Barry van Zyl is a world-renowned musician with over 30 years experience in thecreative sector, from performance and production to executive education,strategy and business development. Having toured the world for 21 years withSouth Africa’s most famous export, Johnny Clegg, and while working with artistslike Annie Lennox, Carlos Santana, Peter Gabriel and Die Antwoord, Barrycompleted an MBA at Henley Business School and is now focused on the businessof music, creativity, and culture. Since 2018 Barry has been growing newbusiness for Henley Business School, starting in Nigeria and then in otherareas of west and east Africa, with the aim of ‘building the people, that buildthe businesses that build Africa’. As the Chair of Henley’s pan-African Alumnicommunity, Barry is leveraging Henley’s network of 80,000 alumni to build thebrand in new territories, develop the offer in existing markets, and createinnovative new revenue streams. Barry is partnering with premium organizationslike the Temple Management & Ogidi Studios group, and developing excitingprojects focused on creativity, content production, the future of music andeducation. In addition to this work, Barry embraces his passion for themarriage of the creative sector and executive leadership by designing anddelivering corporate leadership programs in creativity and innovation,entrepreneurship, and the business of rhythm. His clients include major SouthAfrican companies in financial and professional services, energy, travel andeducation. Despite his immense success in the creative industry, Barry’s mostimportant job is being a role model to his teenage daughter.

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Dr. Alicia Peña Bizama is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and an Occupational Psychologist. Her doctoral research was on understanding and facilitating individuals’ return to work after being off sick due to stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout. She has worked both in the NHS and in the private sector and was the Head of Student Wellbeing at the University of Reading until August 2017. She now works part-time at the university managing the Life Tools programme that she designed and delivers to students at the university. It is a psycho-educational programme focused on providing training for students’ personal and professional development, including self-management, and building resilience to maintain health and well-being and prevent burnout.

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Dr. Adeyinka Adewale is an Associate Professor of Leadership Ethics and Entrepreneurship and the Deputy Director of Studies in the department of Leadership Organisations and Behaviour at the Henley Business School. Adeyinka regularly gives keynote addresses and facilitates workshops with private and public sector audiences on themes around leadership, entrepreneurship, and ethics in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States. He is a member of the High-Level Group, an independent, tripartite, policy innovation thinktank working on Africa-Europe partnership, and also serves as the Trade Cluster lead for the Nigeria Economic Summit Group’s Senior Fellowship Program. Adeyinka continues to serve on the board of exciting start-ups and charities in Africa through which he affirms his dedication to contributing his expertise to Africa’s development.

Olayinka David-West is a Professor of Information Systems with almost three decades of experience in the IT and financial services industry and is a passionate advocate for digital transformation and inclusive finance. Her research and practice engagements involve policy and strategic management interventions toward digitally transformed businesses and society. Professor David-West is Associate Dean at the Lagos Business School and sits on the school’s Management Board. From 2006 to 2015, she was the Academic Director of the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) of the Pan-Atlantic University. The EDC provides capacity-building programmes and a variety of support services for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria such as advisory, mentoring, experts-in-residence, network meetings, and access to market and information.

Sam Kamuriwo is Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Bayes Business School. His research focus includes ecosystem development and entrepreneurial strategy and financing. Professor Kamuriwo's research has attracted academic honors, and has been published in leading innovation journals such as Research Policy and Journal of Product Innovation management and management journals such Leadership Quarterly, British Journal of Management, Journal of Business Research and entrepreneurship journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. Professor Sam Kamuriwo has raised more than £3.3m in research funding. Professor Kamuriwo teaches core strategy courses in the Master's programs at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) and a long-running venturing elective for the MBAs. In 2010, he was a Visiting Scholar at Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania.

Sam Immanuel is the CEO of Semicolon Africa, a social enterprise addressing the problem of youth unemployment by creating employment and economic opportunities through the training of software engineers. So far, the institute has trained over 500 students across 14 cohorts with 243 graduates, a 98% economic engagement rate and an estimated economic contribution of over 1 billion Naira. Sam is a firm advocate for innovation and entrepreneurship, and this led him to extend the services of Semicolon Africa to venture-building by providing a platform that gives founders early-stage business support and coaching from the idea to the MVP stage of their business. Semicolon Ventures currently support 22 founders spread across 12 startups in various sectors like health, agriculture and transportation.