Dr Denisha Jairam OwtharChief Director: IT ( ie: Group CIO) at University of StellenboschSpeaker
Profile
Dr Denisha is the Chief Director of ICT at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She leads this prominent university of South Africa in it's ICT digitalization journey. She has an array of diverse experience at the helm of leading transformational ICT. She has shown throughout her career that ICT is agnostic of industry. She has also proved through her career via the many accolades that she has obtained nationally and globally, through her outstanding work and results; that she can apply herself in ICT successfully to any industry; from taxation to banking, to investment banking to utility billing systems and now in higher education systems.
Prior to this, she was Chief Information Officer at City of Johannesburg for Metro Services. She was involved in technically leading the City to the latest ERP systems technology that will enable the City to be mSCOA compliant per National Treasury Regulations. She has led many other critical digital initiatives to enable the City of Johannesburg to lead in the 4IR of Smart Cities in this country and on this continent, using emerging technologies.
She is a versatile ICT digital futurist, with both public and private sector experience spanning over several years. After her stint at SARS in various leadership positions, she has held several vice president roles at both Absa Bank and Barclays London, as head of business intelligence for Africa, head of analytics and head of banking fraud analytics and specialized services for Africa. At DBSA, she was involved in IT’s transformational journey. In 2019, she joined the City of Johannesburg as the CIO for Metro Services, where she played a key role in the digitization of the City of Johannesburg.
She has an extreme passion for the ICT industry and impacts the ICT industry not only with her work at the City of Johannesburg (COJ) ; but also via being part of national government board of directors and private sector collaboration that empower young people to flourish in the ICT industry. She also extends herself into universities via lecturing on specifics in the ICT profession for Masters & Doctoral level students, to help industrialize the ICT profession. She is highly respected in the ICT industry through the impact she is making currently in her work , the engagement she has at strategic board level regarding ICT; and her keen interest in empowering young people & driving the ICT profession towards industrialization through universities both nationally & globally.