Cherise Dunn
Dr. Cherise Dunn is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of SOUTH AFRICA MAKES – an award-winning and internationally recognised medical device digital manufacturing company. She is a global thought-leader on 3D Printing for Development (#3D4D) and believes that this is the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technology that will drive the future competitiveness of healthcare in Africa. Her talk “Made for Africa. Made in Africa: 3D printing for development” has been featured by TEDx and she is the premier female expert in 3D printing and the 4IR on the African continent.
Representing South Africa, Dr. Dunn most recently contributed an African femtech perspective at the G20 Startup20 Engagement Forum in Macapá, Brazil, and similarly contributed to global healthtech conversations at the BRICS Young Innovator Prize Competition for her work in the circular economy. She has led SOUTH AFRICA MAKES as one of the winners of Fast Company South Africa’s Most Innovative Companies 2021 and in the same year was selected as one of Wesgro’s Young Innovators in the Western Cape Health Tech sector, encouraging tourism, trade and investment in the region.
Furthering this mission, she is currently a representative for Cape Town in Sister Cities International, facilitating trade and investment relationships between entrepreneurship ecosystems in Cape Town and Miami, as well as the global SCI network, and was one of Nedbank’s current Changemakers in the 2022 YouthX campaign encouraging entrepreneurship and the leveraging of technology and innovation.
She is an alumna of the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, regularly engaging with global stakeholders and visiting US Government diplomats, most recently sharing her insights on the impact of medical 3D printing in emerging countries with visiting U.S. Government diplomats, including Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman, Head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Special Advisor to President Biden, Dr Alondra Nelson, and most recently, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Lee Satterfield.
Her list of achievements include being an invited speaker at the Manufacturing Indaba 2022 where she highlighted the importance of developing a resilient an innovative local supply chain, being selected as one of the 50 most inspiring women in STEM in South Africa for 2019 as awarded by Inspiring Fifty SA (an initiative by the Kingdom of the Netherlands); as well as one of the Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans for 2019 for Business and Entrepreneurship. In December 2018, Dr Dunn was recognized by the United States Department of State as one of the leaders in her field and was nominated for the International Visitor Leadership Program for Women in Entrepreneurship - the premier cultural program offered by the U.S. government.
In the past, Dr. Dunn has been and invited facilitator and moderator in the wearables and technology track of the #Cocreate SANL Design Festival 2020 (an Initiative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa) with the theme “Towards Digital Inclusion”. She has also advised the U.S. State Department, through the American Corner Cape Town, in mentoring 244 teams in the creation of context effective technology programming for the global American Spaces program.
Dr .Dunn has facilitated and mentored more than 200 youth and female entrepreneurs from the Western Cape in networking, design thinking principles, and critical digital tools to be used by under-resourced start-ups as part of the “Youth in Business” and “Top tech Tools for Women in Business” programs launched by the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi). She has also previously assisted Microsoft South Africa Education in developing a sustainable strategy for inclusive adoption of additive manufacturing in education of youth, entrepreneurs, and business in the Middle East Africa (MEA) region. Further to this she has extensive experience in medical education as a problem-based facilitator for undergraduate medics at UCT, as well as more than a decade of experience in various capacities in the adult skills development and training sector in South Africa and regularly engages with stakeholders of the W&R- and MICTSETA. She has most recently been featured in brand eins, one of Germany’s largest business magazines, in the IT Dienstleister issue as one of the featured thought leaders on what’s next for the digital future for 3D printing.
Dr. Dunn completed her undergraduate training at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and subsequently, her doctorate in cancer research within the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town. She is also currently the Harvard South Africa Fellow for 2024, and looks forward to advancing the point of care medical device industry in Africa, driving opportunities for women entrepreneurs and supporting the development of a new era in inclusive healthcare innovation as she embarks on her Master of Public Health studies at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.