AABS 2025 Connect Conference and 20th Anniversary Celebration

Jon is Dean and Director of Henley Business School in Africa, part of the Henley Business School UK, a leading global business school with campuses in Europe, Asia and Africa. With Henley Africa being the first school to be accredited by The Association of Africa Business schools (AABS), Henley now holds international quadruple accreditation, AABS, AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS. Henley’s purpose is ‘We build the people who build the businesses that build Africa.’

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Jon’s career includes roles as educator, dean, corporate executive, airline pilot, aerobatic competitor, writer and speaker. He has 45 years of international working experience. He has been a professor of innovation, MBA director, director of executive education, designer and director of numerous executive education programmes and lecturer in strategy, innovation and executive learning. His interests are economic and educational transformation, sustainability and business evolution.
Henley Africa has been an entrepreneurial success, with a strong reputation for progressive learning design and care for students and clients.

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Jon is chairman of the British Chamber of Business in Southern Africa, chairman of the Association of Africa Business Schools, board member of the Alliance of Management Development Associations in Rising Economies, and former vice-chair of the South African Business Schools Association. He is chair and founder of MBAid, an NPO that seeks to turn the energies of business schools to social good, which has worked with over 350 NGOs. Jon is also a Distinguished Professor at Woxsen University, India and a life Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK.

Samer Atallah has been an associate professor of economics at the Onsi Sawiris School of Business at The AmericanUniversity in Cairo (AUC) since 2011. He was a visiting scholar at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University in 2016 and a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago Center in Paris during the winter of 2014.

His research interests are in political economy and development economics. His research also covers game theory applications on the political economy of democratization and quantitative analysis of election results. His research has been published in the European Journal of Political Economy, the InternationalJournal of Economic Theory and the Theoretical Economic Letters. His research work in development economics covers intergenerational inequality, informality and quantitative analysis of household surveys.

He has earned his PhD and MA in economics from McGill University. The title of his PhD thesis is Essays on Resource-Dependent Economies: Political Economy andStrategic Behavior. He also holds a MSc in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

He is are search fellow at the Economic Research Forum and a member of the CanadianEconomics Association and the Middle East Economic Association.

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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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Maurice Radebe, Head and Director of Wits Business School and a seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience in the energy industry. Formerly Executive Vice President at Sasol, he led global energy operations and major ventures in Qatar, Nigeria, and Mozambique. With a rich background including roles at Shell and Exel, Maurice has driven high-impact initiatives like the Go4Gr8 project and Sasol’s Phoenix programme. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the Unleashing Leadership Potential Foundation, dedicated to empowering future leaders in South Africa.

Prof. Daniel J Petzer is a Professor of the University of Reading, Head of Research, and Programme Director of the DBA programme at Henley Business School - Africa. He is also an extraordinary professor of the Department of Marketing Management at the University of Pretoria . He holds a PhD (Marketing Management) specialising in services marketing and is a South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) rated researcher.