Our Panel Members

Steve Zagey, ORT SA Trustee, ORT Jet Chairman and Executive Director at SoHo Properties, a property company focusing on the development of Social Housing Projects. Responsibilities include strategy, deal making, acquisitions and financing thereof, the full financial function and operations with respect to administration. Steve holds a Bcom Degree from the University of South Africa and MBA from Thames Valley University (UK). His financial knowledge and experiences in deal making, financial structuring and negotiating has been key to the success and growth of organisations.

Clive Butkow is Chief Executive Officer at Kalon Venture Partner, a disruptive digital technology Venture Capital Fund (VCC) located in Johannesburg. He sits on various boards of the VCC’s underlying companies including the chairman of many of the companies. Kalon has made 8 investments across various disciplines including; payments; property tech, loyalty, security, artificial intelligence; marketing tech and others. Besides his board role of the 8 investee companies, he is actively involved in fundraising, sales and other business building activities. He is further actively involved in the entrepreneur ecosystem in South Africa as well as looking for new tech companies to invest in.

Jonathan is a social entrepreneur with a passion for people and problem-solving and the CEO of the SAICC – South Africa Israel Chamber of Commerce.
Having graduated high school without a university entrance and no real direction, he soon got put to work in the family business, Lesco Manufacturing, cleaning the warehouse, packing boxes and rearranging the stalls until eventually, he was on the assembly line making products.
Years later, Jonathan is using his hands-on experience in the factories to drive his passion for people and business. Through developing strategic partnerships and interpersonal relationships, Jonathan is tackling South Africa’s unemployment problem at the grassroots level. Lesco has been proudly nominated for the ABSA Jewish Achiever Awards for unlisted companies and Jonathan for the Creative Counsel Young Jewish Entrepreneur Awards.
In 2016, LESCO was a runner-up in the FNB business innovation awards. He is also on the board members of Easterseals UCP.

Roland Sassoon joined his father’s textile importing and wholesale business from school aged 17 in 1962. Due to the development of local textile mills, protected by huge tariff and import controls, to counter the effect of sanctions, their importing business went into decline, and they decided to transform it into a trade finance company. However, as he lacked the skills in finance, he enrolled for a CIS course and left the family business to gain experience with four large banks and finance companies and then rejoined the family company, which had changed its name from Sasstex to Sasfin, in 1973. He retired as CEO in 2018 to be succeeded by his son Michael. He is now a non-executive director of Sasfin, which is now a banking and financial services group, specialising in business finance and asset management.