Professor Charles Parry was the director of the Mental Health, Alcohol, Substance Use & Tobacco Research Unit, formerly the Alcohol, Tobacco & Other Drug Research Unit, at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) between 2001 and 2024. Between 2012 and 2014 he served as Acting Vice President (Intramural Research) at the SAMRC. He is registered with the HPCSA as a Clinical and Research Psychologist and an extraordinary professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Stellenbosch University. He has published over 300 indexed journal articles, and co-authored three books on alcohol policy. Since 2006 he has been a member of the WHO Expert Panel on Drug Dependence and Alcohol Problems and is also a member of the board of the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance (since 2010), the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Alcohol & Drug Epidemiology (2015-2024), the Scientific Advisory Board to the UN World Drug Report (since 2015), and the International Advisory Board for the Shaping Public Health Policies to Reduce Inequalities and Harm Consortium, SPECTRUM (since 2020). He is a Member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa and past recipient of the SAMRC Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to medical research. He engages frequently with the media and is credited with over 800 local and international radio, print media and TV interviews. Prof Parry is currently on a part-time post-retirement contract with the SAMRC while also pursing consulting work in the alcohol/drug epidemiology/policy space, locally and internationally. At Stellenbosch University he serves, with Prof Soraya Seedat as a South African Co-PI on a NIAAA -funded project on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders with the colleagues at the University of New Mexico. Over the past few years he undertaken consulting work for the DG Murray Trust/University of Cape Town, Stirling University (Scotland), the World Health Organization and Vital Strategies (Reset Alcohol). In 2023 he also led an evaluation of the National Drug Research Institute at the behest of Curtin University in Perth, Australia.