Prof. Phakeng is full professor and Vice-Chancellor at the University of South Africa since 2018.
Additionally, she is founder of the Adopt-a-Learner Foundation, a non-profit organisation that provides educational and financial support to learners from townships and rural areas to acquire higher education, and she is the current President of Convocation of the University of the Witwatersrand and trustee of the FirstRand Foundation, a public-benefit organisation.
She served as president of the Association for Mathematics Education of South Africa, founding chairperson of the Board of the South African Mathematics Foundation, and secretary and member of the Executive Committee of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.
She has published over 80 research papers and four edited volumes and she is a National Research Foundation-rated scientist. Moreover, she has won several awards for her research and community work, including the 2011 National Science and Technology Forum Award. In 2014, CEO magazine named Prof Phakeng as the Most Influential Woman in Academia in Africa; and in 2016 she was awarded the Order of the Baobab in Silver.
Prof. Phakeng is Doctor of Science, honoris causa, by the University of Bristol, and she holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of North-West and a MSc in Mathematics from the University of the Witwatersrand.