Infosys EMEA Confluence 2023
Infosys Limited
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Salil Parekh

CEO & MD, Infosys

Salil Parekh, as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, sets and evolves the strategic direction for the company and its portfolio of offerings, while nurturing a strong leadership team to drive its execution. Salil has nearly three decades of global experience in the IT services industry with a strong track record of driving digital transformation for enterprises, executing business turnarounds and managing successful acquisitions.

Most recently, Salil was a member of the Group Executive Board at Capgemini, where he held several leadership positions for 25 years. He was responsible for overseeing a business cluster comprising Application Services (North America, UK, Asia), Cloud Infrastructure Services, and Sogeti (Technology & Engineering Services Division). He was responsible for the strategy and execution of these businesses – setting direction and enabling rapid client adoption. He was also the Chairman of Capgemini’s North America Executive Council. He was the architect of the North America growth and turnaround strategy, and was instrumental in setting up their offshoring capabilities.

In his earlier role as Partner at Ernst & Young, Salil is widely credited for bringing scale and value to the Indian operations of the consultancy firm.

He holds Master of Engineering degrees in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Nandan Nilekani

Co-Founder and Chairman, Infosys

Nandan Nilekani is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited. He was the Founding Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in the rank of a Cabinet Minister from 2009-2014. Most recently, Nandan has co-founded and is the Chairman of EkStep, a not-for-profit effort to create a learner centric, technology based platform to improve basic literacy and numeracy for millions of children.

Born in Bengaluru, Nilekani received his Bachelor’s degree from IIT, Bombay. Fortune Magazine conferred him with “Asia’s Businessman of the year 2003”. In 2005 he received the prestigious Joseph Schumpeter prize for innovative services in economy, economic sciences and politics. In 2006, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan. He was also named Businessman of the year by Forbes Asia. Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 & 2009. Foreign Policy magazine listed him as one of the Top 100 Global thinkers in 2010. He won The Economist Social & Economic Innovation Award for his leadership of India’s Unique Identification initiative (Aadhaar). In 2017, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from E&Y. CNBC- TV 18 conferred India Business leader award for outstanding contributor to the Indian Economy-2017 and he also received the 22nd Nikkei Asia Prize for Economic & Business Innovation 2017. He has been inducted as International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

Nandan Nilekani is the author of "Imagining India", co- authored his second book with Viral Shah, "Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations" and co-authored his third book with Tanuj Bhojwani, "The Art of Bitfulness: Keeping calm in the digital world" released in Jan 2022.

Rafee Tarafdar

EVP and CTO, Infosys

Rafee is Infosys' Chief Technology Officer. He is responsible for the technology vision and strategy, sensing & scaling emerging technologies, advising and partnering with clients to help them succeed in their transformation journey and building high technology talent density. He also leads the technology strategy for all the platforms.

At Infosys, he founded and scaled from zero, a new business capability unit - Strategic Technology Group. It’s a 3000+ global team of passionate technology leaders, full stack architects and power programmers working on the most complex and advanced digital, cloud and AI programs for G2000 enterprise clients of Infosys and Infosys platforms.

Under the visionary leadership of Nandan Nilekani (co-founder and chairman of Infosys), he led Infosys’s own transformation to be a digital native and become a Live Enterprise. He is now helping Infosys leapfrog to be an AI First company with a goal of amplifying human potential, unlocking value and creating exponential impact.

Rafee has led and rolled out complex, population scale (100M+ users), resilient digital platforms and has led several large scale & complex transformation programs.

He is the co-author of “The Live Enterprise” book, co-author of a HBR paper on “Micro changes for Large Scale Transformation” and presented and published several technology papers. He is recognized as a top 50 technology leader in Forbes CIO Next List 2023.

Rafael Nadal Parera

Tennis Legend and 22-time Grand Slam Champion

Rafael Nadal Parera is a Spanish professional tennis player. Nadal has been ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 209 weeks and has finished as the year-end No. 1 five times. Nadal has won 22 Grand Slam men's singles titles, including a record 14 Roland-Garros titles. He has won 92 ATP singles titles, including 36 master’s titles, with 63 of these on clay courts. Nadal is one of only two men to complete the Career Golden Slam in singles. His 81 consecutive wins on clay constitute the longest single-surface win streak in the Open Era.

For over a decade, Nadal has led men's tennis along with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic as the Big Three. At the start of his professional career, Nadal became one of the most successful teenagers in ATP Tour history, reaching the world No. 2 ranking and winning 16 titles before turning 20, including his first French Open and six master’s events. Nadal became the world No. 1 for the first time in 2008 after defeating Federer in a historic Wimbledon final, his first major victory off clay. He followed up his win with an Olympic singles gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After defeating Djokovic in the 2010 US Open final, then-24-year-old Nadal became the youngest man in the Open Era to achieve the Career Grand Slam, and the first man to win majors on three different surfaces (hard, grass, and clay) in the same year (Surface Slam).

Nadal surpassed his joint record with Djokovic and Federer for the most Grand Slam men's singles titles at the 2022 Australian Open, and became one of four men in history to complete the double Career Grand Slam in singles. As a left-handed player, one of Nadal's main strengths is his forehand, which he hits with a high degree of topspin. He also regularly places among the Tour leaders in percentage of return games, return points, and break points won. Nadal has won the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award five times and was the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year in 2011 and 2021. Time named Nadal one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022. He is a recipient of the Grand Cross of Royal Order of Sports Merit, Grand Cross of Order of the Second of May, the Grand Cross of Naval Merit, and the Medal of the City of Paris. Representing Spain, he has won two Olympic gold medals, and led the nation to four Davis Cup titles. Nadal has also opened a tennis academy in Mallorca and is an active philanthropist through his foundation.

John Porter

CEO, Telenet

John Porter is a seasoned CEO with over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications, media and entertainment industry. Under his leadership as CEO of Telenet, the leading provider of telecom, media and entertainment services in Belgium, the company has substantially diversified its portfolio, built the largest Giga-network in Europe, led the way to the creation of the network infrastructure company WYRE and made bold moves in the media & entertainment sector, both locally and internationally. John Porter also led the company through a profound agile and digital transformation. He is passionate about advancing diversity and inclusion, promoting servant leadership and leading with purpose.

Prior to joining Telenet, he was the CEO of AUSTAR, a leading entertainment company in Australia. He led the company from its inception until its acquisition by Foxtel. Before that, John also worked at Time Warner (Ohio), Group W, and Westinghouse Cable Systems (Texas & Alabama).

Pernille Geneser

Group CDIO, STARK Group

Pernille Geneser is an accomplished technology leader with over two decades of experience in digital transformation focusing on the retail sphere.

Currently, as the Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO) at STARK Group since December 2019, Pernille drives the digital innovation journey modernizing the STARK Group platform.

Prior to her role at STARK Group, Pernille was the CIO at the global retailer BESTSELLER from October 2013 to December 2018, significantly impacting the company's technology strategies.

Her career began as a SAP Manager at JYSK from March 2002 to February 2004, and she later held a key role at ECCO Shoes as CIO and Arla Foods, contributing to business solutions development.

On top of her current position, Pernille is a Member of the Board at WAREMA Renkhoff and Unit IT, actively shaping their strategies.

Pernille is a respected technology and business leader, consistently driving digital transformation and always from a business perspective.

Antonietta Mastroianni

Chief Digital and IT Officer, Proximus

Antonietta Mastroianni has been a member of the Proximus Leadership Squad since April 2021 where she acts as Chief Digital & IT Officer. Before joining Proximus, she was Group CIO and CDIO at the Danish TDC, Head of IT and Business Partner at Swiss Sunrise, and she had several roles in Swisscom and H3G Italy.

She is an influential IT leader with 20 years of international Telecom experience in leveraging technology to drive organizational growth, performance and profitability. She focuses on digital and agile transformation, the impact of leading-edge technology on business, technology and product innovation as well as IT and Telco transformation. She has worked in different European countries (Italy, Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium) and is a council member of Etis. Currently she also holds the VC Finance seat in the Board of Directors of Gaia-X and is chairwoman in the Board of Directors of Proximus Ada.

Antonietta Mastroianni studied Computer and Automation Engineering at university of Siena and she is a member of the Order of Engineers of the province of Caserta. In 2022, Antonietta was awarded the Telco Women of the Year Award by NetworkX and was also named Telco CxO of the Year in 2021.

Mo Gawdat

Best-selling author, AI Expert & Former Chief Business Officer, Google X

Mo Gawdat was Chief Business Officer for Google X, the search giant’s cutting edge research and development lab. A tech entrepreneur and innovator, he is also the author of Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy, a look at his decade-long search for an engineering approach to happiness.

Starting out at IBM Egypt as a Systems Engineer, Mo also worked in the government sector before joining financial technology company NCR Abu Dhabi. He joined Microsoft in a series of roles including leading the company’s communications division in global emerging markets. Mo then joined Google during some of its most rapid growth, charged with pioneering their emerging markets profile. Passionate about technology’s potential to empower communities, over the course of six years he started almost half of Google’s worldwide operations.

Mo then moved to Google X, the famed innovation division charged with achieving the next ‘moonshot’ development. His role took in planning, strategy, sales, partnerships and business development. Unlike other businesses, and other parts of Google, X focused on giant leaps of innovation, rather than iterative improvements. It aimed to turn science fiction into fact and bring the future closer. It saw Mo working on projects from sustainable energy to providing Wi-Fi to remote parts of the world to autonomous vehicles to life sciences.

Alongside his Google work Mo co-founded outside businesses in areas including health and fitness, property, and food and drink. He’s served on multiple technology company and government boards in Europe and the Middle East.

After a period of general malaise in his life, which he tried to solve with material wealth and experiences, Mo turned his engineering skills to emotions and created an algorithm and model to help avoid and manage disappointment. It incorporated aspects of philosophy and religion; he took data points throughout life and worked for over seven years finding trends and patterns. He placed happiness overall in context of the experiences and expectations of life. He also personally put his project to the test when his 21-year-old son died during a routine operation and the whole experience became the foundation of Solve for Happy. Mo now aims to build on his work to bring happiness to a billion people around the world.

Ann-Kathrin Sauthoff-Bloch

GM and MD, Infosys Consulting Germany

“There are still far too few women in leadership positions. It is our societal mission to change this – now!”

It has become Ann-Kathrin Sauthoff-Bloch's mission to show women the way to entrepreneurial leadership positions based on her own experiences! She is convinced that a balanced gender ratio in decision-making boards is beneficial for companies and society. Since April 2020, Ann-Kathrin has been General Manager and Managing Director at Infosys Consulting Germany. Prior to this, she spent many years in management positions at IBM and Accenture. Her consulting work has led her mainly into the telecommunications and retail sectors and into the subject area of digital transformation. At IBM, she was responsible, among other things, for the global IT and consulting business with Deutsche Telekom. In 2008, she became a partner at Accenture, making her one of the company's youngest partners in Germany.

It is from this wealth of experience that Ann-Kathrin draws her inspiration from when she talks about the opportunities and challenges for women on the path to leadership. She advocates for the dismantling of systemic hurdles – in collaboration with male colleagues. At the same time, she wants to convey to women which qualities are essential in professional life: ambition, initiative, perseverance, resilience – but also attributes considered “typically female”, such as empathy and strong team orientation. After all, it is precisely these qualities that are essential in times of crisis and disruptive change to keep a company on track and lead it to further growth. She is passionate about delivering high-quality management consulting and developing high-performance teams that can implement large-scale transformation plans for their clients. Ann-Kathrin also shares her knowledge and experience within the frameworks of FidAR and Advance Women – because the more women are in leadership positions and take a pioneering role, she believes, the faster fundamental change can be initiated in the corporate world.

Ann-Kathrin holds a degree in European Business Administration from the University of Applied Sciences in Reutlingen, Germany, and Middlesex University in London.

Pascal Matzke

VP, Research Director, Forrester

In his role as research director, Pascal Matzke leads Forrester's global CIO research team that focuses on the digital transformation opportunities for businesses around customer experience as well as connected products and services. His research team advises CIOs on best practices for digital transformation and innovation and helps clients become empowered business partners throughout their transformational journeys. Pascal's personal area of expertise and thought leadership spans across the domains of business technologies such as mobile, social, cloud and the Internet of Things, as well as the related transformational business issues. He is also a deep domain expert in tech services and outsourcing trends as well as the underlying market dynamics.

Acting as a trusted advisor to technology leaders and business executives across Europe, Asia, and North America, Pascal has helped frame successful transformation strategies for many large corporate clients as well as several leading technology vendors. Pascal is a frequent public speaker and is regularly quoted by leading business newspapers and IT magazines, such as The Economist, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Handelsblatt, CIO Magazine, Computing, and InformationWeek.

Pascal joined Forrester in 2005 from META Group, where he was a European lead analyst and consulting director responsible for IT services and vendor strategy issues. Previously, Pascal came from Giga Information Group, where he was a senior analyst and solution program manager covering IT services and outsourcing topics as well as the relevant vendor evaluation methodologies. Prior to joining Giga Information Group in 1997, Pascal was involved in management consulting projects at a Munich-based consulting company, mainly in the telecommunications and IT services area.

Timo Salzsieder

CSO and CIO, Metro AG

Timo Salzsieder was born in 1969. He studied Computer Science in Constance in Germany, Nottingham in the UK, and Berkeley in California. In 1996 he graduated and started his professional career as a consultant at Oracle in Munich, Germany. Between 1999 and 2005, as a member of the management team responsible for IT at Loyalty Partner GmbH, he was involved in setting up Payback. Subsequently he switched to Bertelsmann arvato services, where he held responsibility for the financial, health and IT services sectors. From February 2008 until 2010, as Executive Vice President at D+S Europe AG in Hamburg, Germany, he was responsible for the expansion of the company’s e-commerce activities in Europe and overseas. Since 2009 he has additionally provided support in the areas of e-commerce und CRM as Senior Advisor at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.

In July 2010, Timo Salzsieder became CIO/CTO of TOMORROW FOCUS AG. From July 2010 to November 2013 he was Managing Director at TFT - TOMORROW FOCUS Technologies GmbH. Since June 2013, he has been Managing Director at the newly established company TOMORROW Travel Solutions GmbH. In December 2013 he co[1]founded organize.me an online service for document organization and became Management Director of the company.

In June 2014 Timo Salzsieder became CTO and in 2015 COO of HolidayCheck AG. On 1 September 2015 Timo Salzsieder had joined the Management Board of HolidayCheck Group AG (formerly TOMORROW FOCUS AG) in the position of COO. In his new role he had the overall responsibility for product development, product management and IT. On 1 March 2017 Timo Salzsieder joined METRO AG, Düsseldorf, as CIO/Chief Solution Officer. He is responsible for the entire solution landscape at METRO AG driving the digitization of the global operations in more than 25 countries mainly in Europe and Asia.

Dr. Merritt Moore

Quantum Physicist and Professional Ballet Dancer

Dr. Merritt Moore is a quantum physicist and world class professional ballet dancer. She is Adjunct Professor of Practice and Artist in Residence with joint appointment in Division of Engineering and Division of Arts and Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi. She also is Postdoctoral Researcher at Technology Innovation Institute Quantum Research Center. She teaches robotics and art practice courses at NYU, and choreographs and has performed with robots for Boston Ballet, Harvard, Forbes, BBC, Louis Vuitton, TIME, FT, Mark Zuckerberg and more. She was awarded Forbes 30 under 30, and she was one of the 12 selected candidates to undergo rigorous astronaut selection on BBC Two “Astronauts: Do you have what it takes?” She graduated with Magna cum laude honours in Physics from Harvard and graduated with a PhD in Quantum Optics from the University of Oxford. She also pursues an impressive professional ballet career previously with the Zurich Ballet, Boston Ballet, English National Ballet, and Norwegian National Ballet. Dr Moore is featured in the bestseller “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls“

Allan Wilkins

VP Advisory, Gartner

Allan Wilkins is a Advisory Vice President at Gartner covering Application Services and System Integrators in the IT Sourcing, Procurement and Vendor Management area. Mr. Wilkins guides Gartner clients in sourcing applications services which include ERP implementation, custom application development and ongoing support and maintenance. He guides Gartner clients on all phases of the sourcing life cycle (sourcing strategy, purchase and ongoing management). With over 35 years of experience in IT, Mr. Wilkins has worked as both a client and application outsourcing service provider and gained experience on both sides of the technology sourcing life cycle. His experience covers applications, data and infrastructure across a variety of industries.

Prior to joining Gartner, Mr. Wilkins was responsible for the delivery of all IT services (applications, data, infrastructure, end-user services and security) for an oil and gas services company. Previously, he was the global lead for Supply Chain and Finance application support for a global consumer good and retail company. He also spent time at IBM as a Partner in their SAP Application Outsourcing practice.

Satish HC

EVP, Co-Head Delivery, Infosys

Satish has been with Infosys for close to three decades. In his current role, his primary responsibility is Co-Head Delivery for Infosys. He manages multiple core, digital business units and globally distributed sales, consulting and delivery teams.

Satish is responsible for several organization change initiatives in the areas of Delivery, Operations, New services, Talent supply chain, Optimization and serves on the Infosys Cyber security council.

Prior to this, he has played several delivery leadership roles across Data Analytics, Digital, Manufacturing, Healthcare & Life sciences, Financial services and Retail segments globally. He is a recipient of multiple Infosys Excellence awards for his contribution to Excellence and nurturing Top Infosys client relationships.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering from Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, Bangalore University. He also holds the Executive Education certification on Infosys Global Leadership Program in collaboration with Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Christopher Digby

CIO, NEOM

Chris was a partner with Deloitte for 18 years and prior to that with Andersen Consulting for 13 years prior to becoming CIO at Tonomus NEOMs technology company responsible for the end-to-end cognitive IT experience across NEOM. During his career he worked across many sectors and regions primarily focused on enabling business transformation through the effective use of information technology. Whether the early adoption of ERP and MRP2 or the .com boom in the early part of this century and more recently the growth of data science and now with the explosion of AI, the objective has always been the same: how does an enterprise exploit the emerging technology to more rapidly and more effectively than their competition. Now working on the NEOM, the largest mega project in the world Chris is right at the heart of the worlds largest digital initiative

Øyvind Trangerud

CTO, DNB Bank

Øyvind Trangerud is DNB’s group CTO and Executive Vice President for Group Architecture and Technology. He is responsible for DNB’s Technology Strategy as well as management of the bank’s most important IT partners. Øyvind reports to Maria Løvold and is a member of DNBs Strategic Technology Board and leads DNBs Technology Management Board. Øyvind has held the above positions for close to 20 years, during which time he led DNBs outsourcing in the 2010s and DevOps transformation in the 2020s. His leadership has overseen the establishment of DNB’s current internet banking platform, an extensive data centre consolidation and subsequent public cloud migration. Øyvind was responsible for technology and sourcing for building Vipps (the Nordics largest mobile payment app) and was Chair for DNB owned fintech company IDmee (development of the identification solutions in the BankID app). Øyvind studied Computer Science in Norway and in the US, before being drafted to the Norwegian Marine’s high command as a software engineering. Øyvind spent the first 10 years of his carrier in software engineering working for AT&T and Capgemini, before starting a more tech management focused carrier in DNB.

Luis lopes

Vice President IT&D and Connected Technologies, Toyota Europe

Luis Lopes (he/him) is an accomplished leader with extensive IT expertise, specializing in Corporate Law and the integration of Automotive and Digital technologies. Thriving as a strategic partner and change agent at Toyota, Luis is dedicated to fostering innovation and empowering individuals.

With dual Portuguese/Belgian nationalities, Luis studied Civil Engineering in Computer Science at ULB University in Brussels. Before joining Toyota in 2007, he served as a Programme Manager at a London-based Global Corporate Law firm, overseeing global projects in the Information Systems & Strategy division.

Since 2007, Luis has been a key contributor at Toyota, starting in IT&D in Manufacturing and later managing teams for R&D, Production Engineering, and other Corporate functions. In 2016, he led a two-year assignment in the Product Management Division, focusing on the business case for Connected Cars in Europe before returning to IT&D.

In 2021, Luis assumed the role of Director of the Connected Technologies Business Unit at Toyota, revitalizing its P&L and advancing the connected subscription business. By 2022, he took on the positions of Vice President of Information Technology & Digital and Vice President of Connected Technology at Toyota Motor Europe.