Anthony Fitzhenry is the Chief Executive of Axiz, an employee-owned, South African, information technology infrastructure manufacturer and distributor.

Prior to starting Axiz in 1989, his career has included periods in Asia, Australia and the USA.

Anthony partnered with several global employee ownership experts, the National Productivity Institute (NPI) and Axiz employees to develop a model for employee ownership and economic empowerment. Through the Axiz Employee Ownership Trust, all employees democratically influence and benefit from the profits and future growth of their company.

With over 600 employees, Axiz is, without doubt, one of local success stories. Anthony believes in leading by example, and is passionate about creating sustainable communities. Through initiatives such as the Ledibogo Development Programme, Qhubeka and Inqolobane, Anthony and Axiz assist communities of all sizes and backgrounds to become self-sustainable.

Helena Barnard teaches in the areas of innovation, strategy and international business. She completed her PhD at Rutgers University in New Jersey in the USA in 2006 with a dissertation on how firms from developing countries use investment in the developed world as a strategy to increase their competitiveness.

She has published academic research in Advances in Qualitative Research, the Journal of Management and Governance, and the International Journal of Technology Management. She has presented her work at numerous competitive conferences, e.g. the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business, European Academy of International Business and Globelics (Global network for the Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence-building Systems).

Moira has worked in the IT-related training field for over 30 years.  

She is GM and director of e-learning solutions provider Laragh Skills (formerly SmartForce Africa). Moira has assisted several companies in implementing computer based training programmes aimed at improving e-literacy in the workforce. 

Moira has been on the committee of the CSSA Western Cape Chapter for six years. She is also active on the Computer Olympiad committee and more recently joined the organising committee for the World Conference of Computers in Education 2005, which is run in conjunction with IFIP. 

She is also a non-executive director of the International Computer Driver’s Licence Foundation.

Mthunzi Mdwaba is the executive chairman of Torque-IT South Africa, a company dedicated to computer technical training solutions. In this capacity he has led the company to three nominations in the 2003 African Achievers’ Awards: Creative use of ICT in Education (won); Top Black ICT Company (first runner up); and Top Individual in ICT (first runner up to Sizwe Nxasana, Telkom CEO). In 2004 he won the title of the IT Personality of the Year 2005 presented by the CSSA.

Prior to joining Torque-IT he was CEO of Primedia Music, business affairs director of Metropolis and director of Metropolis Holdings (Primedia and Datatec). He started his career serving articles at Kallmeyer & Strime Attorneys, then took the position of legal services manager at Southern Sun and later became operations director at ASAMI (Association of the South African Music Industry) – now RISA (Recording Industry of South Africa).

Mdwaba holds a BA LLB from the University of the Witwatersrand. 

He holds a number of directorships, including non-executive chairman and shareholder of Lithatech and Sourcecom; president of the Information Technology Association; BITF-national branding and communications executive; and logistics executive for the ICT Charter task team, among others.

Neville has been in the IT industry in South Africa for the past 38 years. His career started in the Operations environment then progressed through Programming and Analysis, Sales and Management. He was with IBM for 29 years and among others, held the positions of Banking Branch Manager, MD of the Corporate Business Division, Director of the Mainframe Division, Director of the Networking Division and IT Solutions Executive.

After leaving IBM, he was MD of Conscripti (Pty) Ltd, the local representatives for Tata Consulting, a major Indian software development and consulting house. He joined META Group in 2002 as Sales Manager and moved across to Gartner in 2005 as Consulting Manager when Gartner acquired META Group.

Ranka is editorial director and founding member of ITWeb.

For the past eight years, she has led ITWeb’s editorial team to grow ITWeb into SA’s premier IT publisher, with a reader base of over 80 000 IT and business professionals. ITWeb published a daily online IT news update; a monthly business IT magazine, Brainstorm, and a weekly IT news digest magazine, iWeek. Ranka has also been programme director and chair of a number of conferences and executive forums hosted by ITWeb and its content partners. 

Prior to joining ITWeb, Ranka was editor of InformationWeek Southern Africa and deputy editor of ComputerWeek. She immigrated to SA in 1994 from Yugoslavia, where she was involved in education, general publishing and IT publishing for over 10 years.

Tony Parry, executive director of the CSSA