26-27 November 2019
RAI, Amsterdam
28-29 November 2018
RAI, Amsterdam
28-29 November 2018
RAI, Amsterdam
Get to know our first speakers. Many more will be released in the coming months
Irit Hillel
Partner @ HP Tech Ventures
Agnieszka Thonet
HP Labs Alliance Manager @ HP
Simon Shiu
Lab Director @ HP Security Lab
Réka Nikoletta Gazda
Development Manager @ NetEnt
Rob Idink
Managing Director for The Netherlands @ HP
Toshika Srivastava
AI-Technical Project Lead for Automated Driving @ Audi AG
Susie tried to change who she was for over a decade in a bid to prove she was good enough for her senior roles in high tech Innovation. Her career has spanned media, global telecoms and healthcare. Whilst her work was award-winning, stress spilled into her health and her relationships, until she eventually realised that the cost was just too high.
Having experienced the benefits of coaching, she trained as a Performance Coach in 2005 and coached “on the side” for many years before making it her sole income source.
Now Susie inspires and supports high performers who are where she was – in a pattern of working longer and harder to avoid being found out. She uses a range of techniques that nurture mindset, positively leverage emotions and enhance instinct. She specialises in shifting the way that successful women in STEM think so they can rapidly become better leaders in life and work.
Susie is a passionate speaker, and writes for Families Magazine and Thrive Global. She works with clients privately as well as in a Mastermind setting, regularly running corporate workshops, and life-changing retreats exclusively for women in business. She lives in London with her husband and 7 year old daughter.
Shaloo Garg is Managing Director, Silicon Valley, Southwest region for Microsoft for Startups. She brings a combination of strong startup, enterprise, strategic partnership and corporate development experience. Previously, Shaloo was at Oracle at Global Oracle Innovation where she led the Global Customer Connect practice of commercializing revenue opportunities for startups into the enterprise client base and partner ecosystem. She has also led go-to-market for Oracle’s cloud business and was part of the M&A team that acquired Peoplesoft, Siebel, Retek etc. Prior to joining Oracle, she was in a couple of early stage startups.
Shaloo is the Guest Faculty at University of Pennsylvania Law School on Technology in Global Human Rights. She is passionate about education and is a “Champion of Innovation” at UN Women where she is spinning up virtual Innovation Labs with Universities leveraging emerging technologies to encourage digital literacy in developing countries for young girls who do not have access to education.
She is an MBA from Delhi University and has done specialization in Innovation and Design Thinking from Stanford d.School. Words to live by: “In life, there are no mistakes... only lessons” - Vic Johnson.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt is the outgoing CEO of Save the Children International and a former prime minister of Denmark. She was her country’s first woman PM before leading one of the world’s largest humanitarian charities. After studying political science and European policy and administration, Helle joined the European Parliament, and was later elected as an MEP. After five years she moved to domestic politics and, following a general election defeat for her party the Social Democrats, was elected party leader. Over the following years she turned around the fortunes of the Social Democrats and after six years in charge was elected as Denmark’s first woman prime minister. She and her government navigated difficult national concerns around immigration, military intervention, and economics, particularly in the years immediately after the financial crisis. She steered her party to a second general election victory before leave her post. Helle joined Save the Children International, the global charity that supports children and young people in economically deprived areas, and in the aftermath of disasters and war. She took charge of the 25,000-person organisation and balanced policy, strategy, advocacy and on-the-ground fact-finding before leaving the charity in its centenary year.
As well as being involved as an advisor or board member for a wide range of international organisations involved in equality and development, Helle has served on the European Council for Foreign Relations, the International Crisis Group, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and the Atlantic Council.
Ödgärd Andersson is the Chief Digital Officer for Volvo Cars. She is passionate about having the users of cars in focus as we create the digital customer offerings of the future and enable new business models, adding subscriptions and sharing to traditional car ownership. Digital services and software are already a large part of the customer offering of the modern connected car, and are growing rapidly in importance for the user experience. They play a vital role in everything from finding and ordering a car, to functions such as digital information and entertainment in the car itself, to advanced driver support and autonomous functions that keep users safe and comfortable. Prior to her current role as CDO, Ödgärd was Vice President of Vehicle Software and Electronics at Volvo Cars. Before joining the automotive industry and Volvo Cars 3 years ago, Ödgärd worked for 20 years in telecommunications in Ericsson in Sweden and Silicon Valley, in positions ranging from product development to leading large scale software development organisations. She holds a Master of Science Degree from Chalmers University of Technology and is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA).
As Global Vice President for R&D IT at AstraZeneca, Ånna Asberg is responsible for the pharmaceutical company’s scientific and platforms and transforming its technology capability. The large and growing teams of engineers specializing in AI and Digital Health play an increasingly important role in making AZ’s Science a clear competitive advantage.
Ånna partners with the R&D leadership teams to focus technology resources on enabling a step-change in R&D performance, to develop HCP and patient-centric solutions, and to simplify processes and tools. She is responsible for accelerating the integration of the next wave of innovative technologies and agility while maintaining compliance and quality across R&D systems.
Previously, Ånna was Global VP for Operations - Digital and IT. established the Digital Transformation strategy, Factory of the Future, alongside forming and owning large Transformation projects such as SAP consolidation, digital uplift and insourcing IT to Global Technology Centers in India and Mexico. Prior to that, Ånna worked in different roles across Commercial and Finance, in both Europe and the US.
Nicole Iseppi has been with ENGIE since the beginning of 2010. Nicole is a Senior Executive Adviser to and also Managing Director of Operations & Performance of ENGIE’s Global Industrial Hub (which oversees 12 Global departments, including Group Strategy, Acceleration Taskforce, ENGIE Research and Innovation). Nicole has substantial experience in the strategic formulation, business development, financing and operational phases of infrastructure projects, within Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America and European regions for the past 20+ years and has also had the rare opportunity, to be a previous adviser for establishing and implementing, on behalf of the Japanese Ministry of Finance and Japan Bank of International Cooperation – a new green financial institution called Japan Carbon Finance. She is invited as a regular speaker at global sustainable and innovation conferences and has been appointed to various industry advisory committees. Nicole has also had the honor of also being awarded, various global awards by her industry peers, including most recently – Global Energy andf Natural Resource Adviser of the Year 2018 and Named in CEO and Executive Europe Index Awards 2018 & 2019. Nicole is a passionate problem solver and a strong supporter and advocate of promoting innovation and industry collaboration, as we globally transition to a robust low carbon economy.
From child prodigy to MBE, Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon is Head Stemette and co-founder of Stemettes, the award-winning social enterprise inspiring the next generation of females into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) roles via a series of impactful events and opportunities.
One of the youngest ever to be awarded a Masters’ degree in Mathematics & Computer Science by the University of Oxford at age 20, Anne-Marie, unsurprisingly, continued to soar. In 2018 alone, she was listed among the top 50 women in tech in the world by Forbes, voted the 5th most influential woman in IT by Computer Weekly and was the recipient of the prestigious Barclays UK ‘Woman of the Year’ award.
2017 saw her featured among the top 50 most inspiring women in tech by Inspiring Fifty (an accolade she received for a second time in 2018). In recognition of her significant influence and achievements, Anne-Marie was awarded an MBE in the 2017 New Year’s Honours for services to young women and STEM sectors. In June of the same year she was also made an Honorary Fellow at Keble College, Oxford.
Not only a champion of getting women into STEM positions, Anne-Marie has previously worked with Goldman Sachs, Hewlett-Packard, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers, amassing a wealth of experience. She is also a recognised thought-leader in the tech space, regularly appearing in the media as a talking head, and giving talks at tech giants such as SXSW and Founders Forum.
Evita has a heart for driving change and putting people in the center of that change. Before joining IBM as Chief Marketing Officer for the Benelux market, she has had several international management functions at Philips Electronics with fifteen years of experience in Business Innovation, Strategy, Global Product marketing and Regional marketing & sales. At World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) she repositioned marketing from fundraising focus to segment-needs focus, changing branding, communication, channel strategy and proposition development. When returning to the enterprise world, Evita has driven the transformation of marketing at Microsoft in the Netherlands. Last year she joined IBM as the Chief Marketing Officer for the Benelux to again elevate the business by embracing Digital marketing and People experience as key drivers for change. By leveraging the new opportunities that data and digital provide, marketing has become a solid and predictable marketing machine that drives highly relevant sales leads. Next to the opportunities that Digital Transformation brings to businesses, Evita is highly interested in the impact it has on society and how it serves as a driver of the dialogue around Diversity and Inclusion. As a Board member of the Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, she also supports the societal dialogue around Tolerance and Diversity.
Evita Stoop holds a Master of Science degree from Delft University of Technology and an MBA from London Business School.
Corinne is co-founder of TomTom, a navigation and map-making company that designs and develops cutting edge technologies solving mobility problems and addressing the challenges of autonomous driving and smart cities. She founded Codam, a non-profit coding college based on the Ecole 42 curriculum and ethos, which opened in Sept 2018 in Amsterdam.Voted as one of the top 50 most inspirational women in European tech, Corinne is also Vice-chairman of the Supervisory Board of Takeaway.com NV, Chair of remuneration and nomination committee of Groupe ILIAD, Member of the Supervisory Board of the Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Member of the International Advisory Board to the Amsterdam Economic Board and Chair on the Trustee Board of the Sofronie Foundation. She is passionate about entrepreneurship, equal opportunities, education and technology. Corinne was made Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 2012 and Officer in the order of Orange-Nassau in 2016.
Angela Maragopoulou is a technologist, an lean-agile awarded leader and a big scaler. She has more than 20 years of Telecommunications industry expertise, with achievements in IT delivery, IoT product delivery and operation, Technology Operations, Enterprise Complex Solution Design, Enterprise Sales and Transformation. Currently she is leading an international organization as CIO B2B / SVP Business Solutions for Deutsche Telekom AG, the largest TelCo in Europe, assisting the business with building new business models.
She has achieved dramatic adoption and innovative use case approach, for low-cost predictiveness and preventiveness as well as operational excellence with large-scale AI. She has delivered and operated globally the Vodafone IoT and UCC portfolio. In her free time she codes (loving python), she follows epochs of strangely training data sets and teaches girls to code. She believes in the hybrid human and Augmented Intelligence as well as a fully meshed world of connected devices and that IoT is the Killer 5G application.
Dr Loubna Bouarfa is a machine learning scientist turned entrepreneur.
She is the founder and CEO of OKRA Technologies - an artificial intelligence data analytics company for healthcare. OKRA allows healthcare professionals to combine all their data in one place and generate evidence-based insights in real time, to save and improve human lives. Loubna is currently a member of the European Union High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, where she is particularly focused on healthcare and achieving competitive business impact with AI. She was named an MIT Technology Review Top Innovator Under 35, a Forbes 50 Top Women In Tech, and recently won the prize for Best Female-Led Startup at the StartUp Europe Awards. On a personal level, she is a strong advocate for diversity, women and challenging the status quo.
For more information on OKRA, visit okra.ai and find us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Diana Paredes is the CEO and Co-Founder of Suade, a software platform that enables financial institutions to understand and deliver their regulatory requirements. Prior to founding Suade, Diana had a successful career in investment banking, covering all asset classes at Barclays and Merrill Lynch, across sales, trading & structuring. Whilst working in the industry, she saw an opportunity to innovate and launch her current Fintech/Regtech startup. She believes that a data-driven approach to regulation is the key to preventing the next financial crisis.
Rachana Bhide is founder of The Corner of the Court Project, a program for women to publicly share stories of their successful careers and the impact of men as allies. The program leverages positive psychology to bring men and women together as partners for winning outcomes in the workplace.
Rachana serves as global talent lead for Bloomberg LP's engineering department, focusing on culture and leadership development for 5,500 software and infrastructure engineers. At Bloomberg she also reports headline news daily for Bloomberg News Radio and is a regular host and moderator for Bloomberg Live. Rachana has 20 years of experience in leadership and organizational psychology; she spent 14 years with Accenture, most recently leading the capability of the Austria/Switzerland/ Germany change management consulting practice. Rachana earned her bachelor’s degree with high distinction from University of Virginia and holds a master's degree from Columbia University.
Karina is the Director of Diversity for Google’s EMEA region, enabling an environment of belonging for over 18,000 Googlers in 36 countries.Prior to joining Google, Karina was the Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Vodafone, creating and overseeing the diversity initiatives for over 100,000 people. Central to her role was creating an inclusive culture, driving Vodafone’s ambition to be the best company for women by 2025, and maintain a focus on LGBT+ inclusion, with Vodafone being recognised as a Top global employer for LGBT in 2019.
Previously Karina spent 10 years at Gallup as a successful consultant advising organisations, facilitating thought provoking sessions to executive teams.Karina’s career started with 7 years on the Graduate Scheme at Kingfishe, and has a BA Hons in Social and Political Science from Cambridge University and a post graduate Business Diploma from Oxford University.
In 2017, Karina was awarded the Power of Women award for Diversity & Inclusion and in 2014, Karina was the winner of the Asian Woman of Achievement Award for Business. Karina is married with now 2 children, aged 15 and 9 years old.
Ruxandra is a Career consultant, Program Manager, Recruiter, and Learner. Being A Millennial in love with Psychology and working in the Tech World, Ruxandra is passionate about tackling and sharing her challenges. Ruxandra is guided by Occupational Health principles learned while she was a Master’s student. She enjoys solving problems about the nature of our work and also builds meaningful experiences through corporate context by coordinating learning and social projects. From agency IT recruiter to People Programs lead in a big corporation, she followed an amazing learning path fuelled by curiosity.
Tali Melchior has always had a passion for conveying abstract and complex ideas in a simple and accessible way and believes that by dismantling our bias and paradigms we can unlock our creative potential.
Tali started her career as a high-school history teacher and transitioned into the tech world after studying an MSc in Software Development. Today she works at Nordea, the largest financial services group in the Nordic region. There she combines her passion for human experience, technology and design as Customer Experience and Service Design Lead in the Corporate & Investment Banking Innovation team.
Maja Schreiner is a graduate engineer in information systems with almost 20 years of practical experience in professional software development and quality engineering. Maja’s interests include applying agile practices in everyday work, advocating for agile methodologies and coaching other testers and developers. Before joining Swisscom, Maja worked as a Test Manager, Test Engineer and Software Engineer in the public administration, finance and health industry. Her heart goes for Agile. She’s been running the Agile Testing Meetup Zurich for 4 years where she’s been presenting on different topics on a regular basis and helping the community grow. Since 2015 Maja is a speaker at international software conferences like online test conference, Romanian Testing conference, Lean Agile Scrum 2017 Zurich, DevOps Days 2017 London, Quest for Quality 2017 Dublin, Swiss Testing Day 2018 in Zurich, TesBash Munich 2018, UKSTAR 2019 London and Agile Testing Days USA 2019. Maja’s interests also include empowering and connecting women who work in technical and lead roles and for that reason she founded the internal Swisscom women community three years ago. Community's ultimate goal is to help and enable women on different stages of their careers to speak up, change their jobs, find a mentor or a job-sharing partner. Last but not least, being a good role model for her 2 daughters fills her heart with tremendous pride and joy.
Luba Protsiva has +5 years’ experience in leading OTT (Over-The-Top) projects that delight customers with quality, simplicity and ease-of-use. Luba gets thrill out of digital innovations and she spends her time learning about behaviour design thinking that improves customer experience. Luba grew up in country of Georgia and moved to the Netherlands after Executive MBA graduation from Business School Netherlands. In her free time she enjoys co-organising fundraising events that support good causes.
Francesca has been Chief Financial Officer at Cynergy Bank (formerly Bank of Cyprus UK) since September 2016. She was instrumental during the sale of the bank to Cynergy Capital. Francesca qualified as a chartered accountant and spent time in Audit, Corporate Recovery & Corporate Finance before joining Banking 20 years ago. Francesca joined NatWest Group as Finance Director of Lombard’s. She has held several positions in the RBS group including CFO of Global Transaction Services and International Banking and was also the Commercial Finance Director at Co-Op bank. Before her current post, she was the Financial Director at Metro Bank.
Joining Mercedes-Benz Turkey in 2002, Dr. Demet Karaali has held a series of increasingly expanding positions, including the CEO & President Assistant, Head of IT for sales, aftersales and retail and CIO of Mercedes-Benz Cars and Vans Turkey.
Since 2010, Dr. Demet Karaali has been a leader in information technology management with a focus on the digitalization. As CIO of Mercedes-Benz Cars and Vans Turkey, Karaali manages all IT aspects of sales, aftersales, marketing and retail in MB Cars, Vans Turkey and providing various IT services throughout Istanbul to global Daimler locations. Karaali provides leadership for the continued development of an innovative, robust, and secure information technology environment throughout the company. Under her leadership, IT in Turkey has consistently earned recognition and awards for achievements. Karaali received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Technical University of Istanbul and completed her Phd at the same university in Industrial Engineering. She has completed numerous executive leadership and management training programs during her career.
Bhuvana is currently Head of Engineering for Catalog, Wishlist and Navigation teams at Zalando and is based in Berlin. In this role, she is responsible for both product and engineering teams developing a cohesive, reliable and highly available customer-facing applications. She is passionate about creating opportunities to convert ideas to a customer-centric product that contributes to improving the end-users digital experience.
Over the years, Bhuvana has understood that creating teams which work collaboratively is more challenging than creating solutions for complex issues. She has expertise in identifying and growing talent and has been instrumental in carving out career paths for team members. She pays careful attention to team dynamics and ensures that every role is mapped with a sense of purpose.
Prior to Zalando, Bhuvana worked with Google, Nik Software, Real Networks and Mindtree. In her 17 years of work experience, she strives to maintain the right balance between home, work and family and steadily works on managing expectations.
Karalee Close is the Global Leader of BCG’s Technology Advantage practice and a core member of the Global DigitalBCG Senior Management team.
She has deep experience in Digital strategy, Data / AI driven transformation, Technology strategy and Tech transformation across sectors. Karalee started her career in healthcare and prior to BCG held senior management position in Canadian hospitals. Her client work is focused on digital & technology-enabled transformation in Healthcare, Media & Tech, Consumer and Public Sector.
Karalee is a TED speaker and has published on a range of topics including Humanising Technology, Tech + Humanity : Greater than the Sum of its Parts, The Digital Imperative – BCG's approach to Digital transformation, A Prescription for Blockchain in Healthcare, The Cyber-resilient Healthcare organisation, The Digital Dimension of Healthcare.
Karalee is an active sponsor of Women@BCG and WomenInTech initiatives. In 2019, she was named Top 25 Women Leaders in Tech Services and Consulting. She’s passionate about how technology is shaping the future of what companies will look like and how this will affect the leader’s of tomorrow.
Louise has been working in quality & test for over 13 years. She started with very large waterfall businesses before discovering agile development practices at eBay. She now leads the Quality team for the largest online marketplaces in Denmark, dba.dk & bilbasen.dk. Louise is passionate that trust is better than control and collaboration gives the best results.
Louise’s team act as quality ambassadors in their squads which brings them very close to their product & developer colleagues. Instead of purely executing tests they take on a coaching role, helping everyone to de-risk fast iteration delivery. This empowers the squads to achieve market leading results by taking ownership of their deliveries and creating effective test suites instead of heavy documentation. Louise has learned continually through her career in quality, and she continues to enjoy learning as part of the agile journey at eBay. She loves sharing what she learns with her colleagues and helping them to deliver business value with appropriate quality.
Mariana Gomez de la Villa has joined ING in 2015 and is currently the Distributed Ledger Technology Program Director at ING, with overall responsibility for driving research, development and implementation of Distributed Ledger Technology as well as capitalizing on its potential in order to unlock mass-scale value. Under Mariana’s leadership, the Blockchain program has delivered over 44 proofs of concept and 8 live pilots in collaboration with the following business areas: payments, trade finance and working capital solutions, financial markets, post-trade, bank treasury, lending, compliance and identity.
Mariana is also responsible for setting up long-term purpose and vision, including the governance of the program within ING globally. Mariana is an active leader in global consortia, outlining the Distributed Ledger Technology strategy and envisioning market landscapes. Mariana’s accountabilities include the definition of products, services and business models, as well as foresight to business, technology, leadership communities and international stakeholders, including regulators.
Sonja is a graduate computer scientist and electrotechnics engineer, stared her career in Serbia as teacher, java developer and project manager. In 2000, Sonja took the project manager role for the project that was delivered in Germany, and after some time, decided to move with her husband and two daughters to Germany.
In 2001, she started as an IT specialist at T-Online International AG working on DSL Product support and was promoted to team manager for Configuration and Deployment team in 2005. In 2007, she took over the new roles at Deutsche Telekom AG, first as manager operations and team leader for package development and environment support team and transformed them to the dev-ops team. In 2012, Sonja was promoted to head of infrastructure development media and was responsible for the Infrastructure Platform for the IPTV Product of Deutsche Telekom AG.
Since 2015, Sonja has been with Microsoft, where she started as Premier Field Engineer manager for Germany. Since mid-2017, she was promoted to head of technical delivery for cloud and infrastructure services, responsible for a team of engineers and consultants in Germany as well as Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Microsoft regional office Frankfurt lead.
With a background of more than 20 years professional experience in IT for several industries and true P&L responsibility, she brings proven experience in leading successful, high-performance development and delivery teams and business units across multicultural regions in EMEA.
Ludmila Marian is a Scientific Data Manager at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna, within the Nuclear Data Section. She is responsible for all computer-scientific aspects of the nuclear and atomic data libraries that are maintained by the Nuclear Data Section. Prior to IAEA, Ludmila work at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, for 10 years as a Computing Engineer and Service Manager, as part of the IT Department. She led the team developing CDS, the CERN Institutional Repository, managing more than 140TB of files. Prior to CERN, Ludmila worked as a Research Assistant at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland from where she graduated with a Master Degree in Computer Science, as well as at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, where she did her Diploma Thesis. Her technical interests vary from Information Retrieval, Data Mining, Computer Vision to System Architecture and DevOps, with a focus on optimization. Ludmila is an Open Source enthusiast and outside of work, she enjoys hiking and cycling.
Shea Harty is a woman passionate about helping others with their career development, even if you are unemployed. She has a background in Human Resources and Communications. She was born and raised in New York and currently lives in Amsterdam. Being a foreigner in Europe and being from the United States gives her a keen awareness of the benefits and difficulties of creating diverse communities.
Shea Harty is the Managing Director of Empower Amsterdam. A non-profit organization that believes in creating inclusion and community for foreigners in different cities. They help unemployed professionals get back to work faster with free career coaching and workshops. The organization also partners with companies to outsource their career development for their employees.
In addition, Shea is the Captain of the Women in Tech Regatta Amsterdam. A yearly European boutique conference that brings together women and men to discuss topics around tech, career, start-ups & scale-ups, leadership, and culture in a way that helps women become more involved in the tech industry. They have a unique format that combines panel discussions with in-depth small group discussions creating a space for everyone to laugh, learn, share, as well as an opportunity to be seen & heard. Their motto is #relationshipsarethetruecurrency.
As Catalyst Ambassador for the Benelux and Nordic regions, Caroline speaks regularly in both English and Dutch within the corporate community about Catalyst research and the practical issues surrounding inclusion, diversity and talent management. She is an experienced trainer, building, delivering and facilitating customised D&I events and language programmes across a wide range and scale of businesses and institutions. Well-used to diverse environments, Caroline has held positions within logistics, recruitment, high-tech and the teaching and training sectors. Caroline is originally from the UK and graduated with Honours in Geography from the University of Bristol.
Part-time Gamification Geek & Full-time Education Enthusiast. Co-Founder of EduHeroes Club - An education initiative dedicated to rethinking how we teach & learn. With an emphasis on helping learners thrive in the future, by promoting 21st century skills through project-based learning and design thinking. Community Builder & Communications Manager in education - Organising meetups & workshops for adults, promoting educational topics and gathering like-minded people that want to change something within education. Her quest: Engaging with entrepreneurs and specialists, fostering innovation and dynamic exchange of ideas with a mission to challenge and improve education as we know it.
Even before leaving university with an MBA, in late 2003, Sonna Barry wanted to have a sales career. Achieving that goal was harder than she expected. Two years into her professional career, Sonna managed to land her first sales job at a start-up (which were not yet all the rage in 2005). Since then Sonna has worked in SaaS-related sales working her way up from telephone sales rep to leadership positions, learning from her successes and failures. Today, Sonna believes that everybody can be successful by defining what success truly means for oneself and then taking responsibility for making it happen.
Giovana Vega is a certified Forex Trader (King Juan Carlos University, Madrid), and an International Motivational Speaker and Money Mindset Strategist who grew up in Peru.
Arriving in Holland in 1997, she learnt Dutch, studied bookkeeping and took on a job in Finance, discovering a passion for currency interactions. In 2014, she launched her personal journey into the world of trading and investing, a decision she never regretted.
Founder of Trading for Women, her business focuses on money-mindset, wealth-creation and lifestyle. She is dedicated to encouraging women to take control of their financial future. She inspires women to create financial awareness and wrote the book “Trading for Success, 8 secrets why women are better forex traders”.
She is also international speaker and author. “Phenomenal Global Women Project”, which she co-authored, has also been released as a film documentary. Giovana has been featured in international magazines such as “Star People” and “Global Woman Magazine”. Twice guest on Dutch National TV channel RTL4, Giovana has also been selected as 1 of the 10 finalists of TEDx Amsterdam Women in her role of inspiring women. She is also the National Director of Global Woman Club the Netherlands, a platform that connects professional women around the world.
Eugenia is a Software Development Manager at Vistaprint. In her role, she leads a team of software engineers that build customer-centric experiences on the promotional products website for Vistaprint. In addition, she manages recruiting activities for the expansion of the Vistaprint Technology Team in Europe, which aims to significantly grow the Software Development team in the Barcelona and Prague offices. As a Women in Tech, and often the only women in the room, she is keen on reducing the gender imbalance through hiring and getting involved in local communities that support Women in Tech to attract talent. She is an avid supporter of agile methodologies, having facilitated many agile trainings to different departments within the company. She is passionate about building valuable software fast and empowering teams to become autonomous and productive.
Outside of work, Eugenia enjoys travelling and running. She has ran 7 half marathons in 7 different cities of USA & Europe and 1 full marathon in Paris.
Eugenia was born and raised in Caracas (Venezuela) and went to Boston for college. She graduated Summa Cum Laude and holds an Industrial Engineering Degree from Northeastern University, where she was awarded Top 100 Most Influential Seniors due to her impactful engagement in tutoring Statistics and Database.
Hannah Johnson is Experience Director at Demodern, one of Europe’s leading creative technology boutiques. Here, she looks after storytelling and narrative design across all their projects, ranging from interactive exhibition spaces to augmented reality solutions for clients like Dumont, Ikea and Nike.
Over the course of her career, Hannah founded a London-based tech start-up, worked in strategic and creative roles at advertising agencies, before moving to Demodern, with the goal of creating experiences so immersive and compelling, they feel like magic.
In 2017, Hannah was one of 15 “future female creative leaders” worldwide chosen by Cannes Lions festival of creativity. In 2018 she was selected as one of Horizont Magazines "top 35 creatives under 35”.
Joanne Thurlow is currently Head of IT for Siemens Solutions, a Siemens portfolio company. Her current role’s scope on end-to-end service delivery to 6500 employees in 42 countries and across seven vertical markets. Focus is on IT service delivery, enabling a global engineering environment for large scale projects while orchestrating internal IT digital transformation.
Joanne’s career began in Canada over 30 years ago, and has spanned multiple roles, organizations, and countries. Joanne has experienced many challenges and rewards on route. Through creative problem solving and inspiring leadership, she commits to delivering beyond expectations by finding the right solution, at the right time with maximum efficiency.
Working with global teams, Joanne understands the key to success is the empowerment of each team member. Her ability to recognize and develop an individual’s highest potential value has ensured continuous success over the years – for them, and for the business. Joanne recognizes that all are ‘Possibility in Progress’.
Simone is the founder and designer of MINOIS - smart minimalist handbags. With an MSc in Industrial Design Engineering from Delft University of Technology and a minor ‘Création Industrielle” from Paris Design school, Simone combines solid technical knowledge with a keen eye for elegant designs.
Simone worked for several tech companies (Siemens, TNO and TomTom) before starting her own company MINOIS.
Ellen Meekels is a Business Intelligence and Finance executive with more than 15 years of international experience. As leader of Reporting and Data analytics, Ellen pioneered the alignment of business KPIs and performance measurement across Global Business Services and Country Operations. Ellen is a strong advocate for rationalization and converging of processes and systems. She implemented a global dashboard platform, enabling accessibility to data, dynamic reporting and analytics for associates worldwide. Her recent work includes the development of a data literacy program, ranging from introduction to data and analysis to critical thinking. These elements are fundamental to transform to a data-driven organization.
As executive sponsor of the ‘Diversity and Inclusion program’ at Ingram Micro, Ellen’s vision is to promote a positive, fulfilling and work-related state of mind where everyone feels valued, empowered, and respected by their peers.
Ellen holds a Masters degree in Applied economics from University of Antwerp, Belgium and attended leadership and executive education programs at University of Irvine and Stanford, Graduate school of Business.
Professor Burke PhD MBA DMS is Professor of Management with Winchester Business School, in the Faculty of Business, Law and Sport. Maria has a well established research profile, evidenced by an extensive record in the fields of Systems / Business / Management which include peer-reviewed publications; a successful track record in obtaining competitively funded research grants and an excellent track record in establishing collaboration in community, business and government contexts. She has a significant record of international publications and an excellent record of attracting external income from UK Research Councils and European Union Funds, winning international prizes for the research such as the B2B Best Internet Award and the EPSRC National Impact Prize.
Professor Burke has experience of leading research projects both as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on various projects, having been successfully awarded several EPSRC grants. One of these grants, valued at £1.4 million, aimed to explore the application of Digital Technologies to the High Street. This research attracted significant partners, national and international press and featured in New Scientist; the New York Times; Japan Times and the technology journal WIRED. Maria has also contributed to the workings of the UK Research Councils. Experience in this area, includes invited membership of the Special Commissioning Panel for the Research Seminars Competitive Fund; member of the Expert Commissioning Panel for the awards of Research-First Grants in Business and Management and membership of several Funding Panels including Research in the Wild grants. She has authored several textbooks. In addition she has published book chapters, many peer-refereed international journal papers and national reports. She has also delivered papers at many conferences both nationally and internationally and organised and led international panels and workshops. She is an active Editorial Board member of the Journal of Documentation and a new journal published by Elsevier, focussed on technological innovation, the International Journal of the Digital Human. Maria also has experience within multicultural environments having worked with a range of international Universities in Europe, China and Russia such as the Nicholas Copernicus University; Warsaw Technical University; Jagiellonian University; Budapest Technical Universities; Etvos Lorand University, National University of Columbia and various Russian and Belorussian State Universities.
Donatella is IT Program Manager at HP, with over 15 years of experience in the technology industry. Her focus is on the implementation of large-scale software projects to a global user base for the Digital Services organization. Donatella joined HP in 2001 covering a variety of roles in the IT sector and, prior to that, she served as Technical Trainer in a telco company. While at HP, she recently led a major digital transformation program that re-shaped business processes for over a million of users. Throughout her career but also in her personal life, Donatella has always been a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion. She holds a Master of Science in Computer and Automation Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy. Donatella is a proud hospital volunteer at the Neurological Institute Carlo Besta for the charity org A.V.O. Passionate reader, bicycle enthusiast and ungifted gardener, she loves spending her spare time outdoor in nature.
President of the "Blockchain Testing Community" in the Netherlands, winner of the EuroSTAR Rising STAR Award 2018 and passionate software tester. Software development is different for blockchain-based applications; blockchain impacts the way we are used to working as IT-professionals. IT-professionals and especially testers can deal with blockchain-based software but it requires in-depth knowledge. I am building a community where testers can learn and experiment with this innovative technology.
Ada Ng is a Cloud Consultant within the Professional Services Organisation of Google Cloud, based in London. Originally from Hong Kong, Ada studied Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Imperial College. Before joining Google, she spent over 10 years in the financial industry, involved in projects such as engineering an internal cloud platform to host over 1000+ internal and external customer facing applications. Ada is involved in driving the Diversity and Inclusion initiative at Google Cloud UK, and is excited to be part of the European Women in Tech conference.
Maryam Umar is the Head of Quality at the Thought Machine. She previously worked as Head of QA of a Fintech firm. She started her career thirteen years ago as a QA test engineer in the finance and mobile industry. After transitioning to the eCommerce sector, Maryam performed QA in various capacities for online restaurant and travel services. She continues to work in QA as a manager now with special focus on sustainable delivery practices. In addition to this, Maryam has been a keen advocate of creating and sustaining diverse teams. As she has transitioned in my career, Maryam has found that creating teams which work well together is more challenging than the actual project(s) to be delivered by the team. She pays special attention to team dynamics and ensuring engineers are in roles which give them a sense of purpose. Maryam has also been speaking at schools and universities to educate students about what the industry has to offer and what a creative space the technology sector can be.
Dutch-born Marie Weijler (27) is a member of the investment team at Cottonwood Technology Fund, a Dutch-American venture capital firm specialized in high-tech and hard science. Her main responsibilities include deal sourcing and investor relations. Previously, she was the Senior Manager of fintech scale-up Princip.al, which offers a deal sourcing platform to private investors. In 2018, she was involved in raising € 25 million for fintech scale-up UnifiedPost. This achievement resulted in a place on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2019 list in the Finance category.
Angela is a Talent Developer, Change Manager and Business Coach. She is passionate about all things change. Formerly tasked with the change management of large scale HRIT projects, she now focuses on change at the individual level. Both her career program and 1:1 coaching are deliberate moves to creating more female leaders.
As a believer in strong networks and collective learning, she has created ‘Women’s Badass Business’. A European network of women who are ambitious, daring, caring and like to do and talk business.
If not in the corporate setting, you'll find her switch between start-up and underground. Launching Sunday afternoon electronic music parties or chasing non-traditional business approaches. Angela likes a good game and so do her clients.
Catch her at www.angelahuser.com
Moriah Baxevane-Connell is a Cloud Consultant within the Professional Services Organisation of Google Cloud, based in London. Originally from a small town in Pennsylvania, Moriah spent almost 5 years as a Data Insights Consultant for Microsoft in the US before moving to the UK in 2017 to pursue an MBA at the University of Oxford. She now uses her background in tech as well as the foundational business knowledge from her MBA course to work with customers across the UK to optimise their usage of Google Cloud Platform. Moriah is very passionate about promoting and encouraging women in technology, and has attended and spoken at events such as the Grace Hopper Conference over many years. She’s excited to work with European Women in Tech to continue to support women across the field!
Olga Martens-Stuurman is based in Amstelveen, the Netherlands. She has fulfilled several Global and EMEA leadership positions in HP’s Customer Support organization. Olga gained deep insight in customer needs through 20+ years of Customer Service and by managing global, complex operations at scale. She is currently leading the worldwide provide Knowledge Management organization focused on the development of global, strategic knowledge management capabilities as well as operational delivery.
Olga has a master’s degree in Political Sciences from the University of Amsterdam and has completed several executive courses at INSEAD, Harvard and Nijenrode University. Olga is very interested in new digital technologies and applications, loves to learn and is passionate about people. She spends a lot of time and energy on developing diverse, high-performance teams and the future of work. Olga likes singing and scuba diving as well as cooking and sharing good wine with family and friends.
Bommy is the Chief Marketing Officer at HiNounou, an innovative health tech company on a mission to empower the world’s silver generation to live longer, healthier and happier, at home, while bringing greater peace of mind to their families. She is also the Paris Ambassador for Women of Wearables, a global non-profit with 20K members worldwide, and is a member of the Commission for Tech & Diversity at Paris Tech Advocates
Danielle helps organizations to make better strategic & tactical decisions based on Data. She facilitates Digital Transformation, enabling organizations to not only grow and innovate faster than competitors, but also to deliver a better Customer Experience. Danielle is a result driven, energetic, motivating and inspiring leader, with a natural approach to bridging cultures and people. She believes that data can help with better predictions, but we need to stay in control of the decisions guided by our judgment and that when people/teams within organizations embrace and learn from data, combined with experience and collaboration, best outcomes are achieved.
Danielle started working as a consultant for leading Multinational Companies, working with clients like P&G and Unilever helping them to grow their portfolio in South America and Spain, where she learned data analysis. Then she joined the biggest winery in Europe as Marketing Insight Manager, where she understood more in depth the challenges that Companies were facing when implementing new strategies in an entrepreneurial company. Danielle also learned how data enabled Trade Marketing & Customer Experience as a source of growth. Later on, she decided to move to Amsterdam to consolidate her Global career, so she joined RB as Market Insights Manager, where she led best practices ‘scaling” through Europe and North America. This expertise was built within agile teams, Matrix Organization in a newly created role. Danielle’s current position is Global Head of Brand Analytics in Philips leading the team responsible for the Philips Brand strategy/positioning and Customer Experience within B2C & B2B, influencing Global Management, Business and Market Leaders. To validate her thoughts with science, she combines her passion with a Part-time Executive PhD in Management studying the influence of Digital Technologies in Strategy planning and execution.
Eman Martin-Vignerte was born in Qatar and studied Electrical Engineering at Paderborn University followed by Medical Equipment Engineering at the University of Ulm.
Eman joined Bosch in 1999 as SW Engineer to work for common rail diesel engine, where she developed hardware and software for the Electronic Diesel Control system. In 2004, she moved on to the automotive division responsible for Hyundai customer to become a team leader for change management activities.
Three years later she took on responsibility for business development for Healthcare Telemedicine in the UK. In 2013, she became responsible for Political Affairs and Government Relations.
Emma is the co-founder and CEO of Deployed, a work definition platform. We use software, data, and decision-making science to help corporates scope work better. Deployed has been awarded two coveted government grants for both our user design and machine learning technology.
Having recently been named in the “301 Female Tech Trailblazers”, Emma is a rising star amongst women in B2B tech and is passionate about nurturing other women. Emma has always been a ‘grafter’ with an entrepreneurial spirit. Before Deployed, she ran the popular pop-up chain, Blow Bar, which had five locations across London at its peak, with their flagship outlet on Regent Street, and 140 on-demand staff across the capital. This led Emma to develop a deep understanding of the gig economy and how we could change the way companies describe work.
Johanna is the founder of the Swiss Startup Delygate.com. It’s a digital marketplace empowering people to delegate everyday tasks in just a few clicks. Typical chores are handyman, housework, home improvement, languages and more.
Prior to this, Johanna spent 12 years in corporate finance, management consulting and business development working for companies like Siemens, Procter & Gamble or Horvath & Partners in Europe and in the US.
She holds an MBA degree from NYU Stern School of Business and specialized in both finance and marketing.
She is based in Zurich, Switzerland and enjoys sports and sculpting in her leisure time.
Rose Beaumont is senior vice president, Business Enablement and Communications for Mastercard. In this role, Ms. Beaumont leads all internal and external communications, business experience, interaction and amplification for Mastercard throughout Europe and internationally. Focused on delivering integrated solutions and experiences that drive business performance, enhance reputation and brand and drive engagement and understanding across all audiences, Ms Beaumont combines excellence in thought leadership and strategic vision with creative execution and story-making.
Prior to joining Mastercard, Ms. Beaumont was with The Walt Disney Company, where she was most recently executive director of brand and franchise for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to that, she was director of communications for Yahoo! Europe. Ms. Beaumont also brings a wealth of experience from her previous roles leading diverse, global teams and driving creativity and strategic thinking. A passionate believer in the power of communications, her expertise lies in helping a brand connect with its many audiences in creative and innovative ways.
Passionate about solution oriented product design, customer support and remote leadership, Valentina thrives on creating a structure where there is chaos, deriving clear action items for everyone involved. Pragmatic and outspoken, she helps the teams she works with to get closer to their full potential, by supporting team members to define personal development goals in alignment with the company missions - and teaching team leads to do the same. As Head of Product for Klaus App, she is currently in charge of driving the development and implementation of Quality Assurance strategies and solutions for customers. Before accepting this new challenge, she was responsible for the APAC/EMEA support team for WooCommerce, a division of Automattic. Valentina has over a decade of experience leading and working remotely, facilitating change and excellence in those who work with her. She delivers speeches about remote leadership, customer support and working motherhood in English and Spanish, and lives close to Barcelona with her twin toddlers.
Liliana Carrillo is a computer science engineer with a background in artificial intelligence, distributed systems and business. Ambassador of several post-blockchain and AI projects. Passionate about decentralizing power, and social impact projects.
Her personal mission is the awareness creation of methodologies and technologies that can enable our collective intelligence, the sense of co-responsibility in our communities, and upgrade our society.
To build a better future with prosperity for all Liliana has chosen to work/play with/for kids, and work/play with/for high tech.
Cara de Lange is a wellbeing mentor, coach and speaker. She is the founder of Softer Success – Be More Gentle with Yourself. Her program Prevent Burnout, Find Balance enables individual clients and corporate teams to create a more harmonious, peaceful and productive life. Cara shares simple tools and tips on how to slow down, increase energy and become more resilient.
Cara is an associate of and works closely with the International Stress Management Association (ISMA). She is also a member of the organising committee for International Stress Awareness Week. Her first book ‘Softer Success’ – Prevent Burnout Find Balance and Redefine your Success launched in March 2019 and is available on Amazon.
Annelis heads the Data Engineering Team at Social Point.
She has over 14 years of experience, doing various engineering roles in the tech industry.
Originally from Cuba, Anne moved to sunny Barcelona 7 years ago, she studied Computer Science and has been developing data solutions ever since.
In Social Point Anne’s been designing the analytics infrastructure and architecture, creating the systems that collect and process data as well as the in-house BI platform that uses that data to inform the executive team about the company’s strategy and business performance.
Her team at Social Point created the first Self Service Data Lake in the company, powering data scientists and game teams as they mine for insights regarding SP’s customers and portfolio.
Passionate about crafting, role-playing games and dancing (especially Salsa).
Gloria Kimbwala is looking to contribute to an innovate technology organization domestically or internationally where her positivity, enthusiasm, creativity, intelligence, and hard work can be utilized.
She currently working on her Master’s in Computer Sciences with an concentration in Software Engineering. She actively mentors other minorities, women, and under-represented communities in tech.
In her free time, Gloria spends her time volunteering with women and technology groups in the Bay Area. Also available for speaking and interviewing.
Tereza Novotná is an Interactive Designer at Red Hat where she influences the user experience of the hybrid cloud management product portfolio. She brings the human perspective to technology.
Tereza grew up in the Czech Republic but her life was shaped in the USA where she lived for 7 years. From a student-athlete at Elon University where she competed in track & field and cross country, later on she found her passion in user experience.
Discovering herself and overcoming barriers, she finished her bachelor in International Business and master degree in Interactive Media while taking advantage of an athletic scholarship helping the team to win several trophies. She started her career as a UX Designer in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Currently, Tereza works in the engineering hub in Brno, Czech Republic at Red Hat where she applies UX processes to products. From uncovering deep user insights to exploring various approaches and design paths, she works collaboratively with the engineering team to get the best possible solution implemented. As IT infrastructure is primary a male dominated field, Tereza is looking forward to hearing inspiring stories from women who manage to lead their way in global teams.
Karla currently works as a Product Owner at RatePAY, where she is responsible for all customer-facing platforms. Prior to working in a fintech company she had different roles in the Berlin startup scene i.e. at shyftplan, twago, truffls and epubli. With a background in International Business Administration and her self-taught tech skills she steadily moved into digital product management to build innovative, useful software. Karla is a firm believer in agile methods, user centric design and diverse teams. She greatly enjoys sharing knowledge and interacting with audiences, because there is always an opportunity to grow. She was amongst the TOP10 finalists of RAHM 2018, the global LGBT leadership contest, and named as one of the 50 Women in Product in Europe List 2018.
Alejandra works as a Global Segment architect for Communications and Branding at Shell
Alejandra develops global architectures for the shell.com, DAM, Chatbots, CX and several other digital projects; her focus is to develop digital architectures that can help Shell to respond effectively to customer demands.
Originally, from Peru, she is also an Australian citizen; she gained a bachelor degree in Systems and Software engineering at the Australian National University, Canberra. A few years later, she completed her Masters in Business, specialising in Marketing, at the University of Adelaide.
She has lived in The Hague for several years, working at Shell, International Baccalaureate and Inter IKEA. In 2014, she led a team to win first place at Startup Weekend Eindhoven with VRroom, an app that utilises Google Cardboard to create 3D virtual reality showrooms for Do-It-Yourself stores.
Alejandra has been at speaker at several events such as European women in technology, BDA Europe, CMO digital Insights, Cloud expo Europe-Smart IoT-London, Enterprise apps world - London, Big Data expo-Netherlands.
Karen has spent over 25 years in blue chip customer facing service businesses, working in the UK and internationally. She is currently the Vice President of Payment Products for Western Union Business Solutions in the UK, where she leads a team focused on international payments, supporting companies across various industries including NGO, Education, Pensions and Payroll. Since taking up this position in the middle of 2018 Karen has established herself as a respected leader with a commercial and customer centric approach and a desire to develop her people.
Karen was General Manager for the American Express UK Corporate business from 2012 to 2018 and was responsible for driving significant growth from a mature business through a focus on small businesses, international payments and working capital optimisation. Leading a team of 300 her key responsibilities covered all customer facing activity including direct sales, engaging existing customers and developing new value propositions & revenue streams. She also sat on the European Risk committee and was a director of the American Express insurance subsidiary.
Karen previously held a number of increasingly senior roles within American Express including successfully growing and retaining the relationships with the top 150 clients globally; creating new integrated teams to drive an improved customer experience while ensuring full regulatory compliance; transforming mid-market account management from a servicing and retention culture to a successful sales culture; launching an offshore management information team to drive increased customer engagement and loyalty in a cost effective way; and converting customers to a digital servicing experience.
Kate is passionate about delivering on the opportunity technology offers society. She is Director of Nesta Challenges, experts in solving critical problems facing society through large scale tech and innovation competitions. Working closely with start-ups, entrepreneurs and innovators around the world, Nesta Challenges backs them financially and non-financially to find a tech product or service that improves the quality of life for chosen communities. The current portfolio includes tackling loneliness, re-skilling blue collar workers, mobility for wheelchair users and data for farmers in developing countries.
Kate started her career in management consulting, helping some of the world’s largest companies focus on building high performing workforces. In the last decade, her career has concentrated on growing the footprint, income and profile of organisations on a mission to create good in society, regardless of sector. Prior to working at Nesta Challenges, she was Chief of Staff at Comic Relief, leading on strategy, change management and government partnerships. She chairs the trustee board at Missing People and is a non-executive director of the British Paralympics Association.
Piotr is a "Digital" Executive recognized for his humble leadership and ability to leverage digital as a competitive weapon through the use of data analytics, agile tools and legacy IT. He is big supporter of all "elastic" solutions, driving variability and flexibility into the company cost model. In ALE he has design new organisation to drive agility ("Digital Studio") and unify/optimize business processes ("Digital Factory"). Piotr has operated a common service capability at GE across 50+ developed and emerging countries, and at GE Capital operations in France with need to accommodate highly regulated financial services industry. He has a depth of expertise in leading scaled, global industrial organizations and complex application/infrastructure portfolios. He is the author of the new concept of Happiness Level Agreement, which links digital operations with user satisfaction.
Sonya Iovieno heads up the Growth and VC-Backed division of Silicon Valley Bank’s UK Branch. Sonya joined SVB from Lloyds Bank in September 2016, where she was responsible for new business origination with mid-market companies. Sonya brings 20 years of corporate and commercial banking experience. At Silicon Valley Bank, Sonya is focused on high growth venture capital backed businesses that have typically raised Series A financing.
Darya Kamkalova is Data Marketplace Manager at HERE Technologies based in Berlin. For more than 7 years, Darya had been responsible for data acquisition first at an intersection of automotive & IT industries, and later – in location intelligence area. Some of her achievements include negotiations and signed agreements with state authorities, industry associations and businesses - from Australia to the US, from South Africa to Sweden. She is currently supporting customers on their journey with HERE Data Marketplace – a platform designed for location data exchange that simplifies sourcing and licensing of data and speeds up time to market.
Rebecca Töreman works in new innovations and manages the development of the IKEA Home smart (TRÅDFRI) ecosystem. Before her current position, Rebecca worked in product development engineering and sustainability at IKEA for Lighting and product development for Lighting & IKEA Home Smart.
Rebecca appreciates being able to create a better everyday life at home around the world by combining technology with home furnishing. She is especially passionate about Democratic Design, which means always considering form, function, quality, sustainability and low price to develop fantastic products.
Marili is the Chief Operations Officer (COO) at WeTransfer. She joined the company in May 2017 and is responsible for a number of departments and teams — including operations, finance, HR, legal, facilities, support, the creative studio and growth and analytics.
Marili is an experienced and energetic general manager who excels in high-growth environments. Her focus on financial management, strategy and operational excellence comes from a wealth of experience across multiple subscription services, marketplaces and commerce.
At WeTransfer, Marili’s expertize lies in the international rollout of the company, analytics- based decision making and building optimal teams for business development and integration.
Previously she worked as a consultant for McKinsey after holding a variety of leadership roles at companies ranging from Fab.com, Snappcar and Glossybox to Realnetworks and Endemol. Since 2016 she’s led Fast Forward Ventures, helping startups to navigate growth acceleration and funding.
Marili has lived in the Netherlands, UK, France, Germany, Spain and South Africa and speaks five languages: Dutch, English, Spanish, German and French. She studied Law and Economics at the University of Leiden/Rotterdam and holds an MBA from INSEAD.
Vicky Lagarre has worked for Ubisoft International production HQ for 13 years now. With her team, as Producing Community Director, she is currently in charge of following the 200 Ubisoft producers, organizing internal sharing events but also feeding them with internal and external benchmarks. Since 2016, she has been a change agent leader within the organization, being certified SAFe® 4,6 Program Consultant. Part of her role is to accompany Ubisoft senior producers and development studios in the current transition linked to Games a Platform/Service. She has learned continually through her career by exchanging with video game production leadership but also by attending lots of summits and external events (GDC, DevOps summits). She loves sharing and exchanging with her network around the deep changes the videogame industry is facing.
Asmaa is a Software Engineer and Data Scientist at Ingka Group, formerly known as IKEA Group based in Sweden. Originally coming from Tehran, Asmaa wanted more in life so she decided to undertake distance studies for BSc Creative Computing from the University of London in 2010. She published an academic paper related to Swarm Intelligence while finishing her BSc degree in 2014. She found out that there is no end for a woman’s dreams and got a scholarship for a master’s degree in Computer Science in Sweden, and she travelled 5,196.9 km to continue her dreams.
She initially worked as a Performance Test Specialist at IKEA Group in 2016, and in 2019 she became a Software Engineer in the Data Science team. Asmaa has since grown in her tech career at Ingka Group, stepping up to become a tech lead within the team. She enjoys traveling and reading books, and so far she has visited 15 countries and 40 cities around the world and has many more on her list.
Neha Sampat is CEO of the Contentstack™ – the hub powering omnichannel content, digital experiences and personalized customer journeys – and Founder of Digital Experience Platform Built.io®. Neha is a recognized industry leader, a proponent of diversity and an outspoken advocate for women in leadership. Neha sits on the Board of the Developers Alliance supporting professional growth for developers. She can be found appearing on keynote stages or expert panels discussing her experiences as an entrepreneur, a female leader, or her company's role in the future of technology. Neha was named in “San Francisco Business Times Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” in 2017, is a “San Francisco Business Times 40 under 40” honoree and one of “50 Women in Tech Dominating Silicon Valley” in 2015.
Alvaro has worked in management and conceptual development for top-notch retail, corporate, and tech clients as well as lecturing for over 10 years. Thanks to an Executive MBA at IESE and a strong international experience, he has been able to achieve a better understanding of both the human and the fact-based sides of the business, allowing him to transform complex information into an impactful language. Alvaro’s passion is to contribute to building more liveable cities by combining a human-centered focus with operational efficiency through innovation.
Prachi Patil is originally from India who studied in regional schools. She completed her Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from University of Pune and worked with SKF bearings for one year. After that She moved to USA for higher education – Masters in Industrial Engineering and Masters of Business Administration – Operations from Texas Tech University, Texas, Lubbock. Prachi has worked with Atlas Copco and Mekra Lang North America before coming to Schaeffler. She worked at Schaeffler for 3 years as Industrial Engineer for Automotive segment in Engine Component Department, before moving to Germany at Operations Department for special project management. Prachi like to read, travel and dance, and cooking is her favourite pass time. She enjoys meeting new people and learn about new cultures and surroundings, and has met many inspiring people on her journey so far. Prachi is excited to share her story- a story of a woman who came from different and critical backgrounds and managed to stay in Manufacturing field.
Judith Redi is head of Data Science at Exact. With a PhD in Machine Learning and over a decade of academic and business experience in the field of Artificial Intelligence, she is leading the efforts to develop the technology that will make Exact the Data Science Department of each and every one of its customers. Judith joined Exact in July 2017 as a senior data scientist, to start a new adventure and re-invent her career. Before that, she had spent 10 years in Academia: after her PhD, she had been a postdoctoral researcher in France and then a (tenured) assistant professor at TU Delft, working at the intersection of computer vision, user modeling and affective computing.
Eva leads the Data Enabled Design team at Philips Experience Design. With her team she is at the cutting edge of what design can do. The team uses data as part of the design process and builds meaningful propositions that encompass data and artificial intelligence. In her current role, Eva translates findings of her PhD research in which she portrays a design perspective towards artificial intelligence to the health technology context. As design strategist, she supports the Philips Experience Design organization in shaping and implementing their strategy. She is responsible for a successful design thinking process that helps businesses to develop their customer driven strategy in the health technology context. She is passionate about using the power of design, data and AI to make a difference in the health and wellbeing of people.
Frida is a strong believer in changing the world with data driven insights, and her work passion lies in the intersection between information theory, business development and service design. At Scania, Frida’s work has centred around the topic of digitalization, applied both to the end customer performing transport services, as well as Scania’s own business. Her current role is as manager for the competence centre for advanced data analytics within Connectivity at R&D, where a team of data scientists work to support the design of tomorrow's connected, electrified and autonomous transport system using data from hundred thousands of connected vehicles all over the globe. Frida holds a Master’s degree in Engineering Physics, as well as a Licentiate degree in Image Processing from Luleå University of Technology and has work experience as a researcher, software engineer, senior data scientist and business developer.
Selina is a software delivery manager and coach with over 10 years of experience in all kinds of software environments from Tiny start ups to Global Banks, Broadcasters and Retailers. She currently supports a bunch of amazing people at HelloFresh organise engineering projects which help to bring delicious meal kits to people across the globe.
Selina began her career as a project manager and has since discovered how powerful coaching can be for helping individuals and teams to help achieve their full potential. She is devoted to making the world a happier place through championing self care, working intelligently and productively, not just working a lot. She is also a Future Females ambassador and is delighted to be fulfilling a dream by coming to speak at one the most inspiring conferences in the world.
Rhiannon works in Recommendations & Personalisation as a Technical Product Manager and is passionate about encouraging diversity in business. She's started by setting up a Reverse Mentoring scheme in Technology and goes to universities to speak to Careers Advisors and students, with the plan to extend this to schools.
Arzu is responsible for emerging technologies like AI | RPA | Chatbot | Blockchain, object recognition, smart knowledge management, IoT, Smart video analytics. Focusing on innovation in business, digital roadmap and value proposition.
She is the founder of non-profit technology news platform, Big Data Q | Global Big Data Influencer, Digital transformation, Emerging technologies Strategist.
Her career started as part of IBM Best team engineers, contunied in Turkish Airlines, Getronics, Liberty Global Ziggo, ENGIE, Unilever and currently in Fujitsu.
She worked as Global Sr. Manager of Digital & Specification systems at Unilever Spreads, Scientific Affairs, being responsible of digital transformation at Production side in global business. She has also been involved in beginning stages of various new technologies in IT Industry e.g.: Horizon Internet, SaaS.
Previously, she worked as Product Manager Big Data | IoT at Smart Digital Solutions by ENGIE ventures (formerly GDF Suez - Cofely). She managed for multiple years a H2020 subsidized Healthcare innovation Artificial Intelligence technology research program. This program is executed in 3 European countries, with 9 stakeholders in The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.
Beside her corporate experience, she is also involved in agri-cultural tea production at North-east coast of Black Sea region through family legacy. Additionaly at very early age she managed for many years 3 commercial shops under franchise brand of Yatas AS(House textile & furnuture and fashion) owned by her mother in Kosuyolu/Istanbul. She loves drawing and painting, classical arts, archeology oriented travelling and writing.
Nina Bargisen is Director for Open Connect Partner Engagement for Netflix, responsible for EMEA. In this role she works with ISPs and IXPs to deliver Netflix traffic in the best way possible for the members and for the ISPs. She has worked in the area for Netflix since 2013.
Prior to Netflix, Nina worked as a Network Planner for the Danish Incumbent ISP YouSee, then known as TDC since 1999.
Nina has been an active member of the Internet Community for decades and has served on the NANOG program committee and as a RIPE Working Group Chair.
Nina holds a M.Sc in Mathematics from Aarhus University.
Bhawna currently heads IT Strategy at Boehringer Ingelheim where she defines how IT remains relevant in response to (and ideally in advance of) changing internal and external drivers. She has deep experience in delivering technology solutions for healthcare, having worn many hats from developer to solution architect to global program lead to enterprise strategy, with both learning and advisory opportunities along the way. She is passionate about ideas that spur positive change, with people at the center.
Ellena Ophira is a successful entrepreneur and CEO/Founder of Weddingly, a dynamic B2B2C platform that makes wedding planning more social, personal and intuitive.
As pioneers in WedTech, Ellena and her women-led team are on a mission to bring innovative Technology to the dated Wedding Industry.
With over 10 years experience in Marketing and Strategy, Ellena has worked with leading Brands such as John Lewis, LK Bennett and M&S, as well as supporting the launch and growth of over 200 Startups and SMEs.
Ellena started her first business in her early twenties and is a passionate advocate for entrepreneurship in Women.
She is also proud to be featuring in a new book, celebrating Female Founders, alongside inspirational women such as Martha Lane Fox.
