Dr Dirk Brand is an independent legal consultant, special counsel at Swart Law and an Extraordinary Senior Lecturer at the School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University. He holds the following degrees: BComm, LLB, LLM (European Union Law) and LLD (Constitutional Law). He has published various articles and contributions to books on AI and the law, constitutional law, data protection, public governance and international relations that appeared in publications in South Africa, Italy, USA, Germany and the Netherlands. He participated as a constitutional advisor in the negotiations for the drafting of the South African Constitution in the Constitutional Assembly in Cape Town. He continues to lecture and consult in the fields of AI ethics and law, constitutional law, data protection, public governance. He is part of the LegalAIzers team who won the First St.Gallen Grand Challenge in Switzerland on the application of the EU AI Act (July 2023).
He is also a guest lecturer at the Hochschule Kehl, Germany and the Law Faculty, University of Verona, Italy and West University Timisoara, Romania.

Dirk Brand is a software developer specialising in artificial intelligence and product development. He has a MSc in Computer Science and did his dissertation on sentiment classification of comments on news articles. He is currently employed by a US-based startup that creates games using generative AI techniques. He has a keen interest in the developments of the current AI revolution and its impact on the world.

Rianné is a Chartered Accountant (SA) and Compliance Professional (SA). During
her 27-year career in banking she filled various senior management roles in
business, finance, risk management, internal audit and compliance.
She ran her own compliance consulting firm for 8 years before being appointed
as the CEO of the Compliance Institute Southern Africa in July 2018. She is also
the Chair of the International Federation of Compliance Associations (IFCA).
She is passionate about compliance and ensuring that the compliance
profession is positioned as a strategic business partner, an independent
assurance provider and what it means to be the ‘C’ in GRC.
She became a Chartered Accountant at the age of 41 and lives by her personal motto ‘It is never too late to have a happy childhood (or a new career).