Meet the speakers of previous editions
Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitalization
Sebastian Burduja
Sebastian I. Burduja is the Romanian Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitalization, and Member of Romanian Parliament.
He holds a PhD in economics (Summa Cum Laude, ASE Bucharest), a master's degree in business administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School and a master's degree in public policy (MPP) from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He graduated Stanford University with special honors. Between 2012 and 2016 he worked as a Regional Development Expert at the World Bank in Washington D.C. Previously, he was a consultant for Dalberg Global Development Advisors, a strategic consulting firm specialized in countrywide projects.
Vicepresident
Octavian Oprea
I am a graduate of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, specializing in Economics and Management. Between 2016 and 2020
I worked in the IT industry, implementing information systems for some of the most important companies in the field worldwide. My responsibilities range from business analysis and user training to interoperability of IT systems and coordination of project teams. Since March 2020, I have been in charge of Authority for Digitalization of Romania, successively holding the position of vice-president and president of the authority.
I am directly responsible for Romania's digital transformation projects, including the National Interoperability System, the National Electronic Payment System (Ghiseul.ro), the National Catalog of Public Services, the Centralized Software Platform for Digital Identification, etc.
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Deputy Mayor of Bucharest municipality
Stelian Bujduveanu
Stelian Bujduveanu is the Deputy Mayor of Bucharest Municipality and member of the General Council of Bucharest. He has a bachelor's degree in Law and a master's degree in European Union Law. Between 2016 and 2020, Stelian Bujduveanu also worked in the public service as general counsel of Bucharest. He distinguished himself by a pragmatic approach to the management of public services.
The keyword defining his approach toward public service that has, literally, set in motion the administrative mechanism is “simpler”/“easier”. This approach is based on a modern, up-to-date, efficient solution: DIGITALIZATION.
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Henrik Scharfe
Digital Strategy & Innovation
Henrik is known chiefly for the Gemoinoid-DK project: The world’s most lifelike android. For decades he has been passionate about the interplay between digital technology, humans, and organizations. This has led to numerous spectacular projects including the Gemonind project, Self-driving cars on Danish roads, NordVest Smart Production (digital transformation in SMEs, recognized as a RegioStars Awards finalist).
He has a knack for combining deep academic and strategic thinking with exceptional communications skills. His down-to-earth style and (very) dry humor have earned him a solid reputation as a keynote speaker around the world.
He is a TED speaker, TIME100 honouree, and has more than 2000 media appearances under his belt.
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Gianmarco Brunetti
Head of Transformation and Product Offer
Gianmarco is the Head of Commercial Transformation & Product Offer at Jaguar Land Rover, with history of linking commercial opportunities to product offer and corporate strategy.
Today, he is responsible for transformation within the commercial team and looks after the offer structure and pricing strategy for the global JLR portfolio, leveraging digitalization and agile methodologies to optimize profitability. Within his 12 years in the industry at JLR, GM and Audi, he has worked in product development, launching new vehicles in China and electrification technologies in Europe.
He holds a PhD from Politecnico di Torino and MBA at London Business School.
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Joerie Nijhuis
Innovation strategist & entrepreneur
Joerie is an entrepreneur and senior innovation strategist at Accenture with more than 10 years of experience in innovation strategy and concept development.
As an entrepreneur, he founded an EdTech organization that helps create safer learning environments in schools. The associated interactive learning platform “It’s up to you” is used by 50.000 youngsters every year. In addition, Joerie co-founded a restaurant incentive organization to help stimulate the local restaurant economy.
At Accenture, Joerie leads teams on complex innovation programs at Fortune 500 companies. Within that role he specializes in advising executives on developing their innovation strategy and management
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Anna Borbotko
Product Marketing Lead
Anna Borbotko is a product marketing leader of the industry product marketing team at TomTom, the location technology provider.
With a background in Marketing & Business administration, she has +7 years of experience delivering go-to-market strategies for international high-tech companies and local start-ups. In 2019 and up to mid-2020, Anna was offering her consulting practice by helping start-ups in the hospitality sector better position themselves in a high competitor market.
Apart from building the best product marketing team at TomTom and beyond, Anna is passionate about public speaking. She regularly speaks on topics linked to logistics & on-demand mobility, developer relations, and product marketing.
Anna also believes that communicating about your products and services is best when even your grandma understands it.
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Co-founder
Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez
Rodrigo is an inventor, designer, architect and engineer. He has a Master of Architecture with Honours from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, as well as postgraduate qualifications from the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University (India), Industrial Design at Pontificia Universidad Católica (Chile), the Umeå Institute of Design, Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.
As a lecturer, he has collaborated with different institutions such as Cornell University (USA), CEPT (India) and Kingston University(UK). He won the Gold Medal in the 2nd Improvisation World Championship celebrated in 2009 Santiago de Chile, has been awarded with the National Dyson Design Award, the British-Spanish Society-Telefonica Award.
He has also won the GAUDI European Competition on Sustainable Architecture three times.
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Co-founder
Pierre-Yves Paslier
Pierre is a London-based Innovation Design Engineer. He started his career as a Packaging Engineer for L’Oréal in the daytime and hacking 3D-printers in his living room at night.
He then decided to study design at the Royal College of Art and in 2013, he co-designed one of the first consumer delta 3D-printers. His passion for innovation led him to co-found two startups, Gravity Sketch (3D creation in VR) and Notpla (edible packaging). Driven by the urge to act on our plastic crisis, he’s now 100% focused on Ooho, the edible water bottle as Co-CEO of Notpla.
Pierre is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub and a member of the Industrial Advisory Board of Imperial College London Dyson School of Design Engineering.
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Head of Bosch Engineering Center Cluj
Tobias Matter
Tobias Matter is the Head of Bosch Engineering Center Cluj since October 2021. The Engineering Center is an integral part of Bosch Romania and contributes to the international Bosch engineering network to developing excellent products, services and innovative AIoT solutions for automated, connected & electric mobility.
An advocate of positive leadership, he believes that open communication, fairness and trust-based collaboration are the key principles of successful leadership. These principles guide him both when leading others and the organization.
His extensive experience in project management, quality consultancy and business management guarantees the success of current and future development activities at the Engineering Center.
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Chris Brauer
Director of Innovation
Dr Chris is a public intellectual, contract researcher, and board and C-level strategic advisor. His focus is on helping organizations develop thought leadership platforms for public and media engagement with global issues impacting and shaping our current and future socio-economic lives.
As Director of Innovation for the University of London he conducts large-scale data-driven projects on the intersections of emerging technologies, future of work, human behaviour, risk, ethics, governance, productivity and innovation. He led the world's largest behaviour change driving experiment with 3,000 drivers in 13 countries with Shell, has led sustainability, AI and cultural transformation research for Microsoft for the past five years, developed the psychological framework of the Science of Common Ground for Heineken's award-winning Open your World campaign, and benchmarked the vulnerabilities of global corporate leaders to key cybersecurity challenges for NASDAQ.
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Co-founder
Vlad-Ermil Bodea
Vlad Bodea is one of the new generations of entrepreneurs passionate about engineering and technology. He wrote the first line of code in the fourth grade, in the BASIC language.
In the following years, he continued developing and deepening his passion for programming and the operation and troubleshooting of computer systems. As a software engineer, his reference project is developing and implementing a "SCADA" communications platform within a large-scale project that automates the distribution of electricity. With the growth of BENTO, Vlad moved away from the technical side, focusing on operations and management. Under its direct coordination, BENTO has been a leader in implementing a WFM (Workforce Management) solution for one of the company's strategic clients.
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Content Strategy Manager
Octavian Palade
Octavian Palade is the Content Strategy Manager for Internet Corp, one of the most important publishers in the Romanian online media market. He's also a seasoned tech & business journalist, with over 12 years of experience, writing about startups and innovation for start-up.ro, and a radio host at TANANANA Radio.
Pasionate about video, Octavian is also the Project Manager for VideoCorp, Internet Corp's multimedia department.
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B2B Director
Florin Popa
Florin Popa has been the Business to Business Director in Orange Romania since 2013, with his career in the telecom sector having been started in 2001. With the help of his team, Florin enables Orange to become the digital transformation partner for businesses and public authorities in Romania.
Orange Business Services is the B2B division of Orange Romania and it gives companies and authorities support in implementing solutions from a rich portfolio of connectivity and ICT products and services. Under Florin’s management, the ICT revenues of Orange Romania have become the main growth engine for enterprise segment.
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Marketing & Operations Director
Daniel Rusen
Daniel Rusen is the Marketing and Operations Director of Microsoft Romania, having an extensive business expertise with over 18 years of experience in telecommunications and IT industries. During his professional career at Microsoft, Daniel played major roles in facilitating the synergy between marketing & operations and in embarking Microsoft’s business partners in an in-depth transformation process towards cloud services.
In his current role, Daniel leads his team to drive digital transformation growth and accelerate technological adoption across all segments on the Romanian market. His mission is to prove the remarkable power and essential role of cloud in digital transformation, as a way to spawn innovation and maximize efficiency in the business environment.
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CEO
Dragoș Preda
Dragoș Preda was the State Secretary for Telecommunications (2020-2021), enforcing a portfolio of projects to enrich Romania’s IT&C infrastructure development and to better connect European countries, thus pragmatically extending EU digital sovereignty for the next decade. Currently serving as CEO of SN Radiocomunicații SA.
Just a brief prospection into his progress, in both governmental affairs and corporate business, labels him as a visionary hard-working professional.
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Senior Community Manager
Alexandru Savu
Alex started his career as a Software engineer over 15 years ago. Through his career he had the opportunity to wear many hats: Senior engineer, Team Lead, and different management roles.
As a Senior Community manager at Cognizant Softvision, Alex oversees and manages a community of over 200 technical experts. Key strengths include people centric management approach, VUCA ninja skills and strong coaching and mentoring.
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Mobile Community Manager
Alin Turcu
Alin Turcu is a community manager @Cognizant Softvision, in charge of the Mobile and AI communities. From coding to architecture solutions and coordinating engineering teams, Alin was involved in all stages of mobile app development during his career. Lately he mostly focuses on community building knowledge sharing, managing and building high performant mobile teams.
Alin is also an active contributor to open source libraries and loves sharing knowledge, speaking at various mobile conferences including DroidCon San Francisco, DroidCon Romania and MobOS. In his little spear time he likes to play basketball, practice boxing and going to the gym. He always says: “if you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong, never stop searching for better ways to do things and innovate, innovate, innovate in everything that you do!”
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