SPAR announced that the board of directors of SPAR has appointed Ms Marie Jamieson and Dr Elizabeth (Liesbeth) Botha as independent non-executive directors of the Board, with effect from 1 February 2024. Marie Jamieson holds a B.S.Sc Honours degree in Business Administration, with a major in Marketing and a sub-major in Accounting, from Queen's University Belfast, Ireland and a Post Graduate Diploma in International Management from Teesside University in England. She was formerly an International Strategic Planning Director for TBWA, one of the world's largest brand advertising and communications groups.

In that role she worked in many countries around the world and is recognised globally as a strategic planning expert. Prior to that, Ms Jamieson served as the Chief Executive Officer of TBWAHunt Lascaris in Johannesburg. She has vast experience in marketing and advertising in more than 60 categories, spanning a career of over 40 years including 10 years in FMCG management at Smithkline Beecham.

Ms Jamieson also served at Absa for six years as Head of Marketing and Corporate Relations: ARO (Absa's regional business outside South Africa). There she was responsible for marketing and communication in 10 countries where she headed up the Brand and Name Change program from Barclays to Absa in all of these countries. Liesbeth Botha holds B.Eng (Electronics) and M.Eng (Electronics) degrees from the University of Pretoria and a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Until June 2022, Dr Botha served as the Chief Digital Officer of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Africa where she worked for 8 years. She was responsible for digital business transformation and innovation strategy, as well as digital upskilling, championing the way that the business uses digital technology. Preceding that she was an Executive Director at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and chaired the board of UViRCO, a spin-off from the CSIR.

Her previous experience also includes being Executive Director of Innovation and Commercialisation at the University of Stellenbosch, and founder of InnovUS, the holding company of the start-ups and other commercial ventures of the University of Stellenbosch. She served as a non-executive director of Venfin Limited and was a Council Member of the University of Pretoria. Prior to her executive roles, she was professor of electronic and computer engineering at the University of Pretoria.

She specialised in Artificial Intelligence, data analysis and pattern recognition, including speech and image recognition, artificial neural networks and machine learning. She has published widely and supervised numerous graduate students in all these fields.