Meet the Speakers

Shobhana (Shobz) Ahluwalia is the CIO at Peloton Interactive, where she leads the company’s global IT and Security strategy and operations. Her team is responsible for building and running the systems and infrastructure that help Peloton scale its products and platforms globally.

Prior to Peloton, Shobz served as the CIO of Uber, where she scaled and led the global IT strategy and operations team to support the Company’s exploding business growth. 

Shobz is a board member and advisor to the University of San Francisco’s Board of Trustees’ Committee on Information Technology Strategy (CITS), Consortium of Information Systems Executives (CISE), Zoom Video Communications and Dell. Shobz is also a founding member of Neytri, a non-profit focused on fostering, engaging, and advancing the global community of South Asian professional women.

Shobz holds an MBA with a double major in Strategy and Finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

Susan is a strategic, dynamic, results-driven executive with over 30 years of success in Business and Technology roles.  During her 22 year tenure at Johnson & Johnson, she is known for critical thinking, authenticity and agility across the Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, and Consumer sectors, guiding marketing, strategy, innovation and technology.  Susan is currently responsible for corporate technology solutions around the world.  Prior roles include VP of Sales, Strategy & Commercialization for Health & Wellness, Worldwide VP of Transfusion Medicine, Worldwide VP for the $2.4B JOHNSONS® Baby business and several pharmaceutical marketing roles.

Prior to joining J&J, Susan was Marketing Director at Nabisco Biscuit Company and a Private Banker at Chase Manhattan Bank. Susan holds a B.A. in Economics and German from Duke University and a M.B.A. in Marketing and Finance from the Wharton School. Susan is an “experience chaser” who loves to travel, explore and try new things.  She lives in NJ with her daughter and dogs.

As an experienced and skilled marketer, sales, and people leader, Shimona is focused on shaping the future of commerce by overseeing Shopify’s innovative commerce platform that enables high-growth and high-volume brands, like Gymshark, Huel, AllBirds, and Heinz. Before Shopify, Shimona held senior roles at various software, FMCG, and consumer research companies in Canada and Europe.

A Fun Fact: I began my career in marketing, working for a chicken company!

Anita Rao has 15+ years of experience in various Product, Data, Business, Operations, and Technology leadership roles across the Hi-Tech, Financial Services, and Payment Cards industries. She is currently at PayPal where she has led Product and Engineering Teams that delivered data products via platforms. Before that, at eBay Inc. Anita was the Chief Product Owner for Global Platform Services that included 24 SaaS and Big Data Platforms. She was also the Vice President and Head of Global Finance Systems at Visa Inc. Anita has also held senior roles at Garage Technology Ventures, and Oracle. She earned an M.B.A. from Rutgers University and is a Six Sigma Black Belt. From UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, she did the Executive Education Program. She has five patents pending in the Data realm.

Leigh is Chief of Staff for Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector (WWPS) organization, supporting public sector clients in their cloud adoption and digital transformation journey.

She joined Microsoft’s Public Sector team from the Microsoft Office of Responsible AI. In this role she drove implementation of responsible AI across the company. This included companywide implementation strategy and planning for engineering and in-country teams and the Worldwide Responsible AI Champs program.

Leigh is a seasoned leader, business strategist and communications expert. She has over 20 years as a change agent, driving adoption of new technologies and launching new products, including a deep focus on technology equity gaps in marginalized communities. She is passionate about innovative digital approaches to technology, that positively benefit people's lives and societal overall.

Bode is the Chief Operating Officer at Flutterwave. She is responsible for managing the operations of the organization including strategy implementation, organizational performance and ensuring the company meets its overall goals and objectives.

Prior to joining Flutterwave, Bode worked as an Associate Director in KPMG Professional service. Her experience covers customer advisory, development of strategy plans and models for financial institutions and organisations as well as proposing various ways to scale, improve efficiency and profits. Bode has over 18 years of experience.

Ciara O’Connell is currently Head of Novartis Global Service Center (NGSC) Dublin and Head NBS CONEXTS Ireland. NGSC Dublin is one of Novartis' five strategic capability centers. NBS CONEXTS is the NBS domain that delivers commercial, medical and legal & compliance advisory services to the Novartis enterprise.

Kate is currently Head of Emerging Areas at NVIDIA where she oversees ecosystem, strategic alliances and developer relations for emerging markets, segments and use cases. She works closely with partners and influencers to create disruptive AI applications with a social impact and aims to build a truly global and inclusive AI community. 

Prior to NVIDIA, Kate spent close to a decade at various semiconductor companies holding product, ecosystem and business positions in AI, computer vision, and IoT. 

A D&I and mentorship advocate, she often mentor teens on career development and startups on tech & business. She regularly advises international organizations on the power of AI to drive social good, speaking at conferences for WEF, UNECA, UNICEF and Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.

Kate has won multiple accolades throughout her career, including Business Insider Top 100 Business Transformers 2020 and VentureBeat Women in AI Rising Star 2020.

Fun fact 

Kate enjoys learning new languages and currently speaks French, English, Spanish, Sango, Japanese and Korean

Joining Mercedes-Benz Turkey in 2002, Dr. Demet Karaali has held a series of increasingly expanding positions, including Executive Assistant to CEO & President, Head of IT for sales, aftersales and retail and CIO of Mercedes-Benz Cars and Vans Turkey.

Since 2010, Dr. Demet Karaali has been a leader in information technology management with a focus on the digitalization. As CIO of Mercedes-Benz Cars and Vans Turkey, Dr. Karaali manages all IT aspects of sales, aftersales, marketing and retail in MB Cars, Vans Turkey and providing various IT services throughout Istanbul to global Daimler locations. Dr. Karaali provides leadership for the continued development of an innovative, robust, and secure information technology environment throughout the company. Under her leadership, IT in Turkey has consistently earned recognition and awards for achievements.

Dr. Karaali received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Technical University of Istanbul and completed her Phd at the same university in Industrial Engineering. She has completed numerous executive leadership and management training programs during her career.

Heather Miller serves as Chief Transformation Officer at ServiceNow. She has held technology VP/SVP/CIO leadership roles for several Fortune 100 companies including The Coca-Cola Company, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Bank of America and GE.
She a global technology executive, with strong business acumen adept at planning and executing complex, innovative, secure, cloud based digital transformations.

Prior to joining ServiceNow, Heather served as Enterprise VP of Technology Strategy and Portfolio for McKesson. Heather has transformation experience modernizing legacy tech stacks with SaaS and cloud solutions, integrating acquisitions, leading Agile and delivery teams, and supporting infrastructure and operations. She
also led digital transformation strategy, execution and post- breach remediation efforts for the International business at Equifax.

Heather graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and minor in German from North Carolina State University and she holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a certified Black Belt.

Julie Chapman has spent over 22 years in the technology industry, specializing in retail. She joined Entain in 2019 as the Retail IT Delivery Director, accountable for the technology in retail bands, Coral and Ladbrokes, covering more than 2,500 shops. In July 2020, Julie Chapman was promoted to Retail CTO, accountable for all retail technology across Entain and creating the retail technology blueprint that is deployed globally.

Julie brought new ideas to Entain, championing diversity and inclusion in the gaming industry. At Entain, Julie pioneered listening groups across the division to understand the challenges experienced by colleagues and produced a strategy around diversity and inclusion. The core of this strategy is creating a welcoming environment, where colleagues are valued for their skills and a three-pronged approach to elevating women within the department centered around attracting female talent to Entain, supporting female employees, and developing initiatives to retain that talent.  

A Fun Fact: 

Before Julie started in technology I was a ski instructor and still love skiing

As Chief Information Officer for Clark County, the largest county in the State of Nevada with more than 2.4 million residents, 45 million annual visitors and an $8 billion budget, Nadia spearheads the technology innovation,
strategy and delivers mission-critical services for the organization. She has established Clark County as an
innovation and technology hub for startups and budding businesses and is a key driver in engaging regional

Dr. Jess Evans serves as the Chief Operating & Digital Transformation Officer and Interim Chief Security Officer within the University Technology Office (UTO) at ASU. In her role within UTO Jess aligns with fellow UTO senior executive leadership and executive leadership across ASU to help advance the mission of the university. The ODT portfolio spans across many UTO departments to include all Cloud and Advanced Network Engineering Services (CANES), Strategic Implementation Office (SIO), Experience Center and Learning Space Services (ECLS), IT Service Transformation (IST), Engagement and Consulting Services (ECS), and the Strategic Finance and Business Office (SFBO). Through a transparent and collaborative approach to servant leadership, Jess works with her team to advance the mission of the University. The ODT team provides services that include all network, server, storage, data center, public and private cloud services, identity and access management, enterprise architecture, enterprise systems, project and portfolio management, experience center (help center), desk-side services, customer engagement teams, training and event services, instructional design, classroom support, new construction design, all budget and HR within UTO, and UTO service management systems.

Prior to joining ASU, Jess has a proven track record as a senior information technology executive with strong global and regional experiences within multiple sectors like finance/insurance, consulting, and education/healthcare. A recognized technology executive known for designing and enabling the strategic vision to achieve operational goals, Jess offers a unique blend of executive acumen, global leadership, and technology solution development contributing to a successful record of accomplishment through operational improvements and increased efficiency. Jess is an executive that is passionate about transformational change, agile methods, design implementation and execution. Jess achieves her operational successes with key enablers within technology adoption, design innovation, design modeling and data science experience, which shape and guide the implementation of strategic initiatives. Working in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, Jess provides a unique lens to innovation and change.

Jess is also a recognized scholar and research fellow that specializes in design thinking, quantitative methods, structural equation modeling, knowledge structures, credible leadership and leadership effectiveness.

Beth leads the Data Science Team at Roku. The team develops automated algorithms that provide business value, particularly in newer areas where there is high uncertainty.  

Beth is a seasoned Data Scientist and leader with 20+ years of experience in a variety of big data fields: advertising, speech, music, biology and medical. She has over 30 publications and 11 issued patents.

Fun Fact: 

Beth loves being outside and can often be found walking or running in Boston or hiking in New England.

Since 2019, Brigitte Fuhr heads the Central Data Science team at Boehringer Ingelheim. In her role, she is leading a global team, which works hand-in-hand with all business units to create insights from data and develop data-driven digital products. Prior to her current role, Brigitte was one of the first employees of Boehringer Ingelheim’s digital lab BI X, where she built up and led the Data Science chapter.

Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim in 2017, Brigitte worked as the Head of Data Science and as Data Scientist at Lufthansa Airlines. She holds a PhD in Mathematics and a Master’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.

Stacy Simpson is the Chief Marketing Officer of Genpact, as well as the Global Leader of Corporate Responsibility and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.    

As Chief Marketing Officer, Stacy leads global marketing and communications with a focus on further strengthening the company’s awareness, perception, and reputation to drive growth. She oversees the organization’s media, brand, demand-generation, advertising, content, and communications strategies and creates marketing innovations that drive advocacy and loyalty for the Genpact brand. Stacy has a proven track record for driving impact and change at scale through more than 25 years of marketing, branding, and communications expertise.

Stacy is a champion for building and nurturing purpose-led organizations that drive positive change for all stakeholders. As the Global Leader of Corporate Responsibility, Stacy propels Genpact’s purpose – the relentless pursuit of a world that works better for people – to create positive, lasting impact for employees, clients, communities, and shareholders. This includes oversight of the corporate social responsibility and diversity, equity, and inclusion teams. Stacy is a catalyst for making Genpact one of the most diverse, equitable, inclusive, and socially responsible companies in the world. In this role, Stacy works with leaders across the business to nurture an environment where diverse and inclusive teams drive innovation and growth for clients and communities around the world.  

Stacy joined Genpact from Publicis Sapient, a leading digital consultancy, where she served as global head of marketing and communications. In this capacity, she oversaw marketing and communications strategy for the firm, leading a global, integrated marketing team in creating and executing strategies that drove demand for services and brand awareness.  

Stacy also served as the senior vice president of global communications and brand marketing for IAC, a leading multimedia company with more than 100 consumer Internet and media brands, where she led the corporate and brand marketing and communications functions. She has also held senior positions at IBM and in broadcasting, public relations, media relations, and strategic communications in Washington, D.C.  

Stacy graduated from Syracuse University with bachelor’s degrees in broadcast journalism and public policy.

Carol Juel is Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Operating Officer of Synchrony, one of the nation’s premier consumer financial services companies.

As a business leader and technologist, Carol is responsible for building Synchrony’s technology and operations strategy, including the company’s focus on end-to-end technology and operations solutions, creating seamless customer experiences, driving how the company will operate and modernizing engagement with millions of cardholders. During her more than 25-year career, Carol has played a significant role in the development of innovative Synchrony solutions for its partners, customers, and employees. Carol is responsible for continuing to evolve new ways of working, including the company’s agile approach to promote speed and drive innovation.

Prior to being named Chief Technology and Operating Officer, Carol was Synchrony’s first Chief Information Officer leading the company’s overall information technology strategy and digital transformation focused on hybrid cloud and AI. She and her team also created leading payment and financing solutions for partners and customers.

Prior to Synchrony’s separation from GE in 2015, Carol served as Chief Information Officer of GE Capital Retail Finance. In her 10 years with GE, she held a variety of senior leadership roles in technology governance, security, business development, digital, and marketing. Before joining GE, Carol was a technology consultant at Accenture where she focused on the financial services sector, developing technology initiatives that drove growth, and operational excellence for clients.

Carol is a passionate advocate for helping employees grow their careers, with a focus on advancing women in technology. Carol was elected to the board of directors of Girls Who Code, a non-profit helping to close the gender gap in technology, and she is the executive sponsor of the Synchrony’s Girls Who Code Summer Immersion and Club Programs. She also serves as the executive sponsor of Synchrony’s Women’s Network, one of eight Synchrony diversity networks which promote diversity, inclusion, and belonging throughout the company. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the School of Engineering at the University of Connecticut, a member of the CNBC Technology Executive Council and a member of the Fast Company Impact Council.

Carol was honored by the National Diversity Council as one of the Most Powerful Women in Technology in 2021, and by ORBIE as the 2019 CIO of the Year and was named one of the most “Influential Women in Payments” by PaymentsSource in 2016 and 2017.
Carol earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross.

Ellie Powers is currently a Director of Product at Slack, where she manages a team focused on optimizing the platform experience. Ellie's significant past experience includes 7 years at Google (Chrome Browser, Play Store) and several years at Microsoft. She has experience working in the Bay Area, France and the UK. Ellie grew up in the Bay Area, graduated from MIT, and is currently located in San Francisco. Ellie cofounded the Google Women in Product group, and Women at Microsoft Silicon Valley.


A Fun Fact: Ellie has a lifelong love of comedy, and teaches and performs improv when she gets the chance!

Elyse Kolker Gordon is an engineering leader and author who is experienced at building and leading consumer product engineering teams. Elyse accidentally found her way into consumer product via an interest in video editing and loved it so much she stuck around. Currently she is a Senior Director of Engineering at Strava where she is committed to building an inclusive and high performing team. Elyse is passionate about creating an environment where individuals can be challenged and grow in their careers. Outside of work she likes to be active along with her family which often means just barely keeping up with her 2 year old son. 

Joanne Thurlow is Head of IT for Siemens Energy, Industrial Application Solutions – a global engineering organization providing electrification, automation, and digitalisation solutions to the energy industry. 

With a career that has spanned multiple roles, organizations, and countries starting in her home country of Canada, UK, Norway and Germany, Joanne has experienced many challenges and rewards on route.  

While the technologies have changed and evolved along the way, one thing has remained constant – success depends on the individuals, the teams and then technology. Even the smallest of teams can achieve enormous results in a rapidly changing world through the technology, methodology, and a healthy amount of resourcefulness and inspiration. This can be foundational to securing a sustainable future for all. 

Celia is the Insights & Analytics Lead for Europe and Asia Client Group at Capital Group (CG). Prior to CG, Celia was a Risk & Data Analytics manager at Lloyd's Banking Group (LBG) and held Financial Services consulting roles at PwC and Accenture. Celia is passionate about technology, data, sport, education, diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI). As current lead for the Capital Associates of African Descent (CAAD) Community for Europe, she frequently organizes, speaks and volunteers at Data, Technology and DEI events. Celia’s achievements have been recognised by national and international accolades including: Google EMPower UK Top 10 Black Executive List 2021; Yahoo Finance Top 100 EMPower Role Model 2020 & 2021; Investing in Ethnicity Top 10 Future Leader 2020 and has been nominated as a Women in Investment Week 2021 Future Leader.

Experienced Head Of Operations with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Skilled in Customer Service Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Customer Satisfaction, and Management. Strong operations professional with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) focused in Fashion Design with Communication from Birmingham City University.

Veerle Lauwers is the Digital Strategy & Transformation Director at Coca-Cola European partners. Coca-Cola European partners is one of the largest Coca-Cola bottlers that reaches millions of customers and over 300 million consumers in 13 countries with 23,300 employees across Europe.

Veerle started her career with Coca-Cola in 2013 where she first focused on building out the Digital Shopper marketing portfolio and eCommerce this within the Retail, Away from home (Leisure, Horeca,…) and At Work/Institutions channels.  The past 3 years she has dedicated to driving digital Innovation & Transformation across the commercial, supply chain and workplace area, building a yearly innovation pipeline to validate the value of new technologies and solutions with and within the business and evolve them to scaled solutions.

She has 24 years of experience, of which 4 years abroad, as international commercial project manager. Started her career at Procter & Gamble and held both global and locally driven business partner functions for 14 years. Stepped out of corporate live for 3 years to run her own consultancy firm when Social Media platforms became relevant for brands, helping companies to get started and thrive in those new channels.

In her spare time, Veerle likes to spend time with Family and friends and play tennis.

Shimi has been actively involved in investing and venture capital for over 20 years and has  made over 50 investments in early and expansion stage transactions, of which many have been  successfully exited with superior returns for investors in Europe, the US, and the Middle East.  Over the last decade, Shimi has founded and built up a leading advisory business which is now  a known leader in building and designing boards and providing scale up assistance to SMEs.  

Shimi is the Executive Chairperson of Carousel Solutions Group Ltd, an advisory business  focusing on designing and building high performance company boards for private equity,  sovereign wealth funds, family offices and corporates globally. She has successfully  implemented and built over 30 boards over the last 10 years that have delivered above market  qualitative and quantitative returns for their shareholders. Additionally, Carousel Solutions also  conducts annual board audits and works with SMEs on scale up and growth strategies. Shimi is an active member of the Young President’s Organization (YPO) the global leadership community of extraordinary chief executives.

Bhavini is a high-energy, innovative and business savvy Product Technology executive, with a diverse 20+ yrs experience, aligning technology strategy with business goals, at the same time having a people-first mindset. 

She loves using human-centered design with streamlined automation and has a passion to create experiences that improve people’s lives. She has led teams through different growth stages at Microsoft, Snapchat, Heal and Headspace.

She fosters giving back to the community, advising C-level executives, mentoring at Techstars, First Round, and has also founded a group of Women Technology Executives in Los Angeles to support & foster this minority group while playing an active role in the LA CTO Forum. 

She loves the outdoors and enjoys boogie boarding with her husband and twins.

I have been modelling complex problems to extract value from data for 10+ years. I hold a PhD in Computational Physics from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya where I used mathematical modelling to study coupled time series. In 2020, I joined Vistaprint as a Senior Data Scientist and I am currently focused on optimizing supply chain forecasting. 

Fun Fact

During my career, I spent several years tracking proteins in vivo in bacterial cells. As I really miss working with living organisms, I currently have a houseplant collection with around 30 different specimens. 

Kimberly Snoyl is a senior software tester with 7 years of experience in Testing, and recently added the role UX Designer to her skillset. With a Masters in Human Media Interaction, she focuses on UX Testing, and gives a Usability Testing course to her colleagues. She is leader of the Usability Testing Guild which aims to spread awareness amongst testers on the importance of UX (e.g. Usability and Accessibility testing). She also founded a chapter of Ladies that UX in Utrecht which has the goal to bring the UX community in Utrecht together by providing monthly meetups where members can share their experiences.

Deepti Devraj is the Product Owner for SAP S/4HANA Commercial Project Management. With an astounding 20+ years of experience in the software industry working with big giants like SAP, Oracle, has converted various innovations to product roadmaps, bagged innumerable customer accolades into her bouquet of success. Have contributed on various roles of developer, lead, customer advocate in the agile industry across globe. A prominent speaker at all SAP conferences like SAP TechEd, DKOM, MasteringSAP. Collecting the product requirements, collaborating with customers, delivering with utmost quality without compromising on Cost and functionality being her key achievements , has kept her pace on with many patents. Loves exploring nature by trekking, an avid globe trotter, indulges on great cuisines as a hard core foodie, which are key ingredients in her path of success.

Sara Sjöberg is currently Regional head of eCommerce in H&M, overseeing the PnL as well as digital CX in South Europe. Sara has during her 4 years with H&M set up the personalization area for the group´s 8 brands as well as successfully relaunched H&M´s loyalty program, Hello Member, that now has more than 120 million members globally. Sara´s background is in digital innovation and retail, with experience from eg launching market leading grocery ecom as well as working in digital agency.

Andrea is a lead data scientist and analytics expert at the world's leading logistics company Deutsche Post DHL Group. She has 15+ years’ experience applying advanced data mining, predictive analytics and machine learning methods to real-world problems across multiple domains including medicine, finance and logistics. Andrea holds a Ph.D. in data analytics and combines her profound technical background with a proven leadership record in managing data science projects and teams. As a passionate team player, she bridges between business and technology. In her current role, she delivers powerful and interpretable AI solutions to solve complex business problems and shapes a data-driven strategy of Deutsche Post DHL Group.

Rozemarijn Koppenaal, Global Vice President E-Commerce for Coty. Rozemarijn is a business- and brand leader with 15+ years’ experience in the Consumer Goods industry. Today, she’s heading the worldwide indirect E-Commerce organization for Coty, out of the HQ in Amsterdam. Rozemarijn started her career in Procter & Gamble, where she was inspired for life about the power of building exceptional talent and a supporting community as a catalyst for transformational business growth. Talent- and community development also stretches out over the non-corporate part of her life, as she raises her two daughters of 5 and 7 years old, mentors actively and started supporting female-founded startups. Rozemarijn is Dutch and moved back to her home country two years ago after having lived in Switzerland for many years.

Catherine is a veteran product leader currently working at HelloFresh finding new ways to bring HelloFresh to people all over the world. She has been building products for high growth B2C companies for almost 20 years, and is passionate about meeting customer needs with the right products. Prior to HelloFresh, Catherine worked across industries like mass customization, travel and fashion.

Catherine is a strong advocate for diversity in technology, as a mentor and as a product leader.

Fun Fact

In her spare time, you can find her buying yarn she likes but may never use or trying to learn how to paint. 

Marina is an experience product manager in the financial industry and she is passionate about the complexity of delivering customer-centric, compliant and scalable products. She is currently Head of Product in Solarisbank, where she is overseeing the Digital Banking Accounts and Transactions API’s products. She first joined Solarisbank as a Product Owner and has delivered several API products and process improvements on the scope of Payments and Digital Banking. 

Victoria is a Senior Manager for Core Voice Strategic Initiatives at BT , where she collaborates with Senior Stakeholders and Leadership Teams to drive and deliver the future goals and ambitions.

Victoria thrives on making a difference and is not afraid to challenge the status quo. Her passion, energy and determination ensures the business goals are delivered and takes pride is ensuring we succeed.

UK & Republic of Ireland Emergency Services (999), UK Network rollout for Emergency Services, 4G Deployment and Strategic Joint ventures are all critical projects and teams that Victoria has led as a Leader and delivered against as part of her career within Technology.

Victoria is a strong advocate for developing, supporting and motivating more Technology Leadership roles for Women by bringing the best out in people to achieve their ambitions

With my commercial, digital and people management skills I like to take responsibility for improving the customer journey and revenue at social engaged organizations. I create results via stakeholder management, creating strong divers teams and guide them through changes. Raised in an entrepreneurial technical family, I have a passion for customers and technology. In all my jobs I was responsible for designing, selling and delivering High Tech services. Always striving for the best customer experience with the voice of the customer as the fuel for the customer journey improvement engine.

As a people manager I have led design-, sales- and operational teams and directed business units of 50M € revenue and 270 employees. I ran an ICT consultancy firm with 170M € revenue and 1.200 employees, as a member of the management board. Sectors I worked in: Industry, Government, Healthcare, Retail, Finance and NGO. I have serviced consumer, government and business clients and also drove 2-sided digital business models. Always combined the motherhood of two with fulltime working in high demanding jobs.

Kate is an Associate Partner at FICO in Analytics where she lives in New York City. She has previously worked at IBM as a Data & AI Specialist and holds a Bachelor of Science from The University of Texas in Mathematical Sciences and Scientific Computation. Kate loves volunteering and is a Vice Chair of Membership for the New York Junior League. An adventure seeker, Kate has hiked the highest summit in the contiguous United States and bungee jumped 5 times.

Allison Robinson always knew she wanted to build a business—most likely in her 40s when she had older kids. But while she was out on maternity leave at Procter & Gamble with her first child, Allison’s dream quickly came true due to a harsh reality. It was during this time she read the staggering statistic that an estimated 43% of highly skilled women leave the workforce to become mothers. Imagining a future where women wouldn’t have to choose between their family and their career, Allison founded The Mom Project in 2016. Allison is currently the Founder and CEO of The Mom Project and has been named to Inc. Female 100 Founders, Chicago Business Journal Women of Influence, and Entrepreneur's 100 Powerful Women.

Parinita has a blend of product operations & technology consulting experience. In her current role with Google, Parinita manages global partner ecosystem & strategy for Engineering product operations & services. Prior to Google, Parinita helped fortune 100/500 companies transform product and quality operations through Global consulting firms such as Deloitte & Accenture. 

Over the years, Parinita was able to build successful win-win partnerships with customers and partners, thanks to her negotiation and collaboration skills. Negotiation has been an integral part of Parinita’s day to day duties whether negotiating a partnership agreement for Google or convincing her 4 year old to eat veggies. Parinita has identified the lack of negotiation skills in women and is on a mission to empower fellow women in tech to get better at negotiations through proven concepts & frameworks.

Anna Choury is a leading voice on AI ethics and fairness. Former research engineer and entrepreneur in AI, Anna has been dedicated to making a change in the way we approach technology. She is the lead author of the online course Destination AI, in partnership with Openclassrooms, Intitut Montaigne and the Abeona Foundation. Destination AI is a training course in the technological, economic and social challenges of artificial intelligence. Online, free and accessible to all, no matter their background. The french version of the course (Objectif IA) has been taken by more than 100 000 people in the first year and aims at training at least 1% of the French population in the next 5 years.

A Fun Fact:

I actually became a mathematician by chance. I was too late to enroll and the Faculty of Mathematics was the only one that accepted me after the closing date !

Isabel has been working on the data space for more than 10 years, stretching herself  to learn and develop new ideas on how technology can help organisations. Isabel enjoys helping customers with their data strategy path and uses technology to show teams how they can make an impact on their deliveries. During the past few years Isabel has seen a gap in the adoption of data governance, she is now working on the implementation of Purview in different sectors. In addition to this, she guides customers on the modern data warehouse architecture, using best practices for small and medium organisations

Jenni Burton, Founder & CEO of ASPIRE Consulting & Coaching, to see how the most powerful women find balance in an unbalanced world. Jenni Burton has over 15 years in Tech Leadership, most recently leading a 70-person $380MM business for Oracle. Jenni works with high-performing professional women to advance their careers without sacrificing balance.

Ivy is eko’s business wizard, mapping an entirely new ecosystem for interactive entertainment across distribution, content, and marketing partnerships. With a resume that includes leadership roles at Apple, Awesomeness, MTV/Viacom and AOL, Ivy is uniquely able to spy the demand for a new, “lean-forward” kind of entertainment.

 Fun Fact:

Gordon Ramsay cooked me his famous scrambled eggs once and I started learning bass guitar.

Over the past 15 years of her professional career Nadiia has lived and worked in Ukraine, UK, Poland, USA, Germany and gained an experience in both startup and corporate environments. She has managed to co-create a patented solution of web content experimentation for the Marketing Technology Startup Maxymiser. Throughout the company’s rapid growth, she was heading the technical delivery and services teams, located all across 5 countries worldwide. She has heavily contributed to building the startup up to the successful CX optimization SaaS leader by helping Fortune Global 500 clients to improve their conversion rates. The startup has been acquired by Oracle and has got the highest score for the online testing criterion in the Forrester Wave: Experiense Optimisation Platforms Q4 2020.

At the moment Nadiia is leading a team of Digital Excellence at E.ON Digital Technology, where she is developing and implementing the Digital Transformation agenda for the Energy Retail Business in a joint collaboration with 9 regional companies across Europe. Key focus topics including, but not limited to, Conversion Optimisation, New Digital Business Development, Customer digital self-service channels (Web/Mobile) and Conversational AI.  

Merissa Silk is an experienced product leader, passionate about using customer-centric methodologies to bring new products to market. Her career trajectory includes positions in Sydney, New York, and Monterrey, and she is currently based in Berlin as Chief Product & Tech Officer at fundingport. Merissa is increasingly in demand as a mentor for early stage startups and especially enjoys supporting female founders and other women in tech with career development and coaching.

Dr. Karen Panetta is the Dean of Graduate Education for the School of Engineering and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tufts University. She is a prolific inventor changing lives through her pioneering approaches to solve society’s greatest challenges using technology.

She was a computer engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) where her algorithms played an instrumental role in developing the first complete digital twin of a CPU design capable of running software programs that have redefined semi-conductor manufacturing and test processes and led the way for other complex system simulations to be possible.

Her team has created the world’s first and foremost image recognition database comprising of 7 image modalities of individuals from around the world, ages 4-73. This allows researchers to benchmark their algorithms across many different image typesincluding visible, near-infrared, thermal, computerized sketch, LYTRO, recorded video, and 3D images. It also includes various orientations, facial expressions and includes faces with masks. The database is helping researchers and companies understand and reveal bias in their Artificial Intelligence(AI)/Machine Learning(ML) applications.

While the world moves to using AI in every facet of education, business, health, communication and manufacturing, Karen’s work builds the fundamental tools to help researchers better train and validate their systems through robust quantifiable metrics and robust computer vision algorithms. 

Her pioneering work in computer vision has enabled autonomous systems to best visually present images to humans to better help humans perceive complex information, whether in open-air, underwater or in space. Her technologies have been deployed to keep us safe, healthy and to protect endangered species.

She has been called a “Rock Star of Engineering and Science” and the “Princess Warrior” of engineering and science education for her work championing young women to embrace their creative talents and brainpower to innovate cool technology that has the power to improve lives. 

As the founder of the international Nerd Girls program, Karen has conducted engineering outreach activities with more than 85,000 children, parents, and educators, and she has been recognized for her unwavering commitment to promoting the image of the “Nerd Girl” as a talented, well-rounded woman who can take on any challenge to solve real-world problems. 

She is the Vice-President of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society and the 2021 IEEE Awards Board Chair. She is the 2019 IEEE-HKN (Eta Kappa Nu) President. Karen was the 2014 IEEE-USA Vice President of Communications and Public Awareness, and is the current editor-in-chief of the IEEE WIE Magazine and an active IEEE Fellow. In her capacity as the past Worldwide Director of IEEE Women in Engineering, she has traveled around the world interacting with youth and their families. From these experiences, Karen and her students have used their engineering skills to develop technology to help improve the lives of autistic children and their families, as well as information systems that have helped governments identify root factors in autism and blindness in children. 

Karen has a B.S. in computer engineering from Boston University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Northeastern University. She was the first woman engineer granted tenure in the Tufts University School of Engineering, and she has received several awards for outstanding teaching and mentoring as well as creative curriculum development and outreach activities. In 2011, President Obama awarded her the nation’s highest award for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering education and mentoring, and in 2009 she was awarded the Norm Augustine Award for communicating the wonders of engineering to the public. Karen is also the recipient of several NASA and National Science Foundation research grants, including the NSF CAREER Award.

Being a policy-maker for more than five years at the EU Institutions, Emőke has been in charge of headline priorities of the Juncker and Von der Leyen Commissions. She has been working with high-level political leaders and has been advising and writing speeches for top decision-makers.

Currently, she focuses on ethical tech and hybrid wellbeing. She deals with responsible, human-centric, AI development on the one hand, and with leadership development, the future of hybrid work and its impact on employee’s wellbeing, on the other hand. Having studied both politics, diplomatic negotiations and psychology, she was always intrigued by and researched what factors play a crucial role in creating credibility, increasing influence and boosting executive presence<

Vanitha is a Senior Engagement Manager at Amazon Webservices (AWS) Professional Services global accounts. In her role, she manages large enterprise client accounts and helps them in their cloud adoption and transformations. She delivers multi-stream technical engagements by innovating and collaborating along with AWS accounts teams, cloud experts/architects, partners and customers in hi-tech, manufacturing, healthcare/life sciences and media/ entertainment verticals. As a strategic business partner to her clients, she works with customer leadership to align their business outcomes to well architected technical outcomes in the cloud.

Vanitha is a versatile, innovative and results-driven thought leader accomplished in exponentially increasing several organization’s growth. She has over 25 years of ERP experience specialized in SAP enabled solutions. Prior to joining AWS, Vanitha was Sr. Manager at Accenture in their SAP business group. 

Fun Fact: Vanitha is passionate in holistic wellness and certified Holistic Health Coach / Wellness Advocate. 

Chryssa is working as an Android Chapter Lead in the Mobile Team at Plum fintech. She is responsible for expanding and guiding the team build an outstanding product while helping the Android engineers pursue their personal and engineering skill goals.

With more than 8 years of experience as a Senior and Lead Android Engineer at Plum fintech and ride-hailing The Beat App, has worked in many cross-functional teams with a leading role to cultivate product-oriented engineering focus on what values the most. Actively preserving and supporting teams’ Agile methodologies and practices.

She loves writing articles about building great products and great teams! Passionate advocate for supporting Women in STEM, and believes in volunteering as a way of life.

Dr. Potter is a women’s health naturopathic doctor and leading expert in helping busy,  burnt-out women reclaim their health, energy and vitality. After overcoming hormone imbalance and postpartum anxiety herself, she is passionate about helping others reach  their health goals in a natural way.  

Dr. Potter is a speaker and has contributed to corporations like Adidas, she has also  been interviewed for articles on Healthline.com. She is a nutritionist as well as a doctor.  She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two kids. Find out more at www.drangelapotter.com.

Co-Founder at Custodian, Nathalia Rus is utilising a new native & distributed graph database to build a knowledge graph around physical assets.

Sarah is Head of Biddable Media At Stickyeyes, a part of Reprise, the digital performance agency at IPG. Focusing on channels such as Google, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, Sarah helps to deliver best in class digital marketing services for brands such as Adobe, Hunter Boots and Kroger Bank. Sarah champions a data centric approach to marketing and works with her clients to understand the different data points they can leverage in order to deliver smooth and engaging digital journeys for their clients.

Bella is a Senior UX Designer who has been working in the UX/UI design and technology industry for over 4 years with experience spanning across the national security and cybersecurity sectors. Currently, she is focused on building a clean, user-driven experience for a dynamic threat intelligence platform delivering data management, enrichment, and visualization capabilities in cybersecurity operations for customers across private and public sectors. She is passionate about all things related to user experience design, psychology, and sociology.

A Fun Fact: She is an avid indoor gardener and also loves learning about concepts like urban sustainability and food insecurity.

Lucie Kogelheide is an Information Technology Security Consultant at TÜV Informationstechnik GmbH (TÜViT) in Essen, Germany. A trained physicist, she chose the field of hardware security, now attacking products by performing powerful so-called “physical attacks” in TÜViT’s hardware laboratory. As a “good” hacker, she tests the security systems of smart cards and microprocessors on behalf of a customer to increase security of products in the field. 

Closely monitoring the ongoing research in the area of quantum computing she is currently especially focussing on post-quantum cryptography and preparing for the evaluation of quantum resistant cryptographic solutions, making sure they can withstand today’s attacks as well as the threats of the future.

Liz is a 2020 LinkedIn Top Voice and leader in workplace strategy, design research and former Vice President at WeWork. In 2020 she founded Thinky Space, an insights and innovation practice, working at the intersection of human-centred design, service design and architecture. Clients from Tech and Cultural sectors come with the same question– how might we leverage design research and insight to create a more engaging, vibrant experience for our people, digitally, physically, culturally?  How can we work better as a team to make a better product in the market? At the core, Thinky Space helps clients make space for thinking more creatively and collaboratively.

Liz has also been a visiting speaker at MIT, Harvard Business School, University of Michigan and a visiting professor in design thinking at Cornell University, Parsons School of Design, and the University of Minnesota. Both of Liz’s teaching and design practice incorporate ‘form follows feeling’. In order to do good work, we have to feel good about who we are.

Company Information: 

Thinky Space https://thinkyspace.com/

A Fun Fact: Liz's First job out of college was designing the concepts for theme park rides

Valentina is a UX/UI Designer at the Milan FLEX Design center. Her main role is to design smooth, user-friendly product experiences to improve people’s lives. In charge of embedded User Interfaces, APPs design and development, her key to delivering high-quality products is finding the best compromise among technical skills and trust relationships among cross-functional teams.

She made a hard decision when after 10 years as a PRO volleyball player, she decided to invest time over her long-term dream to become a designer, willing to restart everything from scratch.

Born in Tuscany and raised around Italy, Valentina holds a Master’s degree in Product and Interaction Design from the University of Florence.  When she isn’t busy with digital projects, she loves cooking for her beloveds and joining beach volleyball activities.

Shivani Baghel is an International IT Project Manager and an entrepreneur at heart. Currently working at Edenred a fintech giant with headquarters in Paris, she is responsible for leading key strategic projects across Europe, Asia and the Americas. 

Prior to Edenred, she helped kickstart NIRA, a fintech startup based in India. She played a key role in achieving initial critical mass and prof of concept. The company is now valued over $3 Million.

Very few people know that she hails from a design background and juggled many roles before carving a space for herself in the tech sector. Hence as an active member and Youth Ambassador at the Women In Tech Global Movement, she is on a mission to empower 5 million women & girls by 2030. 

When not testing APIs, reading architecture documents and creating gantt charts she can be found writing articles about change, ethnicity and gender roles at Medium.  

Kandis is the co-founder of The SIX a strategy and innovation consultancy that empowers enterprise clients like Google, Salesforce and Cisco and pioneering startups like Alucio and VianAI to ideate, collaborate and execute quickly and efficiently for sustainable growth.

She leverages human-centered tools like design and vision sprints along with consumer insights and creative audacity to help clients re-frame problems, imagine new possibilities and create new products, processes and organizational cultures.

She is also the organizer of Design Sprint NYC which brings together diverse thinkers and doers to explore topics in product management, user experience, leadership, equity and inclusion.

Miriam began her career in technology, as a PC Technician for Ziff Davis PC Magazine. Miriam, then made her transition over to IPG, where she has been for over 20 years. Miriam’s ability to adapt to an evolving environment presented several opportunities that allowed her to move up within the organization, from Desktop Support Technician to Senior Technical Analyst. As the organization moved toward a global centralized technical service model, Miriam secured a lead position within the organizations, Global IT Operations division. After a series of additional promotions, Miriam transitioned into her current role as Sr. Manager of IT Governance and Communications, where she is focused on improving business processes through technology-driven services. Successfully unifying cross-functional business and technical teams to facilitate the identification of business requirements, translating business needs into engineered solutions.

A Fun Fact

Miriam co-leads IPG IT’s Global “Women in IT” program representing the North America region, executing programs focused on community outreach and unifying women leaders, creating a culture of support for Women in IT within the organization

Alena is a CCS Accredited Career Coach, certified Personal Leadership Mentor/Trainer, Speaker, and the Founder of 'Empowered For Future'. She has been educated in Sociology (HONS) and Human Resources Management and has an extensive background in coaching, training, recruitment, and leadership in various industries in Poland and The Netherlands.

Alena left her corporate job and followed her passion for supporting professionals in defining a clear direction for their careers, life, and leadership, moving there with confidence and consistency. It is a topic close to her heart, for she ‘played small’ for too long, knowing there was something more out there.

She thrives in empowering ambitious professionals on their journey towards a brighter and happier future. Through public speaking events, she shares her view on women empowerment and delivers training and coaching for companies on personal development/leadership topics. She was awarded the Leader in Leadership Coaching and was a finalist of The Freelancer of The Year 2019 Awards. Alena is a happy mother and wife.

Arlyne is a CIMA qualified Accountant working as a Finance Manager in the Telecommunications industry and the founder of Roots to Froots. She seeks to improve the community’s relationship with money thus improving wellbeing.

Phenom, Prodigy, and Whiz kid are a few of the words used to describe Alena Analeigh, who at 12-years old is headed to college, but that’s only part of her story.

With a bold dream of becoming the youngest girl of color to intern at NASA, Alena has used her voice to launch The Brown STEM Girl and The Brown STEM Girl Foundation. She is also the creator of Brown STEM Girl 'STEM in the City Day' Honoring Women of Color in STEM.

Alena traditionally schooled, homeschooled and world schooled, she is an experienced world traveler which enabled her to attend school in Amman, the capital of Jordan, located in the Middle East.

At 4-years old, Alena was excited by LEGO® sets, robotics, and traveling to NASA sites. She was honored by the Phoenix Mercury (WNBA) as part of their Believe in Women campaign where she received a full-tuition scholarship.

A Fun Fact: Personal Hobby: Building LEGO® sets

I have a background in quantitative biomedical sciences. I am an expereicned machine learning practitioner, and worked as a Data Scientist for several years at BI X, the digital innovation laboratory for BI X. Currently, I'm heading up my own Digital Lab in the Digital Transformation Center of Excellence part of Clinical Development and Operations.

After an impressive career in law, as well as sales and marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, Sarah Palmer found her passion in motivational coaching, training and development.  She is PowerSpeaking’s European business affiliate extraordinaire. 

Sarah’s experience includes:

• Leading the development and delivery of PowerSpeaking’s “ConferenceSpeaking” program.
  Providing professional training and coaching, including PowerSpeaking’s SalesSpeaking® and Speaking Up®:  Presenting to Executives/Decision Makers.
• Presenting to executives of Fortune 500 companies around the globe.
• Delivering one-on-one business and personal coaching in the areas of confidence, motivation and personal development.
• Coaching and teaching resilience, communication and organizational skills to physicians in England, and specializing in overseas students.
• Interviewing global business leaders who are masters in the field of communication, to develop best practices in this field.