Louise McCarthy is a former COO and global digital IT transformation director at HSBC. A finalist for Women in IT in 2017, Louise is an outstanding, dynamic and inspirational CIO, and a leader in transformational and business change with over 35 years’ experience in some large private and public sector organisations. Also, she’s highly respected in the technology, digital industry as a passionate, energised and transformational leader who achieves amazing results. She is valued at the board level for design of complex technology and digital transformational visions and strategy. She can take complex organisations with the need for transformation and align to business objectives as well as a back­ground in finance and commercial giving the ability to see the wider picture and achieved commercial creativity. Louise is also a role model for females in technology.

Sophie Huss is the global director of digital HR at Arkadin HQ in Paris. Fond of new tech­nologies and digital transformation, Sophie used her 25 years’ experience in tech market­ing, brand management and digital communications to drive human resources (HR) to the digital era in her company. In digital recruitment, that means employer branding, lead generation techniques applied to talent acquisition, central in-house talent acquisition organisation, new hiring processes and best practices, and deploying new HR internal systems. For digital learning, it means offering an online positive learning experience combined with live training programs for an efficient development of competences. Build­ing the digital workplace around the three pillars of lifestyle, workspace and tech services is central to her philosophy in order to attract and retain talent, as she believes that creating positive candidate and employee experiences is essential to business success.

Ulrika Jonsson works as a business development manager at Microsoft in Sweden, but she has a long career within HR, including the last four years at Microsoft. In her cur­rent role, Ulrika helps customers drive digital change from a people perspective and to build an innovative and digital employee experience that attract future talents, empower employees and drive growth.

  Med Marouane Ajraoui is a passionate team player in the agile trip journeys for several individuals and organisations. Coming originally from Meknes (Morocco), but having lived in several other countries (Spain, France, UK, Czech Republic and Switzerland) he identi­fies himself as a “citizen of the world” inspired by the “active experimentation”. He is a certified agile trainer and an active member of several agile communities: Puzzle It, Agile France, Agile Norway, Agile Swiss, FSUG, Agile Dojo, Mix It and Talk Humans. Being also the “IT guy” for more than 15 years, Marouane enjoys problem solving and finding the way out of the trouble. He has worked for different industries: healthcare, aerospace, telecoms, public administration, EU institutions, real estate, banking, nutrition and start­ups with different business models. Today, Marouane runs https://jedisquad.com/, which provides agile and craftsmanship resources, training, assessments, certifications and coaching for agile teams, scrum masters, product owners, craftsmen and organisations aspiring to adopt more agility. Marouane is also enthusiastic about building purposeful cultures aligned with human nature, hitting the waves on the surf board, chilling out with the guitar and composing new songs and practicing aikido.

Alessandro Centrone joined Steelcase, the global leader in the office furniture industry, in 2012 to lead a diverse and multidisciplinary team of workplace specialists that supports the needs of leading organisations, influencers and dealers across markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. More recently, Alessandro took the leadership of marketing in EMEA. In his role, Alessandro translates customer needs, trends and insights into products and solutions that make up a comprehensive product portfolio. Alessandro or­chestrates the efforts of a team of diverse professionals who seek the input of the market and actively gather feedback and ideas from customers, designers and dealer partners. Alessandro is based in Munich, home of the new Steelcase Learning + Innovation Center, the future-focussed and much-anticipated new hub of Steelcase for EMEA. Before joining Steelcase, Alessandro held leadership roles at an international manufacturer of office furniture for six years. Previously, he developed a solid business acumen and experi­ence by holding positions such as head of sourcing and head of global accounts sales at Renault Italy between 2002 and 2006. From 1999 to 2002, Alessandro worked for the North American practice of Arthur Andersen as a senior consultant operating with clients in several industries. During his consulting career he focussed on finance re-engineering and strategic sourcing projects. Alessandro holds a degree in finance from Università Boc­coni in Milan, Italy, and an MBA from the University of Nebraska in Omaha where he also worked as a graduate teaching assistant throughout his master’s degree.

Nana Yaa Dufie Oti-Boateng is currently the digital workplace product manager at Voda­fone Group Enterprise. She is responsible for helping businesses drive digital transforma­tion through experiential communications that incorporate cutting-edge technology. Prior to this she was the digital transformation manager (DTM) and innovation manager at Vodafone Ghana. As the DTM she was responsible for driving Vodafone Ghana’s digital agenda across three major verticals; customer experience, technology and workplace (people, employees, physical workplace) and as innovation manager was responsible for creating value from untapped market spaces e.g. the industry’s first mobile agricul­tural product – Vodafone Farmers’ Club – and working in the innovation ecosystem with partners and startups. Nana has also worked as a drilling and measurements engineer at Schlumberger – leading drilling projects and oil discoveries for major multinational oil companies across the West African sub-region. An electrical engineer by profession she is very passionate about innovation and digital transformation and serves on the pro­gramme leadership group (PLG) of the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator.

Jessica Lörell has 15 years of experience within business administration/finance in man­agement roles in shared services and IT portfolio. She started up the robotic process automation (RPA) journey in Volvo Group in 2016, securing solution, governance and or­ganisation. She’s part of the Volvo Group digitalisation working group, sharing knowledge and best practices around digitalisation.

Through his deep understanding of human-centric design and workplace wellbeing, Ber­tie van Wyk effectively equips organisations with the knowledge and skills to become more productive, healthy and connected. Bertie’s lust for life is clearly visible in his en­gaging presentation and communication style, and through this he is able not only to expand client thinking, but to transform it. Bertie started with Herman Miller in 2006 after completing two degrees in international business and marketing and his holistic approach to business has helped develop multiple departments. His unique blend of skills and ability to analyse and communicate business improvements make him the ideal wellbeing advocate.

Marco Grossi is global head of sales programs at Facebook, where he and his team help hundreds of new companies every day understand how to overcome the modern challenges of internal communication and collaboration, through the use of new people-centred technologies like Workplace. After graduating summa cum laude with a master’s degree in marketing communications from the University of Bologna in 2004, he went ahead to found a startup developing web software for SMB. He was then called by Google in 2010 to join their mobile ads team first, and then G Suite. In 2015, he went to Face­book to lead the team managing independent advertising agencies in EMEA; he moved to Workplace by Facebook at the beginning of 2018. He now lives in London, with his wife and 2-year-old son, Tommy.

Peter Coulson is specialised in recruitment, sourcing and employment branding. He is passionate about what he does and loves to help people. For him, nothing is more fulfill­ing than being part of a team with similar interests and an organisation that values its employees. Peter has 10 years’ experience working with some of the most influential individuals in digital, technology and innovation. Working with local and international brands across multiple markets has been an exciting adventure. He’s currently working with Zalando, one of the most forward-thinking, innovative companies in the world.

Tereza Urbánková is a PR, communications and marketing professional with 20 years’ experience and proven success in delivering award-winning internal and external com­munications programmes for multinational companies operating in industries such as hospitality, retail, IT, defense, broadcast, logistics, pharma and engineering. Tereza’s broad experience also encompasses mergers and acquisition communication as well as culture change programmes. Originally from the Czech Republic, Tereza lived and worked in the UK for 11 years. In 2018 she moved to Germany and is now Head of Global Ex­ternal Communication, Animal Health at Boehringer Ingelheim, a global pharmaceutical company. She regularly publishes her blogs on LinkedIn and also contributes to the Czech & Slovak Leaders Magazine and Thrive Global.

Barbara Wittmann, Director Talent Solutions, leads the business development of the world’s largest business network in the German-speaking regions and is a member of the leadership team of LinkedIn Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She previously served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations at Immobilien Scout 24 and held several managements, business development and sales positions at Dell, adding up to more than 20 years of experience

Jochen Stecker has been with SAP for over 20 years and has held various positions throughout his time there. In 2014, Stecker was named CFO for SAP Österreich. His range of duties were expanded at the beginning of this year, when he was given the role of CFO for all Southeastern European offices. While collaborating with INNOCAD, he undertook the role of building contractor and supervised the project operations during its implementation.

Oliver Kupfner studied architecture at the Graz University of Technology (Austria), where he graduated with a master’s of science in architecture. During that time, while playing volleyball professionally, Oliver met other INNOCAD employees. From 1995 to 1998, he worked at various architecture firms in Graz until he landed at architect Heinz Wondra’s office, where he stayed for 10 years and gained all the important experience. In 2008, Heinz Wondra retired and Oliver joined the INNOCAD team. Personal and outgoing, Oliver is the communicator of the firm. He enjoys travel, new people, culture and sees opportu­nity in the art of engaging others. Which is good because given the firm’s global expan­sion, he is on the road significant amounts of time. In his work he loves the challenge, the emergence of ideas and its professional implementation. Oliver knew very early on that he wanted to design houses someday. During holidays he would work on building sites which fuelled a passion that never subsided. He is still enthusiastic about architecture, from his first project at INNOCAD, Rose am Lend, to his aspirations to build high-rises or airports. For him, three things complete his life: his two boys, his sport and his sense of humour. His children keep him grounded, his sport – jogging, swimming, beach volleyball – keeps him healthy and his humour – always keen on a good laugh – keeps him sane. In 2014, he became a partner at INNOCAD.

John Hilderbrands is responsible for the global presales team supporting our sales work­force and partners across the world. John and his team work with our customers and colleagues to define solutions that meet their needs and they deliver enablement pro­grams to equip all our customer facing team members with application and technical knowledge. He has been a part of Condeco for almost 10 years and has a wealth of experience across workplace technology, video systems and unified communications. His background in computer science, project delivery and passion for technology has contributed to Condeco’s growth to the global leader in workplace scheduling.

In a world where no one is assigned an own workplace, people’s behavior tends to counteract. The result? A non-cooperative and inefficient work environment with a lot of unused technologies. What happens if you give the autonomy back to your employee? Behavioral researcher Anne Wernand explains how people and technology could work together in the new work environment.