Professors Brenda Wingfield and Mike Wingfield hosted a visit to FABI by members of the Future Professors Programme on Friday 12 May. This ended a very busy week at the Institute that included the External Stakeholders meeting and 34^th Annual Meeting of the Tree Protection Co-operative Programme and the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Plant Health Biotechnology. Brenda and Mike were introduced by the Future Professors project leader and longtime friend, Prof. Jonathan Jansen. The Future Professors Programme is a flagship programme of the Department of Higher Education and Training, aimed at developing the qualities of academic excellence and leadership in university scholarship, which will contribute to the development of a future South African professoriate.  Brenda and Mike spoke of their career paths as researchers and the establishment of FABI as a world-class research Institute at the University of Pretoria. They also gave advice on practical matters such as balancing family and work life, securing funding for research and maintaining research and publishing excellence. Each year all South African public universities have been invited to nominate five eligible scholars for selection to be included a two-year fellowship. The fellowship has consisted three cohorts of 20 to 30 fellows. The programme was designed to help create synergies that will benefit the fellows upon entering the professoriate and to cascade to the broader next generation South African academic populace.