Speaker Biographies

Speakers

Moderators

Pierre Mirlesse

VP Sales Public Sector, Healthcare & Pharma EMEA, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Pierre Mirlesse leads Hewlett Packard Enterprise Public Sector, Healthcare and Pharma business in the EMEA region.

Pierre joined HP in 1993, advising industries and government organizations in their Digital experience transformation. He has held a number of executive positions around the globe including Middle East Africa Regional VP, Worldwide SMB VP based in Palo Alto, Asia Pacific Sales VP and Distribution Director for Emerging markets. Pierre is a recognized industry keynote speaker. He lives in Switzerland with his family.

Maximilian Strotmann

Member of Cabinet, Vice-President Andrus Ansip, European Commission

Maximilian Strotmann is a Member of the Cabinet of Andrus Ansip, European Vice-President in charge of the Digital Single Market. Max's main areas of responsibility in Mr Ansip's team are e-government, interoperability and start-ups.

Working for the Commission since 1997, Max’s career has spanned a broad range of portfolio topics including tourism and enterprise policies; audit and anti-fraud issues; communication and institutional IT issues as well as maritime transport and logistics and intelligent transport systems.

Max studied sociology, psychology and economic and social policies at Augsburg University (Germany). The 1989 fall of the Berlin wall was a unique opportunity to expand on his university studies with extensive trips around central and Eastern Europe and having the opportunity to learn more about Europe's political, historical, economic and cultural history. Jobs at a printer and a bookshop, among others, provided a useful understanding of different work realities.

Kaja Kallas MEP

Rapporteur - Towards a Digital Single Market Act, European Parliament

Kaja Kallas is an Estonian politician. She is currently a Member of the European Parliament elected from Estonia and belongs to the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). She has previously worked as an attorney-at-law and been a Member of the Parliament of Estonia (Riigikogu), where she chaired the Economic Affairs Committee. She is also Vice-Chairman of the Estonian Reform Party. As an attorney, she specialised in European and Estonian competition law.

In the European Parliament Kaja Kallas serves on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and is Vice-Chair of the Delegation to the EU–Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. She is also a substitute for the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and the Delegation for Relations with the United States. She was a rapporteur for the jointly drafted strategic report "Towards a Digital Single Market Act" that calls for ambitious action to remove barriers in the digital world as well as to avoid hindering the technological revolution by overregulating the sector.

Thibaut Kleiner

Deputy Head of Cabinet, Commissioner Oettinger, European Commission

Thibaut KLEINER is the Deputy Head of Cabinet of Günther H. Oettinger, the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society. He has worked since 2001 for the European Commission. The first ten years of his career in the Commission were spent in the area of competition policy (merger, antitrust and state aid). He was in 2007-2010 Member of the Cabinet of Neelie Kroes, Commissioner for competition. In charge of state aid, he supervised banking and restructuring cases for more than one trillion euros during the financial crisis, as well as high-profile energy and tax cases. He was then Head of Unit for coordination in DG Competition. In 2011, he moved to the digital policy area, as advisor of Vice-President Neelie Kroes, in charge of the Digital Agenda, and supervised Internet policies at large (Internet governance, cloud, cybersecurity, data). From 2014 to 2016, he was Head of Unit in charge of network technologies (5G, Internet of Things) in DG Connect. An economist by training, Thibaut Kleiner holds a Master from HEC Paris and a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Luukas Ilves

Counsellor for Digital Affairs, Permanent Representation of Estonia to the EU

Luukas is Counsellor for Digital Affairs at Estonia’s Permanent Representation to the EU, where he makes Europe a more connected and innovative continent by bringing Estonia's outcome-oriented experience in digital markets and government to bear on Brussels. He is responsible for preparing Estonia’s ICT agenda for its EU Presidency in 2018.

Luukas previously served as Head of International relations for RIA (Estonia’s central agency for e-government and cyber security); where he led Estonia’s push to integrate its e-government systems with neighbouring countries and the EU. He previously worked as a policy planner in the Estonian Ministry of Defence and as a national expert at the European Commission (in the Cabinet of VP Neelie Kroes). Luukas is a graduate of Stanford University and a reserve officer in the Estonian Defence Forces.

Andrea Servida

Head of Unit - e-Government & Trust, DG CONNECT, European Commission

Andrea is the Head of the Unit "eGovernment and Trust" in Directorate General 'Communication networks, content and technology' (DG CONNECT) of the European Commission whose mission is to advance the quality and innovation of public administrations and accelerating the large-scale public sector and private sector use of trusted identification and trust services in the digital single market by leadership in the eGovernment agenda and in eIDAS.

From 2012 to June 2016, he led the eIDAS Task Force in charge of the adoption and implementation of the eIDAS Regulation (EU) N°910/2014. The purpose of the regulation is to deliver a predictable regulatory environment for electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market to boost user convenience, trust and confidence in the digital world.

From 2006 to 2012, he was Deputy Head of the Unit "Internet; Network and Information Security" in DG INFSO where he co-managed the Unit and was in charge of defining and implementing the strategies and policies on network and information security, critical information infrastructure protection, electronic signature and identification.

From 1993 to 2005, he worked in the European Commission ICT research programmes (ESPRIT, IT, IST and ICT) dealing with safety critical systems, software engineering, database technology, privacy enhancing technologies, biometrics, dependability and cyber security.

Before joining the European Commission in 1993, he worked in industry for nearly eight years as a project manager of international R&D projects on decision support systems for environmental, civil and industrial emergency and risk management.

He graduated with Laude in Nuclear Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and carried out PhD studies on fuzzy sets and artificial intelligence at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.

Xavier Poisson

VP Hybrid IT EMEA, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Xavier Poisson Gouyou Beauchamps is Vice President for Hybrid IT, Enterprise Group EMEA. In this role, he is focused on combining cloud and datacenter solutions to help customers transition to the New Style of Business.

For five years prior to this position, he built and led HP’s pan-enterprise cloud strategy, sales, and marketing initiatives across the EMEA region.

Xavier also started and continues to drive the Cloud28+ ecosystem, a federated community of Service Providers, resellers, ISVs and public entities dedicated to accelerating enterprise cloud service availability and adoption across Europe. Cloud28+, a “cloud of clouds, made in Europe and secured locally,” proposes an online aggregated catalogue of trusted cloud services to match a variety of workload requirements. Based on open source technologies, Cloud28+ serves as a “one stop shop” for commercial and public sector organizations to find and im-plement the cloud services that fit their business needs.

Earlier in his career, Xavier held a variety of sales management roles in the IT industry. During his 17 years at HP, he also led the Communica-tions, Media and Entertainment vertical and the Storage and Alliances groups in France, as well as the HP CloudSystem business, the HP/Microsoft Infrastructure to Application business, and the HP High Performance Computing business – all at the EMEA level.

He is a graduate of the ESCP Europe Management School.

Joe Macri

Vice-President Public Sector, Europe Middle East & Africa, Microsoft Corporation

As Vice-President for Microsoft EMEA, Joe is responsible for Microsoft’s business across Government, Health, Education, Public Safety and Security. Joe brings a passion for technology and how digital transformation can make an impact on society.

Joe joined Microsoft in 1996 and before moving to Ireland in 1999, the Australian national worked for Microsoft in the UK, where he was responsible for the small business division. While as General Manager Microsoft Ireland, he represented the company on industry bodies such as the national executive of IBEC and the boards of the technology lobby body, Information Communication and Technology Ireland, and the Irish Management Institute (IMI). Joe also served as Chairman of the Small Business Forum in 2005 and was appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister to the board of the Health Service Executive serving between 2006 and 2008. During the subsequent 4 years Joe lead the Marketing & Operations Organization in the Western Europe Area.

Prior to Microsoft, Joe worked at British bank NatWest and before that he worked for a number of technology companies in Australia. Joe holds an MBA from Warwick Business School in the UK and a Computer Science Bachelor of Science degree from Sydney University. He took up sailing several years ago crewing on a J109 and when not spending time with his family, he enjoys cycling.

Noël Van Herreweghe

Adviser – Open Data Programme Manager, Flemish Government

Noël started his career in the ICT sector as a consultant and principal trainer at Casewise Business Process Solutions in London. He then worked as coordinator Management Consulting at Siemens Business Services in Belgium. Noël first started working at the former Ministry of the Flemish Government, where he stood at the cradle of the PeopleSoft/Oracle HRM project as a process and information analyst.

Noël went on to work for the Flemish government as an adviser, first as head and coordinator Process and Information Management, later at the Administrative Affairs Department and at present as a Program Manager at the Agency for Information Management.

Noël Van Herreweghe initiated and runs the Open Data Program at the Flemish government. He speaks on this topic at home and abroad.

Noël is a honorary fellow at the Catholic University of Leuven.

Celina Ramjoué

Deputy Head of Unit - Data Policy and Innovation, DG CONNECT, European Commission

Celina Ramjoué is Deputy Head of Unit for the Data Innovation and Policy Unit at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology (DG CONNECT). She was previously Head of Sector for “Data policy for science” and for “Open Access to Scientific Publications and Data” for the same Directorate General. Before joining DG CONNECT in 2012, Celina worked on open access, open science and science and society issues for the Directorate-General for Research & Innovation. Prior to joining the European Commission in 2005, Celina was a researcher in the field of comparative public policy and science and technology studies at the University of Zurich. Celina holds a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in political science and foreign affairs (Universities of Virginia, Munich and Zurich) and been a visiting researcher at Harvard University and the European University Institute.

Reinhard Posch

CIO, Federal Government Austria

Reinhard Posch studied at Technischen Hochschule (now Graz University of Technology) mathematics, worked at Graz Research Center (now Joanneum Research) on the topics operating systems, terminal concepts, networking, and automates road construction and planning. He got his PHD in 1976, served as assistant professor and worked with Sperry Univac (Roseville, MN, USA) researching in the field of physical network layers. In 1984 he was appointed full professor at Graz University of technology.

Since 1986 Reinhard Posch is servicing as head of “Applied Information Processing and Communications Technology“ (IAIK). Since 1999 he also serves as Director of the „Austrian Secure Information Technology Center“ (A-SIT) 1999. Since 2001 as federal CIO (Chief Information Officer) for the Austrian government. 2007 to 2011 Reinhard Posch chaired the management board of ENISA.

Besides many publications, Reinhard Posch conducted many national and international research projects concentrating on networking, computer security, smart cards and innovative advances of eGovernment.

Among other awards Reinhard Posch got the “IFIPOutstanding Service Award”, the „IFIP SilverCore Award“, the ID Peoples Award 2006 and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria.

Christophe Merer

Vice-President Government & Public Sector Europe, Mastercard

Christophe Merer is Vice-President Government & Public Sector Europe at MasterCard since January 2013. Christophe joined MasterCard in July 2012 in the Strategic Alliances department focusing on Acceptance related initiatives.
Before joining MasterCard, Christophe worked for more than 10 years at American Express where he held positions ranging from marketing to product and business development in France and the UK, his last position based in London as Head of EMEA Acceptance for prepaid products. He also launched a start-up that he managed for 5 years in the sustainable development sector.

Christophe holds a Master’s degree Marketing specialization from Institut Superieur de Gestion in Paris, France.

Mercedes Gozalbo

R&D Program Manager, Quirónsalud

Ms. Mercedes Gozalbo: is a R&D Program Manager at Innovation and Research Corporative Department of Quirónsalud. Her main interests are focused on innovation of healthcare workflows through the implementation of the management system of R&D projects according to the indications of the UNE 166.002 regulation and PMI solutions as a Project Manager Professional, and Member of PMI. In 2009 she joined the CENIT cvREMOD (Convergence of technologies medical for the integral management of cardiovascular remodeling). In 2013 she is involved in European project CocoCloud (Confidential and Compliant Clouds) as management responsible of Quirónsalud. Since September, performs as coordinator of AG C2.3 Personal User Experience, EIP-AHA.

Nick Wallace

Senior Policy Analyst, Center for Data Innovation

Nick Wallace is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation. Based in Brussels, he writes about the effects of public policy on the use of data in the EU. He joined the Center in September 2016; prior to that he was a government analyst at Ovum in London, where he wrote about smart cities, open data, and government tech policy worldwide. He studied in Hungary and Spain, and is originally from Liverpool in North-West England.

Stefano De Panfilis

Chief Operating Officer, FIWARE Foundation

Stefano De Panfilis graduated cum laude in Mathematics from the University of Rome "La Sapienza". In 1984, he was hired by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica and in July 1988, he moved to the R&D department managing the "Formal Methods" unit where he started research on the architecture and implementation of complex IT systems, addressing this topic from both the methodological and the technological side. Since this time he has held various positions within the firm and in June 2011, he began his role as Chief Innovation Officer.

He has actively participated in the various Future Internet initiatives set-up by the European Commission, having also served on the Future Internet Assembly (FIA) caretakers committee, set-up by the European Commission, for several editions. In this context, he became one of the founders of the FIWARE initiative.

Since the beginning of FIWARE, he has been responsible for the FIWARE Lab and it is in this role that he serves the FIWARE Architecture Board. In 2013, he was also elected chair of the FI-PPP Steering Board. Very recently, he was appointed as the COO of the FIWARE Foundation.
Author of several scientific papers, Stefano has appeared in several international journals and conference proceedings. He is also a member of a number of international conference programme committees.

Elio Gullo

Office of Innovation and Digitization, Italian Digital Agenda Agency

As an IT systems expert with a long experience in Italian public administration, Mr Gullo has held the position of Head of Office for Innovation and Digitisation for the Italian Government since 2015. As Office Head, Mr Gullo has contributed to defining the roles of the Italian Digital Agenda Agency, the public agency in charge of implementing the Digital Identity Architecture, the Electronic Identity Card and National Population Registry by the end of 2017. Now Elio Gullo is on the advisory board of the agency.

Mr Gullo has worked for the Department of Public Administration since 1998. During this time, he has been involved in projects concerning the improvement of IT systems in public authorities. In this role, he has also been in charge of the organisational change for pursuing the improvement of the management of IT systems for Italian Public Administrations. Through these roles, Mr Gullo has had extensive experience in e-Government since its first introduction in the European Union at the end of 1990.

Additionally, Mr Gullo has taken part in several different team-works for the Italian Government, aiming to simplify bureaucracy and increase transparency in Italian Public Administration. He has also been a lecturer in IT courses for PA and issues related to administrative law for digital public services.

Jean-Claude Burgelman

Head of Unit Data, Open Access & Foresight, DG RTD, European Commission

Jean-Claude Burgelman is presently Head of Unit Data, Open Access and Foresight and Chair of DG RTD Taskforce on Open Science. As Head of Unit, he is responsible for open science and data policies as well as foresight for research priorities.
He joined the European Commission in 1999 as a Visiting Scientist in the Joint Research Centre (the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies - IPTS), where he became Head of the Information Society Unit in 2005. In January 2008, he moved to the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (attached to the president of the EC) as adviser for innovation policy. Since 1-10-2008, he joined DG RTD, as advisor and then Head of Unit in charge of top level advisory boards like the European Research and Innovation Area Board, the Innovation for Growth Group and the European Forum for Forward Looking Activities.

Till 2000 he was full professor of communication technology policy at the Free University of Brussels, as well as director of the Centre for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication and was involved in science and technology assessment. He has been visiting professor at the University of Antwerp, the European College of Brughes and the University of South Africa and sits on several academic journals. He chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Innovation and was a member of its Science Advisory Committee.

Wilfried Grommen

Director & Chief Technologist Public Sector EMEA, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Wilfried Grommen serves as Hewlett Packard’s Chief Technology Officer for the Public Sector in EMEA. In this capacity, he interacts extensively with senior regulators, information officers and top-ranking advisors within the European Institutions, the United Nations and national governments. He is a core member of HP’s Public Sector team for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and outlines HP’s strategic vision on IT within the public sector. This includes the value of digital government, health and education, innovation strategy and some core IT breakthroughs like cloud adoption, big data, security, privacy protection and mobility.

Grommen has 24 years of experience in the IT industry. In his previous position, he served as Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer for Central and Eastern Europe, focusing primarily on technology policy (interoperability, innovation, security). As a member of the core Citizenship team, he also had strong EU involvement regarding Microsoft’s digital agenda. Grommen specialized on business innovation, research collaboration, and start-up ecosystem. He also held international management positions in technology development and strategy with a financial services and solutions provider (Capco – financial markets solutions), IBM global services (business – IT alignment consulting), as well as Motorola (networking).

Grommen is a domestic, regional and international speaker and lecturer on public fora, government roundtables and IT events. Recently, he lectured for the Singapore IT association in Geneva, for the UAE government in Dubai, the EU border management conference in Brussels, IoT at the European Union, and ITU keynote in Geneva His lectures focus on technology policy around the new style of IT.

Grommen also recently co-authored Cyber Security Collaboration Needed Between US and E.U. for the Institute for Supply Management’s Beyond Our Borders magazine and was interviewed by National Public Radio regarding the upcoming EU data protection reform and its effects on EU and US business.

Grommen holds a Master degree in Civil Engineering and Electronics from the University of Leuven in Belgium. He is an EU citizen and fluent in English, Dutch, French, and German.

Jennifer Baker

EU Policy Correspondent, Reporting on technology, politics and legislation for ArsTechnica UK, IAPP, Tech.eu and more

Jennifer has been a journalist in print, radio and television for more than 18 years. She has worked across a wide range of sectors, from editing a national daily paper in Malta, to television reporting on EU affairs to the Middle East. She has a wealth of experience in writing about politics, business, legislation and tech.

She moved to Brussels to work as a freelance EU correspondent in February 2009 and now focuses all aspects of policy relating to IT, from data protection to trade agreements, antitrust cases to copyright law.

Jennifer has written for The Register, PCWorld, ArsTechnica, Politico, CIO and IDG. She is senior presenter on Vieuws.eu and regularly features as an EU tech expert on the BBC.

Gareth Mitchell

Presenter: Click, BBC World Service

Gareth has been a journalist at BBC for the last 15 years. He joined the BBC in the mid-1990s as a broadcast engineer, before he became science and technology journalist with his first hosting role for “The Lab”, a youth science program. Today, he presents on the BBC as the host of the worldwide weekly radio show “Click” that covers a wide range of technology issues. In addition, he contributes to the Q&A section of the BBC “Science Focus” magazine.

Next to his profession as journalist, Mitchell is also a lecturer at Imperial College London since 1998, where he teaches broadcast and written journalism.

Fabian Zuleeg

Chief Executive and Chief Economist, European Policy Centre

Since October 2013, Dr. Fabian Zuleeg is Chief Executive of the European Policy Centre, with overall responsibility, including providing strategic direction, managing its staff and resources and representing the EPC. He remains Chief Economist at the same time (a post he has held since January 2010), in charge of the Europe’s Political Economy Programme. Fabian holds a PhD on the political economy of EU accession from Edinburgh University. Before coming to the EPC he has worked as an economic analyst in academia, the public and the private sector. He is currently Honorary Fellow at the Europa Institute of the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Professor at Heriot Watt University.

His research focuses on the economic and Euro crises, including the reform of the new economic governance at Eurozone level. He also works on the Single Market, Digitalisation, European labour markets and the EU budget. He has a long standing interest in the political economy of European integration, with a particular focus on the UK-EU relationship, analysing the impact of Brexit on the UK and the rest of the EU, as well as the process of separation. He was appointed to the Standing Council on Europe, established by Scotland’s First Minister after the Brexit vote in June 2016.

Fabian works closely with decision makers in the European institutions, the EPC members and partners and the wider Brussels stakeholder community. Fabian regularly comments on current political and economic issues in the EU in the media. He also chairs and contributes to a wide range of debates, conferences and seminars and has researched and published widely on European integration and on European economic and social policies.