Vanessa Pather is an Attorney and an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) specialist. She also holds an Honours degree in Industrial Relations. As an Attorney, she has both Civil and Criminal Law experience and served as a public prosecutor before being admitted to practice in 1992. She has been a CCMA Commissioner for the past twenty-four years and currently serves as a Senior Part-Time Commissioner. She is also a mediator, arbitrator, chairperson of disciplinary enquiries, investigator and trainer on several private panels and private and public sector bargaining council panels. She has expertise and a broad range of experience in developing capacity and building skills in the field of ADR and Labour Law. Vanessa also project manages labour market initiatives and teaches Labour Law and ADR at universities.

Vanessa has thirty years of training experience. Before being admitted as an Attorney, she taught Labour Law, Industrial Relations and Media Law at ML Sultan Technikon. She developed material and trained Candidate Commissioners for the CCMA for five years. She managed the CCMA's Education and Training Unit for two years during which she reconceptualised and improved the Candidate Commissioner training programme. In addition, she has extensive experience in conceptualizing, designing, managing, monitoring, evaluating and improving training and development initiatives both nationally and internationally. She led an initiative on behalf of the Labour Relations Practice Industry which successfully developed and delivered a qualification in Labour Dispute Resolution Practice (LDRP) in partnership with six public universities. She lectured on the LDRP programme for Stellenbosch University for four years. She recently project managed an initiative for BUSA in partnership with the CCMA which developed a Small Business Labour Information Web Tool. Institutions and organizations that Vanessa has worked with include: The CCMA; Bargaining Councils; Trade Unions; South African Universities; The International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the United Nations (UN) in collaboration with the University of Cape Town and the CCMA. Vanessa currently teaches Labour Law and ADR at universities in the Western Cape.