guy harris

Guy Harris - Social Entrepreneur
Guy is mentoring a few youths led or focused start-ups/accelerators targeted at limited resource communities. They are building PoP (Pathways outa Poverty) for motivated, mostly NEET, youth not captured by the ganglords or druglords. He also promotes the use of area based S12j accelerator/scalerators focusing on fast tracking high job growth Scaling Medium Enterprises (SME’s). Real job creation will come through entrylevel upskillable jobs in SME’s mainly selling to niche export focused high growth and high disposable income markets, to address SA’s high unemployment & poverty. He believes in not giving a fish or teaching to fish but rather investing in the fishing business and then helping them disrupt the fishing industry. He is mentors 6 Lavender Hill ECD centres for Learning in Reach.




Guy chairs the Board of Novelquip, an IDC subsidiary, and serves on the UCT Intellectual Property Advisory Committee and Private Equity Advisory Group. He is the University nominated board member of Cape BioPharms. He serves on the Red Cross Childrens’ Hospital Facility Board and on the Council of False Bay TVET College and coordinates a national initiative around TVET Entrepreneurship for DHET and USAF. He chairs the False Bay TVET Centre for Entrepreneurship and Rapid Incubation and their Finance Committee & serves on their Academic Board



He previously served on the Board of the Cape Town International Convention Centre where he chaired the HR and Remco, and on the Boards of Booyco Engineering and of SABS, chairing their Risk committee and served on their Audit and Social and Ethics committees and previously served on their Finance and Investment, HR and Remco and Nominations committees. He was Chair of the City of Cape Town’s Audit and Performance Audit Committee, served on the City Risk Committee, on the Cape Town International Convention Centre, National Parliament and on the Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board Audit Committees. He served as a part time member of the Western Cape Liquor Authority Tribunal. He was previously Vice Chair of the Northlink TVET Council and Chair of their Audit Committee amongst others. He was a Founding Trustee of Shonaquip’s Social Enterprise and Empowerment Trust.

He was CEO at SA Institute for Entrepreneurship, upskilling survivalist micro entrepreneurs. He was a founding director of Greybeard Business Catalysts, focused initiallly on Southern Cape Entrepreneur Development and Job Creation through Harnessing Public and Private Funding and Greybeard Angel Investors/Mentors. He coordinated obtaining major changes to S12J tax legislation to help make VC funding more cost effective with SAICA, SAVCA, BASA, Aurik and Edgegrowth.


Guy was on the Western Cape Committee of the Institute of Directors, promoted the Manufacturing Circle in the Western Cape, and was the Project Leader: George LED: PACA & BRE 2012. He was on the George and Eden District Municipality Audit Committees and George and Mossel Bay Hospital Boards. He has served on the Board of ProudlySA and the Council of SEIFSA and currently on the PSA WPC Advisory Committee

Guy qualified as a CA (SA) with Hons in 1977. He has a [link-omitted] Hons in Financial Management and attended the AMP at UCT GSB. He has completed a Commercial Mediation course. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors & a member of SAICA.


Guy was previously part time with Bell Equipment focussing on government, industry relations, strategic and empowerment matters. Guy was Financial Director at the South African Sugar Association, Commercial Director at Bell Equipment Limited, and a Board Member for 18 years. He was Managing Director of Avis Rent A Car and on the Avis Board. Prior to that he was the Managing Partner of Deloitte Consulting in Durban and was a partner in the firm for nine years. He also was seconded to Chicago in the early 80’s when transitioning to consulting.

Contact Guy on email: [link-omitted], mobile 27-82-5598755, Skype: guyharrissa; or follow him on Twitter: greybeardsme; Linkedin [link-omitted]

To see guy's full profile please login or register.