Dr Penny Mkalipe is the health and wellness manager/ chief medical advisor ESKOM and has 17 years of experience as a medical doctor. She began her career as an Intern and thereafter held a post of medical officer in the Paediatric Unit at Baragwanath Chris Hani Hospital.

She managed a solo general practice in Orlando East, Soweto in 1992, where she provided primary health care services to the community of Soweto. She qualified as an Occupational Health Practitioner after completing her Diploma in Occupational Health (DOH) from the University of the Witwatersrand, in 1997.

In 1998, she started consulting for various companies in and around Johannesburg on occupational health and safety issues. These included the development of world class policies, procedures, programs and setting out strategic direction in the arena of health and wellness. .She ensured compliance of these companies to all the legislation governing occupational health and safety and other statutory bodies, whilst still running her practice in Soweto.

She was a member of the assessment panel of the Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases (MBOD) from 1998 until 2000. This panel was assessing all South African miners for compensation for occupational diseases incurred whilst working on the mines.

She left general practice and occupational health consulting and joined Eskom as the health and wellness manager and chief medical advisor in 2005. Mkalipe's function within Eskom is to develop allhealth and wellness policies, procedures, strategic development and implementation, organisational performance improvement, communication and mobilisation in the management of health and wellness within the company. She also develops programs in the fields of HIV/AIDS, Travel medicine including expatriate health, occupational health and safety, employee assistance programmes/work life, wellness, health promotion and education.

She received a certificate of competence in travel medicine from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2005.

She successfully completed a Bsc (Hons) in aerospace medicine from the University of Pretoria in 2006.

Penny was appointed as the responsible appointed medical practitioner (RAMP) for Koeberg power station by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) in March 2007 Her role is to assist in the prevention and management of radiation exposure to the workers.