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An enthusiastic and dedicated IT professional combining a strong academic background in computer science and in economic studies with 12 years of experience in areas such as Banking, Telecommunications and IT Consulting. Irina started as a Technical Analyst and migrated towards Software Development. She is currently contributing to ING's Data Warehouse solution.
With over a decade of experience in the Thales Naval domain Patrick is currently working as software architect in the development of Thales’ TACTICOS Combat Management System.
Adrian enjoys building teams and businesses that accelerate their results by creating omnichannel ecosystems and promoting an accelerated digital transformation. He reached senior management positions in both private and corporate environments, leading teams in companies such as Angels Den Funding, Phillip Morris or METRO. By the age of 30, he built two successful companies - the most recent being OmniPERFORM in the e-commerce & advertising industry, aiming to disrupt the digital and media agencies industry. OmniPERFORM, the digital-first communication agency, creates personalized marketing campaigns based on consumer preferences while using AI-driven prediction algorithms.
Mr. Adrian Floarea, PhD, graduated Mathematics and holding a PhD in cryptographic algorithms is a strong supporter of the R&D activity in the IT Identity and Security Field, with applied and innovative approaches of the projects he involves in. He is the CEO of certSIGN and he will back up the project team, providing advices 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 a 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 renowned international institution that, together with all its sustained activity, only prove once more that he is a true path finder in its field of activity.
Adrian Humă has over 20 years of experience in banking, of which 15 years in ING, within the Wholesale Banking division - which manages the relationship with large companies with a turnover of over 100 million euros. Since 2018, Adrian heads the activity of the Automotive, Transportation and Logistics sector of ING Bank Romania. In his role, he offers to his customers personalized financial solutions for their business, but also relevant advice to facilitate the transition to a sustainable economy. Moreover, Adrian is a member of the CSR Board, which has the role to increase the involvement of the whole bank in social responsibility projects. Previously, in ING, Adrian led the Lending transaction structuring team, so his expertise includes all important sectors of the economy. Adrian is passionate about a healthy lifestyle - he has a diploma in nutrition and participates reguarly in running and triathlon competitions and, of course, he is passionate about environmentally friendly cars.
Ahsan is a multi-faceted sustainability professional with knowledge and interest in clean technologies, energy decarbonisation, climate policy, circular economy and sustainability integration in corporate strategy. His broad experience in the environmental industry was developed through his work as a Consultant with Cap-Op Energy, SYSTEMIQ and ERM. In these roles, Ahsan has advised clients across the public and private sectors on upstream oil and gas energy efficiency projects, GHG emissions quantification & reporting, carbon market regulatory design, carbon offsets project development, net zero GHG emissions planning and climate risk management and disclosure (TCFD and scenario planning). Ahsan currently works as a contractor for various clean technology companies between Canada and the UK, helping companies reduce emissions in hard to decarbonize sectors using green hydrogen. Ahsan has a BA in Business Administration from the Richard Ivey School of Business, a BSc in Environmental Science from Western University, and a MSc in Environmental Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences which he attended on a full scholarship as a Chevening Scholar.
Aldo Lele is Sustainability manager at IKEA South East Europe (SEE). South East Europe region includes 5 countries - Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine. He is responsible for leading, developing and implementing sustainability related projects and topics in the whole SEE market. Aldo has been with IKEA for almost 15 years. He started his IKEA jurney as Colaborador in 2006 in IKEA Portugal.
He has changed various positions in IKEA Portugal through years and some of them are: Communication and Interior design manager, Project manager, Country Sustainability leader and he is Sustainability manager in SEE region at the moment. Aldo is passioned about People and Planet positive actions and inspiring others to live more sustainable life. He believes that together with co-workers and customers around the world, a new vision of how people can live a better life within the limits of the planet can be co-created. That means that everybody should always think long-term - The more people we reach, the bigger the impact we can have together.
Alexandru Luca is an experienced Mobile Division Manager with over 15 years 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.
Alexandru is working in digital marketing for over 10 years now. He has expertise in strategy, digital analytics, tracking, email marketing but also with a strong focus on biddable media throughout his career. He worked on international projects reaching out to six continent.
Alexandru is a software developer from Bucharest, working at ING on payment processors. He loves Open Source, is the author of Monix, and a contributor to Cats Effect and to other libraries from the Typelevel Scala ecosystem. He’s also writing at: alexn.org
Ana is a highly experienced technical and sales consultant, specialised in integrated informatic systems solutions and business processes for service-oriented architectures. Over the last 17 years, Ana helped large international enterprise customers from the financial-banking, telecom, or utilities industries to set up their technological processes and implement the latest digital business transformation strategies. In the last 2 years, she focused her attention also on the fintech innovative domain, launching in 2019, together with Mihaela Georgescu, Andrei Dumitru and Alexandru Cociu the Romanian start-up Smart Fintech. This was set up as an innovation lab, set to deliver innovative open banking solutions that emerge from the two words: Finance and Technology. Their ambition is to create in Romania value-added services based on the PSD2 directive and help develop the Romanian market so that not only EU TPPs or Fintechs in partnership with banks are the main players.
Andrei is a highly skilled and experienced consultant in Digital Customer Experience, IT Security, Digital Identity, and Digital Business Transformation. Over the last 15 years, he helped large international customers from the Telecom and Banking industries steer their IT strategies to ride the latest technological trends. Lately, he focused on R&D around Open Banking, particularly the security challenges, in close cooperation with leading software vendors and initiative groups. Following this direction, he co-founded Smart Fintech, together with Mihaela Georgescu, Alexandru Cociu and Ana Maria Georgescu, in February 2019. Smart Fintech is a Romanian start-up created as an innovation lab, set to deliver innovative open banking solutions that emerge from the two words: Finance and Technology. Their ambition is to create in Romania value-added services based on the PSD2 directive and help develop the Romanian market so that not only EU TPPs or Fintechs in partnership with banks are the main players.
Andrei Georgescu is the co-founder and Managing Partner of White Image. With over 18 years of experience in marketing, he is passionate about endurance sports, data and solutions that generate results. Currently, White Image delivers Data Management, E-Mail Marketing, SMS Marketing and creative solutions for top clients in all fields. Andrei is also a teacher at the IAA school, where he teaches E-Mail Marketing.
Andrei Ignat has >20 year programming experience. He started from VB3 , passed via plain old ASP and a former C# Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). You can ask him any .NET related question – he will be glad to answer – if he knows the answer. If not, he will learn.
Andrei Pavel, Director of Engineering at Cegeka Romania is present in the software development industry since 2006, which allowed him to explore an entire range of technologies, methodologies, verticals as well as roles and responsibilities, and as he puts it: “It was, and still is, a fun and fulfilling ride, not without its challenges of course”.
Making a true and meaningful business impact through the use of technology is his ultimate goal.
From Beekeeper to Robot Maker, Andrei has always been fascinated by patterns and efficiency. He is striving to build his robot "hives" while tackling puzzling challenges and pushing for new tech horizons.
Andrei Uhr is a Field Product Manager at Dell Technologies where he supports customers and partners in their journey towards a modern Workplace. Andrei has worked as an IT professional for over 10 years and has seen the industry going through transformation after transformation, that's why he's here to talk about both the challenges and opportunities we can expect going forward.
CTO and Co-founder of Automate The Planet Ltd, inventor of BELLATRIX Test Automation Framework, author of bestsellers "Design Patterns for High-Quality Automated Tests: Clean Code for Bulletproof Tests" in C# and Java. Nowadays, he directs a team of passionate engineers helping companies succeed with their test automation. Additionally, he consults companies, leads automated testing training series in C# and Java, writes books, and gives conference talks. You can find him on LinkedIn every day. – 300+ Published Articles Automate The Planet – 120+ Published Articles Code Project – 60+ Published Articles DZone as Most Valuable Blogger – 6+ Articles Published in Quality Magazines – 30+ Given International Conferences Talks and Keynotes – 3 books published – 5,000,000+ article views – 1000 000+ amazing readers for 2020 – Read in 180+ countries
Licensed in Managerial Informatics at Romanian American University in 2006. Business development Manager with 11 years’ experience in trust services market and promoter of digital transformation concepts and projects using electronic signature and electronic identification. Along with his BD team has implemented e-Citizen projects within the Public Sector for citizen electronic interaction with public administration. On Private sectors constantly contributes to increase the trust services adoption rate within the Romanian market either by being invited as speaker in order to share expertize and best practices or directly involved in projects subject to onboarding and lending processes in the financial sector or HR, supply chain, clients and contractors digitalization processes.
Bogdan Costea is Head of Information Security at ING Bank Romania. He previously spent 12 years auditing both business and IT processes, including cybersecurity. Having extensive knowledge on both business and security processes allows Bogdan to identify, assess and drive implementation of security controls while without impeding too much business processes. Bogdan is highly aware of the need that nowadays security must be embedded in people mindset and part of the core business of the companies as it is not an IT issue alone. In his current role he is preaching this on every occasion.
Bogdan Ivașcu has been active in the IT domain for over 15 years, with experience in sales and commercial development of product portfolios. Bogdan currently holds the position of Country Manager for ASUS Romania, SYS department.
Bogdan Stefanescu is a CEE Channel Sales Specialist | Unstructured Data Solutionsat Dell Technologies. Bogdan has over 20 years of experience in the field of Data Protection solutions and Technology, out of which 8 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.
Bogdan is one of the co-founders of Code for Romania and he is currently one of the Technology Officers that help in coordinating the project teams and in delivering the civic apps the organization’s volunteers are working on. Having over 10 years of experience in .net, flavoring from version 2.0 in a POS Windows application, to multi-tenant Azure enterprise solutions, Bogdan is also a Technical Team Lead for a technology company whenever he is not managing the coding teams in the biggest civic tech ONG in Romania.
Brooke Wenig is a Machine Learning Practice Lead at Databricks. She leads a team of data scientists who develop large-scale machine learning pipelines for customers, as well as teach courses on distributed machine learning best practices. She is a co-author of Learning Spark, 2nd Edition, co-instructor of the Distributed Computing with Spark SQL Coursera course, and co-host of the Data Brew podcast. She received an MS in Computer Science from UCLA with a focus on distributed machine learning and a BA in Chinese. She enjoys cycling and taking her dog, Bingo, to the beach.
Born in 1964, Bruno Vanel is a graduate of HEC Paris. He began his career at Renault in 1988, in Germany, in the Marketing Department. In 1990, he joined the Group's Product Department for the first time. In 1996, he returned to the Sales Department where he held a variety of operational positions within the sales network in France. From 1999, he spent more time in the Marketing Department, alternating between 'corporate' and 'regional' positions: Brand Manager (Corporate) in January 1999, Marketing Director of Renault UK in September 2000, then Marketing Director of the AB Segment (Corporate) in September 2003, before taking over the Marketing Department for Europe G10 from July 2008. He returned to Product Management in 2010 as Director of Product Strategy, before taking charge of Product Management for the Asia Pacific region in 2012. In July 2017, he was appointed Programme Director for electric vehicles to manage three EV projects including ZOE. In March 2020, he returned to the Corporate Product Planning Department, this time as Director. In 2021 he is appointed VP Renault Brand, Product Performance
Meaningfully bridging brands and customers by building authentic relationships that the customers can enjoy seamlessly across channels – this is what Carmen believes to be critical for the long-term success of a company, and it can only be achieved by wisely using the right marketing technology to innovate and create value. With over 10 years of marketing experience in B2B and B2C markets from various industries, such as banking, energy, customer research, and private healthcare, Carmen Barleanu is passionate about customer experience and digital transformation and the foundation that can make or break them, which is the sync between the marketing and business strategies, objectives and resources.
Cătălin Sava joined Carrefour Romania in March 2021 as Enterprise Architect, working closely with the Chief Information Officer in the IT & Digital department. At Carrefour, he is responsible for creating coherence and alignment between the various programs and projects, supporting various business units and domains with respect to Information Systems, guiding Solution IT Architects in defining the project architecture, and reviewing the IT architecture of projects, among other things. Prior to Carrefour, Cătălin was at British American Tobacco (February 2020 - March 2021), Vodafone (June 2018 - February 2020) and Avon (April 2011 - June 2018). Throughout his career, his main focus has been on achieving the best architectural design model and delivery method, enriching business experience and simplifying the IT operating model.
Cătălin Tudose graduated with a degree in Computer Science in 1997 in Bucharest. He also holds a PhD in this field. He has more than 20 years in the IT field and more than 15 years in the Java area and is currently acting as a Java and Web technologies expert at Luxoft Romania. Cătălin has developed 3 courses for Pluralsight on topics related to JUnit 5: “TDD with JUnit 5”, “Java BDD Fundamentals” and “Implementing a Test Pyramid Strategy in Java”. Besides the IT field and mathematics, Cătălin is interested in world culture and in soccer. He is a lifelong supporter of FC Argeş Piteşti.
With more than 15 years of experience in the IT&C sector, 10 of them in ecommerce alone, Catalin Vladescu is now a VP of Sales for VTEX Romania. As a Platform Manager for eMag, Catalin has been an integral part in transforming the online giant from an IT store to a regional multicategory marketplace. Furthermore, as a Regional eCommerce Specialist for The LEGO Group, Catalin proved his experience is not limited to the B2C retail area, as he managed the entire regional strategy for the world’s largest toy manufacturer.
Charl van der Walt is Head of Security Research for Orange Cyberdefense, where he now leads a specialist security research unit that identifies, tracks, analyses & communicates significant developments in the security landscape that may impact customers. Previously Charl was a co-founder of SensePost – a penetration testing company that has made a mark on the industry globally for two decades now, and the lead for a global threat detection operation based in the UK. Charl and his team are globally recognized and frequently showcased at international security events such as Black Hat, RSA & BSides. Orange’s access to authentic security data as an operator, and their deep focus on intelligence and research, place Charl in a unique position to understand and comment on the fundamental dynamics of the security landscape.
Charlie has 10 years of experience in startups and Technology M&A, during which time he raised more than €1bn in funding for SMEs.
After completing his MBA, Charlie implemented the world’s first stroke rehabilitation system based on embodiment in Virtual Reality in a clinical setting and has since successfully completed projects related to Diversity and Inclusion at Google Jigsaw and the World Bank.
Ciprian is a software architect for the 2Checkout platform, now part of Verifone. He’s been part of the eCommerce world for the last 15 years, designing scalable platforms and processes, testing a lot, discarding the wrong approaches, and finding the right ones along the way. Passionate about solving problems, performance, scalability, security, UX, and software design. His kryptonite: busywork.
My name is Claudiu Neaga and I am an Assistant Product Manager at Flipsnack with background in Computer Programming and Web Development. I was a developer for 15+ years, working with different technologies and programming languages along the way, finally settling on Web Development. In the recent years I helped our development team with the onboarding process for new hires and especially helping junior developers learn the necessary skills to perform in our team. I'm passionate about learning new skills myself and personal and professional growth, hence the step to a new role.
Experienced Tech Journalist with a demonstrated history of working in the newspapers and online media industries. Claudiu has been a Tech Editor for several romanian outlets and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of one of the only remaining printed tech publications in the country, connect Magazine.
Constantin Burdun graduated from the Military Technical Academy in Bucharest. He obtained the PhD in Computer Science within this faculty, where he pursued a teaching career. He further completed his studies at the University of Bucharest, graduating the MBA – Business Administration, Management and Operations studies. He is a renowned specialist involved in dozens of large projects, in Romania, but also in other countries, for the implementation of infrastructures with public keys and the digitization of workflows for various organizations. He has also participated in over 10 research projects, publishing over 15 papers on information security. His areas of expertise include advanced electronic signature schemes, PKI interoperability and legal aspects of electronic signatures.
Constantin Toma was born on February 1, 1959 in Țintești commune, Buzău county, 10 km from Buzău municipality. He is an engineer in ,,Machine Construction Technology", graduating from the University of Galați, in 1984. From 1984 to 1990 he worked as an engineer in the industry of production of tractors and agricultural machines, in the largest industrial holding company at that time, CITAMA Brașov (28 companies, 200,000 employees), being promoted to lead a department with 400 people. He is married and has 3 children. From 1990 to 2016, except for the period 2000 - 2004, when he became a senator in the Romanian Parliament, he created and led several production and trade companies in the water treatment and agriculture industry. In 2000 he became a member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), and in 2016 he was elected from this party, mayor of Buzau. On September 27, 2020, he won the elections for the second term of mayor of Buzau, with the highest score in Romania, 78.06%. After these elections, he became executive president of the Association of Romanian Municipalities, an organization that includes all 103 Romanian municipalities, including Bucharest, the capital of Romania. He promoted a vision of development of the city, ,,Buzău - magnet city until 2030", with the mission for ,,Buzău to obtain so much attractiveness and competitiveness for its inhabitants, investors and visitors, so that it becomes one of the most important cities in Romania ”. For this, 72 objectives were established to be fulfilled, on the 4 pillars of development: economic, educational, social and cultural. In the economic field, Buzău aims to become the national center of the circular economy, being the only city that already has a strategy approved by the Municipal Local Council, for the transition from the linear economy to the circular economy. On June 23, 2021, Buzău won the title of "Best City Brand in Europe", defeating Paris in the final.
I've been in IT for about 10 years, working with Java for over 7. I've been an advocate for serverless and it's benefits, wherever and whenever I could, but also when it made sense. I like using new technologies and frameworks to keep my team interested and engaged.
As a partner and senior vice president at Future Point of View, Corey White is tasked with helping leaders look out into the future and anticipate how technology will impact their organizations and themselves. Corey leads FPOV’s cybersecurity arm where he guides leaders on the best ways to protect their organizations in an increasingly critical yet dangerous digital landscape. He teaches leaders how to recognize and avoid common and uncommon cyberattacks while also proactively preparing for the near inevitability they will be forced to endure a digital event at some point. From building digital event response playbooks, assessing organizational cybersecurity risk, and even trolling the dark web for client information, Corey has wide experience in many different facets of digital security. Corey is also an accomplished speaker who offers audiences insights into how complex innovation is dramatically altering the world we live in ways that can be both positive and negative. He most recently presented on the subject of algorithmic bias at TEDx Oklahoma City.
With over 15 years of experience in ING Bank Romania, Crina Nicolae was named Tribe Lead Cards in October 2019. Crina joined the ING team in 2005 as a Management Trainee, eventually holding various roles in the Retail, IT and Customer Service areas. In 2006 held the role of Retail Banking Product Specialist, followed by Project Manager, Change Management Manager, Head of Value Chain Lending, IT Change and Process Manager, IT Service Management and IT Governance and Customer Service Lead. Crina has a master's degree in management and business strategies from BI Norwegian Business School and is a graduate of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, where she got a bachelor's degree in Economics and International Affairs.
With over 14 years of experience in building ecommerce businesses, Cristi Movilă is currently the Eastern Europe General Manager & EMEA SVP at VTEX. Part of the ecommerce landscape since its early years, Cristi created, launched and managed top online and omnichannel projects in Romania and abroad. His experience covers market leaders in the beauty and fashion industries such as Coty Cosmetics, Otter or Lensa, but also European start-ups of his own creation. With an educational background in Software Engineering and experience in all major business areas, Cristi is fully connected to the ecommerce ecosystem.
Solid and varied experience in business development and project management in the local and international market with demonstrated success of driving profitable business growth. Developed projects in various industries such as architecture and interior design, shipbuilding, energy, financial services, defense and security, agriculture and mineral resources with outstanding results. With excellent research, analytical skills and extensive experience of liaising with stakeholders at all levels, I am constantly developing new horizons. Furthermore, my focus is going towards a sustainable way of doing business. That is why, my recent projects are in the area of Smart City, Green Tech and Sustainability business environment. Co-founder of Triptic Studio architecture studio in 2013 and Green Spots – Urban Solar Charger in 2016 I am constantly looking at next generation business ideas.
Dan Kaufman is currently the Director of Google’s Advanced Technology and Products division, Google’s research and development lab dedicated to creating next-generation consumer electronics. Prior to Google, Dan spent 10 years at DARPA, most notably as the first Director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O). Dan led the merger of Information Processing Techniques Office and Transformational Convergence Technology Office to create Information Innovation Office. With the creation of I2O, Dan was instrumental in formulating and implementing I2O’s current R&D thrusts in cybersecurity and big data analytics. Previously, Dan worked for Auratio Consulting, Kalisto Entertainment, Dreamworks Interactive (a joint venture between Microsoft and Dreamworks SKG), and Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. Dan has co-authored an 800-page textbook entitled: Corporate Partnering: Structuring and Negotiating Domestic and International Strategic Alliances, and has lectured at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and U.C. Berkeley.
With 12 years of successful experience in the Social Analytics, Experiential and Emerging media, Data Science, and Digital Strategic Developments, Dan took a deeper dive into the digital transformation of physical retail by founding Footprints for Retail. A visionary and a strong believer in the power of data as an asset, Dan is regularly seeking new ways to use advanced technologies to enable commercial real estate to reset its current operations and capitalize on the rise of the AI.
Dan Nicula is the General Manager of Bucharest-Ilfov Regional Development Agency (ADRBI) since its establishment in 1999. He coordinated the regional implementation of the CES PHARE Programs, allocated to the ADRBI, between 1999 and 2009. Since 2007, he coordinates the implementation of delegated tasks by the Managing Authority, within ADRBI as an Intermediate Body of the Regional Operational Program for Bucharest-Ilfov Region. Lately, he also manages the activities related to the programming period 2021-2027, in which ADRBI will fulfill the specific functions and attributions of a managing authority for Regional Operational Program.
Daniel Biran is leading eBay’s Business Development activity in dozens of markets worldwide, ranging from the Middle East to Southern and Eastern Europe. Daniel and the Commercial team are in charge of supporting small and medium sized businesses’ transition to online export, creating tailor made onboarding solutions, professional trainings and strategic partnerships to help eBay sellers grow their business globally. Daniel’s education is in the fields of business administration and psychology, graduated with merit a B.A. and MBA from Tel Aviv University.
David Cuen has over 20 years of experience in community building strategy, digital and social content, brand marketing and communications. He has worked in top global companies like the BBC where in his last role he oversaw the social media strategy of the BBC World Service in 29 languages. He also spent 5 years at Instagram in London and San Francisco where he was in charge of the team building Community Editorial channels in 6 languages and community activations such as Worldwide Instameet. He also led a team of PR and communication professionals to ensure brand engagement. At the moment, David works as Director of Content Communities for Booking.com overseeing the team in charge of all the external sources of content. There he is building communities of enthusiastic travel ambassadors on Travel Communities. He's also a professor on Social Media Engagement on Domestika, an online learning platform..
Experienced sales professional with more than 15 years proven expertise in Business Development, Management, Product and Portfolio management, Partnership development, Services, Solution Selling, consulting and training experience 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.
Dragos Drajneanu has extensive experience in the mobile software domain, being active for more than 10 years in this field. The experience gained has been enhanced by the the various certifications he has acquired in the Enterprise Mobility Management and Mobile Device Management sphere, like Android Enterprise Professional, Samsung Knox Professional and Support & Architect Specialist.
Enterprise Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services, where he works with companies and partners in Romania and CEE by transforming their enterprise IT landscape and helping them design reliable, cost-effective cloud architectures. Dragos works with clients to assess their infrastructure and application portfolio while developing a shared vision, leading the customer and partner over the technical and business hurdles of cloud adoption
Eduard Dumitrașcu is the President of the Romanian Smart City Association, Associate Professor at The National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, trainer at The National Institute of Administration, trainer at Smart City Academy. The vision he has for the Association is to set the bases of a strong, innovative, sustainable developed, digitally educated nation with involved citizens and universal accessibility for all groups, genders, kinds of contributors to a constructive community. He is highly focused on smart cities and communities development. Eduard is co-author of the book Smart Cities, from idea to implementation (2018, Universul Academic, C. Vrabie, E. Dumitrascu). He also initiated together with the National Standardization Body - ASRO a collaboration agreement on the elaboration, publication and adoption at national level of the International Standards on the sustainable and sustainable development of smart communities and cities (ISO). He launched Smart City Magazine (2016), Smart City Caravan (2017), Smart City Academy (2018), he is also the initiator and organizer of Smart City Industry Awards, (scia.ro) annually since 2016, gala ceremony to award contributions to the smart city development projects and more. 2021 is the year dedicated to improving air quality measures in schools, by the objectives of the program City Air. During the last five years, Eduard created an ecosystem for smart cities, starting from scratch. Before the Romanian Smart City Association there was little to no interest in the topic. With a positive approach, mobilizing the best actors in the field, learning from best practices, traveling for learning, sharing the information, he managed to create a pool of experts and to create free accessible tools for the administration. His main focus was on Creating the ecosystem for educating and empowering the local administration to set the basis for improving the public the quality of the services offered to citizens.
Sales & Account Manager, with 5+ years experience in selling complex software solutions.
Eli Neicut trained to be a software engineer, but she discovered she could have a more significant impact using different technical tools - social media. She is a content creator about volunteering under the brand "Eli Vorbeste" (Eli Speaks), where she connects the people who need help to the people who can offer it - by themselves or through their companies. .Her community of over 10k people managed to, among many other things, build houses, build awareness for important causes, and fundraise over 50k euros! And more importantly, because they influence others through their example, she calls her community - #influencersofgooddeeds (influenceri de fapte bune). Eli is constantly trying to extend her comfort zone through courses and conferences, so she is enthusiastic whenever she can mix IT and words as a moderator of an iconic event like this.
Emmanuel Viale is the Managing Director of the Accenture Technology Innovation organization in Europe: Labs, Ventures, Technology Incubation and the Liquid Studios. He is based in Sophia Antipolis, France where He leads the different R&D activities of the Labs nodes in Europe (Dublin, Tel Aviv and Sophia Antipolis) with a particular focus on identifying, incubating, applying and delivering applications of innovative and emerging technologies. He also leads the Liquid Studios in Europe. Recent Technology areas of focus have been around: Blockchain, Extended Reality (VR, AR, MR, 3D scanning and rendering, wearable devices, etc.), Quantum Computing and Communication, smart materials, etc. where the evolutions of the technology domains are identified, partnerships with universities and startups established and first proof--of-technology and proof-of-concepts are designed, developed and tested. Emmanuel holds a degree in Signal Processing and Computer Science from the Ecole Centrale de Marseille, France. He joined Accenture in 1997 and lives in the South of France with his wife and five children.
With the right attitude and a great amount of curiosity, Flavian is a pattern disruptor, fascinated by digital, and there are few subjects he couldn't tackle. A certified Professional Scrum Product Owner and Digital Strategist at Grapefruit for 7+ years, Flavian has proven experience in business strategy, digital marketing, social media, digital transformation, project management, UI/UX, business development, and product development.
• Florin Costache is the Head of ING Regional Information Risk Management Centre, leading a team of risk professionals which are providing Information (Technology) & Continuity Risk services – which consist in monitoring, challenge and advice regarding the implementation of IT Risk & Continuity key controls in local or regional applications, projects and business initiatives - to various ING entities;
• Prior to his current role, Florin headed the Information Risk Management team of ING Bank Romania where he was responsible for IT, Continuity, Personal and Physical Security sub-risk areas, including full scope of Cyber Crime risks (APT, DDoS & E-banking Fraud);
• Florin has more than 14 years of experience in Risk Management domain, and he holds multiple international certifications, such as ISACA CISM, (ISC)2 CISSP, (ISC)2 CISSP-ISSMP, Offensive Security OSCP & CompTIA Security+;
Gabriel Caramis is the Founder & CEO of Woobble the Human Beings Digital Agency in CEE 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!
Gabriela Stănică joined Carrefour Romania in October 2020 as Chief Information Officer, heading the company’s IT & Digital department. The IT & Digital objectives managed by Gabriela and the team include the continued digitization and automation of internal processes, the implementation of new platforms and technologies to optimize operational processes, website development, Carrefour apps and technologies necessary for the omnichannel experience, as well as information security. Gabriela has over 10 years of experience in creating and managing teams in different companies. Prior to joining Carrefour, she held the position of Head of Marketing IT at British American Tobacco, where she coordinated teams from Europe and North Africa, having previously held the position of Chief Information Officer at Vodafone Romania. Gabriela began her professional journey at Avon, where she held several positions over time, culminating as IT Executive Director Central and Eastern Europe.
.Gavyn Long is a software engineer with 20 years’ experience working with real-time financial data systems. He has in depth knowledge of AWS, Terraform, Ansible, Packer, Groovy, C++, Java, Lua, Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket and database systems. He is a Linux and Windows Sysadmin and has worked with C#, IBM Mainframes, low level assembler, Stratus, Tandem and Sun Sparc prior to moving to DevOps.
Experienced Senior IT/Software Engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the IT industry. Skilled in Planning, Development, Operational and Architectural/Design thinking. Latest changed the area to DevOps Practices and become Solution Architect in terms of CICD Product design and implementations. Joined Thales in serving several business lines that need to deliver quality products by applying DevOps culture.
Graduated of CSIE Faculty, even from the beginning of my career I was fascinated by the processes diversity and complexity within manufacturing and logistics, but especially of the different methods that can be used to improve them using different technologies. In the 20+ years of my career, I’ve implemented and managed implementations of various software systems (ERP, MES, WMS etc) within prestigious companies, following all the steps of a digitalization project. Currently, I am Technical Director at Plin Tech, where, together with a young and motivated team, I have the opportunity to implement innovative technical solution for business processes optimization.”
Graeme Rocher is the creator of several popular Open Source projects including Grails (https://grails.org) and Micronaut (https://Micronaut.io) and co-author of "The Definitive Guide to Grails" (Apress - http://apress.com/book/view/1590599950). Graeme currently works as an Architect at Oracle Labs. Graeme is a member of the Java Champions (https://twitter.com/java_champions) and 2018 was awarded the Groundbreaker award by Oracle (https://developer.oracle.com/groundbreakers/) for his work on Open Source.
Gunnar is a Senior Developer Advocate at Amazon Web Services (AWS) based in Sweden. He has previously worked as both a frontend and backend developer, as an operations engineer within cloud infrastructure, and as a technical trainer, in addition to several different management roles. With a focus on building reliable and robust serverless applications, Gunnar has been one of the driving forces in creating techniques and tools for using chaos engineering in serverless. He regularly and passionately speaks at events on these and other serverless topics around the world. Gunnar is also deeply involved in the developer community by organizing User Groups and Meetups in the Nordics, as well as being an organizer of technical conferences.
Haiyan Zhang is a designer, engineer and maker of things. Haiyan is Chief of Staff for Xbox, Microsoft’s Gaming division. She was formerly Senior Director of Innovation at Microsoft Research Cambridge. She has also served as an inventor and TV host on the BBC series, Big Life Fix, inventing cutting-edge technology in support of people and communities in need. Previous roles include Innovation Director at Xbox Games Studio and Co-Founder, Design & Development Lead for the SaaS platform, OpenIDEO. Working at the design consultancy IDEO, Haiyan created innovative tech experiences for clients including Mattel, Electronic Arts, HBO, Citibank, France Telecom, Alcatel, Cisco, and AT&T. Haiyan holds a Masters degree with Distinction in Interaction Design from the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea and a Bachelor of Computer Science (1st-Class Honours) from Monash University, Australia. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the British Academy of Film & Television Arts.
Ileana Glodeanu is a Partner at Wolf Theiss and the coordinator of the Corporate/M&A team in Bucharest. As a talented and professional lawyer, who enjoys high positive name recognition on the M&A market, Ileana is extremely active and has advised on some of the largest transactions concluded in the past few years in Romania. She has a solid profile as a leading expert with a particular focus on retail, TMT, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and healthcare and energy, also excelling in the field of employment and insolvency restructuring. Ileana has received several awards as woman in business law in Romania and in Europe and has been generally very active in M&A large transactions, including closing the largest transactions in Romania in recent years. Ileana is a member of the Bucharest Bar Association and holds two LL.M. degrees in Private and Commercial Law.
Ioana is a senior leader with more than 15 years of experience in various industries and business models (from B2C to B2B, retail to e-commerce, financial institutions to classifieds), in various evolution stages (from existing and newly formed businesses), with focus on operations, commerce and marketing. During her intense career, she drove growth for businesses with +30 mln monthly turnover while designing and leading digital transformations.
With more than 13 years of experience in both small and large organizations, Ion Anghel is currently a CRM Team Lead 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 develop and create amazing things.
With over 17 years of experience in the IT field as a Software Developer, working on various programing languages and technologies, Ionut Bobaru is currently a Technical Lead in Ubisoft’s IT Department. He works closely with his team on complex applications that have a direct impact in the lives of millions of players, using mainly .Net Framework, AWS, SqlServer, Snowflake, Agile/Scrum. As a highly curious person, Ionut believes in constant learning and sharing the knowledge with other people, in order to grow together.
As part of his role, Itay Mesholam built strong and trusted relationships at both C and operational levels with customers and partners across EMEA. Itay spent time with our customers, partners, and teams, developing and designing solutions for the industry. With over 14 years of experience specializing in Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, Cloud-native technologies, he leads the Emerging Technologies vision for Dell Technologies services across EMEA. Itay had the opportunity to hear first-hand from customers how he can better serve them as a true technology partner through solving problems and turning issues into an opportunity for their organization to use Technology to achieve these goals.
Ivan is a Partner with McKinsey and Company in Zurich with passion and leadership roles in technology and innovation-led growth. Ivan is a leader of McKinsey’s Global Technology Council where he leads research initiatives in quantum computing and technology trends. Ivan is also the leader of McKinsey's EMEA Innovation practice. Ivan advises clients across a variety of industry sectors, with specific focus on tech driven industries such as Pharmaceutical, biotech, life sciences, healthcare, high tech, chemical, energy, advanced industries. He helps large and small organizations in business model and technology driven innovation (e.g. analytics, digital solutions, new technologies) throughout the value chain from research to early commercialization.
Jim Jagielski is a well-known and acknowledged expert and visionary in open source, an accomplished coder, and frequent engaging presenter on all things open, web, blockchain, and cloud related. As a developer, he’s made substantial code contributions to just about every core technology behind the internet and web and in 2012 was awarded the O’Reilly Open Source Award. In 2015, he received the Innovation Luminary Award from the EU and in 2019 was picked by InterCon as one of their Top 50 Tech Leaders. He’s likely best known as one of the developers and cofounders of the Apache Software Foundation, where he has previously served as both chairman and president and where he’s been on the board of directors since day one. He’s served as president of the Outercurve Foundation and was also a director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). He’s Salesforce’s Open Source Program Office lead, and he credits his wife Eileen with keeping him sensible
Jurjen is a digital innovation and transformation professional, recognised as an influencer on digital twins. With cross-industry experience and operating at the intersection of design / innovation / technology / development and arts - he applies a multi-disciplinary and a holistic approach to the process of innovation to enable the most advanced and meaningful digital experiences. The concept of Human Digital Twins is his healthy obsession and the amalgamation of his work evangelising 'Industry 4.0 technologies' across the many hackathons he orchestrated to alleviate societal challenges.
Katarzyna Paliwoda joined Facebook over 5 years ago, now leading Emerging Markets in Central & Eastern Europe. Previously @ P&G - managed more than 15 brands in nine different markets in Central Europe. Worked in the non-profit sector, such as volunteering as a Communication Consultant at UNICEF or Polish organization Stowarzyszenie WIOSNA, where she is the on-going board advisor.
At Nestle, Katja is heading Sustainability across the region with the objective to embed sustainability in the Business across all categories and countries to support the transformation of food systems. Katja is part of the Executive Team of Nestle Europe, Middle East and North Africa. She has substantial strategic and operational experience with more than 23 years in global, regional and national business management, marketing, business development, innovation and sales both at Nestle and Henkel, with a proven track record including Business Executive Officer/ Managing Director with P&L responsibility for regional and national business Units. Katja holds an MBA from the University of Kiel and Executive Programs from Harvard University and IMD Business School.
Koen Vanhees has 13 years of experience in Cyber Security, in various fields such as incident response, security monitoring, penetration testing and vulnerability management. Four years ago he started Cegeka’s Security Operations Center, where all these fields come together into practical services delivered to 30+ customers. Although being a SOC manager, he is still an engineer and incident responder at heart.
With 4 years of experience in Salesforce, Laura was one of the pioneers in Loyalty management implementation since it was released by Salesforce in February 2021. From her role as a consultant, she guides customers to define their digital transformation approach and she is the link between the customer and the technical teams. Using Loyalty expertise and previous experience with Sales and Service Cloud, she is able to help companies enable a 360 view of the customer.
Laura is the IT Director for Ubisoft’s People Technologies Stream bringing to the table more than 17 years of experience in managing worldwide teams of IT professionals. Her background covers support and operations, processes improvement, software development and testing. She is passionate about IT and about the difference that IT products bring into people’s lives, no matter their field of expertise. She is a great supporter of diversity & inclusion and as a women in tech, she would like to be an inspiration and a mentor for women who want to pursue a career in IT.
Laura is a Cloud Solution Architect and has a vast experience with Azure Cloud, helping customers with different migration projects from on-prem to Azure cloud.
I'm a dedicated development lead and trainer at Endava, where I lead the development of various projects used in various places in the world, from Europe to EU, and Asia. As a Java instructor, I delivered thousands of hours of trainings to 3000+ students in the past 10 years, recently being involved in courses at the Mathematics and Informatics Faculty of Bucharest University. During the previous couple of years, I delivered presentations, tutorials and workshops at different important events around the world: in Bucharest, New York, San Francisco, Warsaw, Belgrad, Berlin, and many more. Outside of work, I'm passionate of traveling, music, and scuba diving.
Loek is is an Global Omnichannel Strategist, also known as Mr. Omnichannel, with 10+ years’ entrepreneurial FMCG experience building and nurturing C level relationships, driving partnerships and evaluate performance of retail & eCommerce & Customer Experience programs globally including but not limited to Logistics, Change Management, Business Operations and Brand Development. Always striving for excellence together with the teams. Omnichannel, Unified Commerce and Customer Experience are his passions; frequently sharing insights as a Keynote speaker or Panel member at international events on Omnichannel, Customer Experience and Retail. He has an untenable love to be challenged in solving problems that improve user experiences. Passionate and motivated for leading talent teams that work on impactful complex projects while focusing on delivering the daily revenue’s. Seasoned in transforming retail technology to meet needs of quickly growing or highly customer centric brands. o Transformed and built cross country teams with improved processes and passion to work as coherent teams o Improved customer journeys in million dollar companies with new processes, software and customer journeys o Simplified, Transformed and Implemented Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) programs in 40+ Retail, eCommerce and User Experience initiatives, investments and programs o Breaking boundaries by transforming silo oriented teams into unified teams putting customers first
12 years work experience in Software Quality Assurance. Hands On experience also as a QA Community Lead. I often describe myself as an enthusiastic Linux user and a big fan of Open Source philosophy.
Marian Brătășanu is Commercial Team Leader within ASUS Romania. He is working on the development of the company’s Business PC solutions in Romania . Marian has economical and technical education with expertise in connected workplace, project management and business development. With over 15 years developing modern PC solutions for customers ranging from small companies to ministries, local administrations and schools, Marian Bratasanu is passionate about customer experience and creating a better and connected digital work environment.
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 five 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
Engineering Manager in charge of digital transformation for Thales Romania Engineering Competence Center. Responsible to continuously improve our processes and provide the best engineering practices for Software based solutions and System Engineering. We are accountable to migrate from a “Support” driven organization towards a “Services Delivery – DevOps as a service
Mark Little leads the technical direction, research, and development for Red Hat JBoss Middleware.
Prior to taking over this role in 2009, Mark served as the SOA technical development manager and director of standards. Additionally, Mark was a chief architect, and co-founder at Arjuna Technologies, a spin-off from HP, where he was Distinguished Engineer. He has worked in the area of reliable distributed systems since the mid-80s with a PhD in fault-tolerant distributed systems, replication, and transactions. Mark is also a professor at Newcastle University and Lyon University.
Martin Borrett is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and CTO IBM Security EMEA. He advises at the most senior level in clients on policy, business, technical and architectural issues associated with security. Martin is co-author of the IBM Redbooks "Introducing the IBM Security Framework and IBM Security Blueprint to Realize Business-Driven Security" and "Understanding SOA Security". He is Chairman of the European IBM Security Board of Advisors, represents IBM at GFCE and the Industry Advisory Board of LORCA, the London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement, is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and member of the IET. Martin has a passion for sailing and has represented Great Britain; he is also a keen tennis player.
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.
Started with electrical engineering research and then moved to software. Background in industrial/automation software and B2B backend integrations. Currently contributing to Thales’ TACTICOS Combat Management System.
Mihai is a backend developer who has been working with Scala and functional programming for the better part of the last 6 years, both in the startup community and within ING. He is interested in correctness-by-design, building fast, reliable and scalable backend systems.
With more than 15 years of experience in various IT areas, such as IT Project Management and R&D, Mihail Musat is now Director of Technical Operations at Bigstep, a bare metal dedicated server and Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider. An experienced trainer and a tech professional, his expertise focuses on servers, ISO certifications, GDPR, and security.
E-Government enthusiast having spent recent years in top management positions for Romanian IT businesses. Now Deputy CEO for Trencadis Corp, an organic growing Romanian integrator managing complex IT systems, accessed by more than 100.000 citizens daily. Joined Trencadis in May 2017 having previously shown expertise in implementing many critical systems as Project and Program Manager from 2003 to 2017 in e-Government, Retail, Automotive and Telco IT sectors. Began the project management career holding local and regional positions in Softwin and IBM, implementing projects in various countries, such as The Netherlands, UK, Serbia and Bulgaria. Earned a degree in Economics and skiing is the prefered sport, while traveling in the rural and historic sites of Romania is a passion. Father of two kids, a boy of 3 years old and a girl of 1 year old.
Before anything else, Mihnea is first a web developer, at 17 launching a user-generated content platform with thousands of active contributors. In his early career, after graduating Computer Science, he came in contact with various Python frameworks for rapid web application development (Zope, Django, Flask) while working for a contractor for European agencies digitalization. He moved to advertising platforms, by integrating adserver clients with real time bidding AI, dividing his attention between Python, application monitoring, reliability engineering and the Frontend boom. In fall 2015 he got his first job as Frontend Developer at ING. In 2017 he moved for a year to Berlin to get a grasp of what it means to be an Amazonian for the largest retail online shop, and came back to ING Bank in Bucharest, soon to become the Frontend Chapter Lead for Home'bank.
Mircea Geoană became NATO Deputy Secretary General in October 2019, after a distinguished domestic and international career. He is a strong advocate of transatlantic integration and has held a number of international positions, including OSCE Chairperson-in-Office in 2001 and personal representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for Georgia in 2005. Mr Geoană also served in various capacities as a diplomat and politician, including Ambassador to Washington, Minister of Foreign Affairs, President of Romanian Senate, and, in 2009, his party’s candidate to be President of Romania. He is also the founder of the Aspen Institute Romania and has published extensively on domestic and international affairs. Mr Geoană is the first Deputy Secretary General from Romania, and the first from any of the countries that joined the Alliance after the end of the Cold War.
When LEGO Group Senior art director Morten Bonde was declared legally blind in 2016, His whole world collapsed. How should life continue? Morten made a decision: he wanted to teach himself to focus on the good in life rather than the bad. Morten became a public speaker and wrote the book Sentenced to Blindness – Now What? A Journey from Hopelessness Street to Possibility Road to share how he decided to see possibilities in blindness rather than limitations. Today Morten has an active career in the LEGO Group, and is a published author and motivational speaker on self-management and self-motivation.
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 over 25 years 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.
Dr. Newton Howard is the founder of ni2o, Inc., a biotechnology company developing a novel, artificial-intelligence driven brain-computer interface to treat a wide range of debilitating neurological disorders and to improve cognitive and athletic performance. His career spans academia, the U.S. military and the private sector. A prolific scientific author and inventor, he is highly skilled in moving research from the lab to military and commercial applications, including technology you may use daily such as wireless hot spots, Google Earth and Google Translate. Dr. Howard holds advanced degrees in Mathematics (Oxford), Cognitive Informatics (Sorbonne), Neurosurgery (Oxford), and psychiatry (Sorbonne). He has made significant contributions to the fields of neuroscience, linguistics and national defense, including the Physics of Cognition (a mathematical framework for modeling complex medical, economic and security equilibriums), Intention Awareness (a theory for predictive modeling of naturalistic systems), Mood State Indicators (an algorithm to model mental processes involved in human speech to predict emotional states), ADAMA (a method of autonomously identifying and contextually understanding metaphors in language), the Functional Code Unit (a method for translating neurological signaling t logical data structures) and most recently, the Brain Code (a multivariate analytical model designed to extract emergent properties of the brain’s neuronal system).
Dr. Howard is a professor at Oxford University and Georgetown. He currently directs the Computational Neurosciences Lab at Oxford and is the former director of the MIT Mind Machine Project and the MIT Synthetic Intelligence Lab. He founded and sits on the Board of two nonprofits: the Howard Brain Sciences Foundation, which funds innovative research initiatives to improve our understanding of the human brain and advance the diagnosis and treatment of neurological conditions; and C4ADS, which is dedicated to providing data-driven analysis and evidence-based reporting on global conflict and transnational security issues.
Octavian Oprea is the acting President of the Authority for the Digitalization of Romania since January 11th 2021. In his current role, he oversaw the development of the public platform dedicated to online payments - Ghișeul.ro - that reached over 1 million users and collected over 200 million euros this year. Mr. Oprea was formerly the Vice President in charge of managing the digitalization projects of the Authority. During 2010-2016, he attended the courses of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, specializing in economics and management. After graduating, Mr. Oprea became a business consultant, promoting efficient management techniques to plan company resources allocation through the use of software solutions. Using data-driven decision-making tools, Mr. Oprea generated excellent results in a variety of industries – from financial and human resource management to production, trade and sales. From 2017 until February 2020, when he became Vice President of ADR, Mr. Oprea worked for a global software company as Interfaces Country Lead & Project Manager. His duties covered all stages of project implementation, from business analysis and user software training, to Go-live support and post-implementation support. He was involved in managing the interoperability process of the systems of a top multinational corporation in the FMCG industry, by interconnecting platforms such as ERP, CRM, EDI, etc.
Octavian Palade is the Content Strategy Manager for Internet Corp, one of the most important publishers in the Romanian online media market. He's also a seasoned tech & business journalist, with over 11 years of experience, writing about startups and innovation for start-up.ro, the leading local startup news website. Pasionate about video, Octavian is also the Project Manager for VideoCorp, Internet Corp's multimedia department.
A Journalism graduate, Olga Abramescu has been working in the commercial area of photography for more than 20 years, presenting and distributing the visual content produced by photographers and videographers to end users, by licensing and protecting usage rights. She contributed to the development of the industry regionally since analogue times and in the last 3 years - together with the Czech group Profimedia of which she is now part and whose operations she coordinates in Romania – builds the groundwork for the Romanian office of Shutterstock, the largest digital visual content base in the world and those of Profimedia press agency. Her job involves finding the best long-term illustration solutions for a wide range of clients, optimizing the use of visual resources and matching ideas and inspiration in accordance with communication plans, as well as within the allocated budgets.
Otilia is the Managing Partner of NOA, a company gathering a core of professionals with more than 10 years of experience in business advisory and a top clients portfolio. NOA covers a wide range of services, such as tax consultancy, business advisory, internal and financial audit and can assist companies in addressing a wide range of your business challenges. Otilia has experience in direct, indirect, international taxation and transfer pricing, an experience she gathered in international tax consultancy companies. During her professional activity, Otilia gathered experience in tax planning issues as well as in tax litigation, assisting during tax inspections and administrative proceedings. Otilia was a team member that worked with representatives of the Ministry of Public Finance on rewriting the Fiscal Code, as well as local expert for the World Bank, working on specific projects under which the World Bank provided advisory services to the Ministry of Finance on tax reform policies. She is a member of the Chamber of Tax Consultants in Romania. Otilia graduated the Law School of Bucharest University, the same institution where she obtained a master ‘s degree in Business Law. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the Academy of Economic Studies of Bucharest.
Peter Verhas is a senior software engineer and software architect with having electrical engineering and economics background (MSC and MBA). 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 several Java books published by Packt and has a blog javax0.wordpress.com You can follow Peter on https://twitter.com/verhas, https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterverhas/, https://github.com/verhas
Purna Virji is a globally recognized content strategist who has been crowned the Search Personality of the Year by the US Search Awards, was named by Adweek on their Young Influentials List, and was named by PPC Hero as the #1 Most Influential Expert in the world. She is a columnist and top-rated international keynote speaker who regularly speaks at conferences such as AdWeek, DMEXCO, The Next Web Conference and INBOUND. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Purna led global learning and thought leadership programs for Microsoft. An award-winning former journalist, Purna is an avid traveler, aspiring top chef, and enthusiastic tennis player in her spare time.
The R&D unit in RBC, led by Raluca Dobrota, explores and analyses market trends in order to identify opportunities for developing new IT solutions and products. We're most interested in using emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing in meaningful ways, in order to generate novel solutions for real challenges in the retail industry and beyond
Răzvan Prichici is a passionate developer, trainer and conference speaker. He works as a lead architect at Cognizant Softvision where he is crafting code and coaching others every day. In his more than 14 years of professional experience, he was a troubleshooter, led the technical management of large software projects and worked as a freelance consultant in various companies. He deals frequently with the strategic consulting of customers in the area of software architecture, cloud computing and API strategies. He is very open-minded and happy about every conversation, so don’t be shy. The best way to reach him is via LinkedIn.
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. For 10 years, he also headed the IT Operations for Vodafone Romania and created the IT Shared Service Center in Bucharest for Vodafone Group. Travelling, tennis and water sports are his main hobbies and he takes great pride in his two boys that share this passion for sports and technology.
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.
Rory works in the Developer Relations team at Microsoft as a Senior Cloud Advocate. Cloud Advocates use their deep research skills to help professional cloud developers discover and successfully use Microsoft’s platforms. A seasoned speaker whose talks are both meaningful and humorous, Rory speaks around the world empowering developers to achieve more.
Roxana Ionescu is one of the most reputable Romanian specialists in the data protection field. She is the only lawyer active in Romania recommended for Data Privacy & Protection in Romania by Who’s Who Legal 2021 and is praised as a “very hands-on privacy professional when it comes to data protection matters” and noted for her “wealth of experience” in the field. With over 16 years of experience in data protection and privacy matters, Roxana has been assisting clients on complex privacy matters related to their core-businesses, marketing or employment activities, cyber-security requirements, classified information regime, cloud computing, database sharing and data protection implications of business transfers, projects and mergers, both national and cross-border. A partner of the firm since 2013, Roxana was part of the team that established NNDKP’s Data protection practice in 2008 and she has coordinated it ever since, leading the team in myriads of projects, across various industries.
Mr. Sărmaș has developed his professional career in public and private organizations, always linked to the digital sector and the governance of the information and knowledge society. He is currently serving as member of the Romanian Parliament while acting as Chairman of the IT&C Commission within the Chamber of Deputies. Mr. Sabin Sărmaș has been nominated Designated President to Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 of The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) by the Government of Romania. Prior to these engagements, he was President of the National Authority for Digitalization between 2019 – 2021, being responsible for the coordination and implementation of national policies, strategies, and projects in the field of the information technology, communications, and digitalization of public services. His cross-sector activities were also linked to the private sector, as software engineer and business developer within various companies located in the city of Cluj-Napoca. Therefore, Mr. Sărmaș has acknowledged and tackled the challenges of the sector from a multi-stakeholder perspective, becoming known as transformational and visionary expert. Mr. Sabin Sărmaș graduated the Telecommunications Faculty within the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca as Diplomate Engineer, followed by academic fellowships at Vrije University of Brussels and Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (as PhD).
Sameer Sharma is the Global GM (Smart Cities & Transportation) for IOT Solutions at Intel and a thought leader in IOT/AI ecosystem, having driven multiple strategic initiatives to scale over the past 20+ years. Sameer leads a global team that incubates and scales new growth categories and business models for Intel. His team also focuses on establishing leadership across the industry playing a pivotal role in deploying solutions for the development of smart cities around the world—an important effort in furthering the goal of sustainability. These solutions include Intelligent Transportation, AI/Video, Air Quality Monitoring and Smart Lighting. With far-reaching impact, each of these solutions is providing local governments a plethora of data to enhance the daily quality of life for citizens while simultaneously promoting responsible practices to protect the environment. As a leading authority on Cities and AI, Sameer is a frequent keynote speaker at top global events and has been featured in publications such as Economist, Forbes, WSJ and New York Times. His high-energy talks cover pragmatic examples of impact and reflect his passion and belief that technology can and must be a force for good in our society. Sameer has an MBA from The Wharton School at UPenn, and a Masters in Computer Engineering from Rutgers University. He holds 11 patents in the areas of IOT and Mobile.
He can be reached through LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sameersharma/) or Twitter (@sameer_iot)
Scott Lyons leads the Tech & Commercial Partnerships for Ford of Europe. Based in Berlin, Lyons is responsible managing and growing various aspect of Ford's European Tech Partnerships Ecosystem and is the co-founder of the Ford start-up innovation program MakeItDriveable. His focus is on content and services that will help deliver meaningful, unique and viable solutions to Ford customers via the connected car. Lyons joined Ford in 2013 from Motorola Mobility where he was Director of International Market Development and led a global team responsible for external developer engagement and business development within the MOTODEV organization. Prior to that he held positions at WPP interactive agency Digit London as commercial director – leading the award-winning Vodafone and Motorola accounts respectively – and co-founding London-based interactive agency Sugar Ltd. – a pioneer in the webcasting and digital creative industries. Lyons began his career with time spent in both the press relations and on-air promo departments at MTV Networks in New York, working on a variety of high-profile programming including the “MTV Movie Awards”, “Unplugged” and the “Video Music Awards”.
Sergiu joined the cyber security domain in 1999, having various roles like IT security engineer, CISO, trainer and advisor for organizations from multiple sectors, like Department of Defence, telco, manufacturing, banking, insurance or retail. Member of various groups of experts during his career, like Business Continuity Management and Crisis Management groups of excellence in Deutsche Telekom, or Cyber Security Task Force of ANIS (Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry), Sergiu benefited from the best environments for innovation and creativity on cyber security topics. Sergiu has a master’s degree and a merit diploma in IT Security from the Military Technical Academy of Bucharest and started his PhD with the aim of improving application security review through machine learning algorithms and natural language processing. Last year, Sergiu received the Best Cyber Security Ecosystem Award for Huawei, from the Digital Transformation Council of Romania.
Shaloo Garg is MD, Growth Stage Startups & Unicorns based out of Silicon Valley and Global Lead for Microsoft Global Social Entrepreneurship Program. She brings a combination of strong startup, enterprise, strategic partnership and corporate development experience. Previously, Shaloo was Partner , Global Oracle Innovation at Oracle where she lead the Global Corporate Innovation practice of commercializing revenue opportunities for startups into the enterprise client base and partner ecosystem. She has also lead go-to-market for Oracle’s cloud business and was part of the M&A team that acquired Peoplesoft, Siebel, Retek etc. Prior to joining Oracle, she was in a couple of early stage startups. Shaloo is passionate about Tech for Good and is President , BOD at UN Women, Silicon Valley , a “Champion of Innovation” at UN Women where she is spinning up virtual Innovation Labs with Universities leveraging emerging technologies to encourage digital literacy in developing countries for young girls who do not have access to education. Shaloo is a Forbes Contributor, Guest speaker at Penn Law School and is an MBA from Delhi University and has done specialization in Innovation and Design Thinking from Stanford d.School. Words to live by: “In life, there are no mistakes... only lessons” - Vic Johnson.
Siân John MBE is Director of Security Business Development and Strategic Growth at Microsoft. She leads a team focusing on developing opportunities for Microsoft to deliver new security, compliance, and identity offerings to market. Siân has worked in Cybersecurity for nearly 25 years across strategy, business risk, privacy, and technology. She is Chair of both techUK’s CyberSecurity Management committee and the Digital Economy Advisory Board for the UK Research Councils. Siân is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Information Security and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s 2018 New Year’s Honours List for services to Cybersecurity.
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.
Silviu Tiron is an E-mobility specialist, with over five years’ experience in the energy sector. Silviu focuses on buiding the household customers and businesses at the start of their electric journey, helping them to better understand how charging solutions can be implemented.
Simon Ritter is the Deputy CTO of Azul Systems. Simon has been in the IT business since 1984 and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Brunel University in the U.K.
Simon joined Sun Microsystems in 1996 and started working with Java technology from JDK 1.0; he has spent time working in both Java development and consultancy. Having moved to Oracle as part of the Sun acquisition, he managed the Java Evangelism team for the core Java platform. Now at Azul, he continues to help people understand Java as well as AzulÕs JVM technologies and products. Simon has twice been awarded Java Rockstar status at JavaOne and is a Java Champion. He represents Azul on the Java SE Expert Group, OpenJDK Vulnerability Group and Adoptium Steering Committee.
Follow him on Twitter, @speakjava.
Steve Jarrett as Senior Vice President of Data and Artificial Intelligence Steve Jarrett has taken responsibility for a new Data and AI Department defining the Group's data strategy. This new organisation consolidates key skills to help the company develop use cases, enrich services, improve processes based on data and artificial intelligence, as well as enhance the value of this data externally. Steve has been a product leader and entrepreneur in AI and mobile for over 25 years, including building one of Facebook’s first strategic machine learning programs in 2013, working with Apple on the original iPod, and product managing the first mobile browser at General Magic. He has also been founding CEO of three software companies in the US and UK.
Stuart is a Technical Leader / Developer Advocate at Cisco DevNet, where he focuses on network automation and the developer experience for engineers, partners working with network automation and DevNet. Prior to joining Cisco DevNet, he worked in a variety of roles ranging from Network Engineer to Network Architect for Cisco. Stuart can be found on Twitter @bigevilbeard
I am an engineer, graduate of Industrial Robotics of the Universitatea Transilvania Brașov. I have been an entrepreneur in the field of design and execution of industrial installations for 25 years and I have accumulated a lot of experience in the field of automation and increase of energy efficiency of buildings. I left the company in the care of an associate and entered politics because I want to contribute to the change of Romanian society and this can only be done at the decision-making level. I am an alpinist and a convinced environmentalist and I am in favor of implementing public policies that will ensure the transition to smart cities, increased efficiency and saving resources.
Tejas Chopra is a Senior Software Engineer, working in the Data Storage Platform team at Netflix, where he is responsible for architecting storage solutions to support Netflix Studios and Netflix Streaming Platform. Prior to Netflix, Tejas was working on designing and implementing the storage infrastructure at Box, Inc. to support a cloud content management platform that scales to petabytes of storage & millions of users. Tejas has worked on distributed file systems & backend architectures, both in on-premise and cloud environments as part of several startups in his career. Tejas is an International Keynote Speaker and periodically conducts seminars on Micro services, NFTs, Software Development & Cloud Computing and has a Masters Degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, with a specialization in Computer Systems.
Teodor Gurgui took on the role of Mobile, Loyalty & UX Development Lead at Carrefour Romania in April 2021. He is in charge of the Carrefour App - leading the development of technical functions, ensuring a seamless user experience, as well as creating an integrated Carrefour ecosystem for all customers. Teodor had a major role in developing and launching the Act for Good program in Carrefour App and in all stores. Launched at the beginning of 2021, the app allows customers to have a personalized shopping experience: with every shopping session in the App, users receive points, which they can collect to access special offers and discounts, as well as donate to social causes and complete brand challenges. As such, now integrated with Bringo, the unique App is a hub on the retail market which adds a deeper purpose to shopping. Before joining Carrefour in September 2018 as a Digital Marketing Project Manager, Teodor was Digital Project Manager at Centrade Cheil (January 2016 - August 2018) and occupied different digital positions in the industry.
Theo 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. In 2021 he took over the position of Channel Development Manager for SoftOne Romania assisting IT companies all over the country improve the digital services they provide to their end customers.
Tim is an experienced research and insight professional, with a background in social sciences and over 13 years’ experience in communications, data, marketing and technology. A social scientist by training, with an MA in Sociology from Aberdeen University, he has a proven track record of planning, executing and delivering strategic content and insight projects across a range of sectors. A key part of his role at the DMA is developing content and actionable insight for the data-driven marketing industry, which also supports the association’s core belief in putting the customer first and being the driving force of intelligent marketing.
Tobias Margarit is Managing Director of diconium data and partner for the areas Smart Content & Campaign, Personalization & Analytics as well as Data Sciences & AI. With 15 years of experience in the field of data strategies and the implementation of BI and AI projects, he successfully realizes data driven business management projects for clients. In addition, Tobias has more than 10 years of experience in the conception and scaling of digital and data analytic platforms for a car manufacturer in southern Germany, China and the United States.
Inspirational international keynote speaker Tom Raftery is a Global Vice President for SAP, a guest lecturer at the Instituto Internacional San Telmo, podcast host, and a board advisor for a number of start-ups. Before joining SAP Tom worked as an independent industry analyst focusing on the Internet of Things, Energy and Sustainability, and also as a Futurist for Gerd Leonhardt’s Futures Agency. Tom has a very strong background in technology, sustainability, and social media having worked in the industry since 1991. He is the co-founder of an Irish software development company, a social media consultancy, and is co-founder of hyper energy-efficient data center Cork Internet eXchange. Tom also worked as an Analyst for industry analyst firm RedMonk, leading their GreenMonk practice for over 7 years. Tom hosts the twice weekly Digital Supply Chain podcast, the weekly Climate 21 podcast, and a weekly Tech for Good LinkedIn Live Livestream.
I will use my 19 years of experience as a software tester and my 11 years of expertise as senior trainer in order to support my customers in their effort to be more innovative while approaching the quality process and testing because I strongly believe that brain can be used for creation and machines for execution I lead my software testing business with a very close attention to customer processes so we are able to create tests that will reflect the customer’s style of working, we will replace repetitive actions with creativity, we will use the scripting or coding knowledge to create automated scripts who will replace manual repetitive work. Together we can automate and innovate more because I strongly believe that brain can be used for creation and machines for execution! My 16 years background in software quality testing & quality training facilitation and my customers testimonials – are my best arguments!
Vlad Andriescu is the editor-in-chief of start-up.ro, the main source of information on startups in Romania. Vlad has been following the local startup and innovation ecosystem for the past few years and is looking for new and emerging technologies that will reshape the world we live in.
Vlad has worked as a Java Developer since 2006 and for the past years he has also been in various tech lead or team lead positions, managing teams up to 5 people for both maintenance and greenfield projects, local or remote teams. He's excited about learning and teaching others, and does this by reading, attending, and presenting at technical conferences, and also through volunteer work in a local NGO. Currently, he is also a Community Lead in Cognizant Softvision's Enterprise Coffee Community, helping others grow and develop their careers.
Vlad Oprisa is a Software Developer who learned his craft during the past 15 years while working for a wide range of business domains like Telecommunications, Electronic Payment Systems, Banking, Business Intelligence, Insurance, Accounting, Cash Management, Electronic Data Interchange, IoT and more. He holds both a Bachelor and a master’s degree in computer science. During his career he covered roles like Senior Development Consultant, Software Architect, Technical Excellence Discipline Lead, Development Lead, Senior Software Engineer etc. "I am grateful for the opportunity to tackle major software quality attributes challenges for such a wide range of business use-cases and continuously find better and easier ways to improve the design and architecture.
Dr. Wieger Wamelink works as ecologist at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands. As senior researcher he works on the effects of nitrogen deposition and climate change on biodiversity, especially on plant species. He is also one of the caretakers of the nature gardens on the Wageningen campus and as campus ecologist responsible for the management of the green areas on the campus. In 2013 Wieger started Food For Mars and Moon with as goal to crow crops on Mars and the moon applying the regoliths present at the planets. The research includes the effects of heavy metals present in the regoliths on the growth, effect of cosmic radiation on the plant growth, the application of human faeces as manure and the need to bring worms, bacteria and pollinators to create a sustainable closed agricultural ecosystem. To boldly grow where no plant has grown before.
William Collis is a successful esports entrepreneur, author, college professor and podcast host. He is the co-founder of Gamer Sensei, which exited to Corsair, and Genji Data, which exited to Esports Entertainment Group. His popular book, The Book of Esports, is used at many colleges and universities around the world as the default text for esports education. William is also co-owner of the top esports team OXG and co-host of The Business of Esports podcast. His popular TED talk on Skill in Esports has been viewed over one million times.
Wioletta Lamot-Majewska, with over 10 years experience in supporting companies with B2B sales and marketing communication on international markets. Has been with FOTC for over a year now, on the position of Possibility Creator: creating possibilities to help startups and MSB'S grow with Google Cloud Platform.
Yariv Bash is the CEO and co-founder of on-demand drone delivery company Flytrex, helping spearhead the drone delivery revolution. Flytrex provides a direct-to-consumer autonomous drone delivery service that lets retailers and quick-service restaurants (QSRs) cater to a wider customer base with faster, safer and more economical on-demand deliveries than ever before. Flytrex is currently working with national restaurant chain El Pollo Loco and retail giant Walmart to deliver food and goods to customers’ front and backyards. Prior to Flytrex, Yariv was Founder and CEO of SpaceIL, a $100M Israeli non-profit organization that launched Beresheet, the first private interplanetary robotic mission to the Moon.
Zvi Mitlanski has a career that spans over 20 years in payment, banking, retail, telecommunication and governments markets. He has held senior executive level positions in global companies responsible for growth, sale & business development, M&As, marketing, product management and organizational development. Before joining Comax, Zvi was the CEO of Modularity, GM Asia at Powa and President of the Asia Pacific region for VeriFone. As a member of the VeriFone executive team, he was involved in corporate process, decision making and strategy, while successfully managing a $230m business unit containing over 700 team members. Prior to this, Zvi held senior positions with Lipman and StarHome, driving regional business through multiple subsidiaries and sales organizations, including development of local products and services.