Desan Pillay joined Wits Business School as Digital Director in July 2023. He has more than 18 years of experience in strategy, management consulting, and executive line management across a wide range of sectors, including fintech, edtech, start-ups, telecoms, financial services, and retail.
Desan’s areas of expertise include turnaround strategy and execution, digital transformation, eCommerce platforms, ecosystem partnerships/JV’s and commercialisation, business model integration, operating model efficiencies, customer experience and human-centred design, big data and analytics, and large scale organisational change management.
Previous positions include Head Consultant at Peppers & Rogers Group (Africa, UAE & Tukey), Associate Director (Applied Intelligence, Africa) at Accenture, and Strategy and Integration Lead at Barclays. He has held executive roles in banking and insurance at Nedbank, served as Chief Growth Officer at Omniscient, Africa’s first data privacy and collaboration platform, Chief Product Officer for The Space Between Us, the first digital mental health platform across Africa, and led the delivery and commercialisation of the first African marketplace digital solution for Nedbank Avo, among numerous other advisory roles in fintech, banking and start-ups.
Desan holds a B.BusSci (Honours) in Finance, Econometrics and Strategy from UKZN and an MBA from GIBS. He has also completed courses in Data-driven Consulting (Northwestern University, US), Advanced Design Thinking (Duke University/Standford University) and Transformation (LEAD Consortium) and is Six Sigma certified.