Cape Town Hackathon Finale

Rob is a member of Block.one’s Board of Directors and is responsible for group global operations. Prior to joining Block.one, he worked at Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), a global top-12 bank by market capitalization (A$125 billion) for six and a half years, most recently as its Chief Financial Officer. Before CBA, Jesudason worked at Credit Suisse as Head of Global Emerging Markets for its Financial Institutions Group. Earlier in his career, he held positions at JPMorgan, Barclays, GE Capital and McKinsey & Company.

Dan is one of the leading innovators, engineers and thought leaders in the blockchain space. He is the co-founder of an array of successful blockchain companies, most notably the decentralized exchange BitShares, the social media network Steemit, and Block.one, publisher of the EOSIO protocol, all of which provide industrial- and enterprise-grade blockchain solutions utilizing the widely-adopted Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) consensus mechanism, which he invented. Recognized as an industry pioneer, Dan is one of the most high-profile figures in the blockchain arena, having garnered a decade’s worth of entrepreneurial and technical experience in the field. At Block.one, he is the lead architect behind the EOSIO software, which is engineered to run highly scalable blockchain applications. He is an alumnus of the Virginia Tech Department of Computer Science, where he currently serves as a guest lecturer and curriculum advisor.

Mark is a serial entrepreneur, and a four-time South African chess champion. He was CTO and co-founder of Gyft.com, which exited to First Data in 2014. In addition, he was also CEO and Founder of Chesscube.com, a leading chess site in 2007. Most recently, Mark became the CEO and co-founder of Trixta, which provides a software development suite of visual tools for organizations to work with blockchains. Mark is also an angel investor in multiple early stage startups.

Chris is a well-established successful serial entrepreneur, board advisor, mentor, and speaker with over 25 years of C-level role experience in marketing, technology, startups, and corporate acquisitions. Born and raised in Nigeria, Chris founded his first venture at age 7 by recycling tires with a group of friends which he ran for 2.5 years prior to attending boarding school in Nigeria. He migrated to the U.S to attend college in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Coming from Nigeria, he was amazed by all that he saw around him in the technology boom era and by the growth of the internet. Chris decided to teach himself various programming, design and software languages which he used as a foundation to catapult himself into various high level advisory roles in Fortune 500 companies. By age 19, he was working on his first patent while pursuing a BA degree in marketing from San Jose State University. After graduating from college, he founded and sold several companies globally while establishing new companies in Africa, USA, Middle East and Asia. Before Chris founded his current venture, the award-winning Mall for Africa and Mall for the World platform, Chris was the Founder and CEO of OCFX Inc a multi-million dollar globally recognized Silicon Valley-based, award-winning software agency serving and consulting clients such as SONY, LSI, Cisco, HP, EPSON, TYCO, Accenture, CapitalOne, EMC, the US Government and many others in over 60 countries. Chris has a learn-as-you-grow, out-of-the-box thinking philosophy that drives strategy and business growth.

James Hedley is a Founder and Director of Quicket, a fast and effective online ticketing service for events of every size. Within minutes anyone can create an event profile and start selling tickets though our secure online payment gateway. Quicket provides users with seamless Facebook and Twitter integration making it an incredibly powerful viral self marketing tool. Without any of the expensive administrative and advertising costs incurred by other ticketing services. Quicket is able to offer an industry beating commission of only 4.9%. This makes Quicket a truly unrivaled tool for marketing and selling tickets online in the South African market.

Nichole Yembra is the Chief Financial Officer at Venture Garden Group (VGG) and Managing Partner at GreenHouse Capital, the VGG investment arm. At VGG, she is responsible for investor relations and the financial strategy of the 7 technology companies under its umbrella as they serve public and private clients across the aviation, power, education, financial services, and social investment sectors.

BCom (Hons), University of Cape Town. Chartered Accountant. Formerly with Lehman Brothers. Since 1997, with Deutsche Bank: former Co-Head, Structured Credit Trading, Credit Derivatives; former Head, Global Finance & Foreign Exchange (GFFX); GFFX encompasses all foreign exchange trading, debt financing, short-term interest rate trading, global exchange services and fixed income prime brokerage activities of Global Markets, leading the bank to a number 1 ranking in foreign exchange for each of the past seven years; since June 2012, Co-CEO, Asia-Pacific and Member of the Group Executive Committee.

Titi Odunfa Adeoye is the Founder and CEO of Sankore, a diversified investment platform with a wide array of investment products and services. Sankore also runs an innovation arm that builds and invests in early stage ventures with a focus on investech, artificial intelligence and market infrastructure.

Prior to founding Sankore Investments, Titi was Head of Investment Strategy at Zenith Capital where she led teams responsible for investment management, research, and new product development. At Goldman Sachs in New York, Titi worked as a member of a team responsible for investment strategy, tactical asset allocation and portfolio advisory services for private funds. In this capacity, she developed investment strategy and capital allocation expertise across a range of geographies and asset classes. Her previous experience also includes business strategy, restructuring, consulting, accounting and auditing with KPMG Consulting and Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Washington DC.

She holds a Master degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School, and a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in Accounting (summa cum laude) from Howard University.

Chris is a well-established successful serial entrepreneur, board advisor, mentor, and speaker with over 25 years of C-level role experience in marketing, technology, startups, and corporate acquisitions. Born and raised in Nigeria, Chris founded his first venture at age 7 by recycling tires with a group of friends which he ran for 2.5 years prior to attending boarding school in Nigeria. He migrated to the U.S to attend college in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Coming from Nigeria, he was amazed by all that he saw around him in the technology boom era and by the growth of the internet. Chris decided to teach himself various programming, design and software languages which he used as a foundation to catapult himself into various high level advisory roles in Fortune 500 companies. By age 19, he was working on his first patent while pursuing a BA degree in marketing from San Jose State University. After graduating from college, he founded and sold several companies globally while establishing new companies in Africa, USA, Middle East and Asia. Before Chris founded his current venture, the award-winning Mall for Africa and Mall for the World platform, Chris was the Founder and CEO of OCFX Inc a multi-million dollar globally recognized Silicon Valley-based, award-winning software agency serving and consulting clients such as SONY, LSI, Cisco, HP, EPSON, TYCO, Accenture, CapitalOne, EMC, the US Government and many others in over 60 countries. Chris has a learn-as-you-grow, out-of-the-box thinking philosophy that drives strategy and business growth.

Ciaran is the VP of Analytics at Invictus Capital. He leads the team responsible for managing the investments of the Hyperion Fund, a tokenized venture capital fund owned by more than 4000 blockchain community members. Prior to joining Invictus Capital, he worked in advanced analytics for Mastercard (NYSE: MA) and quantitative finance for AXA (Euronext: CS). He served as an Officer in the South African Navy, and holds Bachelors degrees in Mathematics and Atmosphere Science, with a Masters in Mathematical Finance.

Clive is the former Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Accenture South Africa, he has 28 years management consulting experience. During his tenure at Accenture (formally Arthur Anderson and Anderson Consulting), he played numerous leadership roles, including Managing
Director of Accenture’s Technology business as well as Managing Director of Accenture’s Resources business. Since being promoted to partner in 1997, Clive led sales for various
divisions including SAP, Resources and Accenture’s Technology business, cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset which helped grow Accenture into one of the top emerging
markets globally.

Clive is currently the CEO of Kalon Venture Partners, a disruptive digital technology Venture Capital Fund (VCC). He sits on various boards of the VCC’s underlying companies including chairman on one of the companies. He also sits on the board of a large privately held ICT company.

Clive joined Arthur Anderson in 1985 (now Accenture) after graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand with a B.Sc degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics.

James has a decade’s worth of experience as a chartered accountant, previously serving as a Director and working as Head of Finance for Sanlam Global Investment Solutions for just over 4 years where he was responsible for directing, planning, controlling and coordinating the overall financial activities of the company.

Prior to joining Sanlam, James worked as an Operational Financial Manager in the mining industry where he was responsible for implementing operational reporting and other such tasks.

He is a CA(SA) and holds the CFP® designation. He completed BAcc and BAcc (Hons) degrees at Stellenbosch University.

Tricia is a serial entrepreneur and behavioral economist who has devoted her life to solving problems for underserved consumers around the world. Her experience ranges from cash transfer solutions in Africa to small business microfinance, to the development of an investment fund for underserved markets. Prior to Wala, Tricia built a cash transfer technology that provided universal income to subsistence farmers in Uganda and tracked the investment and financial well-being of its recipients. While spending her career in the financial inclusion space working directly with consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa, Tricia has been exposed to the deeply rooted complexities and barriers in the financial systems. With her background in behavioral economics, Tricia decided to take a different approach and began testing incentives models as a means to influence financial behavior. From there, Wala was born. Tricia completed her Masters of Public Policy with a concentration in Behavioral Economics from the University of Chicago.