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Christian-Marc Lifländer serves as the senior cyber policy official of NATO’s International Staff. As head of the Cyber Defence Section, he is responsible for leading the development and implementation of cyber defence policy across NATO.
Before joining NATO, Mr. Lifländer held executive and senior advisory level positions within the Estonian Ministry of Defence, including Acting Deputy Undersecretary for Defence Policy, Director of Policy Planning, and Adviser to the Minister of Defence. Mr. Lifländer also served as a Defence Counselor at the Embassy of the Republic of Estonia in the United States and as a Defence Counselor at the Delegation of the Republic of Estonia to NATO.
Mr. Lifländer received a direct commission in the Estonian Defense Forces (Infantry) and has been awarded the Estonian Defence Forces Distinguished Service Decoration as well as Distinguished Service Decorations of the Estonian Ministry of Defence. Mr. Lifländer received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering from the United States Military Academy, West Point. He received his Master of Arts in Security Studies from Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies (CSS) in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Andy Peart is CMSO of Artificial Solutions, an international business that “Makes Technology Think,” believing that people should be able to interact with technology intelligently, using their own voice, in their own terminology and across whatever channel they choose. Using a form of AI referred to as ‘Conversational AI’, Artificial Solutions allows people to talk to applications, websites, and devices in a human-like, intelligent, and conversational way. Its Teneo platform enables non-specialists to rapidly build and deploy enterprise-strength, conversational applications and deliver customer insight and personalization using conversational data.
Andy has over 25 years of strategic and marketing experience within the IT and AI sector, successfully helping build innovative, technology-driven organizations. He presents widely at conferences, webinars, and workshops on AI and how it can benefit mankind.
An Entrepreneurial Technology Leader - the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Fujitsu for Western Europe driving digital business innovation and digital transformation. A published author, podcaster (Tech4Good) and speaker at international conferences with a passion for thought-leadership focusing on IT strategy, Innovation and the Impact of Technology on Business and Society.
Mr. Edwin Keh is the CEO of The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel. He is also on Faculty at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where he teaches supply chain operations.
Until April 2010 Edwin was the SVP COO of Wal-Mart Global Procurement. Prior to Wal-Mart Edwin managed a consulting group that has done work for companies on the supply chain, manufacturing, and product design. The practice also did work for non-profit organizations and charities. Edwin co-founded the Consortium For Operational Excellence in Greater China (COER GC). The Consortium is sponsored by the Wharton School and Tsinghua University.
Edwin had a career as senior executive with several US consumer goods and retail companies. He was the Managing Director of Payless Shoe source International, Donna Karan International, and Country Road Australia. He also worked for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
Edwin serves on the Board of Whittier College, CA, and is on the advisory board of multiple social enterprises and NGOs including the Expert Panel of H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award for the year 2018 & 2019.
Edwin was named the best of Top 50 Innovative Retail Leaders by Inside Retail Hong Kong in 2019 and is on the Debrett’s Hong Kong 100 as one of the most influential people in the Technology and Digital sector in 2015. He is also the 2011 recipient of the Production and Operations Management Society’s Excellence in Production and Operations Management Practice Award. Edwin filed multiple IPs that won global invention awards.
Octavian is a tech journalist and the Events & Contents Strategist of start-up.ro, Romania’s finest startups & entrepreneurship publication. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief of the top tech news website in the country and he has written stories about technology and startups for two of the leading newspapers in Romania, Adevărul & România Liberă. He is an avid social media user, with over 10.000 followers, a passionate video creator and SEO Consultant.
Jaco is Chief Innovation at OMV Petrom, where he is driving the change towards a more innovative and digitally dexterous company with a healthy portfolio of new business options. He does so a.o. by sponsoring a portfolio of proof of concepts to kick start innovations, building a digital academy to develop skills, forging collaborations with external partners, and leading a cross divisional innovation council to drive alignment and implementation throughout the company.
In his four years at Shell, he helped their transition to a more Open Innovation approach. He re-invigorated initiatives like GameChanger and External Technology Collaborations, and set up internal tribes and learning programs to drive culture change. He built Shell TechWorks, an innovative outfit that maximizes the use of external technologies in a ‘skunkworks’ approach.
Jaco also spent 23 years with Royal DSM in progressive roles across four different businesses, including Business manager Flavors, BU Director (super)Fibers, VP Business Incubator and Director of the China Innovation Centre. As member of the DSM Innovation Council, he drove the company change from operational excellence to innovation excellence.
Galit Ariel is passionate about a future that will integrate technology into our everyday lives, but not control it. As the author of ‘Augmenting Alice - The Future of Identity, Experience and Reality’ she is considered a thought leader in augmented reality, exploring the wild and imaginative side of immersive technologies,
as well as their impact on our culture, behaviors, economy, politics and ethics.
Galit is a highly sought-after international speaker and mentor, delivering notable talks, workshops
and seminars that explore the role and future of immersive and emerging tech.
She has been a member of several think tanks and mindshare groups, such as ‘The Copenhagen150’ the think tank that generated the Copenhagen Letter and the Copenhagen Catalog and 150 principles for a new direction in tech. Galit has delivered keynotes and workshops at global conferences and organizations such as: TED, SXSW, BELL Labs, EU Data Economy Conference, Slush, FITC, nextM, FifteenSeconds, Data Natives, VRAR Association Global summit and PauseFest among many others.
After 10 years at Accenture Olivier co-founded and managed Smile in the Benelux region which is now the European leading Open Source integrator.
Olivier has then joined ING Group first as Global Head of Regulatory Change overseeing global implementations such as EMIR or MIFID ii. In 2018 Olivier joined the Innovation Office Management Team as Global Head of FinTechs overseeing the scouting, selection and partnering between FinTechs and ING units. Since 2020 Olivier also oversees all incubation and acceleration activities at the ING Labs with one clear purpose: creating maximum impact for ING and its clients.
Born in Houston, Texas, Brittany Kaiser grew up in Chicago and went to high school at Phillips Academy Andover. She went on to study at Edinburgh University, before earning post-graduate degrees in international relations at The University of Edinburgh (MA with honors), an LLM in international human rights law at the University of London Birkbeck College, and a Masters in Philosophy in international law and diplomacy at Middlesex University.
A fervent advocate for progressive politics at an early age, Brittany volunteered for the presidential campaigns of Howard Dean and John Kerry, and for Barack Obama’s run for senate while still in high school. In 2007, she worked full-time for a summer in the new media team of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign, and in 2014 she volunteered for the “Ready for Hillary” campaign, before deciding to support Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary in 2015.
Following her volunteer work for these political candidates, Brittany spent several years engaged with human rights projects around the world, including work for Amnesty International, lobbying at the United Nations and European Parliament to stop crimes against humanity, and contributing to human rights research projects in Asia and Africa.
After the fall of Gaddafi, Brittany helped establish a company to organize diplomatic conferences in Libya, including on trade and investment. Her primary motivation was to work on human rights issues in that country. In parallel, she started her Ph.D. on preventive diplomacy, including studying the development of data-driven early-warning systems to prevent possible acts of genocide. She also began consulting to human rights barristers and political campaigns internationally.
These activities, together with her background in the Democratic party, caught the attention of Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix. He offered Brittany a job at the SCL Group, the then-parent company of Cambridge Analytica, as a business-development consultant in late 2014. Brittany quickly excelled at the company and was promoted to Director of Program Development, and then Director of Business Development in 2015. She left the company in January 2018.
She was the only business development and salesperson to train directly under Nix. While she was not privy to all the internal machinations of Cambridge Analytica’s activities as an employee of the company, she had access to many important and sensitive documents and communications and was witness to a significant number of key meetings.
Brittany left Cambridge Analytica in January 2018, and in April of the same year, she testified before the U.K. parliamentary investigation on Fake News by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, providing both verbal and written testimony and documents. For her parliamentary testimony, she was advised in the U.K. by leading human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson QC and by Mark Stephens CBE, a leading data attorney. In the U.S., she is represented by attorneys Jim Walden and Amanda Senske of Walden Macht & Haran LLP. Jim is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, who has significant experience representing whistleblowers.
Brittany Kaiser decided to become a whistleblower for two reasons. First, she wanted the truth about Cambridge Analytica and its activities to be exposed in the public domain. Second, she had come to the conclusion that the whole system of data brokerage was flawed and in contravention of fundamental human rights. When controversy about the company’s practices broke in the news, Brittany agreed to a preliminary debriefing by The Guardian in March 2018 as part of the news organization’s Cambridge Analytica Files investigation. She provided an initial selection of documents and information, which were the basis for a momentous story on Brexit, the Trump campaign, Facebook, and more.
Brittany’s experience with Cambridge Analytica has deepened her belief that people need and deserve greater rights over both the use and proceeds of their own data. She spends her time exploring ways to empower individuals to protect and take control of their digital rights, assets and identities for their own benefit.
Throughout 2018, Brittany offered her assistance to governments and private companies in developing policies on, and programs for, data and blockchain technologies. Before meeting with The Guardian in March, she began lobbying for bills to be passed protecting digital rights, including defining digital assets as property for each individual. To that end, she co-founded the Digital Asset Trade Association (DATA), a 501C6 lobbying non-profit. Alongside her work with DATA, Brittany acted as an expert witness and gave testimony to investigations on the data industry, big tech and elections, around the world, helping achieve landmark decisions against data abusers and achieve changes in policy for both the public and private sector.
After her first whistleblowing interviews, Brittany started the #OwnYourData campaign, asking corporations such as Facebook to change their terms and conditions to provide transparency, opt-in and property/monetization rights over the data produced in their platforms. Brittany has joined the boards of over 10 ethical technology companies to help develop solutions that promote transparency, consent-based data sharing, data sovereignty, and cybersecurity. She has also recently joined the board of The Center for Data Privacy, which won the first case against Equifax, to help individuals protect their legal rights over their personal data and file for compensation for data breaches.
Brittany is also an author of the new book with Harper Collins, entitled “Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower’s Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump and Facebook Broke Democracy.” This book will hold a global non-fiction launch on October 22, 2019, and roll out across additional territories through 2020.
Brittany is considered to be an expert in the use of data, digital asset legislation, and blockchain technology. She speaks about these topics at public forums and conferences around the world to promote sustainable change and the adoption of ethical principles for digital life.
Paul Misener is Amazon.com’s Vice President for Global Innovation Policy and Communications. An Amazon VP for over 20 years, Paul remains passionate about Amazon’s history, culture, and methods of sustained, customer-obsessed innovation, especially in the context of Amazon’s Leadership Principles. He frequently describes the company to external audiences and newer Amazon colleagues worldwide.
The founder of Amazon’s global public policy organization, Paul built and led the team and served as the company’s Vice President for Global Public Policy from February 2000 to May 2016. Paul has testified before the United States Congress over 30 times and many dozens of times before other policymaking bodies around the world. He has delivered hundreds of speeches and media interviews.
Paul is both an engineer/scientist (Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Princeton University, 1985) and attorney (Juris Doctor, George Mason University, 1993; Distinguished Achievement Award, 2001). Since 1993, he has been a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia. He is an inventor named in three patents.
Paul has met hundreds of times with political leaders around the world, including cabinet ministers and legislators, in over two dozen nations. In the US, Paul has met with hundreds of Representatives and Senators, as well as dozens of times with the governors of US states. Paul successfully negotiated policy deals with many of these governors and jointly announced many of them in public appearances. Paul also established and for several years oversaw Amazon’s economic development incentives program.
Paul has met with dozens of corporate CEOs and their senior leadership teams to discuss innovation principles and methods. For the two years that Amazon’s CEO chaired The Business Council (a CEO-only group), Paul served as his sole staffer for its six meetings.
Paul had planned to become an astrophysicist and conducted two research projects in Princeton’s Physics Department. Both projects involved electromagnetic radiation detectors Paul designed around junction field-effect transistors; one project was conducted under the guidance of Dr. David Wilkinson, for whom the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite is named. Paul remains awed and fascinated by space and time, particularly as illuminated by the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
Formerly a partner in the law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding, Paul previously served as the Senior Legal Advisor to a commissioner of the US Federal Communications Commission, and as Intel’s Manager of Telecommunications and Computer Technology Policy. In the mid-1990s, he co-founded and led the computer industry’s Internet Access Coalition, which included Intel, Microsoft, and IBM, and which successfully blocked the imposition of telecom access charges on Internet access. In the early 1990s, he was the assistant to the chairman of the Emmy Award-winning FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service, which established the system that underlies all modern TV and computer displays.
In 2013, Paul chaired the technical subcommittee of the US Federal Aviation Administration’s advisory committee that recommended allowing commercial airline passengers to use portable electronics during taxi, takeoff, and landing. Prior to the recommendation from Paul’s subcommittee, airline passengers around the world were barred from using their electronic devices during taxi, takeoff, and landing; today electronic device use is permitted gate to gate.
While in college, Paul worked for two summers at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration and one summer at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In the late 1980s, after evaluating advanced government telecommunications systems at the Electromagnetic Compatibility Analysis Center, Paul was a public policy specialist for NTIA and a US delegate to several conferences of the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union, including the 1988 ITU World Administrative Radio Conference, where he chaired an international working group and served as the working group’s US representative and spokesperson. Over the years, Paul has conducted business in some three dozen countries and has visited over a dozen more.
Paul serves on the FCC’s Technological Advisory Council, the Board of the Public Affairs Council, the Advisory Board for Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and the Board of the Partnership Fund for the STEM-focused Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST). For Amazon, he is supporting the 2019 annual meeting of NCSSS, the National Consortium of Specialized STEM Schools. Also for TJHSST, Paul is a certified referee in the Virginia High School League (part of the National Federation of State High School Associations) and serves as the head swim referee and swim officials coordinator. He also is a certified meet official for Potomac Valley Swimming (USA Swimming), and serves as a meet referee, judge, and starter in the Northern Virginia Swimming League, where he is a certified (“patched”) referee. Paul’s physical book library of over one thousand volumes includes hundreds of antiquarian books, most on 18th and 19th Century history, politics, natural philosophy, and methods of science. He and his family live in the United States near Washington.
Karina Cireap is Sales Executive and Adoption Specialist at Crayon Romania.
With over 10 years of experience in successfully selling and promoting Microsoft Solutions, Karina is also certified in Change Management in accordance with Prosci Methodologies.
She has a huge focus and passion on delivering Modern Workplace Adoption Projects, helping the companies to increase the ability to do their work more efficiently.
Natalia Donțu is appointed by the Government to lead Moldova IT Park - the most important initiative to develop the IT industry in the Republic of Moldova and to increase its competitiveness at the regional level.
Natalia has a strong professional background in business consulting. She started her professional career 12 years ago with a local consulting firm, being involved in business development projects and attracting funding for public authorities. In 2011 Natalia joined PwC Moldova, providing tax and business advisory services to local and international companies, but also being involved in many projects aimed at improving the tax policies and tax administration for more than 8 years.
Natalia has been a promoter and supporter of IT industry in Moldova during her entire career. Among the most important projects she has been involved in was the development of tax and legal framework for virtual IT Parks in Moldova.
In the past, Natalia has been an active member of business organisations working with the Moldovan Government and business leaders to foster a more favourable business climate in Moldova for foreign trade and investment. For many years, Natalia was among the main contributors to various business directories on the Moldovan investment climate.
Raluca is the direct coordinator of the Employer Branding and Internal Communications team in Carrefour Romania, and member of the HR management team. Her role is to create and identify the most effective communication strategy within the organization while emphasizing the value of people and culture, alongside her team. With every implemented project, their actions are to highlight and align with the company's vision. Raluca is constantly seeking new challenges that can add value to the projects and the digital transformation within HR. With over 10 years of experience in the field, she has brought great value to many Romanian companies that exceeded to become employers of choice.
In Carrefour, digital transformation revolves around people and culture, with technology being an add-on that helps with the acceleration. As HR's main focus are the people, it is critical for them to evaluate the presence of people's effort, ideas, and contribution to this digital expansion, Raluca believes. She fuels her energy by exploring the opportunities from within the Carrefour World and the people from each department, aiming to grow as a People's Manager.
Cosmina is a senior member of the Carrefour Romania management team, with a vast experience in both retail (almost 20 years) and communication.
For almost 20 years, she has been part of many fast-paced transformations within Carrefour Romania, from entrepreneurial beginnings to today’s sustainable growth. Each of these moments has given her opportunities to create, to try and to learn, and she has been lead or key contributor to many “firsts” in Carrefour Romania: first internet website, first recruitment marketing campaign, first employee engagement project, first gamification campaign, first EVP and EB communication campaign, first HR chatbot ☺
As a senior HR manager, her role is to make sure that HR is a solution-focused, trusted business advisor, as well as a true change agent with an appetite for innovation. She works alongside her team to simplify, modernize, automate and digitize processes, in order to improve peoples’ life at work. She strongly believes that the Carrefour world is about people, so she aims to create contexts that empower people to learn, grow and contribute.
Ionut Dumitru is an entrepreneur with a wealthy technological background. He has founded Soft Dreams, a web development company focused to build fresh and innovative ideas to market.
He is also the main driving force behind ClusterCS, where his technical know-how of more than 20 years of experience in programming and server management helped built a unique web server management panel focused on high availability clusters.
With a vast experience in customer services and B2B solutions, Radu is leading Onlinet Romania for over 5 years. He successfully managed to generate innovative solutions for corporate customers to increase their efficiency, quality and sales. Over the years Radu provided valuable assistance to corporate customers for Telecom services, Hardware and Software necessities and complex Enterprise Content Management solutions like Workflow and business process management, Document management, Web content management, File and archive management, Library services and Capture solution (Recognition, Image clean-up, Enterprise report management, Forms processing). Now he is dedicated to develop more and more customer satisfying experience, staff increased motivation and acknowledgement and better analytics for accurate management strategy through Queue Management Systems and Self Service solutions.
A true tech visionary, Radu has chosen eCommerce as his main focus for over 20 years.
Founded in 2003, one of the first of its kind, ContentSpeed has become throughout the years a market
leading provider of software for eCommerce and continues to set the industry standards ever since.
The company creates end-to-end award winning online stores. Big brands and startups alike have
chosen ContentSpeed eCommerce Platform as their infrastructure for the online sales channel. More
than 1000 implementations since 2015 and over 500 clients with active monthly based services.
The portfolio consists of B2C and B2B companies that operate in different industries.With market leaders like: Sephora,
Diverta, Chicco, Auchan, Cellini, Teilor, Herlitz, Professional PharmaLine, Remedium Farm, Duc Farm, MedLife, Wuerth Romania, Teraplast SA, Amigo & Intercost, Fuchs, Caparol etc.
Dave Matthews is a systems engineer at Netwrix who specializes in security, governance and compliance and has a proven track record of delivering high-value, data-centric projects. He has deployed and integrated security solutions in a variety of industries, including financial, legal and manufacturing, and in a variety of locations, from central London to rural New Zealand.
Codrut is focusing on analyzing and promoting the new business ecosystem enabled by 5G and its peers Cloud and AI, for a healthy and stable evolution through digitalization. He is also constantly active in academic life, sharing with the students his 20+ years’ experience in telecom industry, fix and mobile, design and operations and also in technology marketing.
Gabriele (Gabs) works for SAP and focuses on Cybersecurity and Enterprise Risk management. He has worked with Big4s, boutique SAP Security consulting firms as well as leading the SAP Security PepsiCo Center Of Excellence in Europe for many years. Gabs is passionate about helping SAP customers securing their businesses leveraging the latest cybersecurity, enterprise risk management and data analytics technologies.
Lubos Klokner works as Senior Solutions Engineer at F5 Networks covering central-east Europe. Previously he has been working as Security Consultant managing team of Network Security engineers at major system integrator in Slovakia. Over the years he has moved his focus from open-source technology to enterprise security systems including penetration testing and cyber-security consultancy. Currently he is applying acquired knowledge in availability and security of applications and services in enterprises, ISP/MSP, private data centers as well as in public cloud environments.
Gabriel is a Business Development Manager for Romania and Bulgaria at Kingston Technology. He has been in the IT business for over 16-years and this experience helps him to develop Kingston’s business for all product lines through all sales channels – distribution, etail, retail and corporate. Other tasks include discovering new business opportunities, making sure that Kingston’s products reach end-customers through the right channels as well as increasing brand awareness among the key audiences.
Prior to joining Kingston in 2010, Gabriel worked as a Product Manager at RHS S.A. and a Sales Manager for the South-East Region at Aline Distribution.
In 2019 Gabriel was listed as one of the Top 100 Romania's most appreciated Entrepreneurs by Business Magazin.
Since 2018, Jean Richard De Latour holds the position of CEO of Carrefour Romania, a company with 18,000 employees that in 2019 achieved a net turnover of over RON 10 billion.
He joined the Carrefour group in 2013, as Studies, Innovation and Public Affairs Director. Over time, he has held various positions within the company, including that of Cabinet Director of the President and CEO of Carrefour Group, for two years.
In 2016, he expanded his expertise in the operational area, becoming Operational Director of the Hypermarket in Paris, and a year later was appointed Operational Director of the Bassin Grand Nord Hypermarket (France). He is a graduate of the famous Institut D’études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and the French National School of Administration (ENA)
Narcis Horhoianu joined Carrefour Romania in 2019 as Chief Marketing Officer, being responsible for all Marketing related activities of Carrefour such as customer operations and experience, brand and marketing communication, loyalty, store concept and store deco and pricing.
He has almost 25 years of experience in Brand, Marketing and Category Management acquired while managing vast portfolios of companies from highly competitive business sectors.
Over the years, he held various key positions in companies such as Vodafone Romania where he was Director Consumers Postpaid Unit or Heineken Romania, where he was Marketing Director and Member of the Board of Directors.
Previously, Narcis was the Marketing Director in P&G Balkans and Member of the Board, where he played the roles of Brand Operations Leader or Business Unit Leader for multiple categories.
Ioana-Ilie Dobre, from her role as General Manager of BRINGO, is responsible for coordinating and accelerating the expansion of the business in Romania.
With an experience of more than 9 years in creating and managing teams, as well as businesses from under-developing industries, Ioana joined BRINGO coming from Uber Eats.
Here, she held the position of General Manager and coordinated the entire operation of the company in Romania, after previously coordinating, for 1 year, the company's marketing activity.
She started her career in Procter & Gamble, where she was responsible for brand and e-commerce operations in the South East Europe area.
With extensive experience in software engineering and business analysis, Andrei coordinates the product development team with Postis. Together with the members of the Postis Community, he integrates within our platform different business typologies and complexities, use cases, optimization scripts and develops product features that generate new industry best practices and help the entire market to evolve.
Andrei holds a Masters Thesis in Distributed Diagnosis with Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble and a Masters Degree in Advanced Automatics with The Bucharest Polytechnics Institute.
Join him at GoTech World 2020 on the Retail and E-commerce stage to learn how IT transforms logistics and transportation sectors and how distribution and last-mile delivery evolve.
Anna Pelkin is leading eBay’s business development activity in Israel, Emerging Europe and Africa.
Anna and her team had revolutionized the way eBay supports small and medium-sized businesses, creating tailor-made onboarding solutions including professional training, analytical and technological assistance.
Anna’s goal is to bring this revolution to Eastern Europe, including Romania and to expose local businesses to a world of opportunities with eBay’s vast spread of 179 million potential customers worldwide.
Anna’s education is in the field of engineering and economics with a BSc in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.
In 1998 Katharina joined ING-DiBa where she enjoyed playing an active role as Head of Marketing in the incredible success story of ING in Germany. In July 2007 she moved to ING-DiBa Austria as CEO/General Manager and transformed this business unit by - among other things - introducing agile and turned Austria into a profitable unit. She returned to ING-DiBa in Frankfurt in January 2011 where she was appointed Head of Retail Germany and was 7 years member of the Management Board of the 3rd biggest Retail bank in Germany. In all these years she fostered innovation and platform thinking.
Since March 2018 she supports ING’s Board in Amsterdam as ‘Head of Platforms and Beyond Banking’ for Retail & SME worldwide. Since then she has introduced a global platform & beyond banking strategy and triggered exciting beyond banking initiatives. Katharina is passionate about “wowing the customer” by providing an excellent service experience and convenient solutions – always embracing new opportunities.
With over 20 years of experience in various software development positions, from programmer to architect, Marian Simpetru is currently Managing Partner at eSolutions, where he is also involved in developing custom software solutions and architectures.
In the last four years he has been actively working on conceiving big-data platform architectures and managing custom projects which he oversees from kick-off to delivery.
· Extensive experience in the IT industry
· Founded eSolutions in 2001
· More than 15 years of IT management experience
· Occasional speaker at local and international tech events on Open Source technologies, Java and Big Data
As the Product Area Lead Engineer for AI foundation Errol is responsible for machine learning & Data Science development for H&M group. With 15 years of experience from a wide variety of industries Errol have been able to reach an expert level in working with and extracting value from data. Both hands on in the data and from a strategic perspective by creating data products and leading large teams.
Cristian is the Product Owner of DIGI.ro, Romania’s leading internet, pay-tv and fixed telephony operator, whose digitalization has increased rapidly in recent years. With experience in e-commerce and media rights, Cristian’s role is to leverage DIGI’s massive scale, reach with flexibility modern audiences and fulfill their telecom needs. While e-commerce is mainly thought of as click-and-buy, it is DIGI’s goal to expand this concept to contracting services over the web with a great end-to-end experience. Whether it’s fiber optic services for your new home or a mobile voice and data subscription, this should be easy to sign-up to, without having to leave your home, wait in line or lower your standards. This is DIGI.ro’s goal.
Before DIGI, Cristian worked for 10 years at ProTV and eMAG.
With over 12 years of experience in digital out of which 7 spent in the automotive industry, Mihai is a true believer in performance driven strategies. With international background in online marketing, digital media buying, CRM as well as offline to online strategies the digital team that he leads in Romania is achieving every day a remarkable feat: selling cars online.
Erik Trumpp, 51, has been born in Stuttgart, Germany. Already during his time as a student at University he wrote and produced books and films about the endangered rain forests in Mexico and Guatemala.
Before joining Diebold Nixdorf in 2006 he worked for large global companies like BASF, 3 Com and ProSiebenSat.1. Inside Diebold Nixdorf he held various management positions in product management and international services.
In 2014 he took over the global responsibility for the Reverse Vending Portfolio. Under his responsibility falls the renewal of the entire product portfolio and consequent internationalization. Erik Trumpp is married and father of three children of the age of 20, 23 and 30. He holds a master in economics.
Adrian Fratean is part of the Business Development team within ENGIE Romania. He is working on the development of the company’s projects in the field of renewable energy production. Adrian is an engineer, he has technical education and expertise in energy efficiency, project management and business development and an experience regarding development and implementation of projects in the field of energy.
Carmen is one of the founding partners of PeliPartners, formerly name and founding partner at PeliFilip, with over 20 years of experience in Corporate M&A, Banking & Finance and Competition matters.
Well-known for her innovative legal solutions, Carmen Peli acts as C-suite senior consultant for large corporations and investment funds. She has been a leading lawyer in some of the landmark M&A transactions in Romania in the banking, oil & gas, healthcare & pharma, retail sectors. Her deep understanding of economics and the ability to find common ground solutions are praised by clients.
Carmen also advised banks and international financial institutions, as well as debtors in relation to important facilities to finance acquisitions, working capital or projects. She was the first Romanian lawyer to ever be ranked (Band 1) by Chambers Europe in competition and is praised by clients as a lawyer with “hands-on approach and effortless command of antitrust issues”. Carmen has advised on a wide array of antitrust and state aid matters, for clients in the telecom, IT, pharma, retail, oil & gas, construction, insurance, financial sectors, whether during antitrust or state aid investigation proceedings or in respect of their compliance needs.
With over 8 years of experience in the field of competition and commercial law, Oana has advised clients on a various range of projects, focusing on investigations of the Romanian Competition Council in industries such as banking, pharma, energy, insurance or IT, merger control procedures, structuring of commercial contracts, state aid matters and competition compliance programs. She also has extensive experience in preparing and amending legislative drafts in various fields such as commercial, consumer protection and competition law.
Ovidiu Diaconescu is currently the CRM Tech Team Leader at Ubisoft, working with one of the top-ranking leading technology in Campaign Management.
He is an experienced technologist and tech founder with a strong background in information technology, privacy, security and the gaming industry. Ovidiu started as a freelancer by founding, architecting and lead developing a fund-raising platform used in the United States, Canada, UK and Israel. He, later on, worked in the gaming industry, leading the development of risk management platforms, Cloud technologies, products, QA, operations and business.
With more than 13 years of experience in both small and large organizations, Ion Anghel is currently a Software Architect at Ubisoft.
He is passionate about technology, working with software development teams to create and deliver great software. His interests include AWS, Agile, DevOps, software architecture and the list can go on, but what is more important is his interest in working with people to grow amazing things.
Ovidiu Diaconescu is currently the CRM Tech Team Leader at Ubisoft, working with one of the top-ranking leading technology in Campaign Management.
He is an experienced technologist and tech founder with a strong background in information technology, privacy, security and the gaming industry. Ovidiu started as a freelancer by founding, architecting and lead developing a fund-raising platform used in the United States, Canada, UK and Israel. He, later on, worked in the gaming industry, leading the development of risk management platforms, Cloud technologies, products, QA, operations and business.
Michael is a Product Developer Advocate in the AWS container service team and a CNCF Cloud Native Ambassador. He shares his experience around cloud native infrastructure and apps through demos, blog posts, and books as well as contributes to open source software. Before AWS, Michael worked at Red Hat, Mesosphere, MapR and in two research institutions in Ireland and Austria. Find him on Twitter via @mhausenblas or using hausenbl@amazon.com
Job Blom is the Global Product Owner of OnePipeline which is the global CI/CD pipeline for ING and he is a member of the Global Engineering Tribe that provides IT4IT capabilities to ING engineers globally.
The global CI/CD Pipeline objective is to provide a global, integrated and compliant engineering journey for ING engineers that doesn’t contain waste. Before joining ING in 2018 he worked as a management consultant for Accenture and PwC delivering IT transformation within the Financial Services Industry in Europe.
Sven Efftinge is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Gitpod. He has over 10 years experience in dev tool development and initiated an array of successful open-source projects such as Xtext, Theia and Open VSX. In his spare time he enjoys kite surfing on the baltic sea and spending time with his two boys.
Cesar enjoys helping organizations find the best approaches in DevOps culture and practices; their focus is the knowledge transfer to different departments connecting them to a common objective. Specialized in Microsoft Azure Cloud, DevOps good practices, and containerized applications.
Karl Weinmeister is a Cloud AI Advocacy Manager at Google, where he leads a team of data science experts who develop content and engage with communities worldwide. Karl has worked extensively in machine learning and cloud technologies. He was a contributor to one of the first AI-based crossword puzzle solvers that is still referenced today.
Abel Wang is a Principal Cloud Advocate and DevOps Lead at Microsoft, specializing in DevOps and Azure with a background in application development. He is currently part of Donovan Brown's League of Extraordinary Cloud DevOps Advocates. Before joining Microsoft, Abel spent seven years as a Process Consultant and a Certified Scrum Master helping customers globally develop solutions using agile practices and Team Foundation Server. Prior to that, Abel founded and sold his own software company. When not working, Abel is either writing code (yes, that’s what he does for fun), playing his guitar or training for The Great Wall Marathon. Recently winning his fight against cancer, Abel spits in the face of cancer and will never quit.
Is the CEO of certSIGN and he will back up the project team, providing advice based on his extensive experience. With more than 18 years of technical experience in this industry field and over 10 years of management experience,
Mr. Floarea has an innovative vision and a comprehensive approach regarding the means of strengthening the company's activities, but also regarding the new development directions imposed by the evolution of the market and the new technological challenges. Over the years, Mr. Floarea was involved in: research and development projects, certSIGN’s products development strategy, over 15 projects implemented for major industry players. He also was involved in numerous actions, meant to popularize and promote science, it by participating in specialized events and publishing articles and books about its field of expertise. Also, along the years, he has paid particular attention on analyzing the impact of IT Identity and Security Field on non-IT domains, including on the activity of administrative institutions - European and / or national. Academic vise, Mr. Florea has a large number of certifications issued by the renowned international institution that, together with all its sustained activity, only prove once more that he is a true pathfinder in its field of activity.
Liviu Arsene is a Global Cybersecurity Researcher for Bitdefender, with a strong background in security and technology. Researching global trends and developments in cybersecurity, he focuses on advanced persistent threats and security incidents while assessing their impact in critical public and private business infrastructures. His passions revolve around innovative technologies and gadgets, focusing on their security applications and long-term strategic impact.
Raj Samani is a McAfee Fellow and Chief Scientist at McAfee. His prior roles include VP and Chief Technology Officer, EMEA, at Intel Security/McAfee and Chief Information Security Officer for a large public-sector organization in the United Kingdom. A leading international cybercrime expert, Samani has assisted multiple law enforcement agencies in cybercrime cases and is special advisor to the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3/EUROPOL).
Samani volunteers as the Cloud Security Alliance EMEA Strategy Advisor and is on the advisory councils for Infosecurity Europe and Infosecurity Magazine. Samani has published numerous security papers and is the author of 'Applied Cyber Security and the Smart Grid'.
Raj Samani is a sought-after speaker and regularly appears on television commenting on the top IT security issues driving headlines today.
Zwienenberg started dealing with computer viruses in 1988 after encountering the first virus problems. His interest thus kindled he has studied virus behaviour and presented solutions and detection schemes ever since. Starting as an independent consultant, later as R&D Manager at CSE Ltd, as a researcher for ThunderBYTE, as Chief Research Officer at Norman, and currently as Senior Research Fellow at ESET. Over the years he has served in many extra roles in different industry organizations. Currently he is still serving on the board of AVAR, on the Technical Overview Board of the WildList and as the Vice Chair of the Executive Committee of IEEE ICSG. In 2018, Zwienenberg joined the Europol European Cyber Crime Center (EC3) Advisory Group as an ESET representative. Zwienenberg has been a member of CARO since late 1991. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and general security seminars.
IT professional with International experience on IT strategy, acquisitions and enterprise architecture in the public and private sectors. Broad and deep knowledge, combined with hands-on experience in data science, AI and ML, systems integration and the full spectrum of information technologies. Successful track record of helping clients through IT strategy alignment and realization, developing business and improving revenue.
Ilia is driving product innovation and strategy at Netwrix. His technical background is extensive in the areas of Security, Identity and Access Management, Vulnerability Assessment, Regulatory Compliance, SaaS and Cloud Computing. Ilia has over 15 years of experience in IT management software market.
Emir’s over 25 years of work experience is balanced between engineering, consulting and account management, while doing business in over 20 countries and 4 companies.
Engineering work he did in the first third of his career was focused on protecting at that time second biggest Internet Backbone, AS 3561 owned and operated by Cable and Wireless PLC. As IETF and Netscreen advisory board member he helped define and formalize engineering requirements for IPS (Intrusion Protection System).
Middle part of his career was focused on finding technical solution for complex ICT projects in Central and Eastern Europe working as Single Point of Contact for T-Systems and later for Lucid Linx covering countries from Russia via Ukraine and Balkans countries to Greece.
Last 4+ years Emir is working as Technical Account Manager for Qualys where his combination of technical and business expertise prepared him well to work with CIOs and CISOs. His goal is to help his partners to identify new opportunities presented by Digital Transformation and to develop strategies to secure large enterprises and Government agencies. He has worked with hundreds of clients across government, retail, banking, insurance, and others to improve their IT security and Compliance posture.
Limor Kessem is an Executive Security Advisor at IBM Security. She is a widely sought-after security expert, speaker and author and a strong advocate for women in information security. At IBM, she leverages her over 10 years of cyber risk and security expertise to provide counsel to CSOs, CISOs, and CIOs at the world’s largest corporations and governments. In addition to her work with IBM, Limor is part of the RSA Conference steering committee. She volunteers with the Tel-Aviv University Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center, is a founding member of the Cyber Week FraudCon conference, and volunteers in the local chapters of OWASP and BSides Tel Aviv. To follow Limor’s security feed on Twitter, please check out: @iCyberFighter
As a former senior member of the legal department of major telecom companies and as a former member of the Romanian telecom regulatory authority, Cristina possesses vast experience in telecom and technology matters, spanning regulatory, competition, M&A and contractual projects. She equally possesses widely acknowledged data privacy acumen, having acted as DPO for one of the largest telecom companies, formerly part of Liberty Global group. Her solid background in the in-house departments of major corporations helped her gain valuable experience and soft skills in dealing with business clients. She is in addition a very efficient and insightful case handler and a truly skilled communicator.
Daniel provides valuable assistance to major corporate clients with regard to various legal advisory matters, spanning IP, IT & Telecom, data privacy (assisting clients on adapting their corporate policy to comply with EU and Romanian privacy laws, including the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation) as well as advertising and consumer protection aspects. His expertise equally covers M&A, corporate & commercial, competition and employment areas of practice. Daniel represents sound international and local clients in various sectors such as industry, services, entertainment and healthcare. Daniel is a versatile and adaptable professional, showing team player and good strategy related skills, alongside multitasking abilities.
Sergiu began his cybersecurity career in 1999 as IT security engineer with Defense Intelligence, focusing on network security and cryptology, gathering multi-disciplinary experience as Chief Information Security Officer with telco, banking and retail players. As Central Security Director of Telekom Romania, in 2010 Sergiu unified a wide range of security teams into one, directly reporting to the CEO. As a member of Business Continuity Management and Crisis Management groups of excellence in Deutsche Telekom, Sergiu benefited from a know-how transfer from top global cyber resilience experts. He was leading the Security Center of Excellence of BearingPoint in Romania, delivering security advice to European customers across several sectors. Sergiu has a master’s degree and a merit diploma in IT Security from the Military Technical Academy of Bucharest and started his Ph.D. with the aim of improving application security review through machine learning algorithms and natural language processing. Currently, he is acting as Cyber Security Officer for Huawei Technologies, Romania.
Jahmel (Jay) is a security researcher and hacker. He co-founded Digital Interruption in 2017; a security consultancy which helps secure organizations with a mix of penetration testing, tool development and security consultancy. Jay is a big believer in DevSecOps and works with organisations to help embed security into application development pipelines. With a background in not only security testing but software development, Jahmel is able to advise engineers on balancing security with functionality.
Andrada Fiscutean is a technology journalist based in Romania. She has written about Eastern European hackers, journalists attacked with malware, and North Korean scientists. Her work has been featured in Ars Technica, Nature, Wired, Vice Motherboard, and ZDNet. In 2019-20, she was a Knight Science Journalism fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dmitriy Ayrapetov is VP of Platform Architecture at SonicWall working to solve cybersecurity issues facing organizations around the world by helping to guide product development at SonicWall to tackle these growing problems.
Dmitriy is also working on bringing SonicWall’s Real Time Deep Memory Inspection threat detection technology to broader markets. Prior to this position, Dmitriy held engineering roles and product management leadership roles at SonicWall. Before SonicWall, Dmitriy worked as a software engineer at several startups, one of which was acquired by SonicWall in 2005.
As a cybersecurity expert, he speaks at industry conferences including RSA, Gartner Security Summit and is a regular voice with analysts, the press and SonicWall’s channel partners. Dmitriy holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley and a BA in Cognitive Science at U.C. Berkeley.
