The client: The Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) is a Welcome Trust-funded institute that focuses on HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) research. It has two campuses, one in Durban, and one in Somkhele, where laboratory-based research and population studies are conducted.
AHRI’s main research partners are the University College of London, University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Harvard University and other international medical research institutes.
AHRI’s goal is to become a source of fundamental discoveries into the susceptibility, transmission and cure of HIV/AIDS, TB and related diseases, and is actively seeking ways to improve diagnosis, prevention and treatment of these illnesses.
The task: AHRI wanted to appoint two non-executive directors to their board. These needed to be credible professionals with extensive experience, a good industry reputation and a high profile. AHRI’s board was dominated by excellent researchers and academics, but they needed to bring in commercial and corporate governance skills too. The organisation also wanted to use the opportunity to improve the transformation and diversity on its board.
The challenges: The skills required in this organisation and industry are characterised as hard-to-fill and/or there tend to be long-term vacancies of skilled researchers with leadership and global experience. Our research suggests that these organisations and academic institutions are competing with each other for the same talent due to scarcity of skills.
The results: Tuesday Consulting partners with its clients to provide solutions rather than being a talent acquisition business, which means the company takes great care to understand the client’s problem and tailor-make solutions accordingly, even in complex situations like this one.
In addition, they acted as a trusted advisor to AHRI. Their strategic partnership with AHRI resulted in the successful placement of both non-executive directors and the executive team, while meeting the transformation and diversity imperatives.
To date, they have placed a total of four non-executive directors, the COO, CFO and CHRO and a Clinical Trial Unit (CTU) Specialist.
