Improvate Group – Executive Chairman
Academic Qualifications:Bcomm; Bcomm (Hons); Post Graduate Certificate In Advanced Auditing; Chartered Accountant (SA)

Qualified Chartered Accountant and Executive Chairman of the Improvate Group based in Port Elizabeth since 2014. Improvate Group has interests spanning across multiple sectors Business Services, Property and Construction, Textiles, to name a few.Gugu’s has over 18 years of professional experience and qualified as a Chartered Accountant after serving articles at KPMG Port Elizabeth. He has acquired significant expert and working knowledge in Leadership, Governance, Policy, Transaction Advisory, Business Processes, Financial Modelling and Financial Management, Strategy development and Implementation, and Business Support. Gugu has extensive experience in both Public and Private Sector environments.

Gugu is a former Partner at KPMG and was primarily responsible for both the Eastern Cape Management Consulting practice as well as being the National Lead partner for Rural Development sector. He was the driving member of the Core-team responsible for driving KPMG involvement and response to the National Development Plan and served as a Lead Partner on various client accounts.

During this time, Gugu was also invited to take part as a member of the Expert Panel in one of the Work-Streams (Nation Building and Social Cohesion) involved in developing the National Development Plan – Vision 2030.

Gugu currently holds the following governance and board related appointments:

• Board Member for the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber and is a Deputy Chairperson of the Business Chamber Finance Committee and Member of Governance Committee.
• Advisory Committee member of the Impakt Fund’s Investment Advisory Committee for the Impakt Exelator, a S12J Fund based in Johannesburg.
• Appointed by the South African Rugby Union (SARU) to serve as one of three independent Non-Executive Board Members for one of the SARU subsidiary entities, namely SA Super Rugby (Pty) Ltd (responsible for Southern Kings Franchise). Following the acquisition of the controlling interest in SA Super Rugby by a Black Consortium, Gugu was retained as an Independent Non-Executive Board Member in the newly reconstituted Board. He is currently also the Chairperson of the Governance, Audit and Risk Committee.
• Non-Executive Board Member at the Human Settlement Action Group (HAG), which is an NGO formed to support and empower communities in Human Settlement related issues within Nelson Mandela Bay. He is a member of the Audit Committee of this Organisation.
• Until recently, Gugu also served as a National Board Member of the Black Management Forum (BMF), where he also served as the Chairman of the Audit and Risk Committee.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

• NMMU Alumni Rising Star Award (2015)
• Destiny Power of 40 Report by Destiny Man Magazine (2014)
• Top 35 under 35 CAs (2014)

Selected as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (Class of 2014)

John Dovey BSc Quantity Surveying (UCT), started his career as a quantity surveyor with Roy Beamish and then Gordon Verhoef and Krause.

• John was Contracts QS and later Contract’s Director on numerous projects including a number of shopping centres, wine estates and offices.
• John then moved into construction and was one of the founders of Protech Khuthele, that listed on the JSE in 2009. Protech was involved in the construction of many commercial projects (Offices, Warehousing and Industrial Buildings and Shopping Centres), bulk earthworks and roads contracts..
• John was also was a stakeholder and Director of Independent Capital Advisors (ICA), a Property Development Company. ICA was involved in numerous large commercial and retail property developments throughout RSA. ICA had an integral part of assembling the Property Portfolio for Vukile for their listing back in 2006. John was integrally involved in the Due Diligence’s of all their retail acquisitions and was contracted by Vukile to manage and control the financial budgets and programming aspects of the construction of phase 2 of two of their shopping centre acquisitions, namely, Durban Phoenix Plaza and Daveyton Shopping Centre.

Mr Quarmby holds a CA (SA) with Hons.

He was on the board of Dimension Data Holdings Plc for 25 years. He is currently on the boards of KAP Industrial Holdings Ltd. and Tradebridge (Pty) Ltd.

• He previously held the position of Chairman of Dimension Data Asia Pacific Pte Ltd in Singapore
• He was a tax Partner at Ernst & Young (South Africa).
• He has been involved in a significant number of M&A transactions and the funding thereof