Anna is an accomplished business transformation leader drawing on her customer experience consulting and technology background. Former Portfolio Leader of the largest global Professional Service clients at LinkedIn, she is now Head of Culture and Innovation in the Google Cloud Customer Success organization showcasing Google’s distinctive ways of working.

Anna is also a Director for Cocoon Advisory Limited, a consultancy she built to drive support for scale and transformation in startup businesses. Active in a number of Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, Anna is an advocate for the UN’s HeForShe commitment and recently concluded a three-year volunteer Directorship for WNORTH, a global program built to support women on the rise.

Anna has been published on YouTube for her approach to diversity and inclusion as the bedrock for business transformation frameworks to succeed. She is a featured alumna for PwC and has hosted multiple conferences and events including the more recent Canadian High Commission of Canada, Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce Executive Breakfast series and her keynote for WeAreTheCity Future Leaders Conference across 2019.

Anna’s mission is to help shape the way people and companies go to market to successfully drive growth and opportunity. Anna continues to apply her knowledge of customer experience and transformation strategy to next wave businesses evolving the way we live and work. She shares her startup experience in her public posts Soup for the UK Soul: My Startup Speed-Dating Experience.

Anke Sax has a master in Economics and a phD in Information Management. She has more than 30 years of experience in the banking sector: 15 years on the business side and 15 years in IT. She worked for LBBW, Commerzbank, Daimler Financial Services and dwpbank. She was awarded German CIO of the Year 2019.

In November 2017, Erwin Verstraelen became Chief Digital and innovation officer of the Port of Antwerp, a new position in the executive committee. It was a clear indication of the strategic focus the port wants to give to digitalization. Based on previous roles in other companies, he has a strong background in strategic IT thinking and in depth transformation of an organization driven by Information technology. starting from a new business strategy with 5 objectives towards 2020, Erwin created a new IT department with several new competence centers such as ‘data and analytics’, ‘innovation enablement’ and ‘cyber resilience’. Our digital strategy starts from the four roles we fulfil as a port authority: land lord, operator, regulator and community builder.

For the latter role, we focus on enabling innovation for the ecosystem of about 1000 companies in the port. We’ve done so by three targeted initiatives: PortXL (www.portxl.org/be), an accelerator for start-ups focusing on the maritime world. We select and introduce them to the ecosystem. Nxtport (www.nxtport.eu), the data platform that enables the digitalization of the supply chain in an around the port. Finally, the port of Antwerp, the city of Antwerp, the university of Antwerp and IMEC created ‘The Beacon’ (www.thebeacon.eu) an accelerator for Internet of things applications. It brings together researchers, start-ups, scale-ups and established companies around IOT. In the meantime, the Beacon has been recognized by the federal government as also an innovation hub for AI.

Regarding the roles of land lord, operator and regulator, the goal of the digital strategy is to create a digital nervous system across the port. This is very relevant, given the fact that the port area is 120 square kilometers big, being six times the city of Antwerp. So, by leveraging all kinds of (digital) technologies we will be able to create this nervous system, allowing us to have continuous feedback on what is happening in the port. Besides leveraging sensors and the deployment of a LORA network, we are transforming our 500 cameras into smart camera’s, being able to extract data out of video feeds. Next, we see huge potential in deploying drones since they can provide us with a bird eyes view across the port, flying with random patterns several times a day across the port. Finally, Our network of iNoses, sensors that can detect volatile organic components, will give us an early warning of accidental degasification. All these datasets come together in a digital twin, a digital copy of the port providing us with all relevant data to act on an event, the moment it happens.

During the Supernova technology festival, we were able to show our vision of the Port of the future. What we are working on can be further discovered at https://www.portofantwerp.com/en/port-future

Furthermore, the port is becoming an innovation platform, providing place and support to test innovative technologies that can help us and the ecosystem of the port to be more secure, efficient and innovative. An example is our active support for autonomous shipping pilots in the port area.

What characterizes Erwin can be summarized by the following self-made quote: In life there are problems, challenges and opportunities. That’s actually three times the same thing, only the mindset is different.

Rui Pedro Silva has completed his undergraduate degree in Business Studies, and his Master in Business Administration in Madrid. As part of his career, he has gone through all the different levels inside of a technology organization. This experience has provided him with enough background to make informed decisions while faced with complicated challenges in his management positions.

Over the past 15 years, he has worked in multiple countries, including Germany, UK and Spain, and since 2016 he is working at A.P. Moller-Maersk, leading the IT function fully focused on Maersk’s customers. His team covers the end-to-end process of technology activities related to customer solutions, playing a key role in Maersk’s growth and customer onboarding.

Rui sees himself an outlier in the technology world, as it has not been his area of studies. He sees it though, as a significant competitive advantage, as it allowed him to be a better bridge between technical teams and business oriented people. All his technical expertise comes out of self-learning activities, but it has provided him a very clear picture of what is possible and what is not. One of his most common statements is that “The gap between what people want and what others understand of it, will dictate how successfully that project can be delivered”. Closing that gap, has always been his driver.

Geert Standaert is Chief Technology Officer at Proximus. He has been a member of the Executive Committee since March 2012.

In this function, he oversees all IT development, service engineering, the fixed and mobile network, technical infrastructure and operations for the Group. Mr. Standaert joined the Proximus Group in 1994 and held director positions in various disciplines, including IT, Infrastructure Operations and Data Operations before becoming Vice President Customer Operations in 2007.

Geert is also a Board member of Synductis. Mr. Standaert holds a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Ghent (RUG).

A pioneer of today’s Internet in the seventies (at MIT) Roger Camrass has been helping organisations across the Globe harness the power of new technologies and methods for over five decades.

As a thought leader, business executive and part time academic, Roger has introduced a succession of innovations including digital networking in the seventies, outsourcing and call centres in the eighties, business reengineering and third generation mobile networks in the nineties, e-commerce in 2000 and more recently cloud and 5G.

Nils researches competitive digital innovation and how organizations are redesigning themselves to realize greater impact from a diverse portfolio of innovation efforts. In 2010, he co-founded with CIONET the annual European CIO of the Year Awards to raise awareness of especially-accomplished digital leaders.

Based in Madrid, Nils is responsible for both fostering relations with organizations from Europe and Latin America and conducting research on how firms maximize business value and minimize risks from digital.