Walcott was appointed CEO of TSTT in 2014, following the resignation of former acting-CEO George Hill in that year. He had previously been the company’s Executive Vice President of Mobile Sales and Operations. Educated in England, where he received an MBA specialising in Financial Management from the University of Bedfordshire, Walcott completed a doctorate in financial management with North Central University in the USA after taking his current post. He appears full of energy, and expresses excitement at the opportunity to lead the company and the country into a new age of connectivity.

Made Minister of Telecommunications in 2014, Dr. Cwele came into the role with a wealth of experience behind him. A holder of an MBchB in Medical Policy from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and an MPhil in Economic Policy from the University of Stellenbosch, he began working with the ANC in 1984. He served as Chairperson of the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, as well as other functions within the ANC’s underground structures, before first being elected to Parliament in the historic elections of 1994. In 1999, he became a member of the National Assembly, and was appointed to his first cabinet post as Minister of Intelligence in 2008, then serving as Minister of State Security from 2009-2014.

Born in Durban in 1953, the minister overseeing South Africa’s technological boom received most of her education abroad in Botswana and the United Kingdom. Before being sworn into her first cabinet post as Minister of Education in 2004, Pandor was highly involved in education. First working as a teacher in Botswana and London, she went on to lecture at the University of Botswana and in 1989 joined the University of Cape Town as a senior lecturer. Pandor was first elected to Parliament in the country’s first fully inclusive elections in 1994.

A graduate of the University of Johannesburg with a degree in Maths and Physics, van der Merwe held a number of managerial posts over 15 years in the ICT sector before launching RainFin with co-founder Sean Emery in 2012. In his previous roles at TradeWorld and Coin Cameos, he gained the experience in developing and managing online marketplaces that has helped make RainFin the success it has become in his time as Chief Operations Officer. He believes, as does his partner Emery, that marketplace lending has the potential to fundamentally transform the financial services industry.

Prior to joining the TIA in April 2015, Barlow Manilal worked for 14 years at the Automotive Industry Development Centre (AIDC), for 7 of which he served as CEO. He had previously worked in project engineering and manufacturing in the automotive sector with Toyota SA and Mercedes Benz SA. A graduate in Industrial Technology and Management, Manilal has since had a glittering career combining his twin passions of innovation and business. In July 2012, he was nominated for South Africa’s ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’, and has since won Black Business Quarterly’s ‘Public Sector Visionary Award’ in 2013 and was named a finalist in the Oliver Empowerment Awards’ ‘Public Sector Leader Award’ in the following year.

Chartsiri is the son of Chatri Sophonpanich and the grandson of Chin Sophonpanich, the founder of Bangkok Bank. He holds a master’s degree in Management from MIT Sloan School of Management, a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He has been a member of the executive board of Bangkok Bank since 1992, being named its president two years later, and under his tenure BB has become the largest bank nationwide with a local network of over 1100 branches, 230 business centers and more than 17 million deposit accounts. In terms of personal awards, Sophonpanich is the proud recipient of the Banker of the Year award from Thailand’s Money and Banking magazine, the Achievement Award for Leadership in Thailand from the Asian Banker magazine and the Robert H. Goddard Alumni Award from Worcester Polytechnic Institute for exceptional achievement in business.