Volker Kratzenstein is CIO Group IT Components at Volkswagen. Prior to this role, he was CIO of Bentley Motors in the UK and CTO of Volkswagen.

Under the leadership of the Group CEO, the Executive Board implements the strategic guidelines and resolutions of the Board of Directors and leads Franke’s business operations.

The operative structure of the Group is comprised of the Group functions Finance, Human Resources, Operations, Information Services, General Counsel, and the three divisions Franke Home Solutions, Franke Foodservice Systems and Franke Coffee Systems.

Mercer international (Nasdaq:Merc)

Mercer’s mission is to provide sustainably sourced fibers, renewable energy and chemicals for essential human needs. Our operations consist of four large-scale, modern pulp mills – Rosenthal, Stendal, Celgar, and Peace River, and a 50% ownership stake in Cariboo Pulp and Paper. We also own and operate one of the largest sawmills in Germany, Friesau. Through the acquisition of Santanol in December 2018, Mercer expanded its presence into the sandalwood oil business. We employ approximately 2,200 people worldwide. In order to maximize our shareholders’ value and simultaneously achieve our social goals, we focus on our core businesses in forest products manufacturing, while we continue to explore other new and innovative products.

James M. Daquino is an ITIL certified operations executive and technology entrepreneur, as the CIO/SVP, IT for ICM Partners, a global talent and literary agency, Jamie is leading an IT business transformation effort at ICM to bring data analytics to a highly subjective, service-oriented organization. 

 As a corporate technology professional, Jamie has built an exceptional twenty-year career in various roles as a CIO, Enterprise Architect, and Program Executive for several Fortune 500 companies that include: Prudential, Interpublic Group (IPG), Warner Bros. Studios, The Walt Disney Company, Amgen, and Unisys Corporation. 

 In addition to his corporate background, Jamie is an active entrepreneur responsible for founding and investing in several early stage startups.  Recent ventures include founder status or board advisory roles in a patent pending video distribution technology, a championship caliber eSports organization, and a globally crowdsourced network infrastructure analysis portal. 

Jamie is a graduate of California State University with a Bachelor of Science in Management Science.  He also serves as an executive mentor to Columbia University graduate students on a volunteer basis. 

ICM Partners is a premier talent and literary agency with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C. and London. ICM Partners’ cliental is a who’s who in entertainment garnering international recognition, accolades, and honors for excellence in the fields of motion pictures, television, music, publishing, live performance, branded entertainment and new media.  Notable clients include a list of Academy Award, Tony, Grammy, Emmy, and Pulitzer Prize winning talent. 

Roman is a seasoned Executive Director with 18 years of experience in operations management, strategic transformations projects and creating and managing Share Service Center.

Highlights include:

– Cross-functional optimization (“bridge a gap” role) → leadership of four significant transformation

– Savings generator (contract renegotiation and support processes optimization – sourcing and purchasing, financial and accounting, HR, administration and IT)

– Complex programs & projects leadership → IT & Operations transformation: +100 projects including processes, operations, HR, finance & IT; Segment Optimization Program: integration of 20 entities and leadership of 9 key projects including consolidation and processes optimization

NEUCA GROUP is a Polish company with 25 years of tradition. It is active in numerous areas of the national healthcare market. The company develops dynamically both in the pharmaceutical and medical field what results in numerous possibilities for the company and the employees.

Neuca Group is a leader in the wholesale distribution of pharmaceuticals what is the core of our business activity. At the same time, it constantly develops it’s synergetic businesses. NEUCA hold the expert’s position in many of the healthcare market segments that it closely cooperate with as: wholesale trade, pharmaceuticals production, marketing, logistics, outpatient clinics network development, clinical trials, telemedicine, IT, advertisement and media.

NEUCA Group is an innovative company – we conduct a number of start-up projects and we introduce new solutions onto the healthcare market.

All our activities are executed inline of the strategy and as such lead to the support of the independent pharmacies.

NEUCA has been listed on the WSE in Warsaw since 2004.

The Volkswagen Group, with its headquarters in Wolfsburg, is one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers and the largest carmaker in Europe.

In difficult market conditions, the number of Group vehicles delivered to customers rose to 10.8 million in 2018 (2017: 10.7 million). The global car market share rose slightly to 12.3 percent. Group sales revenue in 2018 totaled € 236 billion (2017: € 230 billion), while earnings after tax amounted to € 12.2 billion (2017: € 11.5 billion).

The Group comprises twelve brands from seven European countries: Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ducati, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania and MAN. Each brand has its own character and operates as an independent entity on the market. The product spectrum ranges from motorcycles to small cars and luxury vehicles.

The Commercial Vehicles Business Area primarily comprises the development, production and sale of light commercial vehicles, trucks and buses from the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania and MAN brands, the corresponding genuine parts business and services. The collaboration between the MAN and Scania commercial vehicle brands is coordinated within the TRATON GROUP. The commercial vehicles portfolio ranges from pickups to heavy trucks and buses. The Power Engineering Business Area combines the largebore diesel engines, turbomachinery, special gear units, propulsion components and testing systems businesses.

In addition, the Volkswagen Group offers a wide range of financial services, including dealer and customer financing, leasing, banking and insurance activities, and fleet management.

Christoph is the Head of IT Infrastructure at Hilti. In 2019, the client and workspace area was integrated in his previous portfolio as Head of Enterprise Computing, a position he held from 2015 onwards. Today Christoph is responsible for approximately 30.000 clients, 1.200 Hilti locations and an SAP S/4HANA / SAP ByDesign based landscape used by two out of 3 Hilti employees every day. AWS is used as customer-facing cloud provider while MS Azure serves as datacenter extension.

From 2011 to 2015 Christoph built up Hilti Asia IT Services, the Kuala Lumpur based strategic IT location for Global IT in Hilti and tripled the workforce by establishing relationships with various local and intenational universities.

Previous to this role, he led as project manager and team lead the implementation of “Global Contact Center”, the standardized IT and process solution for Hilti’s customer service departments in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Before joining Hilti in 2007, Christoph gained first experience in SAP CRM at Swarovski, supporting various project implementations in Europe and Asia.

Christoph hold a Master’s and Doctorate degree in Law from his Alma Mater in Innsbruck and was a research assistant for three years at the department for European and International Law.

Hilti was founded in 1941 and evolved from a small family company to the trusted global business we are today. Hilti is the leading supplier for the professional construction industry.

Our aim is to build a better future. By this we mean helping our customers to build faster, safer and with more daring, while all the time being mindful of the legacy we leave behind. We want to be proud of the mark we make on the world.

To ensure the integrity of our products, we run our own production plants and cutting-edge research and development centers right across the world. The group headquarters is in Schaan in the Principality of Liechtenstein, where Martin Hilti established the company more than 75 years ago.

Hilti makes construction sites work simpler, faster, and safer.

Amara Bouzayani is CIO at the Banque de Tunisie, one of the oldest banks in Africa. Before that, he held several roles at UIB Groupe Societe Generale, including CIO.

Javier Alvarez

With more than 25 years of experience in several sectors (Insurance, FMCG, Retail, Manufacturing) Javier’s background includes experience implementing technical solutions across several continents and working to bring value to the business through a myriad of successful projects.

One of his main tasks is to confirm and expose the relevance of the function providing, sustaining and incrementing the completive advantage of the company thanks to the use of the technology. He has a passion to make things happen and a vision of how to transform companies with the use of new ideas.

Master of Engineering (MEng) Telecommunications, (UPM Universidad Politécnica, Madrid Spain), ExMBA (IE, Instituto de Empresa, Madrid Spain), SMP (IMD, Lausanne Switzerland) and post-degree studies at MIT Sloan School of Management, joined HEINEKEN España in 2018 as CIO and member of its Executive Board.  With over 25 years’ experience (Insurance, FMCG, Manufacturing) his background includes implementing solutions across several continents.

The successfully accomplished projects include the design and implementation of several large outsourcing deals; leading the digital transformation of large companies and implementing tangible examples of connected factory blending IT and OT technologies. He has an extensive record of IT organizational design experience and wide knowledge on how technology is changing leadership within the organizations.

One of his main tasks is to expose the relevance of the function providing, and incrementing the completive advantage of HEINEKEN España thanks to the use of technology.

He has a passion to teach and share knowledge and is Associated Professor of the IE (Instituto de Empresa, Madrid Spain) in its Master in Computer Science & Business Technology.

HEINEKEN – the world’s most international brewer. It is the leading developer and marketer of premium beer and cider brands. Led by the Heineken® brand, the Group has a portfolio of more than 300 international, regional, local and speciality beers and ciders. We are committed to innovation, long-term brand investment, disciplined sales execution and focused cost management.

Through “Brewing a Better World”​, sustainability is embedded in the business and delivers value for all stakeholders. HEINEKEN has a well-balanced geographic footprint with leadership positions in both developed and developing markets.

We employ over 80,000 employees and operate breweries, malteries, cider plants and other production facilities in more than 70 countries. Our most recent information is available on: www.theHEINEKENcompany.com and follow us on Twitter via @HEINEKENCorp.

Bernd has decades of experience in government, Fast Moving consumer goods, IT services and Food Machinery. After some years in the Austrian Ministry of Defense, he joined Mars Inc., where he held various regional and global roles. A short excursion into IT Services business followed. Since now 11 years, he has held the CIO position at Haas Food Equipment, a former family owned mid-size business, based in Austria, but with global footprint. Haas joined the Swiss Bühler Group in 2018. Since January 2019, Bernd is CIO of the Consumer Foods division at Bühler Group. Consumer Foods contains Wafer, Biscuit, Bakery, Chocolate& Coffee and Confectionery with around 800 M€ turnover.

He has gained 1^st place at the “CIO of the year in mid-sized companies” in 2012 for a PLM project. Currently, the challenges are to harmonize the systems landscape, prepare for integration into the Bühler IT world, whilst balancing the many business needs in Digitization, IoT and Cloud technology.

The Swiss-based family owned company Bühler is a global, industrial solution provider for processing foods and for manufacturing advanced materials, contributing to food security and high energy efficiency.

The company holds globally leading market positions in technologies and methods for processing grain into flour and feed, as well as for the production of Wafer, biscuit and cookie machinery, mixing solutions, pasta, coffee, cocoa and chocolate, in die casting, wet grinding and surface coating. The company’s core technologies are in the areas of mechanical and thermal process engineering.

Around 65% of the worldwide harvested grain is processed on Bühler mills, around 50% of all car taillamps or headlamps are getting metallized on Bühler machines. Every day, billions of people come into contact with Bühler technologies to cover their basic needs for foods, mobility, or communication. As a Swiss family-owned company, Bühler is active in in 140 countries around the world and operates a global network of 30 production sites. 

The Austrian based Haas Group became part of  Bühler in 2018. Haas is World market leader in Wafer and Biscuit baking plus mixing/aeration solutions.

In 2019, Haas was united with the Bühler parts of Bakery, Chocolate & Coffee and Confectionery to form the new division “Consumer Foods”.