The Cape Cultural Collective (CCC) has appointed Ms Cherie Hendricks and Dr Neeta A. Ramkumar to its Board of Directors. The appointments deepen CCC’s governance capacity and advance its work at the intersection of arts, identity, and community development.
CCC Board Chairperson Zenariah Barends welcomed the appointments:
“Both appointments reflect CCC’s commitment to building an organisation that is as rigorous in its governance as it is bold in its cultural vision. Cherie brings the compliance and sustainability leadership we need at board level; Neeta brings a psychosocial and cross-cultural depth that directly enriches our programme work. We are fortunate to have them.”
Ms Cherie Hendricks — Governance, Sustainability, and Compliance
Ms Hendricks joins the Board with more than two decades of senior executive experience in corporate governance, sustainability, and regulatory compliance. She served as Corporate Affairs and Sustainability Director at a JSE-listed entity, where she was also a member of the Board of Directors.
Her portfolio at the JSE-listed entity encompassed governance frameworks, ethical culture development, stakeholder engagement, and compliance structures within a regulated listed-company environment. She has served on corporate and listed-company boards, with a focus on ethics, compliance, and sustainability oversight.
Ms Hendricks’ community engagement includes long-term involvement with the Where Rainbows Meet Training and Development Foundation in Vrygrond, supporting youth development initiatives. She also contributed to the Sekunjalo Edujazz Concert, a fundraising initiative that provided educational bursaries for learners from disadvantaged Western Cape communities while creating performance opportunities for emerging musicians.
She believes arts and culture have the power to bridge the gap by bringing people from diverse communities and backgrounds together and celebrating this diversity:
“By providing music education and mentorship, from primary school through to tertiary education, it helped nurture local talent. I assisted with students working alongside mainstream South African artists and provided a platform for them to showcase their talents through shows and concerts. Many of the students I worked with became musicians in their own right.”
She holds executive education credentials from the UCT Graduate School of Business (Executive Women in Leadership) and the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. Her appointment strengthens the CCC’s governance capacity at board level, particularly in sustainability alignment, compliance oversight, and stakeholder engagement.
Dr Neeta A. Ramkumar — Cross-Cultural Psychology and Community Wellbeing
Dr Neeta A. Ramkumar is a US-licensed psychologist, therapist, consultant, and founder of Psychology Across Borders, PLLC, a global grassroots organisation created by and for mental health professionals.
With more than 15 years of experience in the mental health field, her work focuses on cross-cultural transition, identity, belonging, trauma, and the psychological impact of living across borders. Through her clinical work and public engagement, Dr. Ramkumar advocates for culture, storytelling, dialogue, and the arts as essential pathways toward collective healing beyond the therapy room.
Dr Ramkumar earned her doctorate in Counselling Psychology from the APA-accredited program at Texas A&M University in 2012, where she also completed a Master of Science in Educational Psychology. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and History from the University of Texas at Austin. Her postgraduate clinical training took place at US Veterans Affairs hospitals in New Orleans and Houston, where she developed specialised expertise in trauma treatment.
Her international career began in 2015 with a lectureship at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, where she focused on mental health capacity-building and developed a telepsychology training program to strengthen professional psychology practice across the region. Since then, she has lived and worked across the United States, Fiji, Cameroon, Spain, France, and South Africa.
Her professional perspective is deeply informed by her own transnational identity. Born to Indian Guyanese parents who separately immigrated to the United States, she spent her childhood in Singapore and Malaysia before returning to the U.S. as a teenager. These experiences shaped her understanding of third-culture identity, migration, and belonging, and continue to influence her work with individuals and communities navigating cultural transitions and intergenerational healing.
Beyond her clinical practice, Dr. Ramkumar is an international speaker, educator, and consultant contributing to conversations on racial identity, migration, cultural displacement, and global mental health. She is the co-editor of Psychology in the Caribbean and Oceania (2022), a TEDx speaker whose talk “Why Psychologists Should Be Everywhere” explores expanding psychological care beyond traditional settings. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Cape Cultural Collective.
