Board Member
Pearl Pillay is a youth development practitioner and is currently the Managing Director of Youth Lab, a national youth think tank that aims to mainstream youth participation in community development and policy making. She holds a Master’s Degree in Political Studies from Wits University with a focus on youth participation in policy making and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cape Town, focusing on social movements and elections. During her student years, she was involved with organisations like Amnesty International, where she served as President of the branch and was then elected to the Student Representative Council in 2013. She was also extensively involved in various university societies such as the Workers Solidarity Committee and the Wits Palestinian Solidarity Committee, as well as the Wits Feminist Forum and the Golden Key International Honours Society. . 

In 2015, Ms Pillay was selected as one of the recipients of the 2015 Mandela Washington Fellowship. She has also been featured on the Mail and Guardian’s list of Top 200 young South Africans 2015 and has been included on Fast Company SA's Top 20 Under 25 List for her work in youth engagement. In 2021, she was profiled as a young female change-maker in Forbes Africa magazine. Ms Pillay was also part of Back Chat, a youth advisory group, selected by the then Deputy Minister in the Presidency responsible for Youth, Buti Manamela. She has been frequently featured in publications such as The Daily Maverick, The Mail and Guardian and Careers Magazine, particularly writing about politics, race, social movements, and Feminism, and has published academic work on entrepreneurship and Black Economic Empowerment.  

Ms Pillay has worked in different countries around Africa, training public officials on how to make their policies more beneficial for young people with organisations like EISA (Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa) and NDI (National Democratic Institute) to name a few. Ms Pillay serves as a Board Member of the African Movement for Democracy, a continental movement of youth organisations focused on strengthening democracy in their home countries. She has a keen interest in democracy and elections, working in election observation missions in Liberia and Tunisia, and has done extensive work focusing on youth and elections in South Africa. Ms Pillay was also appointed by the President to serve on the National Planning Commission as the National Planning Commissioner responsible for youth for the next five years.