Jacqui Stewart is the Chief Executive Officer of The Council for Health Service Accreditation of Southern Africa NPC (COHSASA). She has worked in the public and private health care sectors in South Africa and England. Having qualified as a registered nurse in Cape Town she went on to specialise in Cardio-Thoracic nursing in London. She ran the Heart Transplant Unit at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex for five years. From there she moved into a variety of managerial roles in quality, capital and service planning in the National Health Service.

In 2005 Jacqui returned to South Africa and joined COHSASA as Chief Operations Manager. She was appointed CEO in 2016. She has experience in quality improvement, standards, external evaluation and accreditation. As COHSASA works in low- and middle-income countries there is a strong focus on capacity building and quality improvement in all the
programmes.

Jacqui has a Master of Professional Studies, Health from Middlesex University, London. She was a member of the South African National Lancet Commission on High Quality Health Systems. In 2019 Jacqui was elected to the International Academy of Quality & Safety in Health Care (IAQS). She is an ISQua Expert and serves on the Accreditation Council of the ISQua External Evaluation Association. She served on the ISQua Board from 2017 to 2020. She is passionate about building capacity to improve care for patients and make healthcare safer for staff and patients.