Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa
I build, invest in and scale businesses at the intersection of capital, technology and regulated markets. Over the past 20 years, I have worked across both sides of the capital equation — allocating capital as an investment professional and raising, deploying and managing it as a founder. My investment career spans hedge funds, derivatives, proprietary trading and enterprise risk. At Sanlam Investments, I managed hedge fund and derivatives strategies. At Senwes, I led enterprise risk and proprietary trading across commodity markets, having started my career in FX and money-market operations with HSBC and Bank of New York in London. I am also a qualified Key Individual across FAIS Categories I, II and IIA and have built and evolved regulated investment businesses from the ground up. Today, I co-lead FWC Fund Management, an advice-to-implementation investment business built around a simple principle: investment strategy should translate into portfolios that can actually be implemented, governed and measured. We develop model portfolios, multi-asset solutions, hedge fund strategies and private-market opportunities, including private equity and venture investments through Lab2Sky Ventures. In parallel, I founded BioCertica, a genetics technology company operating at the intersection of healthcare, biotechnology and AI. We have raised more than $5 million from investors across Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Africa, completed a U.S. public-market transaction, executed a cross-border acquisition in Canada and launched Africa's first polygenic risk-scoring platform. Our work has been recognised through a Gates Foundation innovation grant and featured on CNN International. The common thread across everything I do is capital allocation and execution: understanding risk, building the right structures, communicating a clear strategy and creating long-term enterprise value. I am particularly interested in regulated financial markets, healthcare innovation, biotechnology, AI and businesses where capital and technology converge.
Founder and CEO of BioCertica, a genetic-technology platform at the intersection of personalised healthcare, biotechnology and AI. • Raised $5M+ across multi-stage rounds from investors in Finland, Sweden, the USA, France, Dubai and South Africa. • Led BioCertica's reverse listing in (USA), opening access to international investors and public-market capital. • Acquired SoulBiotech (Canada), a biotech developing a concussion treatment in pre-human trials — the company's first strategic acquisition. • Launched Africa's first polygenic risk-scoring platform, turning genetic data into precision-wellness and prevention insights (covered by GenomeWeb). • Recognised with a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation innovation grant, named a Top 15 African HealthTech startup (Viva Technology, 2023), and featured on CNN International.
Co-founder of FWC Fund Management, an advice-to-implementation investment house, and Key Individual (Cat I & II) responsible for advice standards, intermediary oversight and discretionary portfolio governance. • Acquired a licensed Cat I firm and led its evolution into a Cat II discretionary investment business, moving from advice-led distribution into mandate-driven portfolio management. • Led the strategic merger that formed FWC Fund Management, creating a diversified investment house with scalable advice and investment capability. • Directed the full M&A lifecycle — structuring, valuation, due diligence, governance alignment and post-merger integration. • Built the Cat I & Cat II regulatory and operating framework (subclass registrations, intermediary structures, advice governance and mandate documentation) to support compliant scale. • Act as Broker of Record across advice-led client relationships, owning suitability, implementation, monitoring, rebalancing and reporting under FAIS/FSCA. • Founded Lab2Sky Ventures, an early-stage venture platform, and built its screening, due-diligence and portfolio-oversight process across hedge fund, hybrid, private-equity and VC strategies.
• Managing a commodity hedge fund that focusses on extracting alpha returns from commodity markets, through the deployment of capital into relative value, volatility and directional commodity related positions. These positions are designed to exploit structural and cyclical anomalies through time and location value of commodities listed on global exchanges.
• Leading and supervising the Senwes Brokerage and information initiative, the team consisted of eight brokers and a market analyst. The frame of the business was to provide a trading and advisory solution for both producers and millers and to expand its operations and increase revenue streams through product diversification. • Key focus areas included product development, proprietary trading, business strategy development and implementation. • During my time in the position I standardised the Senwes research and subscription offering subsequently expanding the registered subscribers base on all reports from 400 to 4200. • The option market making initiative remained one of my core competencies in addition to the brokerage managerial functions. • Nominated as Senwes Grain Brokerage FSB Key individual. • Served as the public officer for the Senwes Grain Brokerage company, a 100% subsidiary of Senwes.
• Providing liquidity to the South African soft commodities options market by supplying bid and offer prices to market participants. • Volatility trading. • International and local market analysis. • Proprietary trading. • Developing and implementing new financial products. • Supervising the Senwes Brokerage initiative.
• Leading and managing the Enterprise Risk Management Program (ERM) of Senwes, planning, designing and implementing an overall risk management process for the organisation. • Managing a full staff complement of risk managers that establish, maintain, and continuously strive to improve risk management capabilities of Senwes. • Overseeing risk management efforts, identifying and resolving problems, assessing overall effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity of the ERM program. • Establishing and quantifying the organisation's 'risk appetite', i.e. the level of risk that Senwes are prepared to accept for each division. • Providing the leadership, planning, organising, controlling, education and integration of risk management programs, efforts, and initiatives within the Senwes Group and its affiliates. • Overseeing risk assessment, which involves analysing risks as well as identifying, describing and estimating the risks affecting the business. • Risk evaluation, which involves comparing estimated risks with criteria established by the organisation such as costs, legal requirements and environmental factors, and evaluating the organisation's previous handling of risks. • Risk reporting in an appropriate way for different audiences, for example, to the board of directors so they understand the most significant risks, to business heads to ensure they are aware of risks relevant to their parts of the business and to individuals to understand their accountability for individual risks. • Stress testing the drivers of risk to creating various 'what-if' scenarios and possible resolutions to stress tested scenarios to proactively managing risk that may occur under certain conditions.
• This position was a generalist grain trading position (on all Safex related products and commodities) that provided exposure to a variety of trading disciples ranging from brokerage activities, physical trading, spread trading, option trading, arbitrage, portfolio management, market analytics, principal directional trading, grain procurement and marketing. • Responsible for giving presentations / seminars to customers in order to retain or gain new business. • Responsible for the profitability and retention of each account within the portfolio managing sales targets and planning marketing initiatives in line with the business unit. • Developing and selling new and existing portfolio management strategies to clients that aimed to hedge grain at above market benchmarked levels. • Procuring physical grain and cross selling other services, like financing, brokerage and portfolio management services to clients. • Responsible for in-depth market analytics and the compiling of a daily client market grain report. Due to time constrains I created a system to automatically update and populate certain data fields in a set format (this system is still in use by this company).