Cello Gardner
Deputy Director: HR Planning,
University of Pretoria

"Designing a Strategic Plan for HR"

Cello Gardner holds a Master's Diploma in Human Resource Management.

He has 21 years' HR experience, of which 9 have been as a lecturer, thus producing a good balance of theory and practice.

  1. He worked as a lecturer in human resource management for 11 years in South Africa and Namibia.
  2. He was the Human Capacity Development Manager for USAID/ Namibia from 1996 – 1998. There he was responsible for designing national training programmes for the public-, private- and NGO sectors and successfully partnered with government and CEOs to drive an affirmative action agenda for Namibia. His advocacy and facilitation contributed to the development and ultimate enactment of Namibia's Affirmative Action legislation.
  3. His three years in the Free State Department of Health (FSDoH) was characterized by the establishment of one of the best training and development units in the Free State Provincial Government. He was selected to participate in the turnaround strategy for the (FSDoH), which resulted in the Department eliminating a R90 m deficit to within one year. He developed and implemented the first Service Delivery Improvement Plan for the FSDoH and was instrumental in developing the first Transformation Plan for the FSDoH. As Director: HR, Cello instituted the Batho Pele (People First) project as well as the "Buiding Our Image (BOI)" project, which enhanced the HR image with all its 15000 clients within its 87 institutions.
  4. Cello was appointed as Chief Director: HR at the Central University of Technology and was promoted to Executive Director: HR, within one year. He was the HR adviser to council for 4 years and was accountable to develop a performance management system and implemented a labour relations model.
  5. Cello is currently the Deputy Director: HR Planning at the highly reputable University of Pretoria, where he developed a plan to ensure HR alignment with institutional strategy.

Cello is well known in the HR sector in government and higher education and has facilitated many workshops for these sectors including, customer service, employment equity, strategic planning and HIV & AIDS initiatives.

He was nominated by many of his peers to serve on national steering committees for remuneration and HIV & AIDS initiatives.

He is an HR Mentor with the South African Board for Personnel Practice (SABPP) and is also a member of the Institute of People Management (IPM) in South Africa.