Speakers

Maria Murtas Lawrence
Head of Visual Merchandising and Store Designer
Cape Union Mart Group

Maria Murtas Lawrence is the Visual Merchandising and Store Design Leader at Cape Union
Mart, with over 30 years of experience in retail, customer experience, branding, store design, and business strategy. She has led retail transformation projects, store revamps, and customer experience initiatives across multiple retail formats, combining creative vision with commercial outcomes. Having worked in retail operations, buying, marketing, entrepreneurship, and brand development, Maria brings a holistic perspective on building resilient, customer-focused retail businesses. She is passionate about developing people, sharing knowledge, and creating meaningful retail experiences that drive sustainable growth.

Max Essmann
CEO
Pres Les

Max is the Chief Executive Officer of the Pres Les Group, a role he has held since
2019 after serving as the company’s Chief Financial Officer from 2015 to 2019. With over a decade of leadership experience at the Pres Les Group, he has played a key role in driving the company’s strategic and financial growth. A Chartered Accountant (CA(SA)) with an MBA from the University of Cape Town, Max has extensive expertise across consumer markets, retail, direct selling, manufacturing, and financial services, including alternative investments, hedge funds, fund of funds, and segregated portfolio companies. Prior to joining Pres Les, he built his career at KPMG South Africa and KPMG Cayman Islands, where he held management and senior management roles.

Adriano Silva
Sales Director – MEA, APAC & Spain
VTEX

Adriano is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of senior leadership experience, specialising in Sales, building B2B ecosystems, scaling global organisations, and delivering sustainable growth. Having worked across more than 70 countries, he brings a proven ability to define vision, inspire teams, and execute strategies that transform ambitious goals into measurable impact.

His career spans leadership roles across sales, finance, e-commerce, services, and cloud solutions, consistently underpinned by a strong focus on revenue growth, P&L management, EBITDA performance, and long-term value creation. At his core, he excels in forging strategic partnerships and developing interconnected business portfolios that drive both regional leadership and international expansion.

At VTEX, Adriano currently serves as Head of Global Sales, where he has helped accelerate the company’s rapid international expansion. His responsibilities include driving global revenue strategy, sales enablement, sales operations, and solutions engineering, enabling enterprises to scale effectively using the SaaS commerce platform for marketplace integration and order management.

Beyond corporate leadership, Adriano is an active board member and mentor, committed to developing high-performing teams and shaping future leaders. Fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and conversational Arabic, he thrives in cross-cultural environments and is passionate about leveraging innovation, collaboration, and talent development to deliver sustainable business impact.

Hazel Pillay
Managing Director
Pick n Pay Clothing

Hazel is the Managing Director of Pick n Pay Clothing, where she leads the division’s strategy, growth, and transformation across more than 500 stores, online, and marketplace channels. Since joining in 2019, she has helped double sales and profit, expanded the business into 200 new stores, launched the online channel, and driven strong localisation initiatives that created over 2,500 manufacturing jobs in South Africa.

With more than two decades of experience in retail, fashion, merchandising, and brand transformation, Hazel has held senior leadership positions at Cotton On Group, Pepkor Holdings, LEGIT, Edcon, TFG, and MAC Cosmetics. Throughout her career, she has successfully led business turnarounds, built high-performing teams, and driven significant commercial growth across leading retail brands in South Africa and international markets.

Kevin Lennett
Group CEO
Melbro Holdings

Kevin Lennett is the Group Chief Executive Officer of Melbro Group.
Spanning The Crazy Store, Heneck Sacks (Wholesale Division), Classic (Cash & Carry Division), and Melbro Brands (Nutribullet and Ariete), Melbro Group is one of Southern Africa’s most established retail businesses.
With over three decades of retail experience, Kevin brings a wealth of expertise across the entire retail landscape.

Kevin joined Melbro Group in 2012 as Managing Director of The Crazy Store, one of Southern Africa’s leading discount retail chains, with over 530 stores across South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Eswatini. During his tenure, he played a transformative role in the business, overseeing growth to more than 500 stores across the region, reshaping perceptions of the discount retail sector, and building strong customer loyalty through a clear value proposition and a highly engaged, people-centric culture.

Prior to joining Melbro Group, Kevin spent nearly 20 years at Sportsmans Warehouse as Executive and Managing Director, while concurrently leading Sportshoe World and Logans Golf, and contributing at ExCo level to Outdoor Warehouse and The Pro Shop.

Leah McCrae
Managing Director
Rand Capital Coffee – Licensee, Starbucks South Africa

Leah McCrae is the Managing Director of Rand, the licensee for Starbucks South Africa, and a people-first brand and culture leader with more than three decades of experience. She has built her career on one conviction: that brand is a leadership responsibility and an operating model, not a marketing function, and that the strongest brands are built from the inside out — an approach she calls the Inside-Out Advantage.

Since 2020, she has scaled Starbucks in South Africa from 13 to 75 company-owned stores across five provinces, maintaining a strong brand and culture despite significant operational pressures. Her focus today is on the growth and market expansion of international brands across the region. Having founded her first business at the age of 22 and built brands across communications, hospitality and retail, she firmly believes that in a market reshaped by technology and commercial pressures, culture is the one advantage that compounds rather than depreciates.

Jandro Saayman
Head of User Experience Design
Ackermans

Jandro Saayman is the Head of UX Design at Ackermans, where he leads the customer experience strategy for one of South Africa’s largest fashion and value retail brands. With over a decade of experience spanning UX design, digital product development, ecommerce, and customer experience optimisation, Jandro is passionate about creating seamless digital journeys that balance customer needs with business objectives.

Throughout his career, he has worked across both agency and product environments, leading design teams and shaping digital experiences for large-scale platforms. At Ackermans, he focuses on leveraging customer insights, behavioural analytics, user research, and experimentation to drive meaningful improvements in online shopping experiences.

Beyond his corporate role, Jandro is an advocate for human-centred design, innovation, and continuous learning. He is particularly interested in how data, technology, and empathy can work together to create experiences that not only perform better but genuinely serve people.

Vershen Naidoo
Head of Risk & Security
Takealot.com

Vershen Naidoo is a senior risk and security professional with close to sixteen years of experience across supply chain, logistics, HSSEQ, corporate security, and business continuity. He serves as Head of Risk and Security for the Supply Chain Division at takealot.com, having held senior leadership appointments at takealot.com, Imperial, and Barloworld Logistics. A specialist in corporate security, operational resilience, business continuity, and stakeholder collaboration, Vershen is an award-winning risk professional and a committed advocate of Zero Loss Culture across the supply chain

Yaeesh Moosa
Head of Marketplace
Takealot.com

Yaeesh Moosa is the Head of Marketplace at Takealot.com, South Africa’s leading online retailer, where he leads the growth, performance, and strategic direction of one of the country’s largest marketplace ecosystems. With nearly a decade of experience spanning marketplace operations, merchant management, and digital commerce, he is passionate about creating scalable seller experiences that drive customer value and business growth.

Prior to his current role, Yaeesh held several leadership positions within Takealot, including Head of Merchant Operations and Marketplace Operations Manager, where he played a key role in strengthening marketplace efficiency, seller success, and operational excellence. His career began in engineering and manufacturing, where he led continuous improvement, supply chain optimisation, and business transformation initiatives, bringing a unique operational and data-driven perspective to modern retail

Hylton Bannon
Managing Director
Toy Kingdom

Hylton is the Managing Director of Toy Kingdom South Africa and a seasoned business leader with over 25 years of global experience across retail, ecommerce, fintech, automotive, and customer experience.

He has held senior leadership roles at organisations including HomeChoice, FinChoice, Truworths and Toyota Tsusho Corporation where he led large-scale transformation, digitalisation, and operational excellence initiatives across more than 20 countries.

His expertise spans retail strategy, omni-channel development, Africa expansion, mergers and acquisitions, customer experience, process optimisation, workforce management, and financial performance improvement. He is also highly experienced in leading digital transformation programmes, including automation of customer journeys, call centre optimisation, and IT system development in agile environments.

Hylton is passionate about simplifying complex business challenges and enabling organisations to achieve sustainable growth through the alignment of people, processes, products, and systems. He believes that exceptional customer experience is created when strong leadership, efficient processes, and enabling technology work seamlessly together to deliver value at scale.

Christopher Baird
Head of Ecommerce
G-Star

Christopher is the Head of Ecommerce (Southern Hemisphere) at G-STAR, where he drives regional ecommerce strategy, sales growth, and profitability through data-driven decision-making, P&L analysis, and performance optimisation.

He has over 15 years of experience across ecommerce, digital transformation, retail strategy, and business development. Prior to G-STAR, Christopher held senior global ecommerce and data leadership roles at PUMA Group, where he led customer data management programs, supported global market rollouts, and delivered performance insights across multiple countries. He previously built and scaled PUMA South Africa’s ecommerce business from the ground up, achieving significant revenue growth and strong profitability performance.

Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at New Balance, eComplete, RSAWEB, Crossroads Distribution, and Crixus, where he gained extensive experience in retail operations, supply chain management, digital strategy, and business development.

Barry Sickle
Co-Founder
Footgear

Barry Sickle is a South African retail entrepreneur and footwear industry veteran with over 30 years of experience building and leading successful retail businesses.

Recognised for his role in disrupting and igniting traditional footwear retail and developing high-performance teams, Barry is passionate about customer experience, leadership, and the future of physical retail.

Known for his practical leadership style, competitive spirit, and ability to inspire teams at every level, Barry is a speaker on topics including selling skills, leadership, intrapreneurship, coaching, customer experience, employee engagement, and unlocking human potential in business.

Alaine Rossouw
Chief Operating Officer
Toy Kingdom

Alaine Rossouw is the Chief Operations Officer of Super-Brands Retail and General Manager of Build-A-Bear South Africa. She leads operations across Toy Kingdom, Hamleys, and Build-A-Bear Workshop, with a focus on retail excellence, customer experience, and operational strategy.

Passionate about experiential retail and people development, Alaine is known for driving high-performance retail cultures that combine operational discipline with engaging customer experiences. Her work focuses on building strong teams, elevating in-store execution, and shaping the future of immersive retail in South Africa.

Sunil Nair
Chief Information Officer, SVP – Business Technology & Analytics
Majid Al Futtaim Retail

Sunil is the Chief Information Officer and SVP – Business Technology & Analytics at Majid Al Futtaim Retail, and a globally recognized leader in digital transformation with more than 28 years of impact across the retail and consumer sectors. He has driven large-scale transformation programs across multiple regions, reshaping omnichannel, e-commerce, data, and supply chain capabilities for some of the most influential retail brands.

Known for translating strategy into execution, Sunil has built a reputation as a trusted board-level advisor, guiding C-suites through technology-enabled growth and enterprise-wide change.

Having earned multiple industry distinctions for his work, Sunil continues to accelerate business performance by aligning technology, analytics, and operating models to deliver measurable commercial outcomes.

Cindy Chua
Senior Investment Lead
Jobstreet Singapore

Cindy Chua is the Senior Investment Lead at Jobstreet Singapore, part of the SEEK Group. She oversees full funnel marketing investments across digital and offline channels, shaping how brands connect with audiences and drive sustainable growth. Her focus is on aligning media strategy with brand and user journeys, creating meaningful engagement and measurable outcomes.

Harriet Wakelam
Executive Director Design
DBS Bank

Harriet leads Singapore’s largest experience design team. She works end-to-end—from strategy to execution to enhance customer experiences and drive human-centered innovation. A natural connector, Harriet collaborates across technology, brand, transformation, behavioural science, and design to shape both present and future experiences.

Yong Yau GOH
Chief Marketing Officer
BullSwipe

Yong Yau Goh is the Chief Marketing Officer at BullSwipe, a global fintech platform that converts crypto to fiat instantly. He helms BullSwipe’s brand, marketing and communication development across its African, Middle Eastern and Asian markets, and has over two decades experience as an award-winning brand communicator. Prior to BullSwipe, Yong Yau was the Chief Marketing Officer at the AWHL Group, Singapore’s largest conglomerate of integrated health, wellness and beauty brands. Leading regional teams across diverse business verticals, he oversaw the positioning, transformation and communication strategies for the group’s flagship brands. Most of Yong Yau’s career, however, has focused on the agency’s side, where he led full-suite creative and communication teams in Singapore, Myanmar and Shanghai at the Coal Group. This was where he consulted for and engaged CEOs and senior management in some of the region’s leading corporates to take their organisations to greater heights in terms of brand direction, communication approach and business strategy — with proven results. These corporates include regional giants like StarHub, DBS, Mapletree, the Mottama Group and the METRO Group. Yong Yau is also a doctoral candidate at the Golden Gate University, where his work focuses on AI-driven marketing and communication technologies.

Lee Wei Song
Lead, Strategic Operations & Analytics
Flipster

I lead at the dynamic intersection of business strategy, technical infrastructure, and growth operations. My core philosophy is clear: architecting autonomous ecosystems that liberate global headcount growth from revenue expansion.

By weaving together complex SaaS telemetry with unified data taxonomies spanning sales, product, marketing, and customer success, I empower enterprises to evolve from reactive reporting to proactive, automated revenue engines. I built the “Single Source of Truth” (SSOT) that offers C-suite executives the clarity needed to navigate intricate customer journeys and make pivotal, board-level decisions.

Throughout my career, I have dedicated myself to optimising the vital balance between top-line revenue generation and systemic risk mitigation. At TikTok, I mapped risk-versus-revenue trade-offs, assessing initiatives across User, Regulatory, and Platform risk vectors against Tapped, Untapped, and Lost revenue to unlock $500M in untapped platform monetisation and prepare executives for US Congressional hearings.