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Our Treasurer, Robin Fryer CPA, FCCA, CA(SA), recently shared a beautiful reflection on the holiday season on LinkedIn. With  his kind permission, we share it with you below:

The other day, growing tired of the continuous Christmas music on the radio, I tossed an old CD into my car’s CD player—yes, my car is also old and has one. The CD is a medley of songs written by singer-songwriters, some famous, others less so. Around the middle of the CD is a song I had long forgotten: “Hands” by Jewel (Kilcher), the last song she wrote for her second album, Spirit, released in 1998.

Want in on a secret, Witsies? We have a brand new way to change lives forever… and you can see it first. Don’t wait, visit our new Gift page and discover what’s coming on Giving Tuesday.

Read more about Wits today. IT’S FALL Y’ALL…or autumn as we used to call it. Do you also switch between “sidewalk” and “pavement” , or “robot” and “traffic lights”? Hope you also see our ability to switch between cultures and languages as a strength, part of our shared identify as Witsies in the US, looking for ways to give back.

HOWZIT WITSIES, and happy September! Despite the stories below about AI, this newsletter was not written using an AI bot. Have we already reached the future, where artisanal and human-made are at a premium? Or are we all explorers, with all the potential still ahead? We remain grateful for our community here, and for the journey that has led us from Wits, to the US.

HOWZIT WITSIES! DID YOU KNOW Wits has been ranked by ARWU as being in the top 300 universities in the world (joint first in SA), out of a pool of 2,500 global universities? Our August newsletter is full of world-class achievement by Witsies. Please let us know what you’ve been up to – writing a book, climbing a mountain, fighting world hunger –  so that we can brag about you too.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN YOUR FUTURE SELF? It’s an interesting exercise to imagine what our past selves would think about where we are today and what we have achieved. During the Covid Lockdown, the Wits Medical Class of 1960 started to think about their journeys, which you can read about below. And speaking of both the past and the future, the Professor Barry Dwolatzky Memorial Lecture – which the Fund is happy to support – will be about AI in Africa. Hope you’ll join us.

Howzit Witsies! Your time is precious and we’re grateful for you spending some of it with us, reading our monthly newsletter. So many of you have also taken the time to write in and tell us how much you enjoy the stories we curate for you: thank you, you make it all worthwhile.

THERE IS LIGHT EVERYWHERE if only we know where to look. And our Wits researchers are telling us that this is the century of light (as you’ll see in the story below). We hope that this newsletter will continue to inspire and inform our fellow graduates, so that we continue to serve our communities here in the United States, and at home.

AS THE SEASONS SHIFT AND WILFLOWERS BLOOM, spring arrives with a gentle reminder to stay hopeful, grateful, and to find joy in the beauty that surrounds us. In that same spirit, we hope this April newsletter brings you happiness—not only in the stories we share, but in celebrating the joy and accomplishments of fellow alumni.