Dr Lee Randall

Lee has practised as an occupational therapist, consultant, lecturer, trainer and researcher for 34 years.  Most of her career has been spent in the health and disability sector, particularly in the areas of vocational rehabilitation, disability claims assessment, mental health and medicolegal evaluation, including periods of work and study in the United States (1988-1990) and New Zealand (1996-1997).  She has worked with numerous ill and injured employees, assessing their work capacity and assisting with returning them to the labour market where possible. Lee has been instructed by plaintiff and defendant attorneys in a wide range of medicolegal matters and have provided disability equity consultancy and training services to employers.  She has a number of publications to her name including journal articles, disability equity sections for the Labour Law for Managers Handbook and Practical Guide to Human Resources Management (both Fleet Street Publications) and a chapter called “Psychiatric OT in the corporate, insurance and medicolegal sectors” in the 4^th and 5^th editions of an occupational therapy textbook (Crouch & Alers (eds), Occupational Therapy in Psychiatry and Mental Health). She is also involved in training of health practitioners on medicolegal principles, road safety advocacy and road ethics.

Lee holds a BSc Occupational Therapy (University of the Witwatersrand 1986), MA (Tufts University 1990) and PhD in Bioethics (University of the Witwatersrand 2019) as well as various certificates and diplomas. She received a Fulbright Fellowship in 1988 which allowed her to complete the Master’s degree in Boston, Massachusetts, her dissertation being entitled ‘Empowering the powerless: Occupational therapy in apartheid South Africa’.  Her self-funded PhD research led to the thesis entitled ‘Coffins on Wheels: A bioethical study of work conditions, driver behaviour and road safety in the Johannesburg minibus taxi industry’. Currently she holds a post-doctoral research role within the School of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand, being part of a multidisciplinary international research network which is conducting a systematic review of travel behaviour in Africa and the Caribbean from a public health perspective. She is also the founder and director of nonprofit company the Road Ethics Project (registration no. K2019465460), which aims to build ethical literacy and foster Vision Zero thinking in relation to road use and crash prevention.