Kuppulakshmi, fondly known as Kuppu, heads the Zoho for Startups program globally. She has been part of Zoho's growth story for about a decade now; and, bridging the gap between businesses and technology has been her core area of work. She focuses on strategic alliances between Zoho and various startup bodies such as State Governments, Incubators, Accelerators, and other stakeholders. She also mentors startups on pitching, design thinking, and on using EQ while hiring new talents and while setting up the vision and culture of startups.

 Kuppu loves public speaking, and is a sought-after keynote speaker on topics like Future of Work, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership for Future, and Entrepreneurship.

Her previous experience from being a softskills and communication trainer and a voice&accent specialist, strengthen her expertise in story telling, and she is a great fan of "explain-it-like-I am-five" concept. She loves working with young minds and aspires to contribute towards the future of education.

Twitter: @Kuppulakshmi 

Linked In: /in/kuppukrish

Cathy was appointed Managing Director of SAP Africa in March 2018. She is the first ever female executive of an emerging markets market unit in SAP’s history.

Cathy started her career in the insurance industry as an application developer. She also spent three years in the UK, consolidating her expertise, and held a number of executive roles for European and global markets, specialising in the outsourcing services business. Overall, she has more than 25 years’ experience in the IT industry, working for major industry players like IBM and Cisco.

She joined Cisco in 2015, and as Managing Director, led Cisco’s go-to- market sales and digital transformation strategies for sub-Saharan Africa.

Prior to her tenure at Cisco, Cathy spent 23 years with IBM, where she held various leadership roles in IT service delivery, HR and sales.

Karen Nadasen, PayU South Africa’s Country Manager, is regularly described as one of South Africa’s most inspiring women in tech, nominated for IT Personality of the Year 2017, listed among 100 Most Influential Young South Africans 2017 and the Regional Winner (SADC) of Africa’s Most Influential Women in Business and Government 2018.

Since taking the helm 3 years ago, PayU has dramatically grown its total Ecommerce Processing Volume, and revenue, whilst costs have reduced significantly during her tenure. All this whilst balancing personal life – Karen started her position as CEO having just returned from maternity leave after 4 months. Originally starting out as a Java developer in a small development house in Cape Town many years ago, Karen’s industry experience, mostly abroad, ranges from FTSE 100 companies, and large multi-nationals, until she decided it was time to move back to beautiful Cape Town where she started at PayU.

Ocea spent 30 years at IBM prior to joining Oracle in 2019. She has a strong background in Database Management and Analytics, having garnered deep skills at analytics companies over the years before IBM, fulfilling several roles from systems engineering, to pre-sales and leadership.

She recently spent 2.5 years in Singapore assisting the development of a start-up company in Analytics and Governance.

With a deep-rooted passion for women enablement and growth, having proven through several leadership and development roles, that a positive attitude, Emotional Intelligence and honesty fosters a sense of purpose amongst teams and peers. Ocea continues to develop this passion; leading the South African Chapter of the Oracle Women's Leadership Group.

Ocea has a BSc in Computer Science from University of Kwa-zulu Natal.

Prathna Singh is a Managing Director at Accenture leading high performing teams that create new value for organisations in a highly disrupted and digital world. She has been at Accenture for 15 years and has worked across 4 continents partnering with clients to navigate their digital strategy with agility, co-creating digital solutions powered by design, intelligence and emerging technology. She holds a BSC Honours in Computer Science and Information Systems and has recently completed a certification in Disruptive Innovation at Harvard University.

She is the sponsor of the Women in Digital initiative at Accenture and is invested in women leadership, raising the voices of women thought leaders across all levels and being a living example to her peers, clients and diverse teams when working together TO innovate on challenges and opportunities.

Mimi Omokri has a long and varied career, serving as an executive for numerous high-profile companies and currently, Uber’s Head of Business Development for Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the fast-growing regions for the company.

Prior to Uber, Mimi led commercial payments and built the Sub-Saharan Africa enterprise business at Mastercard from the ground-up at a time when startups were chipping away at incumbents and new technology was creating opportunities for all players. Name an innovation that’s changed commercial payments—mobile, e-commerce, AI, virtual—and Mimi has been there in the trenches.

She also understands the importance of bringing leading brands together through partnerships. Mimi has forged relationships between Amadeus and many notable companies — Citibank, Harrods, British Airways, Visa, Ethiopian Airlines, MTN Group and others — to give people in Europe, Middle East and Africa easier access to their bank accounts and the ability to send payments on the platform.

Prior to Mastercard, Mimi spent over 8 years working at top firms such as Jumia Group, Iroko Partners and American Express in Europe, holding P&L and leadership roles in strategy, sales, marketing, partnerships and product development.

Pila Booi is the Partner Sales Manager for Nokia Enterprise in the Southern, East and West Africa regions and manages the whole channel ecosystem in these regions. The Nokia Global Partner Program ecosystem consists of Value Added Resellers, Distributors, Service Provider as a Partner, Alliance and Industrial partners. The program is a critical component to optimise and strengthen the Nokia go-to-market strategy to vertical market opportunities enable the delivery of secure, high-performance, mission-critical communications, applications and network infrastructure.

She joins Nokia from Internet Solutions a division of Dimension Data, where she started her telecommunications career after working in mining and consulting.   In the 7 years at the company, she accelerated her career from being a key account manager to managing the Public Sector sales team and partner business. It is during these years that she got certified as a professional Coach on the International Neuroleadership Coaching Programme, as she is passionate about people growth and development.

Pila, has a B. Com in Marketing and Supply Chain Management from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School and completed the Management Development Programme at the IE Business School in Madrid.

A consummate business professional, Paul has more than 20 years’ experience in the African ICT market where he has led sales, marketing and product businesses. In his role as regional director for the Sub-Saharan African region within Nutanix he is directly responsible for growing sales, defining market opportunities and developing the business across the continent.

Passionate about growing new markets, Paul has experience across a multitude of sectors, including networking, telecommunications and software where he has assisted both enterprise and public sector organisations to embrace technology to transform their business. He joined Nutanix in 2015 as the first employee in the region, and has grown the business to be the premier-choice vendor for hyperconverged and hybrid cloud solutions across South Africa and the broader Sub-Saharan Africa.

Prior to joining Nutanix he served a tenure in senior management roles at VCE, Cisco, F5 Networks and HP.

Entrepreneurial by nature, Paul has a proven track record of growing teams, developing market opportunities in emerging markets and driving sales. At Nutanix he zealously brings the message of hyperscale, web scale and marrying clouds across environments as a means to assist customers to virtualize legacy technology stacks and enable them to embrace digital transformation by being software-first organisations.

Sarah Belete is a Sales Operations leader at Nutanix who partners with executives to focus on the company’s growth goals, go-to-market strategy framework, and implement business processes that drive efficiency and performance improvement across multiple operational and financial metrics.

Originally a transplant from Silicon Valley, Sarah moved to Amsterdam 4 years ago and recently relocated to London. There she built the sales operations organization in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Previously she worked at Dell Force10 and with Nutanix for almost 7.7 years now.

Sarah holds a BA in Child & Adolescent Development: Concentration in Youth Work from San Francisco State University.

Dr Lee-Anne McKinnell is currently the Managing Director responsible for the Space Science Programme and Hermanus Facility of the South African National Space Agency (SANSA). She has held the position of Managing Director for 10 years, prior to which she was a Researcher with a joint position between the previous Hermanus Magnetic Observatory (a national facility of the National Research Foundation, NRF) and Rhodes University.

Dr McKinnell received her PhD in Space Physics from Rhodes University in 2003, and completed a postdoctoral year as a research fellow in the Graz University of Technology in Austria. Her research areas of specialization are ionospheric physics and space weather and her PhD work was on the development of a neural network based ionospheric model for the bottomside electron density profile over Grahamstown, South Africa. In the past she has held the position of Chair of the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) working group (2010 – 2014), Associate Editor for Radio Science (2007 – 2014) and the journal of Space Weather and Space Climate (2009 – 2013), and Radio Science Bureau member for the Scientific Committee on Solar Terrestrial Physics (2011 – 2014). Nationally Dr McKinnell sits on a number of committees such as the National URSI (International Union of Radio Science, of which she is chair) and COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) committees.

In 2009, Dr McKinnell received 3 awards, including the African Union Regional Women Scientist Award for Basic Science, Technology and Innovation in the Southern African Region, and a Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) 2009 Technology award in the Advanced High Technology Category for the industry linked project “Ionospheric model: Phase 5’.

In recent years, Dr McKinnell has led a number of successful research, science advancement and infrastructure funding proposals, and was part of the team that led the establishment of the South African National Space Agency (SANSA). Dr McKinnell has a MBA degree from the Business School Netherlands, and has 12 years of management experience of which 10 have been as the managing director of a national research facility within the public sector in South Africa. In her current role Dr McKinnell represents South Africa on a number of international committees and working groups ensuring Africa’s interests are maintained in the field of space science and related technology. She is a champion for space weather applications, and is leading the SANSA project to develop 24/7 operational space weather capability for Africa. As a current member of the SANSA Executive team, Dr McKinnell contributes towards the leadership team of SANSA utilizing her expertise as a Space Scientist combined with her facility and programme management experience to ensure sustainability of Space Science and the Hermanus facility within SANSA and South Africa.

With over 10 years of Global and Regional IT experience Markus helps the business align their IT strategy with their Business strategy enabling business execution, optimisation and innovation.With over 10 years of Global and Regional IT experience Markus helps the business align their IT strategy with their Business strategy enabling business execution, optimisation and innovation.

Markus has the ability to transform executive vision into tangible operational deliverables; solutions that are sustainable and increase productivity.

He works closely with stakeholders across all areas of business and has extensive exposure at board level.

Louise van der Bank is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of AfriSam, a leading supplier of superior construction materials and technical solutions in southern Africa. She was one of the first CIOs to be awarded Professional CIO certification in 2019, awarded at the highest level in the profession and was recognised as one of the Top 5 Visionary CIOs, in 2015 & 2019, whom have made outstanding achievements in their careers and significant contributions to the South African IT industry.

As a leader & strategic business partner, Louise collaborates with other executives to ensure the organisation gets the most value from IT, and to create business differentiation and competitive advantage. Her priorities are the effective leveraging of information & technology enablers and digital solutions to grow revenue as well as exploiting IT to increase organisational efficiencies and streamline business models across all departments. She has worked across several industry sectors and has delivered major business change programs and significant operational improvements.

Louise holds a Bachelor of Science degree with Computer Science as major and a Higher Education Diploma and has graduated from The Executive Program at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in the US.

Hailing from a small town in KwaZulu Natal, Tertia moved to Johannesburg to pursue her dream legal career. Her planned path took an unexpected turn when she was exposed to the world of ICT. Working while completing her studies, she sought out various challenging roles in the industry, moving from IT distribution to terrestrial broadcasting to name a few. These diverse roles allowed her to gain a holistic understanding of the ICT landscape and ignited a passion for client experience within her.

In her current role, Tertia manages the NTT Global Managed Services Platforms, where she has been instrumental in implementing Scaled Agile. The initial intention behind adopting Scaled, was to create a better working environment for employees and improved outcomes for the company. By aligning required skillsets to roles, rather than tying roles into traditional managements structures, Tertia and her team were able to remove the self-inflicted biases that often impact women.

With an Economics degree from the University of Stellenbosch, Lindsay began her career at Accenture, coding payroll systems for mines. She has worked across multiple industry sectors and continents with Accenture, Infosys, in Insuretech and currently, Blue Prism, driving transformation through strategic partnerships with Digital, Analytics and Automation technologies.

Lindsay is passionate about the opportunities for women in the world of tech, particularly for those who do not come from a STEM background. Women, with backgrounds in the Arts and Humanities, demonstrate that STEAM is a powerful additional to the tech industry. She believes we need to encourage and equip more women to participate actively in the opportunities the Fourth Industrial Revolution offers. Automation, driven by the business and operations teams within an organisation, creates an exciting opportunity for women to become digitally enabled.

Milisa is the Head of Communication and Media Spokesperson at SENTECH, has over 10 years’ management experience, and an Office Bearer on the Governing Body of an NPO. She is a member of the Institute of Directors Southern Africa (IODSA) and on her journey towards becoming a Certified Director the IODSA.

Milisa holds an Executive Master of Science in Communication Management from the University of Lugano in Switzerland. She also augmented her leadership skills by completing various senior leadership programmes like Managing Managers for Results from GIBS, Senior Management Programme with University of Pretoria Executive Education and Management Advancement Programme with Wits Business School

Milisa has worked in different sectors including, Banking, Defence, Government, Freight Logistics, Forestry, ICT and Technology. Her career portfolio includes, all aspects of Reputation and Brand Management; Transformation and Corporate Citizenship; Stakeholder Relations; Marketing; Business Development; Government Relations and Protocol.

Hayley Ann Patterson is the lead Territory Account Manager for Nutanix, looking after the Northern, Eastern and Western Cape of South Africa. Her primary focus is leading strategic engagements with customers, enablement and alignment of the Nutanix Channel community and successful representation of the company across the region.

Hayley is an experienced sales and key accounts professional with a demonstrated history of working in the Enterprise software industry. She is originally from Johannesburg, and made the move to Cape Town to establish the region with her previous employer, Sage. Hayley is skilled in Business Development, Strategic Account planning and Management, and has been with Nutanix for just under 2 years.

Andrew is Zoho's Business Development Manager for Africa and is based out of Cape Town, South Africa.

He has more than 15 years of experience in Sales and Marketing.

Andrew has spent the last 5 years focussing on the implementation & testing of business technologies.

He is extremely passionate about Zoho and has exceptional insight into the business and marketing world.

Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, trail running, tennis, golf and wakeboarding.

Fun fact: Andrew used to be a professional athlete and represent South Africa in the sport of wakeboarding

Lindiwe Matlali holds degrees and qualifications from the University of Cape Town, Stanford University, University of Pretoria and Columbia University. Her numerous accolades include: Destiny Magazine Power of 40 a list of South Africa’s powerful women under 40, MTN Women in ICT Community Builder Recognition Award 2018. She was recently awarded the 2019 Commonwealth Point of Light by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She has just been appointed by the President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa to serve as Commissioner for the Fourth Industrial Revolution responsible for the development of the 4IR strategy for South Africa.

Metropolises like Cape Town and Johannesburg attract a wealth of attention from the tech community for being hotspots for talent, innovation and thriving startups. Nevertheless, there is an abundance of budding tech hubs across the continent that are promising brand new jobs, welcoming international investment and commercialising African tech discoveries. Join this session to take a deeper look!

Key takeaways:

• Where are the up and coming hubs supporting Africa’s tech backbone? - with a close focus on Accra, Cairo, Lagos, and Nairobi
• Eyeballing the offerings of the startup scenes in future hubs
• Pinpointing where international investment is coming from and how it's shaping the future of African cities
• Reviewing the different career prospectives in each city
• Analysing what's making these cities so favourable for businesses - is it regulation, talent or fresh investments?

Lesley–Anne Scholtz has information technology and business management experience, gathered over the course of a 20+ year career. Founder of RevelationData, a US Consulting and Services Company focused on Service Desk Optimization and Service Management best practices, including ITIL Consulting, Training, Assessment and implementation services. Prior to founding RevelationData in the United States, she owned RevelationData in South Africa.

Lesley–Anne Scholtz is goal-oriented, focused, fastidious, and works exceptionally well under stress. She has a “can-do” attitude, and believes that attitude is an integral part of success. She has a natural ability to motivate, excite and keep team members focused. She is able to absorb new technologies and concepts quickly. Possessing excellent project management and time management abilities.

Lesley–Anne Scholtz combines her operations background with strategic thinking to achieve business excellence. Believing that her combination of technical skills, business acumen, management and leadership experience would serve her in any leadership role.

Georgina Wilson is currently the Flight Lead for Fly Zipline Ghana, ensuring operational excellence at distribution centers across the country. Georgina is one of the first team members for Zipline in Ghana, leading our scaling efforts from the first distribution center to four regions across the country.

Georgina is an Electrical and Electronics engineer who graduated from the University of Energy and Natural Resources. Her background includes Projects Engineering for the building, installation and distribution of power for stand alone photovoltaic systems in rural areas.

She believes in the mission of Zipline “To provide every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies.”

Valencia was born to code!

She has 24 years Software Development experience, of which 14 years is in Business Intelligence space.

She has performed various roles and functions from Business Intelligence Manager, Datawarehouse ETL developer, System Analyst ,Business Intelligence Front End Developer to Data Solutions Manager @ Pernod Ricard.

She sees my job as a privilege to serve others and help them make better informed decisions.

She is passionate about people, leadership, entrepreneurship and empowerment.

She would love to see more female developers and my dream is to open up a Coding school for girls. She believes knowledge is power and if you are not learning you are not growing. Has had the privilege of being a Key Note speaker at the following events;

After completing her BSc Hons degree in Computational and applied Mathematics from the University of Witwatersrand in 2012, Zandile joined the Johannesburg Centre of Engineering Coachlab program whilst working on her Master’s Degree. Here is where she found her love and passion for software development. Zandile Keebine has enjoyed success as a Business Analyst at Boxfusion, a software development company. In this role, Zandile was responsible for responsible for project and task co-ordination duties as well as requirements gathering and testing in various client projects. In the past 6 years working in the ICT sector, she’s worked on delivering various projects that required her to identify appropriate and innovative solutions and designing software solutions for various clients in the public sector. It is in this role that she realized the vast gender inequality that exists within the ICT sector.

As part of her personal CSI portfolio Zandile Started GirlCode in 2014 as a hackathon to get more girls excited about tech and after hosting it for two years, she joined forces with her 2 friends Jeanette Theu and Tinyiko Simbine to register GirlCode as a non-profit organization and lead it as the Chairwoman.

Since its inception, GirlCode has employed 4 women including Zandile who works full time as GirlCode’s CEO and Chairwoman. Zandile with her team aims to grow GirlCode to become Africa’s leading Digital and Innovation Hub for young girls and women who want to get into tech by providing them with various opportunities such as the annual all-female hackathon, monthly Workshops,and Vacation work where the beneficiaries are given direct access to women working in the various ICT companies to gain skills and be recruited by the top tech companies.

Kerry is the UI and UX designer at NTT. She has a bachelor’s degree in design and multimedia and is working towards her UX certificate. Before NTT she worked on mobile advertising platforms and multiple tech start-ups. Her goal is to always design products that are focused on the client’s needs and she is always focused on the “why”.

Maushami Chetty is an admitted attorney with 15 years’ experience in law and professional speaker and consultant on gender mainstreaming and cultural change in businesses and schools. She has consulted and spoken on gender related issues for Werksmans attorneys, African Leadership Academy, ENCA, Kaya FM, Alexander Forbes and Nestlé among others.

She has practiced at Webber Wentzel and the ECCHR in Berlin before starting her own practice in 2014. She co-founded the Thlomphanang Gender Violence Re-education Program in 2013 and created a curriculum for learners based on an empathy and values approach to addressing GBV. She currently runs a legal tech start-up.

Maushami has served on the steering committee of the 30% Club where she spear-headed a board ready women program. She has sat on the judging panel for the Women in Business Awards, Oliver Empowerment Awards and Gender Mainstreaming Awards respectively.

Nadia graduated from University of the Free State in 2008 earning a B.Com (Hons) in Strategic Management. After completing her degree, she decided to move to Johannesburg to begin her career in the FMCG industry. 6 years later she took the opportunity to pivot into the IT sector. She has worked in project management and as a scrum master, completing several global initiatives ranging in scope from human centred design to SAP. She currently manages 4 scrum teams, implementing Scrum and Scaled Agile. Nadia believes in constant self-development, both for herself and her team members.

Sewagodimo Matlapeng is a Fullstack developer with a proven history of developing world class applications. She is an international technical speaker and co-founder of Indoni Digital, a women lead tech house based in South Africa. Indoni Digital is a digital consultancy startup that helps companies leverage technology to reach their potential.

Sewagodimo also founded Indoni developers which is a group for Black Women who are Software developers. The group focuses on mentorship, skills development and opportunity as the three pillars of developing sustainable tech careers for women of colour. They also organise workshops to teach other women how to code. She is the co-lead for Developer Circles from Facebook, as a circle lead she advocates for developer programmes which focus on building, community development and entrepreneurship. Sewagodimo uses her Youtube channel : Sunshine in my Code, to encourage and teach more people how to code.

Andrea is Co-Managing Partner of Venture Capital firm Knife Capital.

Having grown up in Germany, she has a Masters Degree from the Technical University in Aachen, Germany and a MBA from Henley Management College in the UK. After years in industry, she has spend the last 14 years as an investor, working with technology companies in South Africa, assisting them to scale internationally. Before joining Knife Capital she was the Founding Partner at Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa. As an ecosystem activist, she believes that technology entrepreneurs have a significant influence on the future of Africa, impacting the generation of Intellectual Property, skills transfer, employment creation, creating role models and building significant sustainable businesses.

Knife Capital is an independent Venture Capital investment firm focusing on innovation-driven ventures with proven traction. By leveraging knowledge, networks & funding, we accelerate the international expansion of entrepreneurial businesses that achieved a product/market fit in a beachhead market. We have offices in Cape Town and London and invest via a consortium of funds under management, including SARS section 12J Venture Capital Company: KNF Ventures and Draper-Gain Investments.

Curry has been involved in Data Analytics since 2001, fulfilling a diversity of roles, including ETL development, front end development, BI project management, BI business analysis, dimensional modelling and Data Governance. For the past 6 years, Curry has focused on helping organisations formulate and execute their Data Strategies, both in South Africa and Australia. In 2015, Curry completed her MBA at the University of Stellenbosch Business School – her research report was on how to measure the value of Data Analytics in organisations.

Colleen Stone is a Research & Development Senior Quality Assurance Engineer in the Manage Centre platform team. The 24/7 Online Manage Centre platform delivers managed services features that are designed to enhance our clients service experience. The platform simplifies service management and increases visibility of hybrid IT. As part of the NTT Limited team, ingenuity and market disrupting innovation is strived for and valued within the Corporation. The Manage Centre Support and Development teams are influenced by Scaled Agile Framework, ITIL and DevOps principles improving turn-around and reliance required in evolving IT ecosystems.

She joins from Automytest, where she consulted at Santam as a QA Analyst. There she coached, supported and upskilled Quality Assurance teams within the Business Change Department. She also drove implementation of an Automation framework that increased efficiency within the SDLC build process by 41% within 6 months.

Her previous experience includes 15 years of Telecoms Billing Management systems for Vodacom directly and indirectly through Service Providers. While employed at Bytes Universal Systems and consulting at Vodacom, she was awarded with a Business Excellence Award in 2015.

Colleen is a certified IIBA Agile Business Analyst, DevOps professional, Supervisory Management and an Assessor. She is currently studying towards a BSC Informatics degree through UNISA. She offers a wide range of skills from coaching to management and is a key driver in delivering a quality product to her clients.

Onalerona’s passion for computer science started at the age of 15, when she ran a successful program for the first time. She has since then dedicated her life to social impact for women in tech. She has previously been a volunteer for Code4CT, an organisation that teaches high school girls how to code. She also is often involved in organising free software development workshops for women who have interest in coding, but no experience in the field. She previously was the chairperson for Women in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town. Within that time period, she was awarded the Entelect Social Responsiveness Award for her impact in the computer science community.

Aside from her community work, she works as a Software Engineer for Praekelt.org, a tech non-profit company that focuses on health solutions for the disadvantaged.

Her daily work involves designing products and services that address real needs, combining human-centred design and agile development processes, employing a creative approach to problem solving that starts with people.

I am Head of Design at Allan Gray, tasked with conceiving meaningful user experiences and designing innovative services for the investment industry.

As a digital product design professional, alternating between designer and leadership roles, my experience spans telecommunications and fleet management engineering, mobile messaging design, as well as innovative project leadership.

True to creative form, I’m always pushing user centricity and challenging the established ways of working. It’s crucial to make business, strategic and technical stakeholders aware of the benefits of an early adoption of a user-centric design methodology. Which means I have to push a lot of buttons.

So, apart from constantly challenging corporate bureaucracy for the good of design, I am a tireless seeker of knowledge, occasional purveyor of wisdom and playful creative. But most importantly, I strive to design, nurture and lead a team to succeed, which includes helping to shape current and future women in tech.

She is a Product Owner for the Manage Centre team at NTT. Manage Centre is an award-winning portal that provides clients with real-time analysis and reporting on the health and performance of their technology from a technical, operational, and business perspective. The NTT Limited R&D division delivers technology through the Scaled Agile Framework.

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce Honours degree from Rhodes University and has experience working across various industries including banking, customer success, e-commerce, and platform delivery. She has a passion for delivering customer focused solutions leveraging technology and is energised by building relationships and collaborating with sharp minds.

Ellen Fischat is the Co-Founder of Innocircle, a boutique, innovation consultancy and Founder of Story Room, a social enterprise that focuses on inclusive, digital and socio-economic impact program design and implementation. She holds an Honour’s Degree in Social Work and Community Development and a number of small business and technology certificates. She returned to South Africa, her place of birth, after a 23year residency in Amsterdam. Upon her return to South Africa in 2006, she ran a Boy’s Home and 7 daycare centres for two years in multiple townships in Port Elizabeth. Ellen set up various community initiatives based on social entrepreneurship principles. She expanded on her people development and strategic skills and co-founded a HR Boutique Consultancy in 2008.

Before being the first Managing Director for The Silicon Cape Initiative in 2017, Ellen was the Co- Founder and Incubator Manager for Propella Business Incubator, a Public Private Partnership between the Nelson Mandela University Incubator and Engeli Enterprise. Ellen was also responsible for establishment and management of Telkom Future Makers Innovation Hub in 2015. Prior to that, she was the Enterprise Development Manager for the SEDA NMB ICT Incubator 2011-2015.

Ellen has extensive experience in small business development, with a focus on social enterprises and technology. She mentors of technology start-ups and designs community outreach programs, that focus on personal development, digital literacy and increasing employability of marginalized young women through STEM initiatives.

Ellen Fischat is a seasoned entrepreneur in the establishment of startup incubation programs, Hackathons, think tanks and incubators both in government and the private sector in South Africa. She has a proven track record in designing, hosting and executing tech challenges and launch events for STEM related initiatives for national and international clients. Her strengths lie in her strong and diverse network of associates. Ellen is a frequently asked speaker, moderator and facilitator of panel discussions that focus on social innovation and corporate responsibility, gender equality and youth empowerment initiatives, on both national and global stages. She is the South African Ambassador for Inspiring Fifty, a non- profit organization that focuses on increasing the visibility and celebration of the most inspiring women in STEM.

Joanne Perold works as an agile coach at agile42. She has worked with teams, senior leaders and organisations in agile environments since 2009. She is interested in both people and process improvement and continuously learning and finding better ways to solve problems.. She uses agile practices, principles and complexity thinking tools in her approaches.

She is also a Certified Scrum trainer, a Kanban Management Professional and is currently exploring a coaching and mentoring program from the Satir Institute.

Palesa Ryan is the Head of Origination and Coverage for the Social, Health and Education sectors at the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). She has more than 16 years of experience in the financial services industry; spanning across South Africa’s big four banks as well as the Land Bank of South Africa. Her work experience includes Credit, Workout and Restructuring, Coverage (Relationship Management) and Private Equity.

Prior to joining DBSA, Palesa managed the Workout and Restructuring Business Unit at Land Bank, which led the turnaround of the bank’s non-performing loan book in the agricultural sector. During her tenure, she also sat on numerous committees as either a voting or an alternate member on Credit, Pricing and Asset and Liability Management Committee (“ALCO”) for the Land Bank. She has also served as the Vice President and Head of Non-Bank Financial Institutions (“NBFI”) for ABSA Group Limited. In this role, she managed a budget in excess of R 330m across Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Botswana, Mauritius, Mozambique and Seychelles.

Palesa holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree in Management Accounting and Finance from the University of Witwatersrand, as well as a Diploma (cum laude) in Insolvency Law & Practice from the University of Johannesburg. She has contributed insightful business and development news from around the continent to South Africa’s business media such as CNBC Africa, Power FM and Radio 702. The mother to twin boys is recognised as an astute public speaker, and Master of Ceremonies, having hosted key international events such as the African Presidential Leadership Conference in 2017.

Kirsten is currently working at eyeo, a fully distributed company based in Germany, as a Remote Team Coach. Prior to this she worked at Jumo as an Agile Lead and 22seven as an Agile Facilitator. Kirsten began her career in counselling and psychology and moved into software about 7 years ago. She has focused primarily on the financial technology sector, working with both local and distributed teams. She’s worked with a range of companies, from those that are 6000+ people to small startups. She completed her honors in clinical and neuro-psychology and has built on her experience in counseling to enhance her effectiveness when coaching teams.

Kirsten Clacey, together with Jay-Allen Morris, has specialised in enabling distributed teams to reach high performance, using a combination of adapted facilitation techniques, team coaching methods and Agile frameworks. In the last 3 years they have spoken at conferences on the topic of remote facilitation and creating effective distributed spaces. They also host a monthly learning group to provide a space for facilitators to practice and share remote skills and techniques. Their book on remote facilitation will be published in June 2020 by US publisher Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Jay-Allen has a background in humanities, which has been invaluable in her various roles within the tech industry. She found it natural to transition into the role of Team Coach. She has been focusing on creating effective team spaces, both in-person and remote. She volunteered for the SUGSA Committee (Scrum User Group of South Africa) from 2017– 2018, organizing the annual conference and encouraging new speakers.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jay-allen-morris-26bb4643/

Genevieve has over 22 years’ corporate experience, of which the last 15 have been in a Business Intelligence or IT leadership role.

She has looked after business intelligence capabilities in the financial service industry, as well as the retail industry.

She currently head up the IT and BI divisions for Cipla SAGA (Africa).

Genevieve is extremely passionate about improving the diversity in the STEM fields and spends time particularly working with young girls and getting them into the STEM industry.

Genevieve was also voted as one of the top 50 Most Inspiring Women in STEM, in South Africa, for 2018.

Liz is a Senior UX/UI Designer who is passionate about human-centered design, research, and solving problems. She's currently busy with a PhD thesis in design, has summited Mt Kilimanjaro, and plays violin in various orchestras. She strives to create beautiful and intuitive experiences on any platform, and to always fight for the people that will actually be using the solutions we create.

Annette Muller is the founder of Flexyforce an innovative new technology startup aiming to build better supplier relationships. Flexyforce is a B2B cloud based software for companies to automate the onboarding, contracting and payouts of any kind of supplier.

Previously she founded DOTNXT, one of South Africa’s first Innovation Consultancies (sold to an international firm)

where she launched a number of innovations for South African corporate clients such as www.alphacode.club for Rand Merchant Bank and www.satrixnow.co.za for Satrix to name but a few.

Annette holds a Business Science Finance & Marketing degree (Honours Cum Laude) from the University

of Cape Town, SA, and has attended the renowned Hyper Island Digital Master Class in New York.

Recognised by Forbes as one of the top 10 female tech founders to watch in Africa in 2014 Annette is a sought-after international speaker and digital change agent, where her work continues to inspire people and companies all around the world to do things differently

Ndakondja wrote her first line of code at 14 and the thought of creating her own applications led her to pursue a career in the Computer Science field. While completing her qualifications at the University of Cape Town, she tutored, mentored and volunteered to upskill first and second-year students and that grew her love to teach people how to code. Ndakondja is passionate about digital skills development for the underprivileged, especially women of colour as she believes there is so much potential in these communities but there is not enough resources and support to build the right foundation. In collaboration with other women in tech, they have collectively organized coding workshops for women and are looking into having meet-ups to create safe, accessible spaces for women to discuss anything IT-related and create structured mentorship programs for high school and university students.

Ndakondja works as a full stack developer at Code Collective, her career kicked off by co-leading a DevOps implementation project at work and she is determined on driving the DevOps agenda in local software development companies. Being in an ever-changing industry, she is always keen on learning new tech skills and is currently focusing on improving her information retrieval and data mining skills. She is also a co-founder of Indoni Digital, a consultancy start up that is focused on helping other companies with their product engineering and software development.

Andrea currently runs her own Management Consulting business and clients predominantly call on her services to fulfil an outsourced COO function of sorts - by implementing leaner more efficient ways of working as remote teams, developing and building out high-performing teams and delivering strategic in-house projects.

She optimizes her business by leveraging her extensive international network of consultants, freelancers, vendors and partners. Her client portfolio ranges from SaaS businesses, Tech Start Ups, Brand & Marketing agencies to Corporates.

Andrea can be described as an inspired, emotionally intelligent strategic thinker with extensive business operations, international brand and general management experience. An agile generalist with a passion for enabling businesses and the workforce of the future.

Over the course of more than a decade of corporate, managerial & start up experience with local and international brands Andrea has developed a toolkit of practical skills which she believes can supercharge organisations, teams and the businesses of the future.

Assertive, reliable, hard-working and caring are just a few of the characteristics which can be used to describe Tumelo. She thoroughly enjoys tackling new tasks and challenges which allow her the opportunity to develop, while making an impact, with a creative and positive approach.

Throughout her career, Tumelo has had the pleasure of undertaking several leadership roles and partaking in a great deal of community engagement work. These varying roles (ranging from testing to systems engineering or organising community development initiatives to judging hackathons and mentorship) have not only taught her invaluable lessons in effective communication, time management, working under pressure and being assertive but moreover, in impact, servant-leadership and helping her team progress together with her.

Tumelo is passionate about community engagement along with the Information Technology industry and believes it is imperative to be purpose-driven, challenge the status quo along with being open to constantly aquire, share and apply knowledge. This has potential to allow one to make a positive impact today while leaving behind a powerful legacy for the generations of tomorrow.

Neelofar is a Senior Product Manager within the Innovation and Business Development team at Safaricom. In her role, she focuses on product strategy and development within the intersection of social and conversational behaviors and digital payments.

She has previously worked at the GSMA - a global trade association. Neelofar was part of a team with the mandate to launch mobile health services within six countries across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Neelofar is actively part of the Technovation and Women in Tech society in Kenya. She is passionate about building products that solve the intrinsic needs of the customer base.

Neha Kumar is passionate about growing with intention and scaling for impact. This drives her philosophy for building teams and building products for clients. She is currently the Director of Product at Vera Solutions. In this role, she leads the product division, develops strategy and roadmap, has recruited and scaled the team, and built partnerships with external stakeholders.

Neha has also led multiple workshops focused on how to use technology for impact measurement, strategies for change management, and data-driven social investing strategies.

Previously, Neha has worked at B Lab (New York) creating ESG standards and building data platforms for impact investors and at Goldman Sachs (London) in the financial institutions investment banking group.

She has a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University and a BSc in Economics from the University of London.

Nokky is the founder of Limit Breakers Global Foundation, a non-profit organisation that empowers women and young girls with access to information, networks, mentorship and support and is a seasoned technology executive with a career spanning over 15 years. She is a mentor on the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation, a member of the Women Leaders of the World Alumni Council in San Francisco, CMO Asia African Women Leader Awardee, an Honouree of the Steyn City 7% Tribe, one of 4 African candidates for the enpact Female Tech Business in Africa Programme in Berlin, an ambassador and judge of the Inspiring Fifty Awards and an associate of The Department of Basic Education’s Techno Girls.

Sarah Luyele Njamu is the CEO and founder for Compu-Connect Education, a Johannesburg based software company that specialises in: E-learning, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cyber Security, Digital Transformation and Executive Leadership Training. She is also an international conference speaker, facilitator, trainer and Business coach. With a career of over 20 years backed by an MBA and qualifications in Education, Sarah L. Njamu has extensive experience in sales, customer care, marketing, change management, project management, leadership training, Robotic Process Automation Implementation (RPAi) and Learning Management system (LMS) implementation with e- learning content. Sarah brings a great wealth of experience and exposure from working in three African markets namely South Africa, Zambia and Botswana.

Monique is an action orientated Business Consultant and coach, passionate about growth and helping others create and communicate their best self.

Monique has more than 30 years’ solid IT / Business experience. Although Monique has been a successful Entrepreneur since 1999, she has also spent many years in Senior Executive Leadership positions at Banks and Telecommunications companies. Monique is known for her ‘making things happen’ ability.

After being retrenched on a very significant birthday, Monique spent a couple of years on her couch, wondering what’s next. It’s during this time that Monique realized the importance of reinventing / recreating oneself. And so her own process started. She managed to successfully reinvent herself and started the #reinventyourself program to help others in similar situations.

Monique is a qualified Executive Leadership Coach (UCT), a Certified Self Esteem Facilitator (SA Chapter) and a Gallup Certified Strengthsfinder coach. Monique is also an APMG Change Management Professional, Prince 2 MSP Practitioner and PMI/PMBOK member.

Ash is an international TV Reporter, Media Trainer and Communications Specialist. After years of interviewing individuals who struggled with on camera performance, Ash founded The King's Speech in South Africa to help train executives and professionals on how to make the most of their media interviews and presentations. She is considered an expert in crisis communications, media strategy and on camera performance.

She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Master of Science in Communication from Lynn University in the USA and a certificate in The Global Financial Crisis from Yale. Ash then spent seven years living in the USA, where she worked on Capitol Hill before returning to broadcasting. Ash has media trained and coached hundreds of individuals on how to talk to the media, what to do in a crisis and how to present.

Previously, Ash worked for CNBC Africa, Business Affair, ABC News and Al Jazeera in Washington, DC. She has reported from The World Economic Forum, The Mining Indaba, The World Bank, Fashion Week and the JSE; and has interviewed some of the world’s most prominent business professionals, South Africa's top politicians and various celebrities. She regularly presents at events, contributes to media outlets, as well as reporting for Business Affair.

In 2019, she launched her personal brand, Ash Evans. A platform dedicated to empowering businesswomen and entrepreneurs through tailored media training and presentation skills workshops to help them become their best, bold, powerful selves.

Professor Rivett is the Director of the School of IT at the University of Cape Town, which combines the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Information Systems.

Her research over the last decade focused on the application and use of ICTs (Information Communication Technologies) to support the delivery of basic amenities and services to under-resourced communities.

Her work has been to “connect the dots” between the theory of computer science, IT and society. Her research team iCOMMS focuses on the creation of solutions that offer an innovative approach to society’s problems such as the development of mobile apps for the health sector, service delivery and the water sector. Recently, she broke the academic glass ceiling of becoming UCT’s first woman professor in IT.

A serial innovation entrepreneur with 27 years of scars and successes from developing transformative talent, products and businesses, Stonefield has conceived, designed, productized, financed and/or taken to market projects in Telecoms (mobile, apps, media & entertainment apps, IPcomms and advertising), BioMed, FinTech, AgriTech, Solar Energy, and e-Learning. Expertise in capitalization strategies and execution, business expansion and internationalization, talent and intellectual property development, user-experience design, product innovation, and go-to-market strategies. Listed as “one of the top 50 mobile content executives” by Mobile Entertainment Magazine, between 1997 and 2005 he spearheaded the multibillion-dollar downloadable song and ringtone industries and has authored or co-authored 11 patents. He has raised over $30 million in venture financing for tech businesses; co-founded or advises exponential startups in the US, UK and several Sub-Sahara African countries; and is a M&A scout for private equity firms.

Stonefield is also Co-founder and CEO of AutoRegenic Immunologics, an advance cell therapyventure that is pioneering the production and administration of immune system transplantation stem cells for blood cancer victims (www.autoregenic.com). With a penchant for impact activities, Stonefield is also CIO of Alternative Initiative for the Development of Africa (www.aida.co.bw) where he focuses on developing of “Reverse Innovations” and “Leapfrog Technologies” in and out of resource-rich Sub-Sahara Africa. He provides venture development services to dynamic and disruptive startups that have regional or global scope. His current engagements include the establishment of South African business bases for www.syntonic.com, www.starnewsmobile.com and www.pmconnect.co.uk; spearheading venture development for www.thesunexchange.com which crowd finances solar power installations in the developing world; and being chief technologist for South Africa’s leading e-learning service, www.e-classroom.co.za.

Prior to these engagements, Stonefield headed the Nokia’s mobile application developer ecosystem in what was that company’s largest market region—India, Middle East and Africa—managing 33 staff spread across the region to source, finance and support new concepts, applications and businesses that added value to wireless devices and local communities.

Prior to joining Nokia, Stonefield served as CEO-in-Residence for a Qualcomm Labs project, Yagatta, a visionary Internet communication solution. Before the Qualcomm Labs engagement, Stonefield raised $14 million in US venture capital to build and sell Emotive Communications, a pioneering solution for transmitting interactive media programs peer-to-peer between smartphones, which was acquired by Appconomy.

Ahead of developing the Emotive venture, Stonefield founded and ran Moviso LLC which he sold to Vivendi Universal Networks in 2002 and resold it to InfoSpace in 2003, where it created and dominated the mobile content market in the USA and UK until 2007, generating over $1.5 billion in mobile content sales and precipitating the global mobile content industry. Moviso was finally sold again in 2007 for $135 million.

Stonefield has served as an advisor to industry analysts and a mentor, judge and expert panelist in the field of innovation entrepreneurialism. His degree in Biology is from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a citizen of the US and South African, an advanced SCUBA diver and commercial multi-engine instrument airplane pilot.

Emma pioneers transformative education models that prepare youth for the 21c workplace. Emma is the co-founder of CodeSpace Academy, a social enterprise that provides high quality tech education courses, with affiliated programmes that ensure diversity & inclusion in IT studies & the tech industry.

She is a dedicated global advocate for a more diverse and inclusive economy and tech industry. As a successful South African social entrepreneur, she has a particular interest in supporting young people in pursuing entrepreneurial activities. Her work has been recognised globally by Fortune Most Powerful Women, Google, Mail & Guardian, and Queen Elizabeth II who honoured her with The Queen’s Young Leader Award.

As the founder and Managing Director of Global Trade Solution, she has more than 25 years’ experience in the International Trade and international Supply Chain and Logistics environment. The objective of Louise and her competent team at GTS is to provide consulting service combined with innovative solutions to enable the optimization of the international trade, supply chain and logistical environment. Linking all the different trade partners in the international supply chain as well as all the various statutory organizations is a primary drive for the GTS team. The various statutory bodies include the Customs and Port Authorities as well as the Other Government Agencies who focus on the related aspects of international trade including food safety, standards and health.

GTS has adopted blockchain technology as a primary disruptor in the International Trade and Supply Chain environment. The GTS team is championing a number of blockchain initiatives with various industry role players to help shape the future of the industry and to modernize the international trade and supply chain landscape.

Louise holds a B.Com from the University of Stellenbosch and a B.Compt (Hons) from the University of South Africa, as well as a number of diplomas in International Trade and Project Management. Prior to founding GTS, Louise completed her articles at Ernst and Young and worked extensively in international trade at various major blue-chip companies in Africa. She has performed extensive consulting and international trade enablement throughout the Africa region and participates in a number of World Customs Organisation, International Chamber and other international organisation initiatives on an ongoing basis.

Alexandra Matthews is the Chief Product Officer at The Delta Studio, a leading venture builder based in Cape Town. She has a background in software and data engineering, but now spends her time working with startups and corporates who are looking to launch new products to market. She now specialises in product strategy and design thinking, and is one of the few Google Venture design sprint facilitators in South Africa.

Alexandra travels internationally to facilitates product workshops, and is working on the expansion of the Delta Studio’s product offering into Europe in 2020. She is incredibly passionate about the opportunity for tech innovation within the African market and is proud to be a part of a company that supports and partners with local entrepreneurs and corporates working in this space. She believes strongly in lean startups and this is a core methodology that she encourages in all product development at the Delta Studio.

With over 6 years in the IT industry, she has experienced the notable gender imbalance in tech and is an advocate for women and girls pursuing careers in technology. She is well acquainted with imposter syndrome herself, and is dedicated to highlighting this issue and enabling other women like herself to overcome it.

Victoria is the Founder & Executive Director of Girls In STEM Trust, a non-profit organization with female future leaders and pioneers in STEM in mind. Through the organisation’s deliberate drive by exposure to all facets of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) as well as digital skills, in fun and exciting ways, Girls In STEM Trust advocates and paves the way for a vibrant generation of women leaders and entrepreneurs in STEM now and in future generations. The cornerstone and primary focus of The Girls in STEM Trust is summed up by the mission statement, “Her Digital Skills, Her Future!” which infuses the organisation’s key values of creativity, adaptability, diversity, versatility and integrity. The organisation is on a mission to get one million girls and young women in STEM related studies, occupations and business enterprises by 2030.

Victoria is an ICT Professional specialising in Systems Analysis, an ICT and Digital Skills Trainer, Speaker and Mentor passionate about Digital Transformation as well as Social and Business Entrepreneurship primarily in the field of Technology for women.

She is also a member of the Computer Society of Zimbabwe Bulawayo Chapter, serving on the Chapter’s Executive as the Executive Member in charge of the Education Portfolio and the Software Development Committee.

Jembi is a not-for-profit that focuses on strengthening public health through innovative technology. Working in Health Tech as part of Jembi's mission has been both fulfilling and challenging. The reality of this space demands more than just creating effective design solutions. But requires a deep understanding of the needs and inner workings of the Public Health sector. 

In her spare time, between business and design, Bianca is the lead vocalist in the all-female rock band, Bite.

A social media marketing specialist and a people’s person by nature, Irma Karsten has over 20 years of work experience behind her. She is currently a digital strategist and principal trainer for and owner of The Training Group. In this role, she serves as an avid trainer and facilitator for all things social media marketing related.

Irma is passionate about training individuals and facilitating courses – from entry level right through to advanced level – on all platforms and across all industries. Her courses are informative and with her sense of humour added into the mix while she presents, it is no wonder that entrepreneurs, marketing managers and executives have all attended Irma’s training sessions.

Irma believes that “if you are not having fun while you are doing it, then you are doing it wrong”, and this coupled with her years of experience across multiple industries and roles makes her a well-rounded and sought-after trainer and facilitator.

Irma started her career as a Branch Manager for a bank in Pretoria. With a keen focus on client satisfaction, project management and client service management, she later went on to hold top positions at various companies including Client Service Manager, Sales & Marketing Manager and Project Coordinator.

Harnessing her skills in account leadership, Irma excelled at managing and coordinating client projects in terms of branding, marketing, advertising, design and marketing campaigns among other duties. Her experience over the years has increased her skills in business management operations, team building, creativity, problem solving, change management, labour relations and financial management. Her customer-centric way of doing business as well as her excellent communication skills puts her in great stead to build strong relationships with partners, suppliers and facilitators.

As a forward thinker, Irma noticed the rate at which social media was growing in the business world, and in 2015, she established her own social media marketing training and coaching business on a part-time basis. Using her own course curriculum and training material, she coaches and trains business owners across industries in South Africa in branding, online marketing and social media management. Some of her clients include the international marketing teams of Karcher, Barlow Motor Retail among others.

Irma’s greatest strengths include her ability to adapt to change, customer relationships and stakeholder management across all levels. Her personal motto of “Make it Happen” is an example of how she lives her life daily. This together with her sense of humour makes her the ideal trainer and facilitator to inspire andbring out the best in each person she trains.

Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of SnapnSave, South Africa’s #1 cashback rewards app since 2015. With over 400,000 downloads to date, and customers in both the formal and informal retail sectors, SnapnSave has offered over R12mil cash back to shoppers across South Africa.

Tina has over 20 years’ experience as a Global Marketing director having worked for a number of multinational corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. Prior to co-founding SnapnSave, she has consulted to several Fintech organisations specialising in go-to-market and market expansion strategies in markets such as Zambia, Malawi, DRC, Ghana, Kenya and Botswana. Tina holds an MBA from University of Cambridge, UK.

Ms. Joanie Fredericks is a modern African Phoenix, having survived physical, sexual and psychological violence throughout childhood and motherhood.

To realise her mission to emancipate and empower women in underprivileged communities, Joanie founded Ladies Own Transport Services. In the spirit of Susan B Antony—who said “I think [the bicycle] has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world”— Ladies Own provides affordable access to tools, knowledge, and know-how for township women to become safe, courteous and professional drivers and escape poverty by gaining access to employment in the transport and deliveries industries. The business has implemented a communal means (stokvels) of financing full licensing programmes. With over 25 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Joanie also co-founded the NEAD Community Development non-profit organization that is committed to providing a platform for the inspiration and empowerment of a sustainable and progressive social development environment aligned with U.N. global sustainable development goals by addressing Gender Equality, Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Joanie has technical skills and operational qualifications obtained from accredited training institutions. Joanie also has a long list of certifications spanning Constitutional Law, Human Rights, Community Capacity Enhancement, and HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAFAIDS). She has volunteered extensively for organizations such as the Bush Radio Community Station, Family and Focus Project, and the Western Cape Network for Violence against Women and Rape Crisis in Israel and was Chairperson of the Cape Town region of the Western Cape’s Network for Violence against Women. In 2003, Joanie received the Amazon Award from the Women’s Legal Centre for her work with women farm workers.

Having started out in sales and supporting technical implementation solutions, Tumi entered the SA tech scene by joining the startup, OfferZen. At the end of 2018, she spearheaded OfferZen Foundation with the explicit mission of helping people from underserved communities thrive in their tech careers.

Foundation’s latest initiative, Project Thrive, saw nearly 100 people enter the tech mentoring programme within the first 6 months. Tumi hopes this will help senior developers build empathy for, and empower, junior and intermediate developers through one-on-one mentoring.

In her spare time, Tumi can be found volunteering as a lead workshop facilitator and preparing speakers for TEDxCapeTown, exploring Cape Town for new spots to eat or enjoying a contemplative stroll through Newlands Forest.

Themibso Magajana, Founder of Social Coding SA is an accountant turned technology advocate, who is recognized for designing and leading strategic coding workshops for rural youth, that have impacted 1800 scholars, across four provinces in South Africa. Embracing the core values of integrity, innovation, and growth, Social Coding scholars consistently rank among the top percent performers in competitions, with a group from Pretoria Technical High School taking first place at District and Provincial competitions in 2018. She gave her first TEDx Talk in 2017, has shared the stage at the Standard Bank Women in Technology Conference ,the South African STEM Conference and Career Expo; gave a Keynote at the Rotary International Nebraska chapter and has appeared in interviews on local and international television. She is a recipient of the Margaret Hirsch Heroine Award , an InspiringFifty women in Technology winner, a Mandela Washington Fellow, World Economic Forum Global Shaper, and an alumnus of Spark* International.

Caroline has been building and running investment platforms for nearly 20 years. Her expert ability to create a strategic agenda and deliver in fast-paced environments has allowed her to be successful in creating wrap platforms and wealth management propositions.

Caroline was recently recognised in the IA Top 100 which names the most influential people across the international financial advisory and wealth management sectors.

Prior to joining INN8 as COO, as Chief of Staff at HSBC Global Wealth Products and Services, Caroline was responsible for supporting Global Head of Wealth Products and Services and creating its global vision. With operational oversight of teams in London, Dubai and Hong Kong, she was responsible for creating cohesion in a multidimensional team.

In her time at HSBC Caroline also held the position Head of Wealth Platforms for HSBC Europe & Head of Wrap Platform Development UK.

Hana El Sadat is a passionate Humanitarian and philanthropist. She has experience in the field of international development and has been actively engaged in charity work. She is the founder of Neya an online platform that supports community engagement and collaborations that are in line with the sustainable development goals. She continuously seeks to be part of organizations and any community responsible initiatives. She is a big supporter of social enterprises.

Hana studied at Northeastern University perusing her degree B.A International Affairs Minor Political Science, Concentration Middle East Studies. Continuing education at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) to receive her masters M.S. Sustainable Development, Concentration in Development Management this year.

Neya was founded late 2018, a community platform for philanthropy and development. It serves to help causes better market themselves and their cause, spread awareness, make available opportunities for donations or volunteer work and better reach individuals, organizations or companies who are ready and willing to give their support. The platform’s role facilitates and promotes collaboration, ensures quality and participation synergy, and communicates and harmonizes efforts.

In the early stage of her career Hana worked in her family company Sadat group, in logistics. She moved on to working at the Ministry of International Cooperation under H.E Minister Sahar Nasr. Before pursuing Neya, Hana worked at the United Nations Development program, working on programs such as the Behavior Insights Program to improve the delivery of Social Care for Children in Egypt. In 2016 Hana founded a popup street store to help dress and supply the homeless with their needs.

Hana continuously looks at ways to be part of the community and is currently part of three organizations the Business Women of Egypt 21, Rotary Egypt Cairo Royal, and Global Shapers Giza Hub. Each organization strives to make a difference and impact with a driven cause.

The roots to making a difference came early on with many volunteering experiences and initiatives created by Hana such as the street store Egypt in 2016 which was a pop up shop campaign made for the homeless. It was a dignified way to provide the homeless with materials and supplies they needed. Fundraising came early on supporting different health care entities and groups to try to make a difference.

Anna Collard founded security content publisher Popcorn Training– a South African company that promotes Cyber Security awareness by using innovative, story-based techniques and gamification to make complex content simple to understand and easy to remember.

Anna has been working in the information security field for 18 years assisting corporates across South Africa, Europe and the US keeping their information assets safe and holds various security certifications such as CISSP, CISA, ISO 27001 lead auditor, CIPP/IT and used to be a Visa/Mastercard PCI DSS QSA.

US-based Cyber Security Awareness Training giant KnowBe4, acquired Popcorn Training in 2018. Anna maintains her role as Managing Director of Popcorn Training/Knowbe4 Africa driving security awareness across the African continent.

Eno Essien is the Founder/Chief Executive Officer of Rheytrak Limited, a Vehicle Tracking and Recovery company licensed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), which she established thirteen years ago at the age of twenty five and with no prior work experience ever.

Under her leadership, the company has consistently experienced steady and remarkable accomplishments and recorded an exceptionally high success rate in recovery of stolen vehicles from locations within and outside the Nigerian boundary. With branches in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Akwa Ibom and with an impressive portfolio of clients cutting across Insurance Companies, Transport and logistics Companies, Multinationals, Public Quoted Companies, Government Agencies and a host of individuals, she attributes her success rate first to the grace of God and then the effectiveness of her product.

A graduate of Microbiology from the University of Calabar, Eno Essien was recognized by The Guardian Newspaper as one of the women who made impact in 2019. Her commitment, diligence, and dedication to a job she absolutely loves, has earned her several awards locally and internationally amongst which are; the Exquisite Ladies of The Year (ELOY) Award for Woman Who Inspires, the Nigeria Women Achievers Award for Enterprising Humanitarian Personality of the Year, and a recognition for her outstanding contribution as a role model and mentor to Nigerian youths. She was also nominated as Entrepreneur of the Year, Technology category at the 7th edition of the Future Awards and Her Network Technology Woman of the Year 2019 as well as ELOY Awards Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019

She has attended various Management and Leadership Development Programmes at different times. She is also an alumnus of the prestigious Lagos Business School.

She is the Public Relations Officer of the Association of Telematics Operators of Nigeria and a member of the Governing Council of the Lagos Business School Alumni Association (LBSAA).

Eno-Obong is the only female CEO in the vehicle tracking industry in Nigeria and the youngest.

Michele Scott is the Client Service Director of the Oxford Leadership.

She has a demonstrable global portfolio in Executive Development, Business Transformation, and Leadership Solutions in a variety of industries including FinTech, Pharma, Chemical, Finances Services, Education, Banking and Media.

Her own research and consultation includes elevating high performing business executives who operate in a global environment with a focus on optimising decision making in high stake meetings. The aim is to equip leaders with the skills and abilities to respond quickly to new developments and mobilise themselves into action as efficiently as possible.

Michele also is on the Board of Trustee for a youth led charity that empowers young people to participate equally in an integrated, cohesive and representative society. It invests in the skills and talents of young people to work towards gender and racial equality.

Alexia Usgaard is a leadership expert, self-care advocate, and Founder of The FEARCE Movement. She has spent over a decade studying fear, integrative biology, stress, mindfulness, and leadership across the world, from Silicon Valley to Southeast Asia, and now Africa, using what she's learned to support women from being burnt out to badass leaders. Alexia has also worked with some of the world's leading entrepreneurs and billionaires.

Alexia is currently coaching female leaders around the world, speaking on leadership and empowerment panels, changing organizations from the inside out, and offering group coaching programs with the mission of connecting the visionary women of the world. Alexia's focus is on supporting women to harness work-life integration to create spacious and sustainable success.

Kate, the Managing Director of Sera Afrika, based in Nairobi Kenya, drives the strategy, operations, and delivery of the organization focusing on data driven policy across the continent.  She has over 20 years of experience building solutions, teams, and business models to spur social and economic development. Kate brings expertise in the creation of sustainable partnerships between government, private sector and the UN/NGO world which are critical to the successful development of Africa.

Most recently Kate was the Global Director of Strategic Partnerships within Microsoft's Worldwide Industry organization, which created transformational change through technology. In that capacity she bridged the digital divide in partnership with a multitude of international organizations, including primarily the United Nations.  In this role she developed a deep understanding of creating impact across the private sector to development space, including a TEDx talk.

Kate Krukiel’s unique perspectives and diverse skillset stems from her academic background in computer science having been applied to a career tackling early-stage corporate growth challenges in development markets.   Living in London for 12 years, she is a native Delawarean and spent 10 years in Washington DC before moving to Kenya.

Kate has worked in the Middle East and Africa, focusing on the nucleus of private and public sector, non-profits, United Nations and Civil Society to break down political, social, and language barriers to create lasting change in emerging markets. Her passion lies in working across boundaries to build solutions and new business models driven by technology that create long-term impact. From human rights to affordable access to connectivity, technology and people are the critical change factors.

Kate advises and mentors individuals to start up organizations which include a Malawi refugee in building the "Girls Smart Code." She is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Ambershore Group and in early 2020 she joined the UN in developing a newly formed joint venture, the UN Digital Solutions Centre.   

Masego is versatile procurement thought leader, IT operations executive, speaker, self starter with more than 17 years experience in the procurement and Sourcing industry. Masego enjoyed an accelerated success in her career earlier on, by becoming a deputy director at the tender age of 23 and having a multitude of leadership roles under her belt from thereon.

These roles were held in the following companies:

• JSE, SARB, Woolworths Financial Services, ABSA, SASSA, Dept of Minerals and Energy

Masego is a capable professional with the ability, drive and determination needed to succeed, create opportunities and drive value driven strategies.

Elaine Wang is the Cloud Solutions Director at Rectron (Pty) Ltd, driving the shift towards cloud in the South African IT channel, with a strong focus on the transformative power of cloud for small business in South Africa. In addition to the cloud business, Elaine also leads the Rectron national marketing team, leveraging her strengths in strategic marketing, and seeing to creative, and impactful campaigns for Rectron. This year, Elaine has also spearheaded the creation of Basadi, Rectron’s own female empowerment programme, with the aim to drive a more diverse and inclusive culture within Rectron, as well as within the IT channel.

Dietmar joined TymeBank almost 4 years ago, building up their analytics and data team as well as overseeing the design and build of the Data Lake and Advanced Analytics platform.  TymeBank is South Africa’s first fully licensed fully digital bank that is founded on simplicity, transparency and affordability.  Dietmar has a BSc (Hons) in Actuarial Mathematics with honours from the University of Pretoria.  He lectured in the Actuarial field for a couple of years before he joined the banking sector 15 years ago.  He spent time at Nedbank and Standard Bank, leading and building various lending, data science, machine learning and big data teams.

Samantha is the founder and CEO of Sanari Capital, a private equity firm investing in the lower and mid market, with a specialization in founder-run, owner-managed and family-owned businesses.

Samantha has more than fifteen years of private equity and venture capital experience in the South African and United States markets. She played a leading role in investments at Ethos Private Equity, prior to which she worked in private equity in Chicago and investment banking and consulting in New York.

Samantha holds an MBA (Hons) from the University of Chicago, a BCom and BA Honours degree in Industrial Psychology from University of the Witwatersrand, and is a CFA Charter Holder.  Samantha is a director on the board of the Southern African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (SAVCA).