Kerry Swift is Executive Director of Institutional Advancement at the University of Johannesburg where he oversees Marketing and Communications, Internationalisation, Alumni Relations, Community Engagement, Fundraising and Arts and Culture. The University of Johannesburg is the result of a merger of three separate tertiary institutions, which has required a complete remake of the brand and the careful management of perceptions regarding the three legacy institutions. It is the largest and most complex merger in the history of South African tertiary education.

He holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa and an MA from the University of York in the UK as the recipient of a Rotary Journalism Fellowship.

He is a published author in South Africa (Don Nelson and Jonathan Ball) and the UK (Robert Hale) and has written for numerous publications in South Africa and abroad.

As a journalist he worked on various newspapers and magazines, including the Sunday Times and the iconic Drum magazine, and for a number of years was engaged as a consultant in corporate communications, assisting numerous South African blue-chip companies with their corporate communications needs.

He has won two of the country’s top specialist writing awards, the Siemens Award for Technical Journalism and the overall Transnet Award for Journalistic excellence.

He helped launch City Press, South Africa’s largest black weekly newspaper and, as a publication designer, redesigned the country’s top business daily, Business Day and the Herald in Port Elizabeth.

For a period he taught at Rhodes University, before venturing back into publishing. He returned to Rhodes in 2002 as Executive Director of Development, assisting the university and its consultants establish its Development office in preparation for the university’s highly successful centenary campaign in 2004.

He is chairman of The Orchestra Company in Johannesburg which runs five youth orchestras and has 1 500 members, mostly from disadvantaged communities in and around Johannesburg. It is the most extensive and successful youth music programme in the country.