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About

A boutique consultancy built around one idea

Our story

Lithium River is a boutique consultancy based in Johannesburg, South Africa, run by two principals, a husband-and-wife partnership who bring together the two disciplines that most change programmes need but rarely get from one team: business operations and technology.

We started Lithium River because we kept seeing the same problem from both sides. Operations teams designed sensible changes the systems couldn’t support; technology teams delivered capable platforms no one had designed the work around. The value was lost in the gap between them.

So we built a practice deliberately small enough that the people who shape the work are the people who do it, and deliberately integrated so that the operating model and the technology are designed together. The name reflects it: the energy and charge of modern technology, and the flow and continuity of a well-run business, moving an organisation from its current state to where it needs to be.

The principals

You work directly with both of us. There is no account layer between you and the people delivering the work.

Sylvester Kuisis

Principal, Technology & Infrastructure

The technology that runs the business, designed to fit, built to last.

Sylvester leads our technology and infrastructure work, drawing on more than fifteen years managing complex technical environments. His focus is simple: make the systems serve the business, rather than the other way round. He helps leaders move past brittle, bolted-together tooling towards platforms that are modern, secure and genuinely fit for how the organisation operates.

His background spans cloud and infrastructure architecture, virtualisation and containerisation, networking and VoIP, DevOps and observability, and the data-centre operations that decide whether a system is trusted day to day. More recently that has extended to AI-ready, high-availability environments for LLM workloads, data-pipeline modernisation, and the governance and security that make adoption responsible rather than risky.

Having led managed-infrastructure teams as an executive and technical director, and now serving as a Chief Technology Officer, he keeps the commercial and governance picture in view while staying close to the detail. Working alongside Megan-Jordan, he makes sure the technology is shaped by the operating model from the first conversation, so what gets built is what the business will actually use.

What clients get

  • Systems and infrastructure that match how you work, not a vendor template
  • Lower operational and security risk, with compliance considered from the start
  • AI-ready, high-availability platforms introduced responsibly and cost-effectively
  • Clear, maintainable technology your team can run without specialist hand-holding

Experience

Co-founder & Principal, Lithium River (director since 2016); Chief Technology Officer, TForge.

Previously Executive and Head of Managed Infrastructure, and Technical Director, leading infrastructure teams, engineering standards and vendor/SLA management.

Education

  • BSc Information Technology & Computer Science, University of South Africa (UNISA)

Areas of expertise

  • Cloud & infrastructure strategy and architecture
  • Virtualisation, containerisation & platform reliability
  • Networks, VoIP (Asterisk) & data-centre operations
  • DevOps, automation & observability
  • AI-ready, high-availability environments for LLM workloads
  • Security, governance, risk & compliance
  • Vendor, SLA & cost optimisation

Megan-Jordan Jones

Principal, Business Operations & Transformation

Operating models and ways of working that make the business measurably easier to run.

Megan-Jordan leads our business operations and transformation work, with more than a decade improving how small and mid-sized organisations run. She helps leaders turn a busy, reactive organisation into one that runs on clear processes, sensible governance and roles people understand, so the business depends less on heroics and more on how it is designed to work.

Her experience runs across business analysis and process optimisation, change management and adoption, project and programme delivery, CRM and customer-success operations, and compliance and governance, including SOPs, knowledge management and performance reporting. Having held progressive operations roles up to senior compliance officer, she is candid about what is and is not working, and pragmatic about sequencing change so the organisation can absorb it without grinding to a halt.

Her approach starts with the outcome the leadership team is after, then works back to the operating model, processes and measures that will get there. With Sylvester, she ensures every process redesign is matched by technology that supports it, so improvements are embedded in the way the business runs, not left to fade once the project ends.

What clients get

  • An operating model and processes designed for maturity and scale
  • Clearer roles, accountability and governance across the organisation
  • Change that is sequenced to stick, not just launched and forgotten
  • Measurable improvement in how efficiently and reliably the business runs

Experience

Co-founder & Principal, Lithium River; Business Consultant.

A decade in SME operations, including progressive roles at d6, from coordination and customer-success operations to Senior Compliance Officer.

Education

  • MBA, Regenesys Business School (strategic execution; electives in Mentoring & Coaching and Organisational Development & Change)
  • Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration (NQF 8), Milpark Education
  • BA Honours in English & Literature, University of South Africa (UNISA)
  • Agile Fundamentals: Scrum & Kanban

Areas of expertise

  • Business analysis & process optimisation
  • Operating-model & organisational design
  • Change management & adoption
  • Project & programme delivery
  • CRM, data integrity & customer-success operations
  • Compliance, governance, SOPs & knowledge management
  • Performance reporting & dashboards

How we work

Integrated by design

Operations and technology are decided together, never in isolation. It is the whole reason the firm exists.

Outcome-led

We start from the result you want and hold ourselves to it, not to a stack of deliverables.

Honest counsel

We tell you what we actually think, including when the answer is to do less, or differently.

Built to be handed over

Our job is done when your team can run what we’ve built, securely and confidently, without us.