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Annie Turner

Editor

Mobile Europe & European Communications

Annie Turner has researched and written about telecoms since the late 1980s in a number of roles — as editor of business titles including for International Thomson and The Economist Group, contributor to national newspapers such as The Times and FT, and as an analyst for Market Mettle and Current Analysis.

Richard Benjamins, Chief AI & Data Strategist, Telefónica

Richard Benjamins

Chief AI & Data Strategist

Telefónica

Richard is Chief AI & Data Strategist at Telefonica. He is among the 100 most influential people in data-driven business (DataIQ 100, 2018). He is also co-founder and Vice President of the Spanish observatory for ethical and social impacts of AI (OdiseIA). He was Group Chief Data Officer at AXA (Insurance) and before that held for 10 years executive positions at Telefonica on Big Data and Analytics. He is the founder of Telefonica’s Big Data for Social Good department, a member of the B2G data-sharing Expert Group of the EC, and a frequent speaker on Artificial Intelligence events. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Science, has published over 100 scientific articles, and is author of the books “The myth of the algorithm: tales and truths of artificial intelligence” (Spanish) and “A Data-Driven Company” (forthcoming). He is strategic advisor of several start-ups, including BigML, Focus360 and Nexus Clips. 

Cecilie Heuch

EVP & Chief People Officer

Telenor

Cecilie has more than 25 year’s business experience in an international context. Previously she had the role of Chief HR Officer in DNV GL, a position she held for 11 years. Her former work experience also includes managerial positions in Norsk Hydro in Norway and Hydro Agri (today Yara) in Italy. 
Cecilie graduated from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. She holds a Master of Science in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a Diploma of Business Studies from Henley Management College. 

George Nazi

Global VP, Telco, Media & Entertainment Industry Solutions Lead

Google Cloud

George Nazi is a recognized technology leader, known for blending strategic vision and operational execution to achieve business goals and customer satisfaction. He offers a unique blend of executive acumen, global team-building and more than 25 years industry experience, transforming large organizations and operations. Currently, he is the Global VP at Google Cloud leading their Telco, Media & Entertainment industry solutions.

Before Google, George served as the Senior Managing Director at Accenture leading their Communications & Media Industry. Prior to that, George was the Executive Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent and President of Global Customer Delivery (GCD) managing a workforce of more than 40,000 professionals. The GCD unit served all customers (Carrier, Enterprise and Strategic Industries) and delivered Alcatel-Lucent’s entire portfolio (products and services) as well as those of other original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s). George was a member of the Alcatel-Lucent Management Committee and served as the Chief Quality Officer.

Prior to Alcatel-Lucent, George Nazi was with BT serving as the President of Networks and IT Infrastructure globally. One of George’s biggest achievements was running the entire 21st Century Network transformation program (21CN) with a budget in excess of $15billion from remaking the portfolio, enhancing the customer experience, and building the next generation Network and OSS/BSS. Earlier at BT, he was the Global Services CTO and Global VP of Networks responsible for the design and deployment of BT’s Global IP/MPLS network across 170 countries.

Prior to joining BT, George Nazi held executive positions with WorldCom and Level 3 where he led the integration of many of their acquisitions, and held a variety of senior engineering and planning roles. George also founded a Consulting firm and a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) in the US in 1998, which targeted small- to medium-size businesses to support them in optimizing their networks and reducing their costs.

George Nazi received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Tulsa University in 1992. George is married to Dr. Becca Nazi. They have been living in Brussels, Belgium since 2004. They are blessed with three children. George is on the Chairman of the board of trustees of the International School of Brussels.

Michael Cik

Founder & CSO

Invenium (a subsidiary of A1)

Emanuel Kolta

Senior Analyst

GSMA

Emanuel Kolta is a Senior Analyst at GSMAIntelligence where he provides research and market analysis on 5G digital transformation and radio access network infrastructure. Emanuel also helps identify economic benefits for mobile networks, which are related to innovations that unlock emerging business opportunities and improves operators’ efficiency. Prior to joining GSMAIntelligence, Emanuel was a management consultant and held various analyst roles in telecommunication. Emanuel holds n MSc in International Economics and Business from University of Groningen, and a BSc degree in Applied Economics from the Corvinus University of Budapest. 

Amy Cameron

Principal Analyst

STL Partners

Amy works with world-leading operators and tech companies to define opportunities and strategies in the B2B and AI fields. She leads STL Partners’ research on the opportunity for telcos in digital health and the application of AI in telecoms, as well as the Growing Enterprise Revenues research stream. Before joining STL, she was Head of ICT Research at Fitch Solutions. Amy speaks French and Mandarin and holds an MSc in Chinese Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Erik Brenneis

IoT Director

Vodafone Business

Erik leads the Internet of Things (IoT) for Vodafone Business where he is responsible for its growth, business strategy and products and performance at a global level, including Vodafone Automotive.

Since joining Vodafone in October 2009, Erik has helped to drive success in the IoT market, leading its development from the early stages through to almost 100 million connected devices and counting.

From June 2016 to December 2019, Erik transitioned to lead Vodafone Global Enterprise, the team responsible for supporting Vodafone’s largest multinational customers.

Before joining Vodafone Erik held a range of senior positions at several organisations, including Siemens and Cinterion Wireless Modules. As Head of Sales for Siemens he developed his awareness of IoT hardware and the industry sector.

Erik holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Karlsruhe in Germany and a bachelor’s degree in business studies. In addition to his native German language, he is fluent in English and French.

Philippe Morin

Chief Executive Officer

EXFO

Philippe Morin was appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of EXFO in April 2017 and is responsible for the Corporation’s strategy and financial directions, goals and results. He has more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and joined EXFO in November 2015 as Chief Operating Officer (COO) leading the company’s global sales leadership, market development, and product strategy. Before joining EXFO, Philippe was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations at Ciena. He previously held senior leadership roles at Nortel Networks, including President of Metro Ethernet Networks and Vice President and General Manager of Optical Networks. Philippe holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada, and a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

ASSAF ALONI

Chief Marketing Officer

Continual

Assaf has more than 25 years of experience in product management, marketing and sales in the telecoms industry. He was has held marketing director roles at NICE Systems and at eglue Business Technologies, and has also led product management teams at Amdocs and XACCT. Assaf has a BSc in Computer Science and Business Administration from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Patrik RoKYTa

VP Systems Architecture

NetNumber

Patrik Rokyta is the VP of Systems Architecture at NetNumber, that delivers interGENerational signaling, security, routing and global data solutions to the telecommunication industry. 

Patrik has been with NetNumber since 2013.  His focus is on the use of the cloud-native technologies in the public/private cloud, and in virtual infrastructure environments. Over his seven years with NetNumber, Patrik has been instrumental in helping communication service providers build economic and effective telecommunication networks including the 5G core. In addition, Patrik and his team are responsible for architectural issues in the areas of telecommunication system security, delivery and deployment automation, OSS integration, network service management, and orchestration.

Prior to joining NetNumber, Patrik was with Nokia Siemens as a Product Manager with a focus on customer projects and deployments in the LTE data, VoLTE, VoIP and Unified Communications space.

Patrik holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany and is based in Munich, Germany.

Kristof Symons

EVP International Business

Orange Business Services

Kristof Symons is an Executive Board Member at Orange Business Services and leads the International Business Division. Previously, he has held positions in Professional and Integration Services, Large Outsourcing and Multisourcing Customers and Transformation programs. In his private life, Kristof enjoys reading about future innovation and human psychology. He also practices martial arts and leads a martial arts club in Belgium.

Justin van der Lande

Principal Analyst

Analysys Mason

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Valérie Cussac

EVP, Smart Mobility Services

Orange Business Services

Ofer Farkash

Products & Solutions Marketing Director, Service & Network Automation Solutions

Amdocs

As a Products & Solutions Marketing Director for Amdocs, Ofer Farkash is responsible for defining and executing the marketing strategy for Amdocs’ Service & Network Automation solutions with emphasis on their key role for enabling innovative 5G services. Ofer has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunication market and held senior product management, marketing, and sales engineering positions.

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Rick Lievano

CTO, Worldwide Telco Industry Team

Microsoft

MOSHE SHIMON

VP, Head of Product Management, Open Networks

Amdocs

Moshe Shimon is leading Amdocs OSS and NFV Products & Solutions Management and strategy. Moshe has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunication networks domain and extensive expertise in networking and telecom software products management. Before joining Amdocs, Moshe served as ECI’s VP of Product Management. Moshe holds a BSC in Electrical and Communications Engineering from Ben Gurion University, and an MBA from the University of Haifa.

GINT ATKINSON​

VP Network Strategy and Digital Architecture​

SES

Gint Atkinson is Vice President Network Strategy and Digital Architecture and leads the transformation for SES’s 5G, virtualization, cloud, and network platform architectures that unify multiple satellite constellations and deliver 5G services from the edge to the cloud. Prior to SES he was head of technology for Colt where he pioneered and launched the first large scale SDN, SD-WAN, and global Datacenter Interconnect services in 2012 offering on-demand elastic terabit services across 100 datacenters in Asia Pacific. Gint has worked in the networking, mobile, and emerging media industries over 32 years as a serial entrepreneur and innovator for start-ups and large service providers including T-Mobile, NTT DOCOMO, AT&T, KDDI, Virgin Media and others where he has led the development and first to market launch of industry changing technologies and services.

Kim Larsen

CTIO

T-Mobile Netherlands

John Strand

CEO

Strand Consult

Fredrik Lemming

Sales & Customer Experience Director

Telia

Kirsi Valtari

EVP

Elisa Automate

Kirsi Valtari is EVP of Elisa Automate business and CMO of Polystar. She has spent the majority of her career in the telecom industry, developing software-based businesses, telecom operations, and technologies. With a strong technology and operations background, Kirsi has succeeded with new businesses, launching go-to-markets and increasing value for Elisa’s customers. Today, Kirsi’s team is combining AI, network engineering and software to implement world class telco software for the mobile operator. 

DR. MARIAM KAYNIA​

VP & Director Architecture, Strategy & Analytics

Telefonica Deutschland

Dr. Mariam Kaynia is an experienced senior executive with deep technology expertise and extensive international business experience with a focus on technology development, advanced analytics, digitalization and agile operating models. She joined Telefonica Germany as Director in Technology function in February 2019 and is today Director of Architecture, Strategy & Analytics, reporting directly to the CTIO. Previously she spent 8 years at McKinsey & Company, where she worked with telecom and high-tech companies on an international basis. Mariam has a BSc, MSc and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU) in joint cooperation with Stanford University, a MSc in Wireless Communications from the University of Minnesota, and an MBA from the Alpine University of McKinsey.  She speaks her native Norwegian and Persian, fluent English and intermediate German and French. In her spare time, she enjoys time with her 2 sons, as well as Taekwondo, swimming and skiing. 

Rabih Dabboussi

SVP, Global Head of Sales & Marketing

Rakuten

Freneka Mumford

Associate Director, People & Change

KPMG

Johan Åhlund

Founder & CEO

JabberBrain

Born in Sweden, studied and worked in Australia, UK, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Brazil and now living in Portugal

Speaks Swedish, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French

Education:

·      Stockholm School of Economics (Accounting and Financing)

Professional Background:

·      3 years at the Asea Brown Boveri group in Sweden and UK

·      9 years at RWS (founder and lead consultant) – Implementing ERP systems (J D Edwards) for multinational companies world-wide

·      10 years as Co-founder / CEO of Artificial Solutions (Nasdaq First North). Pioneer in the Conversational AI space, creating the platform Teneo and developing clients such as IKEA, AT&T, Vodafone, various banks, etc.

·      4 years at NorteSud (founder and CEO) – reseller and implementor of Teneo in Brazil with clients such as Oi (Telecom) and Estácio (Education).

·      7 years non-executive board member at Electrosonic (AV-Tech)

·      Last 5 years R&D and product development of jabberBrain – “The next generation of Intention Based Conversational AI”.

o   jabberBrain democratizes advanced Conversational AI, making it easier, more flexible and less expensive to build and maintain advanced Conversational AI solutions.

o   jabberBrain brings the development and maintenance of advanced Conversational AI solutions away from the Technical Team and closer to the Business & Content Team.

jabberBrain is now in a “pre-official-launch phase” but we will very soon start working closely with companies in different industries and of different sizes, helping them to provide high quality and human-like automated customer support.

 

DR. MARIAM KAYNIA​

VP & Director Architecture, Strategy & Analytics

Telefonica Deutschland

Dr. Mariam Kaynia is an experienced senior executive with deep technology expertise and extensive international business experience with a focus on technology development, advanced analytics, digitalization and agile operating models. She has been Director of Architecture, Strategy & Analytics at Telefonica Germany since July 2020, and reports directly to the CTIO.  Previously she spent 9 years at McKinsey & Company, where she worked with high-tech and telecom companies on an international basis. Mariam has a BSc, MSc and PhD from the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU) in Electrical Engineering, an MSc from the University of Minnesota, and an MBA from the Alpine University of McKinsey.  She speaks her native Norwegian and Persian, fluent English and intermediate German and French, and conversational Swedish and Danish. In her spare time, she enjoys Taekwondo, swimming, skiing and dancing. 

Rabhi Dabboussi

SVP, Global Head of Sales & Marketing

Rakuten

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