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Speaker Bios
Chege Thumbi, Director of Technology & Operations - NIC Banking group.
Chegi is a qualified electrical engineering graduate with 20 years experience in technology and operations in banks such as Barclays Bank as Service Delivery, IT & Change Director, Citibank as Senior Technology & Operations Manager, ABN AMRO Bank as Head of MIS & IT and Commercial bank of Africa as General Manager, Service Delivery and Technology. Chege is always looking for technology based customer solutions and during his career he has traveled to various countries such as Australia, Vietnam, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Zimbabwe, DRC Congo, United Kingdom, Netherlands and others. He has been a key driver in handling change and especially in bank intergrations during and after acquisitions, operations restructuring and change of core banking systems as well as customer facing systems transformations. Chege has done various studies in banking among them Law relating to banking, Management, accountancy, monetary economics, Information Technology etc all towards ACIB diploma. He aspires to studying masters in technology with a bias in financial services.
Wesley Koech, Director ICT - Mumias Sugar Company
Wesley has been in the ICT arena for over 20 years having started as an Analyst Programmer in a Telco. He subsequently served as a Network Manager (2 years) and Head of ICT (7 years) in a Tobacco Multinational manufacturer in the FMCG sector. He is currently the Director ICT for Mumias Sugar Company where he has served for the last 6 (six) years. He has been extensively engaged in Programme Management and Business Strategy development and implementation in his current role.
Darryl Thwaits, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Tiger Brands Limited
Darryl is the CIO of the largest branded fast-moving consumer packaged Goods Company listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE).
Darryl is the CIO of the largest branded fast-moving consumer packaged Goods Company listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE).
He has been with Tiger Brands for the past sixteen years in a number of executive roles, including: Supply Chain, Logistics, Finance and IT, as well as his current Group CIO role which he has held for the past 5 years. He is responsible for developing and implementing the IT strategic plan to support the wide range of Business Units in the Group. Darryl is responsible for the for the provision of effective IT services to approximately 4000 users, located at more than 100 sites across a footprint that spans the whole of South Africa and parts of Kenya and Cameroon. Prior to joining Tiger Brands, Darryl spent 12 years as the Managing Director of The St. Thomas Group - the largest executive placement agency in Durban, and he was also the Financial Director for Tongaat Foods for the six years preceding this.
Elizabeth Akinyi Ochieng, ICT Manager - National Oil Corporation of Kenya Limited
Elizabeth joined in October 2007 as the Information Communications and Technology Manager. She is a holder of Bachelor of Education (Science) degree from Kenyatta University and is currently pursuing an MBA specializing in Operations Management. Elizabeth who is a holder of Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) has 10 years experience in ICT management, project management and implementation, database administration and ICT user support. She will be bringing in a wealth of experience having previously worked at Kenya Shell/BP and recently as the ICT Manager for The Nairobi Hospital. Elizabeth is a member of IMIS, Computer Society of Kenya (CSK) and Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
Gabriel Chege, Group, Head of IT - Nation Media Group
Gabriel Chege, MCSE, MCDBA, MCT, CCNA, Siemon CI, ITIL is the Group Head of Information Technology and holder of a Bachelor of Science degree in the Management of Information Systems. He joined the group in 2002 from PricewaterhouseCopper’s [PwC] Global Technology Solutions (GTS) division and has an industry experience spanning 15 years that has seen him work for a variety of companies within Eastern Africa ranging from Public companies as well as large private organisations. Gabriel was instrumental in the re-engineering and re-design of the www.nation.co.ke. Gabriel is currently pursing a Masters in Information Systems Management (ISM) from the University of London (UK).
Kevin Kinyanjui, Information Systems Director - Kenya Airways
Mr. Kinyanjui aged 43 years has over 23 years experience in the Information Technology field. This includes 6 years at the management consulting firm, Price Waterhouse, 6 years at Bamburi Cement Ltd and a total of 4 years in the banking sector. As an IT management consultant, he carried out numerous management consultancy assignments in the finance, hospitality, manufacturing and service industries in both private and public sector organisations. These organisations were spread out beyond Kenya and in other African countries including Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Ethiopia. As Group IS Manager at Bamburi Cement for all group companies in Kenya and Uganda he was instrumental in strategy formulation, shifting the group to an end user computing environment and integrated ERP systems and putting in place a complete IT organization. Mr Kinyanjui was the first IT Director at Housing Finance where he oversaw similar planning and implementation activities for banking business systems. This included the evaluation and selection of a completely new banking system platform. In 2001, the Computer Society of Kenya awarded him the Chairman’s Achievement Award in recognition of his achievements in the IT field. He has attended many technical IT and management courses both locally and abroad. Mr. Kinyanjui joined Kenya Airways in February 2004.
Potlaki Maine, General Manager - IT (CIO) - South African Broadcasting Corporation
He is responsible for overseeing, managing and coordinating the enterprise IT strategy and implementation. He also provides thought leadership on architecting and the provision of technology services in a rapidly transforming media and broadcasting business. His background includes technology advisory services, innovation and blue -sky advocacy /agenda setting in high performance computing environments. He graduated with a BSc (Pure/Applied) Mathematics (magna-cum-laude) from Cuttington University (Liberia) and an MSc from Syracuse University, USA. He has a Management Development Program diploma from UNISA School of Business Leadership and is a Certified Associate of the Institute of Bankers in South Africa.
Nderitu Kiarie, Head of IS - East African Breweries
Nderitu Kiarie joined the company in January as the Head of IS reporting to the Group Finance Director, Peter Ndegwa. Prior to this appointment, Nderitu was working with Nation Media Group in various IT positions. Nderitu has an engineering background with vast experience in telecommunication technology as well as IS related business development. Nderitu holds a BSC in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Nairobi and an MBA in Strategic Management from USIU. Nderitu also holds various certifications in ICT networks (Cisco and Extreme) and Microsoft Systems. He has attended various global broadcasting and ICT conferences.
Allan Waititu, Director of IT and Innovation Centre - Equity Bank
Allan is a Certified Systems Engineer, a Novell Certified Network Engineer and a graduate of Advanced Management Programme (Strathmore-IESE Business School, Barcelona Spain). He has over 20 years experience in information technology and banking and previously served as Equity Bank's General Manager of Operations.
Moses Muchiri, Group IT Manager - CMC Holdings Group
Moses is responsible for managing all aspects of Information & Communications Technology for CMC Group; and developing and implementing CMC Group’s Enterprise IT Strategies. Prior to Joining CMC Holdings, he spent the last 18 years developing his IT career; 12 of which he spent in the United States where he held IT Management Positions in various companies including Emanuel Medical Center in Georgia as the Director of Information Systems, and Micros Systems Inc., as the Project Manager for Systems Implementations. Moses holds a Bachelors Degree in Information Systems from Georgia Southern University, USA, and is currently pursuing an MBA in IT Management at the USIU. He is a member of the Computer Society of Kenya (CSK) and the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP).
Jim McFie - Academic and Research Director, Management and Commerce
Strathmore University
Nairobi born Jim McFie has degrees in Mathematics from Oxford University, England, and a PhD in Accounting from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland. He trained as an auditor in the Nairobi office of Ernst and Young. After serving as the training manager of the firm for a year, he left Ernst and Young to teach accounting subjects at what was then Strathmore College, while he continued doing consulting work in a variety of areas. He is now the Academic and Research Director in the School of Management and Commerce at Strathmore University, Nairobi. He is also the Head of the Board Audit Committee of the Standard Media Group Limited, the Chairman of Sasini Limited, both quoted on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, and the Honorary Treasurer on the Board of Directors of AfriAfya, the African Network for Health Knowledge Management and Communication. Between 1993 and 2002 he was a Director of the Kenya Capital Markets Authority, a Member of the Kenya Value Added Tax Tribunal and a Trustee of the Kenya Corporate Governance Trust.
Tom Juma , Head of service delivery, IT and operations - Old Mutual Kenya
Tom Juma is a seasoned IT professional who has worked in various banking in Kenya and currently is the Head of Service Delivery and ICT at Old Mutual Keya. A Holder of Master and Bachelor’s Degree in IT, CISA, ITIL, CSSP and PRINCE2 Practitioner in Project Management. Tom has a wealth of experience in IT Strategic formulation, execution and alignment with the business, IT security, Business Continuity Management, IT Services Management, Project and change management. In his wealth of experience he had been involved in implementation and rollout of large turn-key IT Solutions in both the Financial services industry with the current successfully rollout out a cloud-based solution. He is a fellow computer Society of Kenya, Winner of the IT Manager of the year in Kenya in 2002, and special recognition for his contribution and development for ICT in Kenya, Special Chairman’s Award at the Annual Kenya Information and Communication Technology Excellence Awards in 2008.
Tom has also been a resource person and speaker in various forms in ICT, both locally and international in various tops ranging from IT security, IT strategy formulation and business alignment, Business Continuity Management and Cloud Computing.
Derrick Plank , Director - Clearspace Consulting
Derrick has more than 30 years of experience in the IT industry, starting his IT career at IBM in 1979 and has worked for companies as diverse as Symantec, Vision Solutions and Foster Melliar. He believes that the dramatic surge in the adoption of ITIL and other best practice frameworks that has been experienced worldwide in the last decade is merely a taste of things to come, and that we have yet to fully experience the complete transformation of IT organizations into valuable and distinctive service organisations. Derrick is a certified ITIL Expert and ISO/IEC 20000 Consultant. He is also an accredited 1st level tutor for all levels of these practices and long ago gave up trying to keep track of the number of classes he has delivered (he has however been assured that most of his students went on to lead normal lives despite his sometimes unorthodox teaching methods). He is obsessed with understanding the underlying reasons why IT finds it so hard to realise and articulate their true value. He is a director and founder of ClearSpace Consulting– an innovative and free-thinking management consultancy that is dedicated to helping organisations achieve sustainable alignment and breakthrough performance.
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