Ursula von der Leyen, President, European Commission 
Charles Michel, President, European Council 
Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Mariya Gabriel is the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education, Youth and Sport. Under her leadership, the new Horizon Europe, Erasmus+, and the cultural strand of Creative Europe programmes (2021-2027) will be defined and implemented.
Her main priorities are excellence in research, innovation and education (ERA, EEA, EIA); tackling the R&I divide in Europe; Europe as a leader in strategic innovation areas through the digital and green transition, with a particular attention for young people and regions. “No one left behind” and “Think out of the box” are her mottos.
Between 2017 and 2019, Mariya Gabriel was European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society. She proposed the new Digital Europe programme, worked on EU Strategy on AI, disinformation online, cybersecurity and launched the EuroHPC strategy. She has extensively engaged with external EU partners to enhance digital cooperation, in particular with the Western Balkans and Africa.
She was elected as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2009, 2014 and 2019. Mariya Gabriel is First Vice-President of the European People’s Party (EPP), and, since 2012, Vice-President of EPP Women.
Commissioner Gabriel is a board member of the United Nations youth programme Generation Unlimited (GenU). She has been ranked among the 50 most influential women in Europe in the field of cybersecurity by the leading European cybersecurity magazine SC Media UK (2019).
Mariya Gabriel is also known for her involvement in the fight for gender equality. Among others, she received the prestigious Italian prize “Golden Apple” for highest achievements for women. At the European Parliament, she was awarded twice “MEP of the year” – in 2016 for the Development category, and in 2013 for the Gender Equality category.
In November 2020, Commissioner Gabriel received the Annual Award of the Vienna Economic Forum “Partner of the Year 2020” for contribution to the economic development, rewarding Ms Gabriel’s vision of a European knowledge strategy comprising the European Education Area, the European Research Area and the new Digital Education Action Plan.
She holds a Master’s degree in political sciences and international relations from the Institute of Political Studies (Bordeaux, FR) and a Bachelor’s degree in Bulgarian and French Languages from “Paisii Hilendarski” University (Plovdiv, BG). She also graduated from “Dr.Petar Beron” Language High School (Kyustendil, BG).
Hilary Mine, President, DIGITALEUROPE Based in the Netherlands, Ms. Mine leads Customer Operations for Nokia in eleven countries across Nordics, Baltics, and Benelux. She and her teams lead sales, business management, delivery and operations across the region.
Prior to her current role, Ms Mine was based in Silicon Valley, and ran Nokia’s Global Network Transformation practice. She has also run Alcatel-Lucent’s global Consulting Services business, and the full regional business of Alcatel-Lucent in North Asia and Australasia/Oceania which included sales and delivery of large transformation and managed services projects, and well as being Managing Director of both Australia and New Zealand.
Before joining Alcatel, Ms Mine was a much-cited and published analyst and consultant working across the IT and telecom industries. She has worked in the communications and IT field for more than 25 years, during which time she has held senior executive roles with Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Technicolor and Probe Research, and has lived and worked extensively in Asia Pacific and Europe, as well as North America.
Ms Mine holds an MBA from San Francisco State University and a BA in Economics from Reed College. She has one daughter, and enjoys cooking, yoga, running, hiking, and travel.
Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, Director General, DIGITALEUROPE Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl is Director-General of DIGITALEUROPE, the leading digital technology industry association representing over 35,000 digital companies in Europe.
She is a member of the Stakeholder Cybersecurity Certification Group of ENISA (the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity) and of NATO’s high-level Advisory Group for Emerging and Disruptive Technologies, as well as a board member of the European Commission’s Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition and the European Parliament-led European Internet Forum.
Formerly, Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl was a member of the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, and of the High-level Strategy Group on Industrial Technologies in charge of identifying Key Enabling Technologies.
She was an Executive Board Member of the Royal Danish Export Council and Chair of the Export Grant Committee under the Danish Foreign Ministry. She also served as Executive Board member in DIGITALEUROPE, and as a member of the association’s high level Digital Advisory Council.
Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl has served as Board Member of the Danish Chamber of Commerce and was President of the Board of the Danish ICT association (ITB), where she led the development of policy positions on issues such as business digitalisation, ICT security, disruptive business models, telecoms and education.
Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl has more than 25 years of experience in the ICT industry. She previously held international positions at IBM and Oracle as well as with SMEs, building businesses across Europe and China and founding the cloud provider GlobeIT. She has deep insights into the digitalisation of business and society and the data-driven economy, and is regularly invited to deliver keynote speeches on these issues at high-level events across the world.
Svenja Schulze, Federal Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Germany Svenja Schulze was appointed Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in 2018. Before taking office, she was General Secretary of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Between 2010 and 2017, she served as Minister for Innovation, Science and Research of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Svenja Schulze, a university graduate in German and Political Sciences, also worked as a business consultant with a public sector focus and was a member of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament.
“Cities and municipalities are instrumental for the success of our efforts to implement climate action and adaptation to climate change. Cities are home to more than half the global population and account for 70 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. Collaboration at all levels of government and among all stakeholders is essential if climate action is to succeed. I am delighted that the International Conference on Climate Action, ICCA2019, is addressing a topic that before now received too little attention. We will join with government representatives, mayors and experts from all over the world to identify the structural obstacles to climate action, placing a special focus on cities. Together, we will develop ways to overcome these obstacles.”
Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides has been commissioner for health and food safety since December 1, 2019. Prior to that, she was elected to the House of Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus in 2006 in 2011 and 2016 representing the Democratic Rally Party, of which she was the vice-president. She was also the chair of the committee on human rights and equal opportunities for men and women. Previously, she served as president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), after being appointed head of the Cyprus Delegation to the PACE in 2012. At PACE, Kyriakides was also rapporteur of the first report on the optimal care of patients with breast cancer in the Council of Europe, and was the founder of the first breast cancer awareness campaign at the Council of Europe, which is now held yearly. A passionate advocate of cancer patient rights, she was a founding member of the first breast cancer advocacy organisation in Cyprus, Europa Donna Cyprus, where she served as president from 2000 to 2015. She was also president of the European Breast Cancer Coalition Europa Donna between 2004 and 2006. Kyriakides worked as a clinical psychologist in the mental health services of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Cyprus from 1979 to 2006. She holds degrees in psychology from Reading University and Manchester University in the United Kingdom.
Nadia Calviño, Minister for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Spain Nadia Calviño Santamaría, is a Spanish State economist, academic and civil servant of European institutions. In June 2018, she was appointed Minister of Economy and Business, Spain. From 2014 to 2018, she was Director-General for Budget of the European Commission. She holds a degree in Economics (1991) from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) and a degree in Law (2011) from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). In 1994, she joined the Spanish Civil Service as member of the senior corps of State Economist and Trade Experts (Técnicos Comerciales y Economistas del Estado).
Before joining the European Commission in September 2006, she worked in the Spanish public sector in areas such as macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, foreign trade, economic policy and competition. Other senior roles that she held included Director-General for Competition, Deputy Director-General for Legal and Institutional Affairs and Deputy Director-General for Mergers.
Minister Calviño has lectured at the Faculty of Economic at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. She has also published a large number of articles on matters within her expertise and has been awarded 2012 Women Leadership Awards by the Aliter Business School, and the 2007 Public Sector Lawyer of the Year by Iberian Lawyer magazine. In 2015, HM King Philip VI bestowed Minister Calviño with the Commendation of the Order of Civil Merit.
Christiane Canenbley, Deputy Head of Cabinet for Executive Vice-President Vestager, European Commission Christiane Canenbley is Deputy Head of Cabinet for European Commission Executive Vice President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager. Before, she was in charge of the multiannual financial framework, digital single market and relations with Germany and Austria in former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s team. She also worked in the Cabinet of former European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan. Christiane Canenbley studied agriculture and political science in Berlin, Germany.
Kerstin Jorna, Director General, DG GROW, European Commission Kerstin Jorna is a German national and a civil servant at the European Commission where she has held various positions, amongst others as Head of Cabinet of several Commissioners and different Director posts. Mrs. Jorna is the Director-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.
Mrs. Jorna was Deputy Director-General in the Economic and Financial Affairs general directorate where her areas of responsibility included, amongst others, macroeconomic surveillance of EU Member States, the European Investment Plan and coordination with international financial institutions.
Mrs. Jorna also held positions on the Board of both the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund.
Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, Member, European Parliament Miapetra Kumpula-Natri is a MEP representing Finland and the S&D Group. Kumpula-Natri is the first vice-chair of the Artificial Intelligence in digital age (AIDA) special committee, member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and a substitute of the Committees on International Trade (INTA) and on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO). For 11 years, Miapetra was a member of the Finnish Parliament.
Miapetra is eager to find sustainable solutions to climate change and Energy sector and she is looking for more investments in research, knowledge and fair working life through the European cooperation. Digitalization, data economy, artificial intelligence and teleoperation markets are close to her heart, and in the European Parliament she is also known as “Madame Roaming” and “Digi-MEP”. Among other responsibilities, she is at the moment the rapporteur for the European Parliament own initiative report on data strategy, ITRE shadow for the Data Governance act and standing rapporteur for the WTO e-commerce negotiations.
Céline Gauer, Director General, Recovery and Resilience Task Force, European Commission Céline Gauer is Head of the Recovery and Resilience Task Force.
She was Deputy Secretary General for Policy Coordination in the European Commission from August 2018 until October 2020.
Before that she was Deputy Director General for Food Safety in the European Commission’s General Directorate for Health and Food Safety since March until July 2018.
Prior to that date she was a member of the Directorate General for Competition where she occupied various positions from 1995 until 2018, lately as Director for Energy and Environment.
She studied Law and Economics in France (Sorbonne and Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris).
Damian Boeselager, Member of European Parliament Damian Boeselager is a Member of the European Parliament. He holds degrees in Philosophy & Economics from University of Bayreuth and a dual-Master in Public Administration from the Hertie School of Governance and Columbia University’s SIPA in New York City. Damian co-founded Volt – a pan-european, progressive and pragmatic Europe-wide movement with the aim of reforming the European continent and solving the big challenges of our time, together.In the European Parliament, Damian focuses on creating a real European parliamentary democracy, creating the framework for a competitive and innovative European economy with a focus on data policy and AI, establishing paths for legal migration, setting up a common, fair and fast European asylum system, and ensuring that the EU works for all via budgetary stability measures. He is also part of the EU-Canada and US Delegations. Damian is one of the negotiators for the Greens/EFA in the Budget Committee on the Recovery Reform Facility, the largest part of the EUR 672.5 billion European Corona recovery response.
Photo copyright Michal Szyndel.
Jyrki Katainen, President, Sitra Jyrki Katainen is President of Sitra. His main objective is to lead the future-oriented work at Sitra in such a way that Sitra will be able to generate new ideas to aid decision-makers in society and private companies, and to try and test new operating models. Jyrki wants Sitra’s ideas to reach a wider international audience since many of the phenomena that Sitra studies are not national but global. He has a special interest in transforming the market economy so that it complies with the principles of circular economy and sustainability. Katainen also wants Sitra to stimulate debate concerning the forces that will shape our future.
Katainen’s career has been focused on analysing change in society, searching for solutions and making decisions. Before his appointment as President of Sitra, Katainen was European Commission Vice-President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness. Prior to that, he has held the positions of Prime Minister of Finland and Finance Minister. During his 15 years as a Member of the Finnish Parliament he was Chair of the Committee for the Future, among other appointments.
Dragos Tudorache, Member of European Parliament and Chair of AIDA committee Dragoș Tudorache is the Minister of Internal Affairs of Romania. He was also the Head of the Prime Minister’s Chancellery from November 2015 until September 2016 when he assumed the new office.
He started his career as a judge in the Court of Galati, in 1997, a position he held for three years. As of 2000, he was the coordinator of analysis team in the Department of Rule of Law and Protection of Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Pristina (Kosovo). Between 2003 and 2005 he worked as the Head of the Legal Department of the UN team of International Judges at the UN Interim Administration for Kosovo.
In the next two years, Dragoș Tudorache joined the European Commission Delegation in Bucharest being responsible for Justice and Anti-Corruption issues.
In 2007 he joined the European Commission as the coordinator for the Schengen Facility. In 2009 he was appointed Head of Unit in charge of the Unit dealing with Large EU IT Projects: Schengen and Visa Information Systems. He went on to become the Interim Executive Director of the eu-LISA, the European Agency for the operational management of large-scale IT systems in the area of freedom, security and justice, in 2012. As of 2013 he was in charge of International Affairs and in 2015 he became responsible for General Coordination and Strategic Issues in the General Directorate for Migration and Home Affairs.
Francesco Buonarroti, Chief Information Officer, Janssen Pharmaceuticals EMEA, Johnson & Johnson Francesco Buonarroti is the Chief Information Officer at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, J&J where he has been working for 12 years now. His previous positions include Senior Director IT, Janssen Commercial EMEA and IT Director EMEA Finance Logistic and HR amongst other.
Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, Francesco has worked for SAP.
Cristian-Silviu Busoi, Member of European Parliament and Chair of ITRE Committee Cristian-Silviu BUŞOI is a Member of the European Parliament and Chair of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee. He is also Member of the Delegation for Southeast Asia, as well as substitute Member of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Delegation for the Arab Peninsula. Mr. Busoi graduated Medicine from Carol Davila University in Bucharest, Law from Titu Maiorescu University in Bucharest, and Diplomacy from the Romanian Diplomatic Institute in Bucharest. His political career started in 1996 when, as a student, he became member of the National Liberal Party. Eight years later, he entered the Romanian Parliament and, in 2013, became President of the Romanian National Health Insurance House. Since 2007, he has been elected to the European Parliament for three consecutive terms.
Casper Klynge, Vice President, European Government Affairs, Microsoft Casper Klynge is Microsoft’s Vice President for European Government Affairs with responsibility for all of Microsoft’s government affairs and public policy work across the continent. He serves on the senior leadership team of Microsoft’s CELA group. Prior to joining Microsoft, Casper most recently served as Denmark’s (& the world’s first) Ambassador to the global tech industry. Previous posts include: Ambassador to Indonesia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea & ASEAN (2014-2017), Ambassador to the Republic of Cyprus (2013-2014), Deputy Head of NATO’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Helmand Province, Afghanistan & Head of Mission of the EU’s civilian crisis management planning mission in Kosovo (20062008). Casper holds a M.Sc. in Political Science and is a 2009 Marshall Memorial Fellow.
Christoph Zindel, Member of the Managing Board, Siemens Healthineers Bio to come soon
Mauro Petriccione, Director General, DG CLIMA, European Commission Mauro Petriccione became director general of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action in March 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, he was deputy director general at the Directorate-General for Trade and worked on trade relations with Asia, Latin America, several countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific as well as on sustainable development. Prior to this, he worked on trade policy covering various activities ranging from trade defense to standards, investment, competition, WTO, dispute settlement, relations with EU member states and European institutions. He joined the European Commission in 1987.
Hubert Tardieu, Interim CEO, GAIA-X AISBL Hubert Tardieu is currently the interim CEO of the GAIA-X AISBL (in incorporation). After 27 years in Sema then SchlumbergerSema then Atos in various positions including EVP for Global Telecom, Global Finance, Global Consulting& Systems Integration, he has been the advisor of Atos CEO helping him to form the vision of what will be our world in 5 years ahead. To help him in this task he has formed the Atos Scientific Community in June 2009. This global community comprises now 160 of the top scientists, engineers and forward thinkers from across the Group, with a rich mix of skills and backgrounds. Their latest main publication, a future vision report, is entitled “Journey 2024 – Redefining Enterprise Purpose”. They also produce other publications including whitepapers and blogs and participate in innovation workshops and proof-of-concepts.
Michel Isnard, Vice-President EMEA Sales, Red Hat Michel Isnard is Red Hat’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Isnard is responsible for leading regional management teams and managing Red Hat’s relationship with EMEA customers and partners. His focus is on sales, marketing, and services, with an emphasis on Red Hat’s initiative to shift enterprise computing from proprietary to open source solutions.
Since joining Red Hat in 2012, Isnard’s team has consistently exceeded financial targets and delivered innovative solutions that have helped customers overcome business challenges in both established and emerging markets. Prior to joining Red Hat, Isnard spent more than six years leading the enterprise business at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in France. He has held various positions with HPE Software, including director of sales for infrastructure software in EMEA, vice president for Asia/Pacific and Japan, and vice president of Sales, worldwide global accounts.
Anton Ujčič, Deputy Director General at the Information Society and Informatics Directorate, Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration Anton Ujčič is the Deputy Director General at the Information Society and Informatics Directorate at the Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration. The Directorate is in charge for the strategic planning and promotion of the digital transformation of Slovenia, and the functioning of the state information system. Furthermore, the Directorate is entrusted with the responsibility of developing the cloud framework and e-services useful for the state, citizens, and the companies. In this aspect, it provides citizens and businesses with effective, reliable, and easy access to e-services at the national level and in the Digital Single Market.
Anton has a Bachelor’s degree in Management of information systems and a Masters of Science degree in Management. Prior to joining the Ministry, he has worked in various positions connected with management of information systems, information security management systems, BPM, compliance, and certifications schemas. He has examined the use of cloud services in the field of public administration and participated in EU project for developing the European framework for certification schemes and evaluation concepts to secure cloud infrastructures.
Gilles Thiebaut, Managing Director, Senior Vice President Global Sales for Northern Western Europe, Hewlett Packard Enterprise As Managing Director for the Northern Western Europe region (France, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Lithuania, Luxembourg , Netherland, Norway and Sweden) Gilles is responsible for developing and driving growth potential in the region and to extend HPE’s leadership position in these markets.
Before leading the Northern Western Europe organization, Gilles Thiebaut had been the Managing Director of France for 3 years.
Prior tenures include Vice President of ESSN (Servers, Storage and Network division) for Global Western Europe area in 2007 and VicePrésident of Indirect Sales in Europe, Middle Est and Africa, which represent over 70% of the revenue generated in the region.
At the outset of his career, Gilles Thiebaut worked at Xerox as part of the sales organization. Since then he has built extensive leadership and operational knowledge at country and regional levels, while delivering impressive results in terms of revenue growth & organisational transformation.
Gilles sits on the Executive Committee of the AmCham EU and is a regular keynote speaker to events on digital transformation & the future of IT.
He holds a Master in Business Administration from the Solvay Business School and from the Insead. Gilles is the happy father of 4 and enjoys playing tennis, jogging and cooking for his family & friends.
Norbert Lütke-Entrup, Head of Technology & Innovation Management, Siemens Norbert Lütke-Entrup has been head of the Corporate Technology & Innovation Management department of Siemens since 2012.
Norbert is responsible for developing the corporate portfolio of technology and innovation fields, driving the company’s activities in standardization and compliance with technical law, and engaging with policy makers in the research and innovation domain.
Amongst others, Norbert is politically active as member of the Industry Advisory Council to the Bavarian State Government, as chair of the ZVEI Innovation Policy Working Group, as board member of the BDI (Federation of German Industries) Research, Innovation and Technology Committee, and as chair of the BusinessEurope Research and Innovation Working Group.
Norbert holds a master’s degree in physics from the University of Bonn (1996) as well as a PhD in physics from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (1999) resulting from his work on superconductivity at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He also holds an MBA degree from the Collège des Ingénieurs Paris (2000).
Joyce Lee, Chief Information Officer, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson As the CIO for Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Joyce is a strategic member of the Janssen Pharmaceuticals Group Operating Committee (GOC) and the JJT Technology Leadership Team (TLT). She is responsible for the overall technology strategy development and leading the Janssen Business Technology Leadership Team to continue to drive business transformation and value creation using innovative technology capabilities for our Janssen employees, as well as the doctors, nurses and patients we serve.
As a strategic technology leader, Joyce has proven business management capabilities and direct P&L experience. In an earlier role as Managing Director, Johnson & Johnson Consumer, Malaysia and Singapore, she led a diverse range of Johnson & Johnson Consumer personal care, healthcare and over-the-counter brands. Some of her key achievements included three years of consecutive double-digit top- and bottom-line growth and successful implementation of a new go-to-market sales business model.
For Joyce, the best part of her job is to learn from others through their diverse backgrounds and experiences – “Johnson & Johnson has some of the best talents and I have learned so much through working as part of a diverse team. It’s amazing what you can learn from others, no matter how long you have been in your job, there is always a fresh perspective when you open your mind up to learn and embrace new ideas and innovation.”
Dieter Wegener, Vice Chair of DIGITALEUROPE’s Digital Manufacturing Executive Council, ZVEI Biography to follow shortly.
Alain Dedieu, Chair of DIGITALEUROPE's Digital Manufacturing Executive Council, Schneider Electric Alain Dedieu is Senior Vice President of Drives domain with responsibility for building and deploying worldwide strategy and roadmap for Drives offer. In this role, he is responsible of R&D and support globally sells management. In parallel, he is also responsible of the Automation China, a program relative to new lines of products and business model dedicated to Emerging Economies. He began his career with Telemecanique in 1983 as Automation and Drives sales in the French organization. In 1989 he joined the drives activity and held various positions in marketing and offer management and was nominated Drives Activity Director in 1995. Alain joined the management team of the Industrial Control Business unit in 1999 and was appointed Business Development Vice President. In 2001 he was appointed as Power and Control business Vice President. In 2003 Alain joined the North America management team and held the position of Automation & Control Marketing Vice President, based in Chicago Illinois. In May 2007, he joined the newly created Industry Business as the Senior Vice President of Drives and has been appointed to Automation China in November 2012 . Alain shares his time between France and China. Alain is graduated from Ecole Spéciale des Travaux Publics de Paris – France.
Börje Ekholm, President and CEO, Ericsson Group Börje Ekholm is President and CEO of the Ericsson Group.
Börje Ekholm assumed this role on January 16, 2017. He knows the company and the industry well after being a Board member of Ericsson for nearly 10 years (first elected 2006).
Most recently Ekholm was CEO of Patricia Industries, a division within Investor AB (2015-January 15, 2017). Prior to assuming this position in 2015, he was President and CEO of Investor AB between 2005 and 2015. Previous positions also include Head of New Investments and President of Investor Growth Capital Inc. Ekholm has had various positions at Novare Kapital AB and McKinsey & Co Inc.
Börje Ekholm holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, as well as a Master of Business Administration, from INSEAD, France.
He is a board member of Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Alibaba Group and Trimble Inc. Ekholm is also Member of the Board of Trustees of Choate Rosemary Hall and the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce New York. Since 2017, Member of the Stering Committee of the World Economic Forum Digital Communication Governors. Holds Honorary Doctorate at The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Fernanda Ferreira Dias, Director-General for Economic Activities, Ministry of Economy and Digital Transition, Portugal Fernanda Ferreira Dias, of Portuguese nationality, currently serves as Director-General for Economic Activities at the Ministry of Economy and Digital Transition in Portugal.
Master in International Relations, with a specialisation in Political and Economic Relations, from the Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences, of the Technical University of Lisbon, she began her professional career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1991.
Previously, she served as Diplomatic Advisor to the Minister of Economy, between February 2016 and February 2018; and she was Director of International Affairs at the Directorate-General for Consumer Protection (Ministry of Economy).
Between February 2004 and August 2010, she served as Principal Counsellor at the Permanent Representation of Portugal to the European Union, in Brussels, responsible for dossiers on competitiveness / single market, industry, better regulation, consumer policy and tourism. Between 1997 and 1999 she was Seconded National Expert in the Directorate-General for Internal Market and Financial Services of the European Commission, in Brussels, having been a Desk Officer in the Directorate-General for National Defense Policy, in the Ministry of National Defense, between 1993 and 1994.
Throughout her career, she coordinated and accompanied the negotiation of European dossiers and represented Portugal in legislative negotiations at the level of the European Union and meetings of the OECD, United Nations and other bilateral or multilateral forums. She worked in all Portuguese Presidencies of the Council of Ministers of the European Union (1992, 2000 and 2007). She supports female entrepreneurship and the WinB – Women in Business Association. She loves to travel, original ideas and contact with people from all over the world!
Bart Steukers, Director Context and Future CEO, Agoria Bart Steukers (58) is to be the new CEO of technology federation Agoria as of 1 April 2021. He will succeed Marc Lambotte, who will retire from Agoria at the age of 65. The board of directors already made this decision for a smooth transition in these difficult coronavirus times.
Bart Steukers is thoroughly familiar with Agoria and the technology sector. He has been working as Agoria’s Context Director since 2016. He charted the course for Agoria’s activities in the digital and manufacturing industry, helped shape our study centre and coordinated the representation of interests.
He previously worked at Unisys for eleven years, where he became General Manager for Continental Europe, and for eighteen years at IBM as Public Sector Executive for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
That great affinity with the technology sector and his involvement with Agoria and our members, in combination with the successful way in which he led and expanded ‘Be The Change’, our project on the future of the labour market, were important elements for the board of directors to appoint Bart Steukers. Thanks to that project, the arrangements for the relaunch of the labour market are already in place. We know perfectly which jobs will disappear by 2030, which ones will be added and who is best suited to undergo further training or retraining.
‘The digital transformation requires a broad support base, especially after the enormous economic and human shock we are going through. I want to bolster that support. No sector of the Belgian economy can escape the consequences of digitization, but the impact is different for each sector. The biggest challenge in the digital transformation is not the technology but the mindset. A company that wants to digitalize must have time and resources, but first and foremost the people. I am ready to take up that challenge,’ Mr Steukers says.
Bart Steukers is a sales engineer and has a master’s degree in business administration.
Bart Steukers: “Belgium should be the fastest learner for the rollout of the recovery programme.” (28/5/2020)
Ulrich Ahle, CEO, FIWARE Ulrich Ahle is Chief Executive Officer of the FIWARE Foundation. FIWARE is an initiative whose mission is to build an open sustainable ecosystem around public, royalty-free and implementation-driven software platform standards that will ease the development of new Smart Applications in multiple sectors.
Formerly Vice President and leader of Manufacturing, Retail & Transportation business and responsible for Industry 4.0 at Atos in Germany, he is also founder and member of the Board of the Industrial Data Space Association in Germany.
After an apprenticeship as toolmaker at Hella KG, he studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Paderborn. In his career, Ahle held several positions as development engineer, project manager, sales director and Vice President. He has been part of Nixdorf Computer AG, Siemens and Ato.
Patrik Sjöstedt, MBA, EMEA Regional Business Leader, Manufacturing, Enterprise Commercial, Microsoft Patrik leads Microsoft´s business for the Manufacturing Industry in EMEA with a special focus on our large enterprise customers
He joined Microsoft from Hitachi Europe where he as Chief Commercial Officer was leading sales of digital solutions to Energy, Manufacturing and Transportation customers across EMEA
Prior to Microsoft and Hitachi, Patrik worked as CEO / European President for Celerant Consulting (a global operational consulting firm with a special focus on Asset intensive Industries) and for Alfa Laval as Vice President Operations Development
His early career years were spent within Arthur Andersen where he started out as an auditor and then moved into Management Consulting. He also spent three years with Swedish Chemicals group Perstorp as a Business Controller
Patrik lives in southern Sweden with his wife and two daughters and is a passionate golfer. He packs his running shoes on business trips and loves to see a city wake up on his morning run.
Mario Campolargo, Acting Director-General, European Commission Mário Campolargo is Director for “Net Futures” in DG CONNECT responsible for Research and Innovation on what lies beyond the current Internet architecture, software and services and the EU-Strategy for the Cloud.
Previously he has been Director for “Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures” in DG INFSO in charge of Future and Emerging Technologies, ICT based infrastructures for science and ICT trust and security, experimental facilities and experimentally driven research for Future Internet. Before joining the European Commission in 1990, he worked for 12 years in the R&D Centre of Portugal Telecom as a researcher and manager.
He has a Degree in Electrical Engineering (University of Coimbra), a Master of Science in Computing Science (Imperial College London), a Post graduate in Management (Solvay Business School Brussels) and a European Studies Diploma (Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve).
Vanda Jesus, Executive Director, Portugal Digital Vanda de Jesus is the Executive Director of Portugal Digital. She started her career in business consulting and worked in several entities, from the public sector to start-ups, where she assumed roles in marketing, sales and digital transformation. She is a member of the Strategic Council of COTEC, of the Advisory Board of APDC and DNS.pt, and she is also in the Editorial Committee of Human Resources Magazine. Her academic background is in business from ISCTE and she also has a post-graduation in E-Business from ISEG/IDEFE.
In 20 years of professional experience she was a Project Director at UMIC – Agency for the Knowledge Society, a Director for the largest Exhibitions Center in Portugal and the Executive Director of APDC – Portuguese Association for the Development of Communications, coordinating several digital transformation initiatives. Her career is also marked with the role of Chief Business Development Officer in the start-up sector, at Viatecla. She was part of the executive board of MUDA’s movement – a project to promote the digital inclusion in society. Finally, she was the Marketing and PR Director of Microsoft Portugal, where she was responsible for the Building the Future initiative.
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Co-President, Club of Rome Sandrine Dixson-Declѐve has 30+ years of European and international policy, business leadership and strategy experience with a particular focus on EU and international climate change, sustainable development, green growth, conventional and sustainable energy solutions and sustainable finance.
She is currently the Co-President of the Club of Rome and divides her time between lecturing, facilitating difficult conversations and advisory work. She holds several advisory positions for the European Commission: Chair, Expert Group on Economic and Societal Impact of Research & Innovation (ESIR); Member, Assembly on Research & Innovation (DGR&I); TEG Sustainable Finance Taxonomy, Chair, Manufacturing & Outreach (DGFISMA). She sits on several Advisory Boards for Climate KIC, the European Aluminium and the IEEP and is a Senior Associate and faculty member of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and a Senior Associate for E3G. In addition, she is an Ambassador, for the Energy Transition Commission (ETC) and a Senior Advisor to Interel and Xynteo. In 2017 Sandrine co-founded the Women Enablers Change Agent Network (WECAN).
Sandrine was recognised by GreenBiz as one of the 30 most influential women across the globe driving change in the low carbon economy and promoting green business. She has spent her career bringing together business leaders, policy makers, academia and NGO’s. Until recently, Sandrine was Chief Partnership Officer for UN Agency Sustainable Energy for All and prior to that the Director of the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group and the EU office of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (2009-2016). During that period she was also appointed Executive Director of the Green Growth Platform bringing together EU Ministers and CEO’s.
Previous advisory and professional positions include: advising for HRH The Prince of Wales, Members of the European Parliament, European Commission Presidents, Commissioners and officials, Governments in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, international organizations (OPEC, ADB, OECD, UNEP, USAID, UNFCCC, IEA) and business leaders of large international, European and African companies. Sandrine was Vice Chair, European Biofuels Technology Platform 2008-2016; Board member, We Mean Business 2014-2016 and the Advisory Board of the Oil and Gas major Sasol from 2007-2010. Member of The Guardian’s Sustainable Business Advisory Board. She spoke on TEDx: The Sustainable Future series and has published numerous articles, book chapters and given presentations on green growth and competitiveness, innovation, energy solutions, climate change, sustainable development, transport, conventional and alternative fuel quality legislation as well as on trade & environment.
François Cremieux, Deputy CEO of the Greater Paris University Hospitals (AP-HP) François is currently deputy CEO of the Greater Paris University Hospitals (AP-HP). He graduated in economics from Dauphine (Paris) and Lancaster (UK) universities and in public health from Paris Diderot medical school. His fields of interest are public health policies and health economics. From 2014 till 2018, François was CEO of the Northern Paris University Hospitals. He previously served from 2012 to 2014 as senior advisor to Marisol Touraine, Minister for social affairs and health. He was in charge of the national health strategy. From 2010 to 2012, François was director of the hospital sector for the greater Paris region. His career was mostly dedicated to hospital management with an extended experience in post war countries and health policy issues in political transition periods. He also worked for the United-Nations and the World health organization in the early 2000. He is a member of the editorial committee of Esprit, one of the most influential intellectual review in France.
Pierre Delsaux, Deputy Director General, DG SANTE, European Commission Pierre Delsaux is Deputy Director-General in charge of the Internal Market at the Directorate-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs of the European Commission. From 2011 to 2014, he was Deputy Director-General in charge of the Single Market at the department for Internal Market and Services. His career with the European Commission has included working in the Directorate-General Competition from 1991 to 1994. Delsaux actively contributed to the European Commission’s reaction to the financial crisis in the areas of corporate reporting and governance, and governance of supervisory and standard-setting organizations, both at the EU and global levels. His interests also include the application of community law across the EU, as well as the functioning of the internal market. Prior to working at the European Commission, Delsaux was Legal Secretary at the European Court of Justice from 1984 to 1987. After studying Law at the University of Liège, he obtained his Master of Law at Northwestern University, Illinois, US, in 1983.
Anna Ferenczy, CMO, Codecool Anna Ferenczy is the Chief Marketing Officer at Codecool, where she is responsible for brand, service development and digital transformation strategies whilst driving Codecool’s market expansion via communicating a win-win proposition for businesses and digital talent in Europe and beyond.
Originally from Budapest, Anna travelled around the globe, lived in Mauritius and is currently based in London, where she founded her own business, Tribe of Brands, a marketing and digital transformation agency. Even before the pandemic, she has been a keen promoter of digital transformation, online ecosystems, and a flexible, remote working environment as a sustainable future.
In 2020, Anna has joined Codecool, CEE’s leading Digital Education and Talent Sourcing Hub, a company with the mission to solve the digital skills gap and the tech workforce shortage, whilst aims to diversify the talent pool for the businesses who wish to grow, re- or up-skill their teams tech literacy levels.
Anna holds an MA degree in Philosophy and Media Communications. She has more than a decade of experience in developing and managing EMEA, NA, LATAM & APAC based strategies for the Education, Finance, High-tech, FMCG, e-Commerce, Market Research and Gaming sectors.
Dr. Petra Wilson Managing Director, Health Connect Partners After more than twenty years, Petra has recently established Health Connnect Partners, a conultancy pracitce focusing on legal, regulatory and policy issues in eHealth. She is also works as a Senior Advisor in the large international consultancy firm FTI Consulting, leading the healthcare team in Brussels. Her previous professional experience include CEO of the International Diabetes Federation, promoting better and more integrated care for people living with diabetes; a seven year period in eHealth technology with Cisco and eight years with the European Commission working on eHealth policy, and in particular use of patient data to drive better care. Petra has a doctorate in Public Health Law from Oxford University.
Norberto Mateos Carrascal, EMEA Territory Business Consumption Director, Intel Norberto Mateos Carrascal is the Business Consumption Director for EMEA Territory. In this position he is responsible for the design and execution of Intel´s business strategy in the corporate and Public Sector segments.
Mateos Carrascal, who is 47, joined Intel in 2000, and since then he had been in charge of different areas of the sales and marketing department in Spain before becoming Territory Director for Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Israel), position that he held between 2011 and 2016.
Furthermore, before join Intel, he worked for 4 years in different positions at the sales and marketing division at Oracle Iberia.
Related to his education, Norberto has a degree in Telecommunications Engineering by the Polytechnic University of Madrid and also has a MBA by the Instituto de Empresa of Madrid.
Sonja van Renssen, Energy Monitor, New Statesman Group Sonja van Renssen is the managing editor of a new digital publication, Energy Monitor (energymonitor.ai), launched by the New Statesman Group in September 2020. Our goal is to tell data-driven stories about the global energy transition. Based in Brussels, Sonja is an experienced journalist and conference moderator who has previously written for leading energy and climate titles including S&P Global Platts and Nature Climate Change. She won a BBC-sponsored “Young Broadcaster of the Year Award” in 2005. Sonja has an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London and a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford. She grew up in the Netherlands, Japan and Taiwan, and speaks fluent English and Dutch, with a good command of German and French.
LJ Rich, Reporter, BBC World-renowned performer LJ Rich presents on the International Technology show BBC Click. She’s also a NASA Datanaut and host of the United Nations ITU #AIForGood Summit. While filming with Click, LJ’s interviewed founders, hackers, and artists across the globe, meeting everyone from Stevie Wonder to Steve Wozniak. Since reading music at Oxford, LJ’s predicted consumer tech trends for over a decade for the BBC, with particular interest in AI, Music and the human/computer interface.
During the pandemic, LJ learned a few things at home during lockdown – like how to self-administer her own cancer treatments, how to take off in a virtual Cessna 172SP, and how to run AI Music neural network style transfers with OpenAI Jukebox and very little sleep. In fact, her version of The Beatles singing ‘Call Me Maybe’ made it onto Click’s 20th Anniversary show. She also used Deep Music Visualizer to generate video using attributes from the resulting audio file.
LJ now presents exclusively from her home studio while shielding, and made Click’s ‘zoom etiquette’ feature to help others get more out of their online interactions. By client request, she now enjoys running masterclasses helping people present more confidently online. www.ljrich.com
![Sam headshot[1]](https://mastersofdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Sam-headshot1.png)
Sam Fleming, Brussels Bureau Chief, Financial Times Sam Fleming is Brussels Bureau Chief at the Financial Times. He has held the post since August 2019, after moving from Washington DC where he was the FT’s US Economics Editor and latterly Deputy Bureau Chief for nearly five years, covering the Federal Reserve System, US Treasury, and US economic policy. He previously worked as the newspaper’s Financial Policy Correspondent in London, covering financial regulation for the FT, where he started in October 2013.
He worked as Economics Editor for The Times of London from 2010 and 2013. Between 2006 and 2010 he was Associate City Editor and Economics Correspondent for the Daily Mail newspaper, also in London. He started his work in journalism at Bloomberg News in 2001, where he covered industry, the stock market and latterly economics until 2005.
Between 1997 and 2000 he worked at Slaughter and May, a London-based corporate law firm, qualifying as a solicitor in mergers and acquisitions in 1999. He studied law at the College of Law, London, from 1994 to 1996. His university degree was in modern History at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1994. He was born in London in 1973.
Andreas Cleve, CEO of Corti and DIGITALEUROPE Future Unicorn Award 2020 winner Cleve is Corti’s co-founder and CEO.
Corti is the world’s first automatic quality assurance platform for telehealth consultations, powered by artificial intelligence. Corti’s voice assistant Audia helps medical professionals triage patients faster and more accurately during voice and video consultations, lower costs, and improve patient outcomes. Corti’s peer-reviewed technology is helping global governments to alleviate the universal doctor shortage, and Audia is currently augmenting more than 300.000 patient consultations a month.
While serving as CEO of Corti, Andreas also founded Nordic.AI and now sits as chairman of the board. Nordic.AI was created to expand the Nordic machine learning community and bring great minds from Scandinavia to solve hard problems. Premier media outlets worldwide have covered Andreas’ work, and he was one of MIT’s Innovators under 35 list in 2020. Andreas has a background from Copenhagen Business School, where he studied business administration.
Mette Lundberg, Director of Politics and Communications, IT-Branchen Biography to follow shortly.
Jon Lindén, CEO, Ekkono Jon Lindén is CEO and co-founder of Ekkono Solutions. Jon is a serial entrepreneur where his latest endeavor, Procera Networks Inc., went from scratch in 2001, to Silicon Valley headquarters, going public at the NYSE, re-IPO on NASDAQ, and $100m in global sales to tele-com operators in 2014 when Jon left the company. Jon’s experience is within strategy, business development, entrepreneurship, leadership and enterprise-startup collabo-ration with several awards like Connector of the Year 2018. Over the years, Jon has been an appreciated public speaker with experience from the main stage at MWC (Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona, SXSW in Austin, Future of the Car Summit by Financial Times in London, and as entre-preneurial representative at the trade delegation during the Swedish King and Queen’s official visit to Dublin. Besides Ekkono, Mr Lindén is on the board of a number of companies, including the retail-tech company Vertiseit AB that is listed on Stockholm NASDAQ First North.
Jennifer Baker, Journalist Better known as Brusselsgeek, Jennifer has been a journalist in print, radio and television for 20 years, the last 10+ specialising in EU policy.
She has worked across a wide range of media, from editing a national daily paper in Malta, to reporting on European affairs for Middle Eastern television, and has a wealth of experience in navigating the political quagmire of the EU. As well as an address book packed with insider sources and contacts in Brussels, Jennifer is skilled at translating EU policy-speak into understandable English.
Regularly listed as one of the top influencers in the EU bubble, Jennifer was awarded #1 Tech Influencer 2019 by ZN, was listed by Politico as one of the Top 20 Women Shaping Brussels in 2017, and was named by Onalytica as one of the world’s Top 100 Influencers on Data Security 2016. She is also a GLG expert Council Member providing advice on EU Policy, and was an original member of the Expert Council of the Good Technology Collective.
Jennifer regularly features as an EU expert on BBC radio, Euronews, SkyNews and others, and hosts Brussels’ must-watch weekly roundup show TOTW for Euractiv. She has written for some of the biggest names in media, including ArsTechnica, Computerweekly, TheNextWeb, and The Register.
Una Fitzpatrick, Director, Tech Ireland Una Fitzpatrick is a Dublin City University STEM graduate with a master’s in management from Smurfit Business School. She has spent the last 15 years working in the knowledge economy, specifically the last six years being spent with Technology Ireland. Una was appointed Director of Technology Ireland in June 2018. Technology Ireland is the largest and most influential tech sector representative group in Ireland. She also sits on the Board of Directors of FIT Ltd (Fastrack into Technology), the technology apprenticeship scheme in Ireland. Una has extensive lobbying experience both at National and European levels and is a member of the DIGITALEUROPE executive board.
Natalia Drozdiak, European Technology Reporter, Bloomberg Natalia Drozdiak is a European technology reporter at Bloomberg News and based in Brussels, where she writes about the impact of the regulatory crackdown on Google, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants as well as privacy, cybersecurity, and innovation in Europe.
Prior to Bloomberg, Natalia was at The Wall Street Journal, where she covered antitrust regulation in Brussels, and aviation and energy in Frankfurt. She is a dual U.S.-Belgian national and was raised all around Europe.
Giovanni Fili, Founder and CEO, Exeger Giovanni Fili is an experienced entrepreneur and private investor with more than 20 years’ experience in entrepreneurship and 10 years’ experience in commercializing high tech innovations. Mr. Fili was born in 1976 and holds a M.Sc. in Business and Administration with a double major in Finance and Information Management from the Stockholm School of Economics where he graduated 2002. Mr. Fili has been invited several times to round table discussions with the Swedish Ministry of Energy and Enterprise to discuss the entrepreneurial climate in Sweden. He has also participated on state visits with the Swedish King to represent the future Swedish industry. Mr. Fili was recently appointed as a permanent member in the entrepreneurial forum to advise Minister Mikael Damberg on the entrepreneurial situation in Sweden.
Børge Bjørneklett, Co-founder and CEO, Ocean Sun Børge Bjørneklett is founder and CEO of Ocean Sun and has worked in the automotive, offshore O&G and the solar industry for almost 25 years. He worked 10 years in Norsk Hydro, with development of alloys and automotive crash management. Later he joined REC Solar as Technology manager. Among other things he was in charge of the award winning REC Solar PV module. Later he became Vice President of Innovation and Technology in Aker Solutions and worked with equipment for ultra-deep water drilling. In 2016 he formed the company Ocean Sun, based on a new invention for floating PV. He has worked as CTO and Chairman of the company and the last year as CEO and board member. Børge has training in Entrepreneurship from Babson College and a PhD in Materials Science from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
István Peták, Co-founder and CEO, Oncompass Dr. Petak has over 20 years of scientific carrier in the field precision medicine, molecular pharmacology, drug discovery and predictive molecular pharmaco-diagnostics of anti-cancer targeted therapies. He is a senior lecturer at the Department of Pharmacology, Semmelweis University and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He is also the co-founder of the Oncompass Medicine Corp.
He obtained MD and PhD from Semmelweis University, Hungary in 1995 and 2000. In the first years of his carrier he has published several biochemical research articles about the molecular regulation of apoptosis induced by anti-cancer therapies. He spent five years at the Department of Molecular Pharmacology of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, USA as a Fulbright Scholar. During this period he conducted research on death receptors as novel biological targets and published articles in Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research, Cell Death and Differentiation. He was among the first, who used molecular evidence to treat lung cancer patients prospectively in 2003, which was first published in Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2005. Dr. Petak has published 70 articles in the field of signal transduction therapies, molecular diagnostics and precision oncology. He was an invited author of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery in 2010. Among other societies he is a member of the Swiss Group of Clinical Cancer Research, ESMO and ASCO.
Dr. Petak also serves as the chairman of the Scientific and Ethical Committee of the Hungarian Biotechnology Association. Dr. Petak received Gabor Denes Award in 2012. Dr. Petak presented his medical sofware to find effective cancer therapy for each molecular alteration, developed by his team, at the 10th Precision Medicine World Conference in 2016. He was an invited faculty speaker at the annual meeting of the European Society of Medical Oncology in Madrid, 2017.
Marcus Kalliola, Director, Health data 2030, Sitra Markus Kalliola works as a Project Director in Sitra’s Health data 2030 project and as a coordinator in the EU’s Joint Action Towards the European Health Data Space (TEHDAS) cooperation project. The Health data 2030 project creates solutions, draws up rules and builds a bridge for the cross-border use of health data in Europe. Markus has a Master’s degree in technology and has been engaged in digitisation projects in the private and public sectors. With his experience as an entrepreneur and an EU official, he understands both practice and the directives.
Earlier Markus worked in Sitra’s Fair data economy project IHAN project and was responsible for influencing the EU and Isaacus project enhancing the secondary use of well-being data in Finland and creating the operating model for the new data provider Findata.
Peter Geršak, State Secretary, Ministry of Public Administration, Slovenia Mag. Peter Geršak graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana (mechatronics programme) in 1997, obtaining a university degree in mechanical engineering. In 2005, he gained the title of Master of Science at the Faculty of Economics (information and management studies programme).
As an undergraduate student he already taught at the Secondary School of Mechanical Engineering and then worked in the administration and IT department at Oracle Slovenija d. o. o. In 1999, he joined IBM Slovenija d. o. o., working as an IT specialist in application integration technologies for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In 2004, he joined 3Gen d. o. o., where he worked for two years as a system programmer for support to the data centre at the Ministry of Public Administration.
In 2006, Geršak rejoined IBM Slovenija d. o. o. as an IT architect and head of the technical and service team in the field of software, first for Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, then for the Southeast Europe region. Between 2013 and 2015, he was the head of the IBM global technological service department for Slovenia and BiH. From mid-2015, he worked as a technical director or chief technology officer (CTO) in Southeast Europe. One of his principal tasks was the promotion of innovation and introduction of new technologies such as cloud computing, data science and artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and enterprise blockchain technology. Geršak is a qualified design thinking coach and IT architect. With a broad understanding of IT technologies and different industries and an approach focused on IT solution users, he took part in designing a number of solutions for the largest IBM customers in Southeast Europe.
He was a member of the supervisory board at the Ljubljana University Incubator until 2020, when his term of office expired. He joined the Ministry of Public Administration as a state secretary and IT solutions expert on 28 April 2020.
Natalia Drozdiak, European Technology Reporter, Bloomberg Natalia Drozdiak is a European technology reporter at Bloomberg News and based in Brussels, where she writes about the impact of the regulatory crackdown on Google, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants as well as privacy, cybersecurity, and innovation in Europe.
Prior to Bloomberg, Natalia was at The Wall Street Journal, where she covered antitrust regulation in Brussels, and aviation and energy in Frankfurt. She is a dual U.S.-Belgian national and was raised all around Europe.
Mette Lundberg, Director of Politics and Communications, IT-Branchen Biography to follow shortly.
Jon Lindén, CEO, Ekkono Jon Lindén is CEO and co-founder of Ekkono Solutions. Jon is a serial entrepreneur where his latest endeavor, Procera Networks Inc., went from scratch in 2001, to Silicon Valley headquarters, going public at the NYSE, re-IPO on NASDAQ, and $100m in global sales to tele-com operators in 2014 when Jon left the company. Jon’s experience is within strategy, business development, entrepreneurship, leadership and enterprise-startup collabo-ration with several awards like Connector of the Year 2018. Over the years, Jon has been an appreciated public speaker with experience from the main stage at MWC (Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona, SXSW in Austin, Future of the Car Summit by Financial Times in London, and as entre-preneurial representative at the trade delegation during the Swedish King and Queen’s official visit to Dublin. Besides Ekkono, Mr Lindén is on the board of a number of companies, including the retail-tech company Vertiseit AB that is listed on Stockholm NASDAQ First North.
Jennifer Baker, Journalist Better known as Brusselsgeek, Jennifer has been a journalist in print, radio and television for 20 years, the last 10+ specialising in EU policy.
She has worked across a wide range of media, from editing a national daily paper in Malta, to reporting on European affairs for Middle Eastern television, and has a wealth of experience in navigating the political quagmire of the EU. As well as an address book packed with insider sources and contacts in Brussels, Jennifer is skilled at translating EU policy-speak into understandable English.
Regularly listed as one of the top influencers in the EU bubble, Jennifer was awarded #1 Tech Influencer 2019 by ZN, was listed by Politico as one of the Top 20 Women Shaping Brussels in 2017, and was named by Onalytica as one of the world’s Top 100 Influencers on Data Security 2016. She is also a GLG expert Council Member providing advice on EU Policy, and was an original member of the Expert Council of the Good Technology Collective.
Jennifer regularly features as an EU expert on BBC radio, Euronews, SkyNews and others, and hosts Brussels’ must-watch weekly roundup show TOTW for Euractiv. She has written for some of the biggest names in media, including ArsTechnica, Computerweekly, TheNextWeb, and The Register.
Una Fitzpatrick, Director, Tech Ireland Una Fitzpatrick is a Dublin City University STEM graduate with a master’s in management from Smurfit Business School. She has spent the last 15 years working in the knowledge economy, specifically the last six years being spent with Technology Ireland. Una was appointed Director of Technology Ireland in June 2018. Technology Ireland is the largest and most influential tech sector representative group in Ireland. She also sits on the Board of Directors of FIT Ltd (Fastrack into Technology), the technology apprenticeship scheme in Ireland. Una has extensive lobbying experience both at National and European levels and is a member of the DIGITALEUROPE executive board.
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