Richard J Butcherhas a Diploma in Coal Mining Engineering, an Advanced Rock Engineering Certificate, a Graduate Diploma in Mining Engineering (Mineral Economics) and an MSc (Eng) in Mining Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand.  Richard has over 37 years’ experience in the mining industry, including 17 years’ experience in the gold sector, which has been obtained globally with companies including Gencor, Anglo American and Barrick. He was previously Head of Technical Services at MMG, the overseas arm of the Chinese CMC/CMN Corporation. His position involves being discipline head for all technical functions, long-term planning and closure for the Group’s operations in Australasia, Africa and South America.

Following the successful establishment of a multi-disciplinary data consulting division of 25 people within 2 years, Karl recently founded a specialist data services company that provides leadership and strategic guidance for organisations that are ready to extract significant value from their data assets. Partnering with internationally-recognised leaders in data management, Nexus Data provides a tried and tested, pioneering approach to value generation through data-bound use cases in large organisations. They specialise in explaining data concepts in simple, adoptable terms and provide various services in data management and analytics. Karl draws on his years of experience in establishing and leading value-driven data analysis teams in multiple industries like mining, media and entertainment, fleet management, financial services and more, to introduce organisations to new ways of thinking about their data and how to extract value from it. His focus is on guiding organisations to make small, incremental changes to create value by using the data technology and skills they already have.

Frik Fourie is the Head of New Mining Technology at Anglo American, based in Johannesburg. His current role is to develop new technologies that improve safety, productivity and cost efficiency. His portfolio consists of modernisation, mechanised low-profile and narrow-reef equipment, cutting technologies, fuel cell development and digitisation integration for underground operations. He has a long career in narrow-reef conventional mining ranging from shallow to ultra-deep, as well as mechanised and open-cast operations. He previously served as Head of Mining for Anglo American Platinum.

Karina Geyser is a hands-on professional with 20+ years’ experience in the mining industry, having worked for Anglo Platinum, Anglo American, Glencore and Anglo Gold Ashanti. She is currently responsible for the effective strategic management of Royal Bafokeng Platinum’s (RBPLAT) Information Technology infrastructure and application landscape and driving RBPlat’s digitalization strategy. Karina is a very ambitious, passionate, driven individual with great inter-intrapersonal skills. She is emotionally intelligent, innovative, creative and a team player. Her key skills include: strategic management, project management, team building and leadership and good communication skills and she has extensive experience in service delivery and continuous business improvement. She has a Bcom in Hotel and Tourism Management from the University of Pretoria, a BA in Health Sciences and Social Services from Unisa and has completed the Executive Development Programme from UNISA SBL.

R. Michael Jones brings over 25 years of experience as a professional geological engineer and has been involved with the raising of over $1 billion for exploration, mining development and production. In addition to co-founding Platinum Group Metals Ltd., Michael was a founder of Glimmer Resources Inc. and was responsible for the discovery of the Glimmer Gold mine, now Blackfox, in Ontario. During a six-year tenure as President of Cathedral Gold Corp., Mr. Jones ran a producing gold mining company and was involved in the review of a feasibility study and financing for the $1 billion Diavik Mine project during two years as Vice President with Aber Resources. Michael was a co-founder and director of West Timmins Mining that was purchased by producing company Lake Shore Gold Corp. in 2009 and was a co-founder and former director until 2012 of MAG Silver Corp. He is a Director, President and Chief Executive Officer of West Kirkland Mining Inc. and a director of Nextraction Energy Corp. Michael served on the Securities Policy Advisory Committee of the British Columbia Securities Commission for six years and holds a B.A.Sc. in geological engineering from the University of Toronto.

Harmeet is a Partner in PwC’s Mining Operations Transformation unit leading the SMART Mining capability within PWC Africa. He has over 20 years of experience leading large business transformation, intelligent asset care, digital strategy, cost optimization and business integration for clients across different sectors in Africa and Asia. Harmeet is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and speaker at various international conferences on lean and asset management. 

Dr Nkosi Kumalo has been Managing Executive for BCX Mining, Health and Industrial Sectors for the past 4 years and will be transitioning to his new role as Managing Executive for BCX EXA business unit effective 1 April 2021, which is a key enabler of digital platforms solutions for BCX. He will be responsible for driving the digital strategy formulation and execution which includes transformational consulting and advisory services, application development, technology integration, data insights and intelligence into the medium and enterprise markets in and around South Africa. Nkosi has been in the IT industry for over 19 years, having worked for leading multinational companies in hardware, software and network connectivity services. His passion for technology has been demonstrated through his transformational leadership in document management solutions, Microsoft Windows phone operating system, datacentre and hosting services, public cloud computing services, Oracle applications and system integration where he had a significant contribution in helping customers with their digital transformation aspirations both as product development and customer engagement leader. Academically he holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing, a Master’s in Business Administration and a Doctorate in Business Leadership from UNISA School of Business Leadership.

Ian Mackay has extensive experience in improving operations in underground and opencast mining. Focusing on safety, people, production and costs, he has over 20 years’ experience in analyzing and improving mining production performance on several continents and across mineral types. He seeks to harmonise safety, the people and production in sustainable, measurable ways while incorporating technologies that are of material benefit to production personnel.  

Professor Tshilidzi Marwala is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg. He was a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Engineering at the University of Johannesburg. He was a full Professor of Electrical Engineering, the Carl and Emily Fuchs Chair of Systems and Control Engineering as well as the South Africa Chair of Systems Engineering all at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Before this, he was an executive assistant to the technical director at South African Breweries. He holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering (magna cum laude) from Case Western Reserve University, a Master of Mechanical Engineering from University of Pretoria, a PhD in Engineering from University of Cambridge and was a post-doctoral associate at Imperial College. His research interests include applications of artificial intelligence to engineering, computer science, finance and medicine. He has an extensive track record in human capacity development, having supervised 47 Masters and 31 PhD graduates to completion. Some of these students have proceeded with their doctoral and post-doctoral studies at leading universities such as Harvard, Rutgers, Purdue, Oxford, Cambridge, British Columbia and Concordia. He has published 20 books, over 300 papers in journals, proceedings and book chapters and holds three international patents. He was an associate editor of the International Journal of Systems Science (Taylor and Francis Publishers). Prof. Marwala is a registered professional engineer in South Africa, a Fellow of The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, Academy of Science of South Africa, South African Academy of Engineering and a distinguished member of the Association for Computing Machinery. He has received more than 45 awards including the Order of Mapungubwe from the South African Government and the President’s Award from the National Research Foundation. He is a Deputy Chair of the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a board member of Nedbank and a Trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Lerato is currently the Manager for the Mining, Manufacturing and Resources team at Microsoft South Africa, her core role being to ensure customers have the most valuable relationship with Microsoft and to execute the vision of empowering enterprise customers, driving business growth and digital transformation. Lerato has been with Microsoft for just over 10 years in various lines of businesses in the enterprise, commercial and public sectors. Her tenure at Microsoft has included leadership in the following roles: Solution Sales Manager in Microsoft for Modern Workplace, leading a specialist team in the landing of value secure productive enterprises and Licensing Sales Manager. Lerato is a firm believer in continuous learning. Her early career studies include NDIP Information Tech: Software Development accreditations from TUT, an Advanced Management Programme with Wits Business School and Business Strategy from Insead. She is passionate about South Africa and the continued effort we can make to improve our economic and social standing, developing individuals and teams to do their best work and deliver exceptional results. Lerato gets excited about Microsoft’s work in the areas of sustainability, gender diversity and student initiatives in the workplace. 

Priashan Pakiriy is an Executive Manager with 10+ years’ experience within the telecoms industry working primarily for mobile and ISP network operators such as MTN, Vodacom and Cell C. His career has been focused on commercial roles within the consumer, enterprise and wholesale carrier segments. He is currently the Head of Enterprise Fixed Solutions at MTN Business South Africa. In his role he is responsible for strategy development, product management and go-to market activities across MTN’s Fixed Connectivity and Unified Communications business. He previously served as CEO & Group Director of Ubuntu Technologies and was responsible for the IT systems integrator holding company as well as six operating subsidiaries. He holds a Bachelor of Accounting Science degree from WITS University and the PMD from Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria.

Sietse has a Master's degree in radiation physics. As Manager at the National Nuclear Regulator, he was responsible for the establishment of a regulatory framework for radiation protection in mining. He did his MBA with a focus on integrating sustainability issues into the strategy of businesses. He then joined Xstrata as a manager responsible for safety, health, environment and quality. In 2004 he was appointed as the Head of Safety and Sustainable Development in the Minerals Council (formerly Chamber of Mines) where he enjoyed being part of the mining industry's safety and health enhancement initiatives. Since 2015 he has served as the Senior  Executive:  Modernisation and Safety and his purpose remains to help facilitate a people-centric  modernisation  of the mining industry.

Jean-Jacques’ career of 30 years spans several industries and geographies.  He is a globally certified PMP (Project Management Professional) and NPDP (New Product Development Professional), including COBIT, ITIL and BPMs.  He completed the MBA-LS degree from the University of Cumbria and is currently aiming to complete an MSc degree in Information Systems Management (MScISM) from the University of Salford, in 2021. Mostly in senior positions, he has served in ICT (governance, management, technical), enterprise risk management, project management, product development, business transformation, business process management, consulting, and business sustainability projects, in other regions such as North Africa, the Middle East, and often having delivered on large, complex, globally-spread projects (spanning the EMEA and APAC regions). 

Jean-Jacques has worked in numerous industries: ICT, financial services, air travel and transport, mining, renewable energy, telecoms, retail and management/technical consulting.  He currently serves as Programme Manager for the Real-Time Information Systems programme (known as ‘RTIMS’ which delivers R&D and Innovation in/for: ICT, digitalisation, the Industrial Internet of Things, data and information management, etc. in mining), for the Minerals Council South Africa, and is primarily based at the Mandela Mining Precinct.  The aim is to assist in bringing the SA mining industry ‘up-to-speed’ in terms of 4IR technologies and Jean-Jacques has embraced this challenge and embarked on it since 2017.