Elaine Rumboll is currently the managing partner at Elaine Rumboll & Associates Ltd. and an adjunct professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business. She held the position of director of the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business Executive Education portfolio from 2005-2011. A former performance artist, internationally published award winning poet, blues singer and academic turned businesswoman, Rumboll has an eclectic and exciting mix of skills. She holds a MA (cum laude) in Comparative Literature and an MBA (Wits). Working in the notoriously competitive and contested short course market, she brings a refreshing new approach to bear that emphasises cooperation and not competition. “We must not forget that as a university we are a national asset and cannot afford to squander what we have. We owe a debt to the people of this country in terms of continuous professional development and in generating a new body of leadership that is embedded and sustainable”.
(Source: Top Women in Business and Government)
Elaine’s Bio in more detail
A former performance artist (Echoes), internationally published award winning poet (Editor’s Choice Award, 1995; Nomination for Poet of the Year – American Library of Poetry 1995), blues singer and academic turned entrepreneur, Rumboll believes in the worth of mixing up disciplines. She holds a MA (cum laude) in Comparative Literature and an MBA (Wits) where her research report focused on Executive Coaching as a Leadership Development tool.
Elaine has lectured in the Comparative Literature department at Wits, at the UCT Graduate School of Business and consulted for local government on using creativity as a therapeutic and rehabilitatory tool in Jhb,Gauteng, RSA and in London, England, UK. After having spent three years working for Arts Alive in maximum security prisons for men and women running creative transdisciplinary workshops for which she received a nomination by Femina for Woman of the Year (1996), she 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 to many organisations on leadership development including Johnson & Johnson, Massmart Holdings, SABMiller and Nestle. She is currently the programme director for the UCT GSB Business Acumen for Artists Programme – a world first short course through a graduate business school for teaching artists across multiple disciplines on the language of Business. Her fields of expertise are in the areas of Curiosity as a 21st Century leadership practice, the Agile Leader’s Toolkit, Productive Presencing, Unlearning and the role of Gaming in strategy development. She is the chairperson for the advisory board of UCT GSB Women in Leadership.
As well as heading up the Executive Education unit, she also teaches on a number of customised leadership programmes for UCT GSB. Elaine writes a blog http://elainerumboll.com/ on Curiosity, for Thought Leader, http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/elainerumboll the Mail & Guardian online blogging platform and for Memeburn, http://www.memeburn.com/, “a Mashable/Techcrunch for emerging market technologies”.
As well as being an adjunct professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business and Leader in Residence, she is currently the Managing Partner at Elaine Rumboll & Associates, a boutique leadership development consultancy.
Elaine is the winner of the Business Women’s Association Regional Business Achievement Awards in the Professional category for 2010.