Experience
More than 25 years across sales, presales, entrepreneurship, business management and technical roles.
Nov 2025 to now
Compound Bridge
CTO and Co-Founder
South Africa
I match client business requirements for AI use cases with the correct technology. Compound Bridge provides technology, people and services for AI-driven infrastructure.
- AI cloud platforms on OpenStack and Kubernetes
- AI networking and storage fabrics
- Work with AMD and NVIDIA
- Built the team
Nov 2024 to now
Thomas Lee Consulting
Principal Consultant
Pretoria
Cloud, IoT and AI consulting.
Jan 2025 to Jul 2025
ADG
Service Integration Lead (fractional)
May 2023 to Nov 2024
MTN Converged Solutions
Senior Manager, IoT Solution Sales
Johannesburg
IoT solution sales for MTN's enterprise customers, growing the business from telemetry into IoT.
- SIM gross additions 17% over target
- Worked with more than 100 sales staff
- The RT29 smart-meter bid
Jul 2020 to May 2023
IoT.nxt, a Vodacom company
Head of Solution Engineering
Grew solution engineering from 3 to 40 people across the USA, the UK, Germany and African countries, with a 20% gain in efficiency.
- Head of Solution Engineering, Jun 2022 to May 2023
- Presales Solution Engineering Manager, Sep 2021 to Jun 2022 (20+ engineers)
- Presales Technical Manager, Jul 2020 to Sep 2021 (team grown from 5 to almost 30)
- Best performance by a new employee, Dec 2020
Dec 2014 to Jul 2020
Wingu Network Solutions
Chief Executive Officer
Midrand
Took Wingu from an idea to a commercial public cloud. I chose OpenStack, built the platform and ran it in production for more than five years.
- Africa's first Ubuntu-certified public cloud
- Finalist, OpenStack Superuser Award, 2018
- Partnerships with two national telcos
- Brought Hystax and Densify to South Africa
Dec 2014 to Jul 2020
NEC XON
General Manager, Cloud Services
Midrand
Set the public cloud strategy and led the Wingu platform team, reporting to management in Japan.
Apr 2008 to Nov 2014
Solution Blox
Chief Operating Officer
Centurion
Scaled the start-up to more than R25 million in sales.
Sep 2005 to Mar 2008
NetSpeed Technologies
Director of Technical Operations
Centurion
Networking and security.
Mar 2000 to Aug 2005
XON Systems
Technical Presales Manager
Aug 1999 to Feb 2000
AT&T Global Network Services
Senior Advisory Sales Specialist
Aug 1998 to Jul 1999
Pin Point Solutions
Account Manager, Enterprise Sales
Enterprise sales to the mining sector.
1993 to 1995
LAN & WAN Computers
Co-owner and Technical Director
Vereeniging
Grew the business to more than R15 million in sales, then sold it.
Education
- McCombs School of Business, UT Austin, 2020
- AI for Business Leaders
- Gateway Business School, 1999
- Management short course
Certifications
- 2019
- Red Hat Sales Specialist, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
- 2019
- Red Hat Sales Engineer Specialist, Cloud Infrastructure
- ·
- Tintri Certified Systems Engineer
- 2017
- Louis Allen Management Certificate
- 1999 to 2000
- IBM Sales School
Memberships and languages
- Member
- C12
- Languages
- English and Afrikaans
My top five, from the Gallup assessment.
- 01
- Ideation
- 02
- Strategic
- 03
- Activator
- 04
- Futuristic
- 05
- Self-Assurance
Off the clock
Music, hi-fi and vinyl records. I collect them.
For advisory and strategy, partnerships and ventures, speaking invitations or a technology deployment. Pick a time that suits you.