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Meet the speakers of previous editions
E-commerce Central & Eastern Europe
Tomas Petovsky
Tomas leads e-Commerce and Retail segments in Central and Eastern Europe at Meta.
His main focus is consulting digital business strategies, driving export into foreign markets and developing the overall digital business across countries in the region.
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Digital Advisor
Marco Guastamacchia
On a mission to spread innovation, Marco has been working for the last years at Microsoft to recruit and onboard the greatest startups, scaleups and ISVs in the market. Currently he is a Digital Advisor, providing Digital Transformation consulting for Retail, Fashion & CPG customers to support the creation of their future visions, transformative journeys design and solutions building.
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UK Import Supply Lead
Yogith Krishna
An accomplished and certified agile professional with more than four years comprehensive work experience in European and Asian markets while working with Fortune 500 companies on their supply chain operations, digital technology transformation projects, and product delivery.
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Global Head of Ecommerce Strategy & Performance
Christine Nikolaou
Christine started her career in Procter & Gamble and later joined Diageo were she has been working with brands such as Johnnie Walker and Guinness.
She was previously leading the Digital Team in Eastern Europe while now she’s Global Head of Ecommerce Strategy and Performance. She loves reading, music, painting, dancing and learning new languages. She lives in Athens, Greece.
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Academic Director Retail Design Lab, UHasselt
Prof. Dr. Katelijn Quartier
Katelijn Quartier is an assistent professor in retail design at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts of Hasselt University, where she is also the academic director of the Retail Design Lab knowledge center. She and the Lab are researching what the store of tomorrow should look like, what the role of design and other spatial cues play in it, and what the role of the physical store should be as such. Starting from scientific insights, Katelijn advised Belgian and international retail chains to improve their store experience.
Before her academic career, Katelijn worked in retail design practices such as Fitch in London and Claessens-Erdmann in Amsterdam. The combination of experience in practice with theoretical training is what makes her unique.
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Head of Retail Strategy
DeAnn Campbell
A leading Strategy and Insights expert for the retail industry, DeAnn has over 20 years of experience helping top global retailers detect emerging trends, understand the evolving customer journey and build successful business strategies for better shopper experiences and higher revenue.
As a member of the Customer Experience Professional Association, DeAnn is a contributing author for the upcoming global edition of the Customer Experience Book of Knowledge. She was voted a Top 100 Global Retail Influencer for 2022 and is currently serving on the Retail Advisory Council for Total Retail, and on the Board of the Retail Design Institute. She currently leads Retail Strategy for the Armstrong Alliance Group, a Strategy and Marketing-as-a-Service company that specializes in helping businesses successfully align technology solutions with retailers’ executional needs.
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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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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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Retail Checkout Solutions Manager Innovation&Consult
Adrian Toma
Adrian Toma is the Retail Checkout Solutions Manager in RBC. He is dedicated in his mission to propose new and innovative solutions into Romanian Retail landscape. With more than 15 years experience in implementation and maintenance of Retail Checkout Solutions in different retail sectors, Adrian is part of RBC Innovation & Consulting Department since 2016.
Now he is responsible in identifying viable solutions for local retail market by seeking technology providers or involving in own solutions development. Part of his activity is dedicated in consulting and understanding daily needs and challenges, impacts and how all these could be solved.
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Innovation & Consulting Director
Bogdan Gross
Bogdan Gross is the Innovation Consulting Director of RBC and Vice President ADAMEF. He is performance-driven and dedicated professional with strong experience in managing IT solutions, client accounts and business development projects.
With a strong understanding of all aspects of managing a profitable business including innovation, sales and account management, he has all the skills needed for developing new products and IT solutions. Five years ago, he created the Innovation and Consulting department with the main objective of identifying or developing new solutions based on customer needs .
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Charisma Retail Team Leader
Alexandru Bâlea
Alex has a rich background in the Retail & Distribution field, with more than 10 years of experience in implementing business software solutions for top companies in Romania. He leads the division which makes possible 60% of purchases made in shopping malls, which supports more than 1,500 stores in their sales processes, and which has 35% market share for Retail & Distribution.
He focuses on unlocking innovation to create a new growth path for the client. Alex has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences from the University of Bucharest and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Hyperion University.
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Sales Manager Electronic Signature
Andrei Sârbu
Sales Manager with 10 years of experience in the trusted services market and promoter of digital transformation concepts and projects using electronic signature and electronic identification. Together with his colleagues, he has implemented projects in the private sector that contribute to the digitization of processes in reputable companies, including the Human Resources and Sales departments.
He constantly contributes to increasing the rate of adoption of reliable services on the Romanian market through direct involvement in projects subject to onboarding and loan processes in the financial sector or in human resources, supply chain, digitalization processes of customers and contractors.
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Business Development Director
Marius Vasile
Marius Vasile has been pioneering the Romanian digitalization market for the past 10 years, focusing in particular on how visual display technology can significantly improve customer experience. In this endeavor, Marius worked with key local and international partners to develop a complex ecosystem of solutions complementary to digital signage solutions, integrating the latest technology (e.g. beacons, Wi-Fi analytics) to create compelling, results-driven technological solutions.
As of 2018, he took an additional challenge and became the local responsible for developing Samsung’s DOOH (Digital Out of Home) solutions, having successfully implemented the biggest Samsung Outdoor LED in SEE Europe, as a part of a bigger urban regeneration project in Timisoara. Currently, Marius is focusing on the DOOH local development strategy, combining data management tools with the pursuit of delivering a better visual experience.
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Head of Digital Services
Vasile Voicu
Vasile Voicu is the Head of Digital Services at Orange Communication Romania, coordinating the following lines of business: Cybersecurity, Hybrid Cloud, Hosting Data Centers, Digital City & IoT. A highly-accomplished versatile ICT executive with 20 years’ professional experience and a proven track record in cybersecurity, cloud and IoT markets.
He holds a BSc in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, an MBA in Strategic Management and several postgraduate studies in business management, marketing and strategy.
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Digital Content Marketing Manager
Andra Imbrea Palade
Passionate about retail, Andra has covered this industry for the past 7 years, from editorial content to organizing and hosting B2B events. Andra is currently the Digital Content Marketing Manager at Progresiv, one of the biggest B2B media companies covering the retail & FMCG industry. She is in charge of planning, developing and overseeing the digital strategy, but she is also involved in the management of the company's B2B events, such as Conferinta Progresiv, Trade Round Table, Progressive Women and more.
She is the former Editor-in-Chief of retail.ro, a publishing project launched in 2020, covering the retail industry and has managed the retailArena conference from 2017 to 2021