Podcast: SDG 1 - Dr Miriam Altman

Miriam is a strategist, economist, business person and social activist, and has served in leadership roles driving significant transformation. Her professional life has focused on framing and executing scalable high impact solutions to economic development challenges.

She served as a Commissioner in the National Planning Commission in the South African Presidency (2010 to 2021): in the NPC's second term, she led its work on the economy, infrastructure, employment and education.

As a Director at Altman Advisory, she supports governments and companies in their economic and commercial strategies. To date, this has involved African market development in e-commerce, education technology, electrical hardware, tourism and communications. She is currently leading the development of the SA Government's National Infrastructure Plan for 2045 for Infrastructure South Africa in the Presidency and DPWI.

As the Head of Strategy at Telkom, she was responsible for crafting and orchestrating its turnaround and continues to be deeply engaged in digital transformation.

As an Executive Director at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa from 2002 to 2013, she led its work on the economy and employment. The "Employment Scenarios" was her flagship. This drew leaders from government, the private sector, labour and academia together over a period of years to define a vision and practical strategies to address extremely high unemployment in South Africa.

Miriam is deeply committed to civic engagements, often as experiments to show how social innovations could impact on public sector delivery. Passionate about the next generation, she launched YANDiSA in partnership with enke-Make Your Mark. YANDiSA aims to build the capacity of elected high school leaders to drive constructive institutional change starting with improving education outcomes in their own schools. She is also an advisor to the board of PASET (comprised of Ministers of Higher Education, Science and Technology), which is a pan-African partnership of 21 African countries cooperating to strengthen post-graduate applied STEM capability.

Miriam has a BA in economics from McGill University, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in economics from the University of Manchester. She is an Adjunct Professor at University of Cape Town, a 4IR Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, and is associated with Tsinghua and Fudan University. Miriam has produced more than 100 publications and her work can be found at www.miriamaltman.com

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