Dr Madelein Kleyn is a registered South African patent attorney and Attorney of the High Court with more than 30 years’ experience in intellectual property strategy, licensing, technology transfer, and data privacy across the petrochemical, agricultural, and fintech sectors. She is the CEO and Founder of Mad K IP Consulting, advising organisations on IP strategy, commercialisation, and innovation governance. Until recently, she served as Chief Legal and IP Officer at Omnisient, a fintech company specialising in privacy-preserving data collaboration and secure data monetisation technologies that enable organisations to derive insights from data while protecting consumer privacy.

Previously, Dr Kleyn headed Technology Transfer at Innovus, Stellenbosch University’s innovation and commercialisation company, responsible for managing intellectual property, supporting spinouts and startups, and translating university research into industry partnerships and societal impact. She also held senior intellectual property leadership roles at Sasol and at Oro Agri (now Rovensa Next), a global agricultural technology company focused on sustainable crop protection and biosolutions, where she supported innovation strategy and IP management for international product development.

She is a past Vice President of LES International (LESI) and currently serves as Vice President of LES South Africa. Dr Kleyn is a Research Fellow at the Anton Mostert Chair of Intellectual Property and has lectured in the Patent and Design LL.M programme at Stellenbosch University. She also teaches Intellectual Property Management and Technology Commercialisation at THI – Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, Germany.

Dr Kleyn is co-editor and South African chapter co-author of International Pharmaceutical Law and Practice (LexisNexis) and has contributed to several international handbooks on intellectual property, licensing, and technology transfer. She holds a BSc, BProc, LLB, LLM (Tax), and a PhD in Intellectual Property Law, and is a Registered Technology Transfer Professional (RTTP).
Recognised in the IAM Strategy 300 and WTR 300 rankings, she has received multiple awards for leadership and excellence in intellectual property.