Greg Reis

Position:

CEO and founder, Business Systems Group (Africa) (1997 to present)(www.bsg.co.za.)

BSG has offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and London and has been awarded numerous accolades, with some of the key awards being the winner of the Proudly South African Award in two categories (Innovator and Service) and winner of the Deloitte Best Company to Work For Award in two categories (Small Business and Information Technology).

Prior to this co-founded Client-Server (CS) (UK) which provided strategic consultancy and systems delivery to clients including Lloyds of London, ADT Auctions, Guinness Breweries, GEC, Europ Assistance and Fidelity Brokerage Services. 

Qualifications:

Holds degrees in both Computer Science and Electrical/Electronic Engineering from UCT

Motivation for standing:

Greg is currently a director of CITi and was also a founding member of CITI from its inception in early 1998. In order to assist CITI to become a sustainable operational entity in the very early days, he provided essential logistical support to the organisation, such as provision of premises, office automation facilities, a consulting team from his company (BSG) which helped to support the facilitation of the first Cluster-Muster, being an approved signatory on official documents and financial matters, amongst others.

Greg also personally recruited the first executive director, Peter Frampton into the organisation, as well as being part of the core team who recruited both previous executive directors Masedi Molosiwa and Viola Manuel into CITI.

Greg was one of the CITI board members who worked hard and gave up large quantities of valuable time on order to help steer CITI clear of the financial and leadership challenges that existed through the latter part of 2007 and most of 2008, which threatened CITI’s ongoing sustainability. In emerging from this challenge, Greg then played a key role in the recruitment and support of the appointment of the current General Manager of the Bandwidth Barn and the new CITI Executive Director. Under the leadership of these two capable individuals, both entities have emerged from the challenges of the past and are currently achieving great progress.

Greg wishes to continue to remain actively involved at the heart of CITI, particularly with core CITI projects such as The Bandwidth Barn, and input into CITI strategic planning ensuring practical implementation and alignment of CITI efforts to key stakeholders and revenue sources.
As Chairperson of the CITI Audit Committee and more recently the CITI Remuneration Committee, Greg is happy to continue to provide input into financial risk management, controls, (i.e. approval of CITI spending, CITI sustainability, etc) as well as the salary and reward structures for all CITI employees.

Other:

• Greg has been an active force in the local and international Information Technology (IT) sector for well over two decades.
• Founder and long term board member of CITI (Cape Technology Initiative) and its flagship project the Bandwidth Barn.
• Currently chairperson of CITi Audit Committee and Remuneration Committee
• Represented on a number of University advisory boards (Rhodes, UCT)
• In 2000, Greg played a lead role in the sale of a minority equity stake in BSG (Africa) to private equity funding and JSE-listed Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI).