Wilmot G. James

Dr. James, executive director of the Africa Genome Education Institute, serves on the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees.
He is a member of three board committees: Asset Building and Community Development; Management and Governance; and Proxy.
Before joining the Africa Genome Education Institute, he served as chairman of the Immigration Advisory Board (South Africa); executive director of the Social Cohesion and Integration Research Program at the Human Sciences Research Council in Cape Town, South Africa; and professor of history and sociology at the California Institute of Technology.
Previously, he was dean of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town, and executive director of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa.
Dr. James taught at the University of Cape Town and Indiana University and has been a visiting fellow at Yale University and the American Bar Foundation in Chicago.
Dr. James is an executive director of Sanlam Limited and Sanlam Life Insurance Limited; a director of Media 24 and the Grape Company; and a trustee of the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra and the Cape Times Bursary Trust.
Born in Paarl, South Africa, Dr. James received a Ph.D.
in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He holds a B.A.
degree, with honors, in sociology from the University of the Western Cape and an M.S.
in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He received a Fulbright scholarship for graduate study at Wisconsin.