Darren S. Email & Phone Number

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

CACTUS Communications is a global company that offers scholarly, medical communications, and technology solutions to the scientific community.

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

More than 2.1 billion people (UNICEF/WHO 2015) lack a safely managed drinking-water service at home – located on premises, available when needed, and free from contamination. Of this, 884 million people lack even a basic drinking-water service within 30 minutes of home, millions of women and children needing to walk several hours each day just to collect it. The Hippo Roller, designed in Africa for tough rural conditions, is a simple idea which eases access to water, improves health and hygiene and significantly increases the time available for education, household tasks, and food production.In short, the Hippo Roller changes lives.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

Mobenzi enables organisations to measure & maximise their impact by digitising their fieldwork. It works alongside these organisations to scale their impact through thousands of frontline workers in over 50 countries.

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

Brooke Pattrick, established in 1975, specialised in business-to-business (B2B) publishing in the fields of mining, energy, equipment, infrastructure, and the built environment. A subscription driven media company, Brooke Pattrick's differentiator was to provide business intelligence on project opportunities on the African continent, through insightful writing, worth reading.At a time when most B2B publishers had been guilty of what I would call "PR regurgitation" as they sought to safeguard dwindling ad revenues and the impact of the open web, Brooke Pattrick's approach was bold and correct. Because independent journalism matters.Brooke Pattrick was acquired by Interact Media Defined in October 2015.

Pretoria Area, South Africa

Kgwanyape Energy Solutions (KES), a green-tech start up, designed, developed and manufactured electricity and energy management solutions, including lighting, geyser, and swimming pool pump controls.The message of energy efficiency was as important then, as it is today, with the costs of energy soaring in South Africa.

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

Technews Publishing, a technical publishing company focused on print and online publications, research, technical recruitment and media strategy, publishes a number of niche business-to-business titles, including: Hi-Tech Security Solutions (security); net.work (ICT); Dataweek (Electronic Engineering); SA Instrumentation & Control (Manufacturing, Automation & Process Control); Motion Control (robotics and fluid mechanics), amongst others.I loved my time at Technews, where a love of media and tech found full expression. A passion, and a love for what we did at Technews, drove me; meeting with, advising, and learning from executives across the globe, tasked with the promotion and successful positioning of their businesses, excited me. Technically, staying abreast of the fast-changing, dynamic world of technology challenged me; and embracing the tools of the day (the web, social networks, blogging, collaborative integration etc), and applying them in a meaningful way to business kept me from getting my golf handicap down, or diving in the Indian ocean as often as I would've liked. A truly memorable chapter.

Durban Area, South Africa

As Marketing Manager at CAT, I was tasked with raising the profile and credibility of digital surveillance (imaging) systems which CAT had pioneered in South Africa. A little ahead of its time (at the time, the mid- to late-1990s), digital surveillance has since become THE growth area of the CCTV industry worldwide.I enjoyed my brief time at CAT, but in real terms sales (although at an all-time high) simply weren't high enough to sustain the division, and I was retrenched. It was my first exposure to classic business confusion between marketing & sales.My tenure at CAT formed the basis for opportunity, in as much as it was the struggle to sell an innovative, new technology, into an immature market, which opened my eyes to the need for education in the sector.The result? I used my retrenchment package to start Hi-Tech Security Solutions, chose good partners (Technews), and the rest is history. Hi-Tech Security Solutions went on to become the definitive title of it genre, a position it still holds today.

Pretoria Area, South Africa

After having spent 7 years at University (5 studying Electronic Engineering, and 2 years completing a Master's degree), I opted not to pursue a career as an engineer, feeling that I would be a good engineer, but perhaps not a great one! This, in spite of winning the Top Design Award for Final Year Design.So I joined the Integrated Circuit Design Centre as a Sales Engineer in support of its IC design services, as well as its Xilinx FPGA and PLD products. For 6 months, I thought I'd made a significant error of judgement, but as soon as I started to work in the emerging world of FPGAs, success came quickly.Being able to speak the language of engineers helped, and in no time at all, we'd built a fast-growing distribution and consulting division, built on the rapid emergence of progammable technology.After years of thinking that it was engineering that made the world go around, I rapidly came to understand that it wasn't.It was sales!In 1994 I received Xilinx's Rest of World Salesman of the Year.

Executive Short Course, Finance

The Finance for Non-financial Managers course empowers managers to more effectively communicate with accounting and finance people.

Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa, Financial Reporting, Distinction

The Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa Executive Training Program is a comprehensive integrated curriculum around economics, business.

Msc Elec Eng., Vaccum Wave Tube Engineering

Activities and Societies: Graduated BSc Elec Eng 1987, Best Design Award Graduated MSc Elec Eng 1989 My 2-year masters degree was.

High School, M'Levels, M'Levels

Activities and Societies: Toastmasters; Outward Bound M'Levels in maths, biology, physics, chemistry.