She wants to contribute to building a new kind of society that acknowledges the wisdom of harnessing experience and innovation, of matching wealth and resources to new and clever thinking to building bridges,” Kjellstrom-Matseke said
Commenting on her appointment Jobson said she viewed the Foundation’s role as facilitating human conversations.
“So much of what determines the success of our work in social justice is ultimately relational.
“Archbishop Tutu was an extraordinary public figure who could bring his simple human way of being and doing into, very complex situations.
“That is the work I want to pursue.
“Not, what does the foundation think about climate change, but what does the deep well of our collective humanity our human ethic tell us that we should be doing,” Jobson said.
Aside from her experience as a Mandela-Rhodes Scholar at Rhodes University, and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Jobson has twice been named in the Mail and Guardian’s list of top 200 young South Africans.
Since completing her Master’s dissertation at Oxford on the role of youth in global civic society, 13 years ago, Jobson served as a deputy CEO at the DG Murray Trust.