Tlale is an Engagement Manager at MTN, South Africa for Tata Consultancy Services. Her role at MTN is to build and maintain strong and meaningful business relationships on behalf of TCS. Tlale’s work experience spans over a decade across IT Management, Programme Management and Management Consulting.

She has been in TCS since 2015 as a Management Consultant and Client Engagement Manager: Telecoms from 2017. Tlale is very passionate about driving growth for the individuals and is known for being a skillful result oriented professional.

Pierre le Grange is Customer Delivery Executive at CSG, where he is responsible for all customer delivery for MTN South Africa and Group for CSG. His experience spans a period of over 20 years in the industry, having been previously involved with Telco organistions such as MTN, Vodacom, Cell C, Neotel and Liquid Telecom as well as large consulting groups such as Accenture, where he was Associate Director of Innovation. He experiences thus includes an intimate knowledge of the operational functioning of organizations within the industry, but also external best practice and innovation roadmaps from a consulting perspective.

Liezl Huxham is an ICT professional and currently heads up the Technology Programme Management Office at MTN SA. She has been in this role since 2016. Prior to this role she was responsible for Radio Information Management at MTN SA with experience spanning Radio Network Configuration, BI & Analytics, Project and Programme Management, Infrastructure Management, Software Solutions Development, System Integration and Support, Technical Training and Technical Authoring. Huxham holds a National Diploma in Financial Information Systems from Tshwane University of Technology, and current studies towards MBA with Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University. Huxham has extensive experience in the ICT and telecommunications industry, having worked in the sector for over 20 years.

George Thomas is our business Development Director. He has strong emerging market experience having worked extensively in regional and global markets. He has been the leading and managing several complex IT environments concurrently.

He has taken up different business development, solutions and services architecture roles and executed effective transformation solutions for large transformation projects throughout his 20+ years of experience in the IT industry.

Kaushik Lala is a software information technology professional with extensive experience in enterprise software development using cloud technologies.

His primary focus is on application architecture, design and development. Working in the financial industry, he led a team of developers to design and build a set of cloud native rest APIs based on Open Banking standards. These Apis were implemented and deployed using a modern technology stack that included node.js, Docker, Kubernetes and a Kubernetes native DevOps pipeline. He is currently a DevOps engineer, moving the on-premise workload to the cloud using cloud provider tools.

Prior to the open banking project, he worked as a developer and DevOps engineer in the motor industry on a project to start experimenting on the concept of a connected motor vehicle. The solution was to build rest APIs and use the power of cloud-based analytics solutions to address traffic congestion and parking issues in major cities.Kaushik Lala is a Level 2 Certified IT Specialist at IBM, South Africa working with the Cloud and Cognitive expert labs team.

Darren Morris is a Digital Marketing Specialist for MTN, who is based in Johannesburg. With 10 years experience in all facets of advertising and marketing, including multiple awards and credits to his name, Darren really has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to his industry and knowing what works within it. Working with a kaleidoscope of local and global brands across all advertising channels, he really has seen what it takes for an idea to be successfully brought to life. “Im incredibly excited to be judging this years TADHack event. Im so passionate about new exciting creativity, especially in this digital space – I look forward to, and have no doubt with the craziness of 2020, we are really going to have our socks blown off this year!”

Phinda Ncala is the Executive: Information Technology at MTN South Africa. He has in this role since December 2017. Ncala joined MTN SA from South African Airways where he served as Chief Information Officer

An experienced GSM Telecoms IT manager. Work in the Telecoms industry since 1998 with knowledge in Billing, CRM, VAS, Mobile Financial Services, CVM and Charging.

Current Head of Digital and Fintech at MTN, managing the delivery of Digital Products and Mobile Financial Services.

Bridging gender divides by creating an environment in which more women-led start-ups thrive in tech is the force that drives internet governance specialist, Doreen Mokoena. In her work, she administers the .za namespace and arms the end-user with compliance regulations to better navigate emerging technologies in digital forensics, business intelligence, policy and data privacy.

Mokoena formed part of the South African delegation, alongside Deputy Minister Pinky Kekana of the department of digital technologies, at the 2019 Global Internet Governance Forum in Germany, which was organised by the German government, an invitation she considers to be a career-defining moment. Here she highlighted issues surrounding inclusion, cybersecurity and policy and regulations. She said South Africa has the leading number of registered domain names in Africa and being given the opportunity to form part of the ICANN Domain Name Abuse strategy and policy advisory panel was “pleasing beyond my expectations and imagination”.

With qualifications in forensic law, digital forensics and policing science, she’s well equipped for the task. Mokoena says her success alone is not enough: she would like women to be able to break the glass ceiling and claim more leadership roles in the male-dominated tech industry. She has judged one of the country’s biggest annual hackathons three times in a row. Cultivating business intelligence talent through innovation and emerging technologies is an unbelievable achievement. But she says that even though being honoured with industry-led accolades feels like good progress, “not enough women are given the space to make waves”.

Ebrahim Said is an Enterprise Architect and Innovation champion for MTN South Africa. He has served MTN in various roles since 2007. He has recently played the role of lead architect who saw MTN South Africa though its customer and digital systems’ transformation. Ebrahim graduated from the University of South Africa and the University of the Witwatersrand with degrees in Information Systems, Economics & Engineering. He is currently in the closing stages of his Ph. D. in IoT Systems Architecture & Control.

Puseletso is part of the broader Mobile Financial Services (“MFS”) business unit and her main focus is on Insurance portfolio. As a certified Ethics Officer, Puseletso needs to ensure that MTN adheres to the principles of the Code of Ethics.

I am passionate about all things tech and financial inclusion, with career experience in mobile financial services, banking, and management consulting. I was fortunate enough to work on launching MTN’s Mobile Money Open API Platform, that is currently live in 10 countries, with more on the way. Problem solver, geek, and a lover of cats!

Mr Ronny Mabokela is a Head of Technopreneurship Centre at University of Johannesburg and 4IR Skills Development Committee Member at MICT SETA. He is currently pursing his PhD at Wits university. He has vast amount of industry experience focusing on software development, business process automation, customer experience journey and solution architect.

Shaun Strydom is a digital transformation and innovation leader having designed, built and implemented class leading digital citizen, identity and integrated platform ecosystem technologies across various industries and geographies over the past decade. Shaun is seen as one of the global innovators and thought leaders in this space. Has founded and established various businesses including Contactable. Shaun is also a Cchartered Aaccountant and ex Deloitte Partner previously holding various senior executive positions at large organizations in Africa, Europe and the USA.

CIO at the Centre For Public Service Innovation (Government Component)

Responsible for unearthing and enabling innovation at the CPSI. Muzi is a fan of hackathon and rural innovation development. His true passion lies in helping schools get ahead with tools that enable and ignite innovation at a very early age for learners.

An investor and a strategy & business planning professional with over 20 years of international experience at Nokia, Northstream, Argnor, Ericsson, MTN Group and Ayoba with focus on management consulting, strategic planning, M&A, business & financial modelling, venture capital and start-ups. Fluent both in technology and finance.

Currently responsible for MTN Group's incubation, acceleration and venture capital activities as well as business development for the Ayoba superapp ecosystem.

Also Chairman of the UCT Solution Space Advisory Committee, mentor at Startupbootcamp and Investor & Fund Portfolio Advisor at Launch Africa.

Chief Officer: Digital financial services at MTN South Africa

Barnie Barnard Head of Operations and Testing MTN SA IT, National Diploma in Information Systems, MDP, Post Graduate Diploma (PM), MBA. In MTN IT since 2000 headed up the rollout of MTN’s Operations in Nigeria in 2002 for a few years before coming back to MTN SA IT.

Julius has vast experience across multiple sectors (digital services, financial services, telecoms, mining, construction, transport, renewable energy & entertainment) spanning over 10 years as management consultant and implementation expert. Julius’s experience covers Product Design, Sales & Distribution, Data Analytics & Commercialisation of Products. Julius is versed in Design Thinking, Lean Methodology and Agile. Julius is passionate about starting new ventures and improving established high-performance businesses. Julius looks after MoMo South Africa Products & Service.

Gregory has been working in the digital TV space for over 12 years. Within Irdeto, he leads the Broadcast Operations, Broadcast Systems Engineering and VOD/OTT Service Delivery teams, providing a fully managed service to deliver content, securely, to operators’ subscribers on various platforms: DTH, DTT and OTT. Gregory’s teams of engineers and technicians are all highly skilled and well tenured with a vast array of experience which allows them to provide an exceptional level of service to operators and their subscribers. As a more concrete example: it’s Gregory’s teams’ responsibility to compress, encrypt and deliver all content on the DStv platform, that includes the regular satellite broadcast as well as the CatchUp and BoxOffice services, and the DStv Now online service.

Prior to this role, Gregory worked as both a system integration lead and software development lead for MultiChoice. As a system integration lead, he oversaw the delivery of strategic set-top-box projects, notably introducing the first HD DTH Zapper and the first HEVC DTT STB to market at MultiChoice.

As a lead software developer, he was instrumental in the delivery and success of MultiChoice’s iconic Explora PVR that launched in 2013. The success of the Explora PVR was recognised through it winning both the “Product of the Year” and “Most Innovative Product” in SA technology as awarded by Nielsen; and following its success, Gregory was identified as one of the “200 Young South Africans” by the Mail & Guardian in 2015 in the Science Technology category. By way of education, Gregory holds a Master of Engineering Management degree from UP and a BSc in Electronic Engineering from UKZN

Charlotte grew up in the UK but originally comes from Shanghai, China. She first came to South Africa while studying for her PhD in 2015, and moved to Johannesburg in January 2020 where she now lives.

With a background in social research, focusing on gender, global health and employability, she is driven by work that focuses on social impact and change.

Her key focus areas at Geekulcha are research, impact assessment and business development. She is interested in digital literacy for development, civic tech and service improvement.

Giovanni Chiarelli is the Chief Technology and Information Officer for MTN South Africa. He has served in this role since November 2016. Chiarelli is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in the fields of information and technology gleaned from a number of multi-national corporations, including Infostrada, Accenture, Telecom Italia and Vodafone Group. Chiarelli is responsible for shaping and driving technology and information strategies for MTN SA. Before joining MTN SA, Chiarelli was the Chief Technology Officer of Vodafone Romania, and prior to that he served as the Global IT Programme Director for Vodafone Group. Chiarelli holds an Electrical Engineering degree from Poliecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy and a MBA from Universita Luigi Bocconi, Milan, Italy. In 2009, Oracle Corporation awarded him ‘CIO of the Year for the EMEA Region’.