Neville Gabriel is the founding executive director of the Southern Africa Trust, an independent regional agency that supports deeper and wider policy engagement between governments and non-state actors to overcome poverty in Southern Africa. He is also a trustee of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) based in Johannesburg and the African Forum on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) based in Harare, a member of the board of the Goedgedacht Forum for Social Reflection based in Cape Town, a senior fellow of the Synergos Institute based in New York, a member of the Africa Policy Advisory Board of Bono’s ONE campaign based in London, and a member of the founding steering committee of the African Grantmakers’ Network (AGN).

Before becoming the founding executive director of the Southern Africa Trust, Neville worked at Oxfam as its southern Africa regional media and advocacy coordinator and at the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), where he was part of the founding team of its Parliamentary Liaison Office in Cape Town, its first secretary for economic justice based in Pretoria, and later coordinator of its Justice and Peace Department also based in Pretoria.

He co-founded the Jubilee 2000 South Africa coalition for debt cancellation as part of the global Jubilee movement and served variously as its national secretary, national executive committee member, and spokesperson.

Neville was born in Durban, South Africa. He matriculated with distinction before completing a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree at the University of Cape Town. After a year’s retreat and community service in an impoverished rural village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, he returned to study philosophy and religion at both the University of Natal and St Joseph’s Theological Institute concurrently, graduating with Honours in Social Sciences (cum laude) from the University of Natal.