Dr. Pinky Mahlangu is a Specialist Scientist at the Gender and Health Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council and an Honorary Lecturer at the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand. A key focus of her research has been on understanding the drivers and risk factors for women and children’s experiences of gender-based violence in South Africa, and on development and testing of evidence based interventions to prevent violence against women and children in low and middle-income countries. As a scientist, she has been involved in multiple quantitative and qualitative studies as a project coordinator, co-investigator and principal investigator. Through this work, she has acquired a diverse range of research and project management skills and knowledge, successfully carried out studies from conceptualization to writing of publications. She was co-investigator and project coordinator of a complex randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in 24 schools with an intervention that had 3-4 elements to it. She was responsible for coordinating both the delivery of the intervention, staff training and management, as well as management of data collection of the quantitative and qualitative assessments. This provided her with substantial experience in the conduct of research in clinical trials, with all of the multiple entailed areas of learning.  She is currently involved as co-principal investigator in the formative research, development and piloting of Ntombi Vimbela! a sexual violence prevention intervention, which was tested in a one-arm pilot and indicates promise in reducing experience of SV amongst first year female students in seven selected campuses in South Africa. She led the qualitative component together with the PI, Dr. Machisa, who led the quantitative component.