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We are happy to announce to you that the President of Romania, Mr. Klaus Iohannis, will be the guest of honor on the Main Stage, at the Opening Ceremony of GoTech World.
Sabin Sărmaș (b. 1985, Năsăud) attended the courses of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, during 2004-2009, becoming a graduate engineer in telecommunications. Subsequently, for 3 years, starting with November 2009, he attended the doctoral courses in telecommunications of the same university. Also, in 2009 he undertook a research internship under the Erasmus Programme at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Belgium. Since 2012, Sabin Sărmaș has been involved in a series of digitalisation projects in various industries such as HoReCa, media, tourism, youth and culture. 2016 was the year in which he founded his own software development services company, Cicada Technologies, thus becoming well-known in the industry.
His projects focused on areas like IoT (the internet of things), finance, automotive, telecommunications, aeronautics. Sabin Sărmaș was a local councillor in the City Council of Cluj-Napoca. During that period he was actively involved in solving the problems of the community, strongly supporting the youth in the city and becoming a valuable politician at the local level. Currently, Sabin Sărmaș is the President of the Authority for the Digitalization of Romania.
Razvan Sighinas joined ING Bank Romania management Board in March as CIO.
Răzvan is active in the IT field for more than 18 years, having started as a software engineer and moving on to operations and senior management roles in US and Europe for major players including Oracle, Vodafone and Electronic Arts.
He holds an engineer’s degree from the Bucharest Polytechnic University, an MBA from HEC France and several major certifications in software and project management.
Prior to his joining ING he operated as Senior Director for Electronic Arts, running an organization spanning across US, Canada, Romania, Ireland and India in charge of providing technology solutions and services such as game engines, big data and real-time analytics solutions running behind all Electronic Arts’ digital offerings.
In the past 10 years he also headed the IT Operations for Vodafone Romania and created the IT Shared Service Center in Bucharest for Vodafone Group.
Razvan Sighinas joined ING Bank Romania management Board in March as CIO.
Răzvan is active in the IT field for more than 18 years, having started as a software engineer and moving on to operations and senior management roles in US and Europe for major players including Oracle, Vodafone and Electronic Arts.
He holds an engineer’s degree from the Bucharest Polytechnic University, an MBA from HEC France and several major certifications in software and project management.
Prior to his joining ING he operated as Senior Director for Electronic Arts, running an organization spanning across US, Canada, Romania, Ireland and India in charge of providing technology solutions and services such as game engines, big data and real-time analytics solutions running behind all Electronic Arts’ digital offerings.
In the past 10 years he also headed the IT Operations for Vodafone Romania and created the IT Shared Service Center in Bucharest for Vodafone Group.
Rohit Talwar is a global futurist, award-winning speaker, strategic advisor, and entrepreneur. He works with global companies, entrepreneurs, investors, and governments to help them anticipate and respond to disruptive technologies such as AI and the wider economic, political, social, and environmental forces and ideas shaping the future.
His clients include American Express, Bank of America, Bayer, Emaar, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Novartis, PwC, Shell, Tata, and the governments of the USA, UK, UAE, and Singapore.
He is the co-editor and a contributor to nee book Aftershocks and Opportunities – Scenarios for a Post-Pandemic Future which draws on the ideas of 25 future thinkers from around the world and was published on June 1st, 2020.
He is currently working on a multi-contributor book on The Future of AI – Pathways to Artificial General Intelligence which will be published on World Future Day, March 1st, 2021.
Daniel Hulme (Ph.D.) is a leading expert in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies and is the CEO of Satalia. Satalia is an award-winning company that provides AI products and solutions for global companies such as Tesco and PwC. Satalia's mission is to create a world where everyone is free to innovate and that those innovations become free for everyone. Having received a Master and Doctorate in AI at UCL, Daniel is also UCL's Computer Science Entrepreneur in Residence and a lecturer at LSE's Marshall Institute, focused on using AI to solve business and social problems.
Passionate about how technology can be used to govern organizations and bring positive social impact, Daniel is a popular keynote speaker specializing in the topics of AI, ethics, technology, innovation, decentralization and organizational design. He is a serial speaker for Google and TEDx, holds an international Kauffman Global Entrepreneur Scholarship, and is a faculty member of Singularity University. Daniel is a contributor to numerous books, podcasts and articles on AI and the future of work. His mission is to create a world where everyone has the freedom to spawn and contribute to innovations, and have those innovations become free to everyone. He has advisory and executive positions across companies and governments, and actively promotes purposeful entrepreneurship and technology innovation across the globe.
Currently, Secretary of State for TeleComm within the Ministry of Transport Infrastructure and Communications (MTIC) and vice-president of PNL District 1, with an expertise forged in over over 13 years of experience in central public and international local administration, Dragos C.-L. PREDA also participated as a coordinator in the elaboration of 5 national strategies and numerous other legislative provisions.
At local level, in European countries, as well as in the expert groups at the level of the European Commission, his areas of concern included: international development, public administration reform, security and defense policies, communication, development of smart cities and communities etc.
Passionate about strategy and prospective studies, DP has been since 2011 part of the Romania node of the Millennium Project initiated by the Smithsonian Institution, The Future Group International and United Nations University (UNU), participating at the elaboration of numerous national and international studies on the Future of Technology, the Future of the Labor Market or the Future of Education. DP is also member of the board of advisors of the Executive Blockchain Laboratory, initiated by ICI Bucharest, and has been involved in launching tech start-ups.
DP graduated École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) as a fellow scholar of the Government of the French Republic, as well as alumnus of two master's programs of Paris 1 Panthèon-Sorbonne, his BA alma mater University.
Isidro is the Cabinet Expert of Commissioner Gabriel for Innovation, research, Education, culture and Youth at the European Commission. He has been a senior official at the European Commission since 2001 with responsibilities such as head of Startup Europe for 9 years and Deputy head of Innovation Ecosystems at the European Innovation Council.
From 2015 to 2019 Isidro was also nominated “Thought Leader at United Nations ITU Agency”, and is member of several advisory boards to international networks of startups. He combines his professional activities with academic activities such as being “Cambridge University CSAP Continuing Fellow”, visiting lecturer to CEPADE (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid) and writing books and papers which are included as citations by hundreds of academics.
After graduating as an Engineer from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, he set up two Innovative SMEs on software business in the Tech AgriFood area before becoming a strategy advisor to CEOs of large corporations. Afterwards he became director in charge of IT and Change Management Projects in a large corporation (Atos Origin). In 2001 he moved into the public sector where he has been mainly working on strategy and innovation within the European Commission.
Wineke is responsible for the strategy and implementation of Corporate Sustainability, including initiatives related to the Sustainable Development Goals, circular economy, integrated dashboards, social enterprises, and stakeholder engagement. She actively contributes to the global strategy in collaboration with the global team and individual leaders around the globe. She works on innovative ideas and stakeholder understanding and translates these insights into long-term value creation. Her passion is to bring capitalism and idealism together to maximize positive impact.
Besides that, she is a Member of the Board of Committee of the UN Global Compact the Netherlands, board member of the Foundation of the Code Social Enterprises (Stichting Code Sociale Ondernemingen), and in the board of advisors of the Sustainable Flying Foundation (Stichting Duurzaam Vliegen). Furthermore, she is the co-author of PwC Netherlands’ SDG Booster research report, which investigates how listed companies, government authorities, social enterprises, and NGOs integrate the SDGs into their strategy. Moreover, she is the founder of the SDG Dome, an immersive experience that combines virtual reality with a seamless 360-degree projection of the world’s biggest problems.
In 2018 Wineke was ranked at number 36 of the Dutch Trouw Sustainable Top 100 and at number 69 in the Top 100 of CSR influence leaders worldwide. In addition, she was announced as a runner-up of the 2019 SDG Pioneer of the Netherlands by the UN Global Compact.
Christopher Bishop is a workplace futurist, TEDx speaker, LinkedIn Learning instructor and business consultant.
Chris is excited about the power of emerging technologies to positively transform business and society. He writes and speaks on topics including quantum information science, AI, machine learning, fintech, cryptoassets, blockchain, augmented and virtual reality and robotics.
Prior to his freelance career, Chris spent 15 years at IBM in a variety of roles, working initially as a Web producer and strategy consultant, then moving into executive communications at Corporate Headquarters leading social media adoption and the use of virtual worlds.
In April 2020, his live-action course for LinkedIn Learning called “Future-proofing your data science career” went live. In addition, Chris co-authored a white paper with MIT Media Lab professor Sandy Pentland titled Blockchain+AI+Human”, describing the business possibilities as well as the powerful socio-cultural implications of connecting AI and blockchain.
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.
Pamela Pavliscak studies our emotional relationship with technology. As a creative strategist and founder of SoundingBox, she collaborates with organizations like Google, IKEA, and Virgin to craft emotionally intelligent experiences. As faculty at Pratt Institute, she teaches next-gen designers. Her work has been featured in Slate, NPR, and Quartz and she’s spoken at SXSW and TNW. Her book, Emotionally Intelligent Design, charts a tech future with feeling.
With a passion for integrating next-generation technology into everyday life, Daryl works across the current conversational AI landscape to promote digital humans as the cornerstone of tomorrow’s customer journey. Overseeing the marketing efforts at UneeQ, Reva brings to the table a career in working with hype-cycle technologies and those companies looking to drive early adaptors and first-mover advantages. Previously as the VP of Marketing at Mitel, Reva oversaw the transition from a legacy telephony business into global cloud communication and collaboration leader. Prior to Mitel, Reva has held a similar leadership role at a UCaaS startup called Fonality, where he established a new channel model that opened several new vertical market opportunities.
Bogdan Stefanescu is a Product Sales Manager Data Protection Solutions at Dell Technologies. Bogdan has over 20 years of experience in the field of Data Protection solutions and Technology, out of which 7 were spent at Dell Technologies, Bogdan has a degree from “Universitatea Politehnica din București”, asset that give him substantial knowledge of the field both from a strong academic background, but also from actual experience with real challenges.
[Kaloyan Dimitrov] As a Sales Executive, establishing a great relationship with customers is my key driver and self-motivation factor. In my career, I have always been focused on delivering the best results. I have experience working with Microsoft products for the past couple of years. I have worked with customers from all over the world. Primarily I work with clients from the EMEA and AMS regions. In terms of education, I have studied Business Administration at New Bulgaria University.
In my personal life, my hobbies are hiking in the mountains in Bulgaria and skiing on the slopes of Rila and Pirin. I have a wonderful Alabai dog, which goes with me on hiking adventures. Spending quality time with friends is the best way to relax for me. As they are working in many different areas, we always exchange valuable experience.
With over 20 years of experience in the field of IT solutions for infrastructure and security, Ovidiu Seceleanu manages the B2B solutions team of the Samsung Romania IM division. The mission is to promote Samsung mobility solutions for companies, to develop the partners ecosystem and to make Samsung Knox the market leader in the field of mobile device management solutions.
Alexandru Luca is an experienced Senior Consultant for Mobile Technologies with over 15 years of experience in IT & C field. Over the years, Mr. Luca has gained valuable experience in this field both by taking key roles in the companies in which he has worked and by acquiring important certifications in this field such as Certified Enterprise Mobility Management, Certified Solution Design & Deployment and Certified System Architecture.
Mr. Luca is a member of the certSIGN team for more than 4 years during which, his activity was an important part of certSIGN’s work and business in this field. The company, with its own mobile security department, has developed and now owns its proprietary mobile products, such as Trust4Mobile – Voice and Messages Encryption application, Fides – Electronic Signature application, and, at this moment, is giving increased interest in continuously improving products and maintaining them at a constantly up-to-date technological level.”
Sebastian Crețu is part of the Smart Fintech team for nearly a year, but he was involved from the incipient fazes in the new open banking projects. Sebastian is a long time passionate about innovation in any form and about business analysis as well. He is a master’s student at Cybernetics and an entrepreneurship enthusiast.
In ITSS, Sebastian is known for his determination to get things done. His contribution in product development played often a crucial role in fixing outdated processes, driving new technology adoption and innovation along the way.
His determination led him to oversee the business and functional specifications of the Finest & Ryke projects, and his contribution in the development of these strategic products has proven valuable. Sebastian will co-speak on the Demo Stage, presenting the Finest & Ryke products he helped develop from consulting to product development.
Alexandru Cociu is executive partner at IT Smart Systems and co-founder at Smart Fintech, the Romanian open banking innovation lab built in 2018.
Alex is passionate about technology, digital transformation and innovation. His perseverance, the way he embraces the challenges and turns them into opportunities, his always fairness and the way he openly speaks his mind - brought Alex from Junior Developer (his first job ever) to Executive Partner of ITSS in under 10 years. He is an inspirational leader for his team and an important pillar in business development.
His 10+ experience in business development and innovative technology services led the way to the creation of one of the most important products about to be launched by Smart Fintech: Finest – The App. Alex is the product owner of the app and he will present it during his Demo Stage Presentation: ‘Open Banking times two’. `He will gladly answer to any of your queries about the Smart Fintech products.
Experienced Solution Sales Specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Skilled in Business Process Automation, Digital Transformation and Enterprise Software with focus to grow customer profitability and efficiency.
Teo Granis is one of the tenacious changemakers of Softone Technologies, whose mission is to build proofs to the world that progress is always possible through innovation and sustainable changes. In 2006 he was introduced to the business software and the premise of digital transformation
for SME's captivated his interest. Throughout Europe, Theo Granis has been working for SoftOne
for more than 6 years, facilitating the integration of new technologies in business environments.
With more than 15 years of experience in various IT areas, Mihail Musat is an experienced trainer, author and promoter. He currently serves as Director of Technical Operations at Bigstep, a dedicated bare metal server and IaaS solutions provider.
After finishing his Quantitative Economics studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1993, Gijsbert decided to start working in Romania where he set up, together with a local partner, the branch office of Larive a Dutch business development organization.
In 1995 he set up a furniture factory together with his cousin who acted as an industrial partner. This business was grown from zero to 5 m€ turnover in 10 years. Products are exported to almost all countries in Europe. The factory continues to date and currently employs 110 people under local management.
Gijsbert is one of the founders of Som Energia, Spain's first renewable energy cooperative in 2010. He has been involved in all stages of its rapid development. In 10 years Som Energia has grown to 68.000 members, 118.000 electricity contracts and an expected 2020 turnover of 75 m€. Around 90 people work in the office in Girona, Spain with hundreds of volunteers involved at various local support groups around the country. Together the members have invested over 10 m€ in new solar, hydro and biogas projects. Gijsbert resigned as general manager of Som Energia in May 2018.
On a personal level, Gijsbert invested in 2 solar PV plants in Spain in 2012. One plant is an 850 kWp fixed panel plant on land in Juneda, Lleida province. The other is a 620 kWp solar tracker plant near La Granadella, Leida province. Each plant produces around 1.3 GWh per year.
From 2015 some small investments in off grid solar projects were done in India, with later projects in Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Palestine and Bangladesh, amongst others. All these investments took place via a variety of local and international crowdfunding platforms. Gijsbert is board member and a (small) investor in Solaris Offgrid, a pay-as-you-go solar company.
In 2017 a first investment in a 70 kWp on PPA project on a hotel Phnom Penh in Cambodia was made followed by becoming a minority shareholder in a small solar engineering company. 2019 saw another PPA project of 102 kWp on the roof of a water treatment company in Takeo province.
The lessons from Som Energia are currently being used in the development of Cooperativa de Energie, Romania’s first renewable energy cooperative of which Gijsbert is co-founder and member of the board. Cooperativa de Energie is preparing to launch its first production projects and initiate the selling of green electricity in the Romanian market in 2021. 322 people from around Romania are members as of October 2020.
Trayan Trayanov is a Co-founder & Managing partner in Mercatus (hyperlink: www.mercatus.bg) - an agency for outsourced services BPO & ITO. In less than 2 years, the company has been working with over 50 clients, ranging from Startups to large corporations that offer Market Penetration in the EMEA, DACH regions.
Mercatus' customers are mainly technology, telecommunications, financial and manufacturing companies.
Trayan has over 10 years of experience in the BPO & ITO industries, working with large accounts such as AVAYA, Alcatel Lucent, SalesForce, Microsoft. He graduated in Business Management in London - Sunderland University and returned to Bulgaria in 2009.
Mana is VP Sales at Supermsmart, responsible for new engagements, managing strategic accounts and managing alliances.
Mana is an accomplished, passionate, results-oriented sales leader, an expert in selling Enterprise Solutions, focused on understanding each organization and "making a difference" by driving the right solution. Mana has 25 years of experience in retail tech, having held various sales management roles in Retalix, NCR, Profitect and several startups.
As part of EMEA ZEBRA Solution team, Nicola is taking care of the EMEA Personal Self-shopping solution as Business Development Manager, helping retailers maximize the benefits in deploying Self-Shopping service to Consumers.
Nicola has 12-years’ experience in this field with different roles and had the pleasure to work with several Retailers who are successfully offering “Scan&go” service to their customers.
Currently, Global Community Manager at TikTok, overseeing 7 countries from the CEE (The Netherlands, The Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia), Laura Savu has an ascending career as social media strategist and communicator, which saw her elaborate and implement projects from different roles across major industry players, on both agency and client sides – Philip Morris International, Coca Cola Company, Lowe&Partners Bucharest. With 9 years behind, handling social media planning and strategy and influencer marketing, Laura is currently based in Berlin
Currently, Global Community Manager at TikTok, overseeing 7 countries from the CEE (The Netherlands, The Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia), Laura Savu has an ascending career as social media strategist and communicator, which saw her elaborate and implement projects from different roles across major industry players, on both agency and client sides – Philip Morris International, Coca Cola Company, Lowe&Partners Bucharest. With 9 years behind, handling social media planning and strategy and influencer marketing, Laura is currently based in Berlin
Data-driven marketer and Digital Transformation Expert with 18yrs+ experience in CRM & digital marketing. Salesforce Certified Consultant & HubSpot Certified Professional.Co-founder/ manager of 4 successful companies. Proud father of Amalia. Big fan of F1. Bigger fan of fishing. Gourmet chef.
With over 9 years of experience in content management, digital and social media marketing, copywriting and public relations in diverse business areas (private & NGOs), Elena Hogaş is especially passionate about the impact that the visual and text mediums of communication can have over different audiences and the relationship between brands and customers build on them, in the digital era.
As a Marketing Specialist for certSIGN – Romania’s top Qualified Trust Service Provider specialized in innovative software for information security and information systems protection – for the past 2 years she was involved in the development and implementation of various B2B and B2C marketing campaigns.
Alina has over 15 years of experience in Marketing & Advertising field, and 12 as a Marketing Manager.
Her dynamic personality, creative mind and enterprising spirit, determined her to specialize in Brand Management, Marcom Strategy and PR, having a proven success in managing the portfolios of top brands. Over the years, she became passionate about the emotional connection between the consumer and the brand, so that it may generate customer loyalty and influence purchase decision. Developing exeperiential marketing strategies to communicate on a much more personal level and to generate a deeper level of emotional engagment, is her goal.
As Marketing Manager, at certSIGN she is responsible for marketing strategy development, positioning, product & marketing mix and brand performance.
Silvia Dumitrașcu has been part of the ING Bank Romania team since 2014, when she joined as a Senior Digital Marketing Performance & Strategy Expert. In 2017, she occupied the position of Content, Social Media and Website Manager and in 2018 she took on the role of Web Performance Product Lead and Functional Manager as part of ING’s Digital Tribe.
Silvia has a background in Finance and Marketing, working in companies such as IBM and one of the local Agile coaching Startups - Mosaic Works, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Urban studies, as well as a Master’s degree in Physical Planning and the Management of Urban and Rural Settlements from the University of Bucharest.
Andrei is the co-founder of Pluria, on office-as-a-service start-up that offers workspaces access for employees, and 7card, the market leader in corporate sports benefits. Andrei has a background in management consulting and venture capital investment.
Gabriel Caramis is the Founder & CEO of Woobble with an experience of over 10 years in Online Marketing. He launched Woobble in 2017 with the focus to make digital matter to customer problems with specific to all the web, mobile and marketing solutions.
Gabriel always makes sure, the solutions are 100% unique and meet the client’s requirements. He is self-determined and urges to provide the best solution to suit your business nature and goal.
His team of professionals will closely work with you and spot the right window for your business to attract customers. They have a wide area of knowledge in providing vital solutions and services in the areas of information technology, consulting and outsourcing in various segments of industry like advertising, education, finance, healthcare, life sciences, hotel/hospitality, media and entertainment, mobile and wireless, retail, real estate, sports and fitness, technology, non-profit and more.
We Make Digital Matter to You!
Tara Hunt, CEO of Truly Inc. and co-founder of Phlywheel, has over 20 years of experience in market research and strategy on both client and agency-side. She wrote one of the first books on how the social web is changing business, was named one of 2013's Entrepreneurial Women to Watch by Entrepreneur Magazine, and one of the Most Influential Women in Technology in Fast Company.
She has built an engaged and enthusiastic business audience online of over 350,000 followers, including a significant number of thought leaders. She is a LinkedIn Influencer, followed by over 220,000 people. Her Slideshare presentations have been viewed over 2 million times. She is in the top 5% of Twitter users worldwide with over 50,000 followers, and she produces a regular web series on YouTube called The Phlywheel Factor which has over 10,000 subscribers.
Andrei Borțun is The Institute Foundation's CEO and has been a promoter and supporter of creative industries in Romania for the past 20 years. Among the most important projects initiated and organized by Andrei Borțun together with The Institute team are: Internetics Digital Festival, Civil Society Gala, Art Directors Club Romania, the editorial project INSTITUTE, The Magazine and www.institute.ro, Romanian Design Week, DIPLOMA - Vocational and Creative Faculties Festival, Creative Quarter of Bucharest, and ASAP Romania, a project that promotes a responsible behavior towards plastic use and pollution.
Andrei is also partner in Dăescu Borțun Olteanu PR agency and Rusu + Borțun Brand Growers advertising agency, both located in Bucharest.
Andrei Georgescu is co-founder and Managing Director of White Image for more than 15 years. He is passionate about data and solutions that generate results. Currently, White Image delivers Data Management and E-Mail Marketing solutions for customers from e-commerce, banking, auto, HR, and many other fields. You can also find Andrei as a teacher at the IAA School where he teaches E-Mail Marketing, data management & marketing automation.
Adrian, together with OmniPERFORM, helps businesses accelerate their results through digitally-driven integrated campaigns and omni-channel setup.
Launching numerous omnichannel or digital B2B & B2C Commerce projects in more than 14 years, he invested and founded OmniPERFORM – an agency using neuromarketing algorithms embedded within proprietary innovative technology and by this way being able to maximise the campaigns’ performances, achieving higher conversion rates and leading to higher revenue and profit.
Adrian, both as speaker and trainer, is known for offering transformational perspectives and processes between Strategy, Creative and Media departments to keep the focus on the brand’s campaigns results and for successful and proven ways to analyse the results of (marketing) campaigns.
Amy Balliett is the CEO and founder of the creative content agency, Killer Visual Strategies (formerly Killer Infographics). She owned her first company, a candy store and ice cream parlor, at the age of 17 before heading off for college. She subsequently built a successful career in SEO and marketing, and headed up SEO at several companies before launching Killer in 2010. In the years since, she has grown Killer Visual Strategies to become the industry leader in visual communication, driving visual strategy and creative content campaigns for global brands including Microsoft, Boeing, Adobe, Nikon, Starbucks, the National Endowment for the Arts, the United Nations, and more.
Laura leads the team that connects Duolingo’s 300M learners and empowers Global Ambassadors, aka Duolingo’s community growth engine responsible for launching 90+ courses, holding 700+ weekly events, and supporting a language learning forum with over 1M+ daily visits.
Before joining Duolingo, Laura spent nine years at Yelp where she helped craft the original community growth playbook before moving abroad to spearhead Yelp's international expansion. All in all, Laura had a hand in launching over 80 communities in 13 countries and loved every scrappy, entrepreneurial minute of it. Laura now lives in Seattle with her husband, three kids, and ever-present wanderlust.
Mihnea is an e-Government enthusiast having spent recent years in top management positions for Romanian IT businesses. He is now Deputy CEO for Trencadis Corp, an organic growing Romanian integrator managing complex IT systems, accessed by more than 100.000 citizens daily. Mihnea joined Trencadis in May 2017 having previously shown his expertise in implementing many critical systems as Project and Program Manager from 2003 to 2017 in e-Government, Retail, Automotive and Telco IT sectors.
Mihnea Mihailescu began his project management career holding local and regional positions in Softwin and IBM, implementing projects in various countries, such as Serbia, Bulgaria, The Netherlands and UK. He earned a degree in Economics and likes to ski and travel in the rural and historic sites of Romania.
Emanuel Popa, IP Engineering Director, works within Digi Group | RCS & RDS since 2000, when he joined the company for a technical support position. From April 2001, he took over the responsibilities of WAN Engineer (administration, planning and development of the national IP / MPLS network), and four years later he became IP Backbone Team Leader.
Also in 2005, he was appointed NMC manager and, since August 2010, MIST manager, becoming at the same time the coordinator of IP Engineering Direction of NMC, MIST and Backbone activities.
Emanuel has a degree in Economic Informatics, being a graduate of the Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics within the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest.
Jonathan is a senior executive at Cortex where he leads the sales and marketing efforts. He is a Member of the IET, a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and a Chartered Engineer. Prior to Cortex Jonathan has spent more than 28 years in the Enterprise software industry. He has been instrumental to the success and transformation of many organizations in various roles from Sales Exec to CEO in companies such as CA, VMWare, Intralinks, Digital Fuel, Astea and start-ups; two of which he founded.
Formally trained in Cybernetics and Control systems and an active passion for the same, Jonathan provides thought leadership for automation based on a deep understanding of cybernetics, complex systems and process engineering.
With over 14 years of experience in the telecom industry and IT Operations, Marian is now responsible with the automation implementation and evolution in Orange Romania’s IT Operations department.
Bogdan is a senior business developer, with extensive experience in telecoms. Since 2004 he has occupied various positions in telecom integrators, tier 1 operators and hardware manufactures.
Bogdan has a Bachelor’s degree in Images, Shapes and Artificial Intelligence from The University of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology – Bucharest, Romania. Since 2012 he is having a lecture in FTTx network design for the Orange Education Program organized inside POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest.
Starting from 2019 Bogdan has joined our Realworld Systems team being responsible for developing new business directions for the company.
Experienced Solution Sales Specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Skilled in Business Process Automation, Digital Transformation and Enterprise Software with focus to grow customer profitability and efficiency.
Mitko is working at the Microsoft IoT, Mixed-reality and Robotics EMEA team. Mitko has 20 years of professional experience in the high-tech market. After founding the Cisco IoT Innovation Center Berlin as the CTO, he founded the startup OA Digital, Inc. where he was the CEO. He was active in different sales, technology, innovation and investment leadership roles.
Strategic Business Developer & Cloud Enthusiast, acting as a trusted advisor for driving business growth with Cloud Technologies.
Technology-addicted, after spending 8 years working in the banking industry among top leaders that inspired him, he decided to join Revolgy as a Country Manager.
Now he is responsible for the Balkan & Middle East region, helping companies of all sizes to get access and migrate to Public Cloud.
From Cloud Architecture to workspace collaboration, his team of certified engineers is working closely with the Googlers and Amazonians to make sure they are delivering the best expertise when it comes to digital transformation.
Cloud Solutions with a personal touch | Ask me about Google and AWS:)
Mihnea is an e-Government enthusiast having spent recent years in top management positions for Romanian IT businesses. He is now Deputy CEO for Trencadis Corp, an organic growing Romanian integrator managing complex IT systems, accessed by more than 100.000 citizens daily. Mihnea joined Trencadis in May 2017 having previously shown his expertise in implementing many critical systems as Project and Program Manager from 2003 to 2017 in e-Government, Retail, Automotive and Telco IT sectors.
Mihnea Mihailescu began his project management career holding local and regional positions in Softwin and IBM, implementing projects in various countries, such as Serbia, Bulgaria, The Netherlands and UK. He earned a degree in Economics and likes to ski and travel in the rural and historic sites of Romania.
Romeo Kienzler is Chief Data Scientist at the IBM Center for Open Source Data and AI Technologies (CODAIT) in San Fransisco.
He holds an M. Sc. (ETH) in Computer Science with a specialization in Information Systems, Bioinformatics, and Applied Statistics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
He works as Associate Professor for Artificial Intelligence at the Swiss University of Applied Sciences Berne and Adjunct Professor for Information Security at the Swiss University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). His current research focus is on cloud-scale machine learning and deep learning using open source technologies including TensorFlow, Keras, and the Apache Spark stack.
Recently he joined the Linux Foundation AI as lead for the Trusted AI technical workgroup with focus on Deep Learning Adversarial Robustness, Fairness and Explainability.
He also contributes to various open source projects. He regularly speaks at international conferences including significant publications in the area of data mining, machine learning and Blockchain technologies.
Romeo is lead instructor of the Advance Data Science specialisation on Coursera https://www.coursera.org/specializations/advanced-data-science-ibm with courses on Scalable Data Science, Advanced Machine Learning, Signal Processing and Applied AI with DeepLearning
Recently his latest book on Mastering Apache Spark V2.X (http://amzn.to/2vUHkGl) has been translated into Chinese (http://www.flag.com.tw/books/product/FT363).
Romeo Kienzler is a member of the IBM Technical Expert Council and the IBM Academy of Technology - IBM’s leading brain trusts. #ibmaot
Radu Isaia, Sales Specialist in Storage, Platforms and Solutions at Dell Technologies, is an experienced Data Center solutions consultant, working in large scale Storage and Data Center projects, with technologies such as primary storage, unstructured data storage, virtualization and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), Data Protection, Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity, and Cloud Services.
He has a Computer Science degree from “Universitatea Politehnica din București” and 18 years of experience in the field of Storage & Data Center solutions.
With background in sales, marketing, training and consultancy, Tiberiu is now focused on delivery of suitable and customized tools for companies to optimize their internal processes and increase employees’ work efficiency.
PhD in Engineering and Management
Certified Prince2 Project Management Practitioner
Over 20 years in IT
Specialties:
Solution Selling;
Planning;
Consultancy and Project Management.
Experienced sales professional with more than 15 years of proven expertise in Business Development, Management, Product and Portfolio Management, Partnership development, Services, Solution Selling, consulting and training experience.
A technology enthusiast with high expertise in Video surveillance, Video analytics & Video Management System, Hardware & Software infrastructure, Digital signage and IoT.
Specialties:
- Video surveillance;
- Video analytics & Video Management System;
- Hardware & Software infrastructure;
- Solutions selling;
- People Management.
Technology-addicted, challenge-addicted, experienced in Digital Workplace/IT Business Development (Strategy, Planning and Management), with sales and consultancy competencies in software applications, infrastructure services, cloud and on-premise solutions.
Ph.D. in Economic Informatics specialized in e-Business Management.
Certified in Project Management, certified competencies in Leadership, Performance Management, Change Management and Negotiation, CRM and ECM; authorized Trainer.
With 24 years in IT, out of which 14 in Management.
Specialties:
- Business Management - from Strategy to Operations and P&L;
- Services and Solutions Portfolio Development and Management;
- Solution Selling;
- Consultancy and Project Management, Training;
- People Management.
Alex "Jay" Balan is the Chief Security Researcher and Spokesperson for Bitdefender. His career is focused on Information Security, Innovation and Product Strategy, fields in which he has so far accumulated over 15 years of experience. He drove the vision for Bitdefender's UNIX-based security solutions before kickstarting an ambitious project that would advance the company's R&D department and steer a good part of the company's focus towards technology and innovation.
He is now furthering security and privacy research and has been actively involved in creating awareness by speaking at a number of conferences including DEF CON, DerbyCon, RSA Conference, BSides, ISC China, Interpol's meetings on Cyber Crime for Heads of Units, DefCamp, IMWorld, Future of Media and many others.
Mihai Constandis has more than 18 years of IT experience in diverse roles ranging from engineering, testing, project and portfolio management to sales, customer management, and scaling business and large engineering organizations. He joined Softvision eight years ago as a Delivery Manager and had an important role in evolving our successful engagement with our business partners.
Mihai was involved in the implementation and adaptation of the Guilds, Community and Pod model to Romania. He became the Head of Communities for Romania a couple of years ago and has always applied a mindset of evolution and engaging team spirit to building strategic structures and contributing, together with the leadership team, to Cognizant Softvision’s growth and success in Romania.
Răzvan Prichici is an experienced, hands-on software architect focused on the architecture, design, and implementation of microservices, cloud services and distributed systems. He works every day on solving hard business problems with cutting-edge technologies.
I give organizations insight into their processes and knowledge through Machine Learning solutions and I help development teams achieve their goals through continuous delivery. I have a keen eye for software quality. To deepen my business knowledge I got an MBA at the Rotterdam School of Management specializing on spin-offs and innovation.
Through my work I am able to bring insight into how engineering innovation can help bring a better user experience, optimizing processes and improving software quality.
With a background in both front-end and back-end programming, George Dragomir joined the ING Bank Romania team in 2017, where he occupies the role of Senior Java Developer. He is a versatile and professional software engineer, experienced in developing innovative and creative solutions. Able to perform full software development life cycle activities, he is dedicated to streamlining processes and efficiently solving project issues. George has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and Automatic Control from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.
Developer and creator of many things OSS, his passions include Web Development and Software Architecture. Has authored a couple of books, a few courses and has been speaking at industry events for nearly 20 years. Currently at JetBrains leading the Developer Advocacy team. Spends as much time as he can writing code.
Rafael works as a software consultant in Oslo, Norway. He is a proponent of static typing and a JVM enthusiast with a particular interest in code instrumentation, concurrency and functional programming. Rafael blogs about software development, regularly presents at conferences and was pronounced a JavaOne Rock Star. When coding outside of his work place, he contributes to a wide range of open source projects and often works on Byte Buddy, a library for simple runtime code generation for the Java virtual machine. For his work, Rafael received a Duke's Choice award, an Oracle groundbreaker award and was elected a Java Champion.
Started as a developer in 2006.
Worked in various business lines, from search engines, security tools, telecom applications to financial platforms.
Did some trainings and presentations of design principles and agile principles.
Currently managing two teams in Luxoft and acting as Software Functional Owner for various projects.
https://youtu.be/0cU-4LrcWI0
https://youtu.be/zz-ahaUFdwc
https://www.amazon.com/Head-Start-Java-Programmers-Expectations-ebook/dp/B07CXQKXPX/
I have joined EA in 2013 as Server Engineer within the FUT FIFA team. Since then, I have been involved in several projects within the Server team, working with a variety of clients, both Console and Mobile. Having the opportunity to be involved in the majority of the Server areas, I have pursued a Technical Team Lead career starting with 2016. One of my dearest projects is the Switch FUT project, where I had the opportunity to implement FUT for the Nintendo platform from scratch. Currently, I'm acting as Bucharest FUT Server Lead Engineer, enjoying working with smart and fun colleagues :).
Edson Yanaga, Red Hat’s Director of Developer Experience, is a Java Champion and a Microsoft MVP. He is also a published author and a frequent speaker at international conferences, discussing Java, Microservices, Cloud Computing, DevOps, and Software Craftsmanship.
Yanaga considers himself a software craftsman, and is convinced that we all can create a better world for people with better software. His life’s purpose is to deliver and help developers worldwide to deliver better software faster and safely - and he can even call that a job!
Peter Verhas is a senior software engineer and software architect with having electrical engineering and economics background (MSC and MBA). He studied at TU Budapest, TU Delft, and Vienna. He created his first programs in 1979. Since then, he has authored several open-source programs. He has worked in several telecommunications and finance industries positions and was the CIO of the start-up index.hu during its early days.
Peter works for EPAM Systems in Switzerland as a developer, supporting training programs for developers and internal mentoring.
Peter is the author of the books Java 9 Programming by Example (2017, Packt), co-author of Mastering Java 9 (2017, Packt), and author of Java Projects (2018, Packt)
JAX 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA4ZJpFNLhM BaselOne 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upgfrw6xP6Y https://github.com/verhas/ https://jax.de/core-java-jvm-languages/api-design-fluent-api-and-annotations-in-java/ https://www.jug.ch/html/events/2019/code_generation_lu.html https://javax0.wordpress.com/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
