{"id":883695,"date":"2026-11-11T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=883695"},"modified":"2026-11-11T12:09:57","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T10:09:57","slug":"business-talk-gifs-ceo-kershen-pillay-on-accountability-and-corporate-governance-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/education\/883695\/business-talk-gifs-ceo-kershen-pillay-on-accountability-and-corporate-governance-in-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Business Talk \u2013 GIFS CEO Kershen Pillay on accountability and corporate governance in education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In this Business Talk with Michael Avery interview, Kershen Pillay unpacks the GIFS-INSETA story and the importance of accountability in South Africa\u2019s education sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pillay is the CEO of the Graduate Institute of Financial Sciences (GIFS) and is a leading voice in the education sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks to his dedication to improving the education sector and his work to build GIFS into the financial powerhouse it is today, he has received multiple industry awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was named a TYI Top 100 Young African Innovator and won the inaugural Future of Work Visionary Award at the Future of Leadership Summit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pillay also received a Certificate of Recognition for Moral Courage from the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Along with this, he assumed his position at GIFS at only 27 years old and oversaw the organisation&#8217;s rebrand from Masifunde Training Centre to GIFS in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The interview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In this Business Talk interview, Pillay outlines what good corporate governance entails and the responsibility of leaders to speak up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pillay unpacks the GIFS-INSETA story and the governance and accountability concerns that prompted them to take a stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also touches on INSETA\u2019s CEO&#8217;s recent announcement and shares his outlook on this development, given the concerns raised by GIFS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pillay concludes the interview by discussing what needs to change to strengthen governance in South Africa\u2019s skills development system and the key lessons to take from the GIFS-INSETA story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Watch the interview with Kershen Pillay below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t6lMRfcQdbI?si=HSvbQ6KDJFBRqy9m\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kershen Pillay is the CEO of the Graduate Institute of Financial Sciences and a leading voice in South Africa\u2019s education sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":883696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2120487964589379650","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2269381393882259","_sma_instagram_post_id":"17905908021602416","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26526],"tags":[15578,23829,23832],"class_list":["post-883695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-business-talk","tag-gifs","tag-kershen-pillay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883697,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883695\/revisions\/883697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}