About redAcademy
Jessica has a deep passion for providing talented South Africans with the opportunity to sprint into their software developer careers by working closely with professional lecturers, industry-leading senior developers and customers, designed to fast-track careers in the real world. She is committed to changing the way in which learning takes place, with the specific aim of addressing the skills and experience gap, as well as the talent pipeline shortage faced by CTOs and software development teams.
Jessica previously held the position of General Manager of Operations at the Carrick group of companies, a multi-award winning offshore Wealth Management organisation. Having joined Carrick from State Street Poland, in which she was responsible for the launch and training of the Asset Manager Services division in the country.
Gareth has over 30 years of experience within the IT industry, and holds an MBA from the University of Cape Town. He has a deep and long standing passion for business and the development of the human capital.
With over 20 years of experience in the retail technology sphere, Gareth brings immense strategic business acumen to redPanda Software team as Group CEO and non-executive chairman of redAcademy. His unique insight has come from diverse and high-level work, including spending 10 years working with a large listed retailer; and a further 10 years on the other side of the desk, supplying retailers with dynamic technology solutions.
Nashid has a great desire to see young people in South Africa to develop and grow their careers. With experience in working with an international school exchange programme in Scotland, and 10 years in Corporate Retail, he brings great insight to understanding people and process management.
Having coordinated one of TFG’s leading outbound call centres for 2 years, he led a team of 17 team leaders with a total staff complement of 250 staff. Nashid later moved into an Area Manager role overseeing 14 stores across Cape Town for 4 years.
Nashid holds a BA degree in Psychology and Linguistics from the University of the Western Cape.
Emmanuel holds a Masters degree in Information Technology and has more than 10 years of experience in both academics and the software industry; with extensive experience in software development. Prior to joining redAcademy, Emmanuel held the position of Software Development Team Lead and Lecturer, working closely with students on Software Development projects.
During his career, Emmanuel has worked with students from different backgrounds, in both private and public institutions. This broad experience has further strengthened Emmanuel’s ability to engage a diverse group of students through his adaptive lecturing style. Emmanuel has a strong background in implementing and improving the full systems development cycle (SDLC), with the use of a wide range of technologies and frameworks.
Shana Mbomvu is a highly motivated individual, a Software Development graduate with international certifications from Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. He further went on to become a registered MICT Seta assessor, trained facilitator, and skills development content designer and developer with over 12 years sectorial experience including facilitating for Higher Education and Training and Further Education and Training institutions.
Prior to joining the team at redAcademy Shana held a position as Business Unit Manager and later took up a Lead Business Unit Manager role for a Skills Development business in Gauteng.
During his career, Shana acquired advanced knowledge and experience in different Mobile Application Development platforms, systems development, and various project management and software engineering and six sigma methodologies.
