Professors of Practise
Exceptional leaders bringing practical knowledge and industry experience into the classroom.
Professors of Practise
Our Professors of Practice are seasoned industry leaders who turn their real-world experience into life-changing teaching to our students.
More than just teaching theory, they share insights from years of hands-on experience, guiding students through the skills, mindset, and values needed to thrive in software development and beyond.

Henry Kaestner
Henry co-founded the Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor ministries, and has been a catalyst behind both movements. He and his team seek to serve faith driven entrepreneurs, investors, funds, partners, and advisors through content, community, and connections. Henry is also a Co-Founder and Partner at Sovereign’s Capital, a private equity and venture capital management company that invests in faith driven entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia and the U.S. from its offices in Silicon Valley, Durham, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Jakarta, Indonesia. Prior to co-founding Sovereign’s Capital, Henry was Co-founder and previous CEO, and then Chairman, of Bandwidth (NASDAQ:BAND) and its sister company, Republic Wireless (which spun out of Bandwidth in 2016). Together, the companies have grown from $0 to more than $600 million in revenue. The founding values of Bandwidth are: Faith, Family, Work and Fitness (in that order). Prior to co-founding Bandwidth.com with David Morken, Henry founded Chapel Hill Brokers (a predecessor to ICAP Energy), an institutional energy derivatives broker that became the top-ranked electricity broker in the country.

Marlon Parker
Marlon is deeply committed to community, technology, and innovation, which has shaped his career and led to the creation of RLabs, a social enterprise that has reached over 65 million people in 24 countries. Recognised by Quartz as a leading African Innovator in 2017 and named among the 100 World Class South Africans, Marlon has also earned accolades as an honorary faculty member at the International School of Digital Transformation, a non-resident fellow at New York University, and a member of the GITEX Impact Council. His contributions to social entrepreneurship have earned him prestigious titles, including a WEF Young Global Leader, a Schwab Foundation Social Innovation Fellow, a Dangote Fellow, and an Ashoka Fellow. Most recently, Marlon has launched RLabs Capital, which focuses on investing in and managing a portfolio of scalable technology and impact-driven companies founded by underrepresented entrepreneurs.

Wendy Luhabe
Wendy currently serves on the Boards of Pepkor & Richemont. She is a former Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg and recipient of three Honorary Doctorates. She is known for her vision in the founding of Women Investment Portfolio Holdings (WIPHOLD). Some of her past chairperson roles include the International Marketing Council (IMC) and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC).

Russ Tuck
Dr. Russell Tuck, is an award-winning software engineering manager who now serves as a professor of computer science at Gordon College in Boston (USA). He led the productionisation and launch of Gmail and built and managed Gmail's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) group. During his 11 years at Google, Russ also led teams developing some of the infrastructure systems for Google's vast web services and helped facilitate the company's EDGE Engineering Leadership Training program. He has published several articles, holds 10 patents and has a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from Duke University.

Nico van der Merwe
Nico and his wife Anita are the founders of the H.A.S.S.Group – which is the leading hearing health care service provider in Sub-Saharan Africa with 465 staff, 24 Ear Institutes and a professional agent network situated throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Nico and his family have a God given vision – to make a difference in deaf education – which resulted in the formation of the “Foundation for Children with a Hearing Loss”and Eduplex schools in Pretoria. To take the Vision globally and change traditional deaf education internationally (from sign language to spoken language), Nico founded the Eduplex Training Institute (ETI) - an online virtual classroom training institute that trains professionals (teachers / audiologists / hearing aid acousticians) and parents in inclusive education as well as hearing aid acoustics. To date, professionals from more than 45 countries have received training at ETI. Nico has been awarded the Ernst & Young Business Mover of the Year and the Chancellors Medal by the Senate of the University of Pretoria.
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Register your interest to join our programme in 2026 and we will keep you in the loop with developments and progress.
