Elisja van Niekerk is an IT Project Manager and Innovation Lead at MTN and the co-founder of Coding Mamas, a community of 870 moms with a vision to empower moms to participate in the digital economy and teach them the skills and ability to inspire and support their children in their own digital journey.

Elisja has 15 years of experience in IT Project Management, where she has been responsible for the successful implementation of many transformational and strategic projects, one of them being the implementation of the largest warehouse automation project in the history of MTN. She is also an Innovation Lead for Data Science at MTN and has hosted the MTN Innovation wall, which is a wall for students in Africa to showcase their work at the AI Africa Expo. In addition, she has hosted many university visits, information days and tours for students at MTN. Elisja also planned and hosted TADHackJHB, a global telecommunications hackathon in 2018 and 2019. Elisja is also the BICC project manager and was seconded to work in the enterprise information systems department for a year developing her analysis and reporting skills.

In June 2019 Elisja entered and won the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Health Hackathon. She wanted to use AI as a tool to decrease the rate of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, low self-esteem, abortions and even suicide, caused by a lack of reliable sex education, which led to the creation of Elisja’s chatbot called LTAS (Let’s Talk about Sex). Elisja was also a finalist for the Woman in Technology, Woman of Stature Awards 2019

Elisja holds a BSc degree in marketing, a certification in Prince2 and ITIL, and recently completed her Data Analysis short course at UCT, with aspirations to become a data scientist.