Yong Liao, president of Huawei Southern Africa Enterprise, has been working in Huawei more than 18 years. He has worked in various countries in Europe and Africa, and he was involved in various leadership roles. He has extensive market experience and a deep understanding of digital transformation in vertical industries.

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.

Jun Xu is the CTO of Huawei Mining Team. Before this position, he has worked in the ICT industry for 25 years in different roles from software engineering, solution, ecosystem to sales and marketing. He has worked for global leading companies including Cisco, Juniper and Huawei in different countries from Singapore, USA, China and Latin America.
Jun Xu graduated from University of Southern California (USC) with MSEE focusing on Computer Networking and also hold MS in Systems Engineering from National University of Singapore (NUS).

Mr Johan Hendrik le Roux is the Director of the Mandela Mining Precinct and CSIR Executive Manager: Synapse strategy implementation.
Born in 1960, Johan joined the CSIR in 1991 and has held a number of positions within the organisation including: Programme Manager for Small Business Development, Business and Market Development Manager, Operations Manager, Executive Director, etc.
Before joining the CSIR, he was involved in various education and leadership development roles.
Johan is a graduate from the University of Stellenbosch and has also completed studies at the University of Cape Town’s Business School, UNISA and IMD in Switzerland.
He has played a key role in the design, implementation and management of a number of national and CSIR strategic programmes in support of industrial and socio-economic development.
He was appointed as Director of the Mandela Mining Precint in 2021.

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 at the University of Cumbria and a Master’s in Science in Information Systems Management degree from the University of Salford (England).
Jean-Jacques has served in mostly senior management positions 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 Research, Technology 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.
Jean-Jacques also serves as an Assessor at Getsmarter, in the University of Oxford/Saïd Business School’s Executive Leadership programme.