Dr Viola Makin

Viola Makin
Job Title: Academic Director
Qualifications: DBA (Pretoria), MBL (Unisa), HED (Wits) BA (Natal)

Contact: viola.makin@wits.ac.za

The new Academic Director of Wits Business School started in January 2012 and hopes to bring an exciting, entrepreneurial and innovative approach to this new Strategic Direction at WBS.
Prior to this Viola was one of the most experienced academic members of the Strategy and International Business division at the University of South Africa (Unisa) Graduate School of Business Leadership (SBL) where she was a Full Professor: Corporate Strategy and Governance. She is an acknowledged expert in her field and also has more than ten years Tertiary Education Management experience. Her Director portfolios have included - Seminars and Short Courses, International Relations, Executive Education, Marketing and Communication, as well as being a member of the SBL Board. She retired in 2009 after 20 years’ service to become the Director and to startup the Namibian Harold Pupkewitz Graduate School of Business.
At Unisa she taught mainly on the Master of Business Leadership Program (MBL), a three year program which has about 1200 participants. She has also supervised several Master and Doctoral candidates. Her areas of expertise are Competitive and Corporate Strategy, including Corporate Governance. She has been invited to teach on MBA programs in the United States, a number of times. In 2007 she was resident at the University of Maryland University College, USA and has also taught their online MBA Managing Strategy in the Global Marketplace She has designed, with the SA institute for Directors (IoD) an executive course focused on the Public Sector Governance and has a research interest in Governance. She has presented numerous academic paper’s and case studies and has had papers accepted at the American Strategic Management Society. Her latest publication is a Chapter on Governance and Sustainability in J Hough, AJ Strickland & AA Thompson and J E Gamble, Crafting and Executing Strategy (2011), Southern African 2nd edition. This also includes a case study on Brett Kebble. Prior research interest include Corporate Governance and International Business Through her business consultancy Makin and Associates, she has also obtained considerable practical experience and is an associate of the The Balanced Scorecard Institute of South Africa
Her doctoral studies looked at inter-active information technology for strategic advantage in the global management education industry. She is a member of the IoD (UK/SA) and the American Academy of Management and has had executive training at INSEAD, Wharton and Harvard Business School. where she also did post-doctoral research. She has worked in or visited more than 30 countries. She is a Non–Executive Director at Alexkor. This is a South African public company with the government and the community being the main shareholders. The business is diamond mining on land, in rivers and in the sea. Office Contact Telephone Number : 011 717-3496.