Geordie Ractliffe
With a PhD (Zoology) in freshwater ecology and more than 20 years’ experience in river and wetland management, including planning and hands-on experience in mitigating impacts of construction and built infrastructure, water resource development and environmental flows, Geordie has lectured to undergraduate and postgraduate courses, supervised theses, written over 50 papers, reports and reviews. More recently Geordie has focused on issues of literacy and learning. She has a deep commitment to contributing to finding solutions to the education crisis in South Africa and is passionate about improving access to quality teaching and resources. She retrained as a teacher in 2014, earning her Post-Graduate Certificate in Education with Distinction at UCT. She is currently leading the Trust’s ALERT (Access to Learning through Responsive Teaching) programme.
Geordie has a long history of political and social activism, President of the Students’ Representative Council at the University of Cape Town at the height of the anti-Apartheid struggle in the 1980s, and part of a delegation to meet the African National Congress in exile in 1989. She served as a regional organiser for the National Union of South African Students. As a post-graduate student, Geordie served on UCTs Council and on a commission into student governance.