A respected brand and reputation authority, Thebe Ikalafeng has been named one of the ‘100 Most Influential Africans’ by New African Magazine. He has travelled to over 50 countries across Africa and the world and worked on over 100 brands, gaining an incomparable perspective and experience on building brands and reputations in Africa.

During a distinguished corporate career that started at Colgate Palmolive in New York and culminated at Nike as group marketing director for Africa, Thebe led Nike to the status of number-one brand across Africa, grew the business by over 450% and earned over 75 local and global awards.

Since establishing Brand Leadership in 2002, he has led over 100 brands across all spheres, including places, institutions, products and political brands such as Brand Ghana and Brand South Africa, Transnet in South Africa, University of South Africa and University of Botswana, Zanaco Bank in Zambia, Mail&Guardian Africa in Kenya, Africa Green Revolution Forum in Tanzania and Ethiopia, and the successful political branding campaigns for Presidents Atta Mills and John Mahama of Ghana in 2008 and 2012 respectively.

Thebe is a non-executive director of Mercantile Bank Holdings, Brand South Africa, WWF South Africa (WorldWideFund for Nature), South African Tourism, and chairman of Brand Finance Africa, a division of Brand Finance plc. He is the Founder & Chairman of the Brand Africa and Public Sector Excellence initiatives, and founder of the Brand Africa 100: The Most Valuable Brands in Africa.

Under Thebe’s guidance, Brand Leadership has been recognized as Marketing Services Agency of the Year by Fin Week (South Africa) and with several global awards for Effective Brand Transformations by REBRAND 100 (USA).

He has been recognised as one of the Top 10 Thinkers in Marketing in an Ipsos survey among business decision-makers in Southern Africa and one of the Top 10 Africans to follow on Twitter by How We Made It In Africa.

Thebe holds BSc and MBA degrees from Marquette University in the USA after attending Wits Business School and Harvard Business School. He is a qualified Chartered Marketer (SA).

Matthew Brown heads Echochamber, a London-based retail intelligence consultancy, which travels the world tracking retail innovation in order to inform and inspire.

Echochamber provides competitor intelligence, global best practice analysis and creative insight services to clients across all retail categories. The company has worked closely with Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Waitrose for over a decade helping develop new store designs and keeping them informed of the latest retail innovations. The agency helped develop new fast food brands for Compass Group and were instrumental in creating the Great Eastern Market, a revolutionary fresh food market concept in Europe’s largest shopping centre, Westfield Stratford in London.

Other clients include big global retailers, such as Wal Mart, Nike and IKEA, as well as major FMCG Brands such as Unilever and Johnson & Johnson. Echochamber also works with leading global shopping centre developers, such as Westfield, Unibail Rodamco, Lend Lease and the Majid AlFuttaim Group. Matthew is currently consulting on the retail strategy for the new terminal at Abu Dhabi International Airport, due to open in 2017.

Matthew is married with two young daughters.

John Baumgartner is the Director of Business Development at Nordic travel retail specialist Inflight Service Europe AB, based in Stockholm, Sweden. Having held various roles and responsibilities within Inflight Service, such as Head of Purchasing, Logistics and Sales, John now heads a team fully dedicated to the company’s ambitious growth plans, with airline retail and international expansion high on the agenda.

Since 2010 John has also served as Chairman of the Nordic Travel Retail Group, a sister organization to the European Travel Retail Confederation that works to protect and enhance the travel retail trade environment in Europe and in the Nordic markets.

John holds a Bachelor of Arts, Business Management degree from Fresno Pacific University (USA) and an MBA from Warwick Business School in the UK.

Issam AbdulRahim Kazim is the Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing, the body responsible for the branding, promotion and marketing of the Emirate of Dubai.

With Dubai’s Tourism Vision to attract 20 million visitors per year by 2020, the Corporation is dedicated to working with private and public sector tourism and commerce partners to promote Dubai’s position as a leading international business and leisure destination around the world.

Under his remit he will oversee the development and activities of the Corporation, which was established in December 2013, as an affiliate of the Dubai Government’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).

Issam took up this post in February 2014, joining the DTCM from the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), where he was the Director of DXB Live, a subsidiary of DWTC. In his role he was responsible for creating and developing strategic live events such as Dubai Sports World, Dubai Music Week and Dubai Classics.

Prior to this, Issam was the Director of Corporate Marketing and Communication for DWTC. He has also worked with Nakheel and with Dubai Bank/Dubai Tadawul.