Geri M. Augusto
Geri Augusto, Visiting Associate at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for African Studies, is an Independent Scholar and Education/OD consultant whose primary current interest is knowledge dynamics across societies, systems and institutions of unequal power. This includes social and cultural interaction between contemporary indigenous African therapeutic knowledge and the biosciences, between local and global science, between historically black and historically white universities, and between lay and expert systems in many arenas. Other interests include the design and management of learning networks and systems of innovation, organizational learning and transformation, and practitioners’ knowledge. Her most recent assignment was with the Office of the President of Brown University (Providence), where she conceptualized and coordinated a program to support the recovery and rebuilding of Gulf Coast region HBCUs, particularly Dillard University and Tougaloo College, post-Hurricane Katrina.
In Southern Africa, where Dr. Augusto lived for 18 years, her posts included: information officer for the Sixth Pan African Congress; English editor at Tanzania Publishing House; editor of a technical bulletin and rural radio program for the Angolan Ministry of Agriculture; project economist and technical editor for the SADC Energy Sector Technical Unit (Luanda); consultant to UNICEF and Norconsult; and interpreter (Portuguese/English) for a variety of ministerial, Frontline states, and UN meetings. She was the author, in the 1980’s, of numerous articles on energy and development in Southern Africa. Since 1994, she has collaborated on several projects in the South African science and technology and higher education sectors, including: a study for the then-FRD on Strategic Issues in High-level HRD in Science, Engineering and Technology (1994-95); the Future Needs & Priorities Task Force for the National Commission on Higher Education (1995-96); the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology’s System-wide Review of the Science, Engineering and Technology Institutions (1997-98); and the First National Workshop on Indigenous Knowledge Systems (Mmabatho, 1998). She is an advisor to the board of Indigenous Knowledge Systems of South Africa (iIKSSA). Augusto’s doctoral dissertation was on a bioprospecting case involving both biological sciences and indigenous medico-botanical knowledge in contemporary South Africa. She is currently engaged, along with others, in a Pan African project to produce a multimodal documentary on Amilcar Cabral.
In the U.S., Augusto has researched organizational change in the public and nonprofit sectors, consulted to executives leading such changes, and taught executive courses on organizational culture, managerial and organizational cognition, and change management to a variety of senior-level U.S. public officials, international leaders from countries in transition, and heads of nonprofit organizations. She was an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, from 1994 to 2002. Geri Augusto holds a B.A. (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in economics from Howard University (Washington, D.C.), a master’s in public administration from Harvard University (Cambridge), and a doctorate in Education (Human and Organizational Studies) from the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development (Washington, D.C). Fluent in Portuguese, she has a working knowledge of KiSwahili, French and Spanish as well.
Contact: GMAugusto@aol.com
