Professor Elmin Steyn was the previous Executive Head of the Department of Surgical Sciences at the Faculty of Health Sciences of Stellenbosch University. Now, as Emeritus Associate Professor, she is a part-time teacher and in full-time private practice at Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital. She performed her first renal transplant operation as a surgical registrar at the former Ga-Rankuwa (now George Mukhari) hospital under Prof Johan van Wyk in 1986, where they did early research on pancreatic islet transplantation. After qualifying as a surgeon, she worked with transplant teams at Steve Biko Hospital in Pretoria, Tygerberg and Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospitals in Cape Town, as well as the Queen Alexandra Hospital in the UK. She spent time at the Vancouver General Hospital in Canada to study organ sharing, allocation systems and remote recipient management systems. In 1998, together with nephrologists Drs. Julian Jacobs and Derek Miller established the first private renal transplant program in Cape Town. They went to Madison, Wisconsin to learn multi-organ retrieval, DCD donor management and pancreatic transplantation at the Hans Zollinger unit.

Over the years, Elmin has served as chair of the management committee of the ODF and president of SATS, and on various ministerial advisory committees working on finalising the regulations on transplantation for the new Health Act, as well as on proposals to set up a national organ procurement organisation. She has been on SATS exco at various times. Over the years, she has personally performed more than 1000 renal transplants, of which more than 800 were at Chris Barnard Hospital in Cape Town. Elmin is also a registered Trauma Surgery sub-specialist, and her current interests include supporting medical students to grow the Save7 and Life Pod projects.