Sue Geuens CDMP, MDQM started in Data Management during 1996 when she was handed a disk with a list of builders on it and told they were hers to manage. Sue mentions this as fate taking over and providing her with what she was “meant to do”. Various data roles later, her clients numbered 3 of the top 4 banking institutions in SA, a number of telco’s and various pension funds, insurance companies and health organisations. Sue was the initial designer of data quality matching algorithms for a SA built Data Quality and Matching tool (Plasma Mind). This experience stood her in good stead as she slowly but surely climbed the ladder in Southern Africa to become the first CDMP in the country. Sue worked tirelessly on starting up DAMA SA with the successful Inaugural meeting in February of 2009. She was unanimously voted as President just prior to this event. From that time on Sue has been the leader and driving force of the DAMA SA Board and became Past President at end of 2015.

Sue is the current DAMA I President. She is a sought after presenter and has been a prominent speaker at EDW, DMZ, EDBI, DMDG, CDO Forums and various DAMA chapters since 2006. Her thought-provoking presentation on Practical Data Governance has sparked interest all over the world and she has been asked to return to a number of countries to meet with key clients on this topic. She has recently moved to the UK and is providing Data Governance support and advice to one of the larger financial institutions. A self-confessed “dataholic”, Sue also occasionally manages to share her thoughts and feelings about data and current issues through a number of blogs.

John Randles has led Bloomberg PolarLake since it was formed in 2012 as a result of the Bloomberg acquisition of PolarLake Ltd. John joined PolarLake as Chief Executive Officer in 2006 and drove the company’s move from being an integration technology supplier in many industries to focus 100% on the Capital Markets industry and particularly the Data Management challenges of that industry. Over six years, PolarLake established itself as the most innovative vendor in the sector leading to the acquisition in 2012.

Prior to joining PolarLake in 2006 as Chief Executive Officer, John was CTO of Banking at Siebel Systems for a number of years having joined Siebel through their 2004 acquisition of Eontec, an Irish based Retail Banking Software vendor of which John was CTO. John originally joined Eontec as a Software Engineer and worked in a variety of roles across R&D Management, Product Management, Pre-Sales and Sales & Marketing over a number of years.

John led and managed the transformation of PolarLake from a pure Software vendor to a Data Management Service provider as Bloomberg PolarLake has re-structured the company’s offerings with the backing of Bloomberg.

John Randles is a graduate of Computer Engineering from the University of Limerick, Ireland.