Sephela Makete Thema is employed as General Manager (Tailings and Remining RSA) responsible for Tailings and Remining operations in South Africa at Fraser Alexander. He has over twelve years’ experience in the mining industry having worked for various blue chip mining companies and achieved significant safety and production milestones through the adoption of innovation and use of cutting-edge technologies to derive solutions. He is a member of the Southern Africa Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM), and the Association of Mine Managers of South Africa (AMMSA). Sephela serves on the SAIMM Young Professionals Committee (YPC) and is the chairperson of the Wits University Mining Engineers Association (WUMEA) branch in the North West province. Among his career highlights Sephela was selected as one of the top 200 young south Africans in the mining and manufacturing industry for 2023 and was also selected to represent Sibanye Stillwater at the United Nations Young SDG Innovators Programme for 2023 and was part of the project that was achieved the mining industry environmental award. Sephela was also previously awarded the TransUnion Rising Star Award for the mining and minerals category in 2022. Sephela holds a Master of Science in Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand.