Speaker list
Steve Dunbar
IoT Commercial Director
Microsoft, MEA
Steve Dunbar has over 25 years of experience in the IT sector. He’s been with Microsoft for 12 years, and leads Microsoft’s IoT go to market strategy for the Middle East and Africa. His remit is to help customers and partners realise the opportunity presented by digital transformation technologies and solutions.
Enno de Boer
Partner and Senior Leader McKinsey & Company, USA
Enno de Boer is McKinsey North America’s Digital Manufacturing Leader and Global Leader of their Digital Capability Centers.
With 18 years with McKinsey and 12 years as partner Enno has led the operations transformation teams at several Fortune 500 clients to become leaders in their respective industries. His expertise consist of broad cross industry expertise across Automotive, Advanced Electronics, Semiconductors, Pharma, MedTech, and CPG. End-to-end supply chain experience across Product Development, Purchasing, Supply Chain Planning, Manufacturing, Quality, Compliance, Logistics and Service Operations.
Enno has initiated, designed and built centers for Top Fortune 500 companies in Automotive, Mining, Banking and for Governments to train more than 300,000 people. In addition he is leading strategic partnerships with World Economic Forum (WEF), Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute in Chicago (DMDII) and Ecosystem of 50 Digital Manufacturing Tech Companies.
He is also a serial start-up founder and VC/Incubator experience (founded: Digital Manufacturing Start-up, M-Commerce Incubator, Food-Tech start-up’s)
Christos Sermpetis
Partner, Operations Practise
McKinsey & Company
Christos Sermpetis is a partner based in our Dubai office and leads our Operations Practice in the Middle East. In his more than 10 years at McKinsey, he has served leading energy and industrial institutions across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Christos’s commitment to the Middle East is based on a deep belief in the “Resource Revolution” and the new frontiers it creates for the global energy, materials, food, and water sectors. He supports resource shapers in the region in their transformation efforts—in particular, their journey to operational efficiency, agility, and cost control. His areas of expertise include mining, chemicals, aluminium and steel, industrial minerals, and upstream and downstream oil and gas operations.
Christos has led a number of large-scale transformations for organisations aspiring to achieve and sustain higher levels of performance. The focus of these efforts ranges from increasing asset availability, to optimizing yield, to improving maintenance processes, to standardizing operations, to reducing unit cost. In all cases, these transformations entail shifting institutions’ performance culture and building the capabilities of large numbers of people.
Jesper Toubol
VP
Elements and Moulds
Lego
Jesper is heading up Elements and Moulds – Engineering. He has delivered organizational
footprint and technology strategies within Element design and Mould Manufacturing -
establishing Engineering centres in LEGO manufacturing sites in Mexico and Denmark.
Responsibilities include delivering innovation to support product development and leading
engineering on manufacturing sites. During his work, Jesper has a profound focus on how IoT
can support his visions and enable the future.
Milan S. Lakhani
Innovation Strategist
Konica Minolta
With almost 20 years in the IT industry, Milan has built a passion for business-led innovation, and as the senior client principal within the Konica Minolta Business Innovation Centre, Europe, he is responsible for the strategy, management and delivery of a joint client innovation agenda.
Prior to joining Konica Minolta, Milan spent 16 years with Electronic Data Systems (EDS) / Hewlett Packard (HP), of which the last 7 years were within the office of the CEO, supporting the set up of one of the largest global enterprise innovation programmes in the IT Services industry.
Milan is also an Associate of the Centre for Technology, Innovation & Engagement at Leeds Business School (UK), where he delivers a lecture on innovation & strategy to MBA students.
Michael Rudolph
Head of Air Space Safety
Dubai Civil Aviation Authority
Michael is currently Head of Airspace Safety, Aviation Safety & Environment Sector, DCAA.
His responsibilities pertain to Airspace Safety Oversight of both Commercial, as well as other aviation entities within the Emirate of Dubai. His portfolio includes regulated commercial Air Traffic but it extends to other aviation entities like Extreme Avaition such as Aerobatic displays, Jetman, Gyrocopter, Paragliding, Airships, Radio Controlled High Speed Aircraft, Base Jumping, Drone & RPAS Operations, Aerial Works & Surveys, Autonomous Aviation Vehicles as well as Aerial Surveillance using Drone Technology. Further responsibilities include Heliport Operations, Ground based Aerial displays such as Pyrotechnics, Laser light displays, Ballooning and many others.
Anil Khurana
Partner, US & ME
PwC
Anil leads the Middle East Consumer & Industrial Products and Services, which includes transportation, industrials, energy, and retail.
He is the chairperson of PwC’s global Aviation COE, and on the global leadership team of the Industrial Products, Industry 4.0, and New Ventures teams.He has more than 25 years experience in operations, innovation and R&D, consulting, academia, and private equity.
Vinay Chandran
Partner
Digital McKinsey
Vinay Chandran is a Digital Partner in the Dubai Office of McKinsey and Company. He leads
McKinsey’s Analytics practice in the region. Vinay has ~13 years’ experience, serving a wide
range of institutions covering topics related to digital strategy, digital and analytics
transformations, technology simplification, and digitally enabled operation transformations. He
has previously worked in the Pittsburgh office, North America.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Vinay worked at Visa International in San Francisco, EDS in
Melbourne Australia and Motorola in Adelaide, Australia.
Vinay holds a double masters – MBA from Cornell University, and a Masters in Business
Systems from Monash University, Australia. He also holds a Bachelor of Engineering, with
distinction, from RMIT University, Australia, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria. He has worked with
government clients and offered strategic advice that has contributed towards the development and implementation of national visions and smart cities.
Jihad Tayara
VP
du
Business development & Sales, Bid Management, Partnerships and WiFi
Lead the engagement and commercial negotiation of the Smart Dubai Platform win
Leading ICT and IOT sales in Government and Large enterprises
Launched the first smart city WiFi UAE initiative
Bhanu Shekhar
CDO & Head of digital MEA
GE Power
Bhanu Shekhar oversees the digital transformation and is responsible for the software and analytics to drive business growth for more than 30 countries in the region. Bhanu has held leadership positions in multiple GE Businesses including Electrical Distribution, Power Conversion and Power Generation.
He has 14+ Years of experience in GE; starting with Aircraft Engines in 2002, operating in multiple geographic including China, Europe and Asia Pacific. Prior to leading the digital business, he was the global business leader for Power Quality that included power supply solutions for railway network, and power management and control systems for Power Plants.
A veteran in the Digital & IOT technology, Bhanu played an essential role in multiple digital transformations for industrial complexes in Middle East and Africa. He is leading the largest efficiency and reliability improvement projects for power generation and LNG terminals. Bhanu earned Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Mysore University. He is currently headquartered in the UAE.
Gert Thoonen CISM, CISSP, PMP, CEH, CND
Business Development - Network & Security Services - ME
Rockwell Automation
A seasoned OT specialist who cycled through many roles in various industries like metals, pharmaceutical, O&G, consumer goods and utilities. His career transformed him to a manager and strategist with a passion for high-end technology integration. Understanding the customer requirements and match them with leading technologies and security in mind is his passion. He holds eMBA from Ahsridge, CISSP, CISM, CEH and many others’.
Fahd Zahid
Regional Solutions Expert
IBM Watson (MEAT)
Part of the IBM Watson team working with clients in MEA region to develop new innovative
use cases that extend existing IT applications with real-time data from sensors. Also
responsible for the continuos Engineering practise in MEA.
Dr Johan Himberg
AI Strategist
Reaktor
Professional career prior joining Reaktor at 2014 as a Chief Data Scientist
Johan has worked for example for Xtract, a pioneering Finnish analytics company and for
Nokia Reasearch Centre. The projects have ranged from information visualisation to machine
learning in customer analytics, social network analytics, context-aware user interfaces and
process analytics, and multisensor fusion in industrial processes.
Richard Budden
Business Development Director Esri
With more than 16 years of experience working with GIS and information management Richard’s work at Esri focus on Smart Cities, transport and infrastructure.
Upon moving to Dubai in 2011 he lead the Atkins Middle East geospatial team, working on complex multidisciplinary projects for clients including the UAE Ministry of Public Works, Kuwait Municipality and Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council.
In 2014 Richard joined Esri in Dubai where he leads smart cities business development for the West Asia, Middle East and Africa region. Richard has provided subject matter expertise and regularly speaks and presents on topics including enterprise GIS, smart cities, GIS and BIM, GIS for road safety, and aviation, with clients in the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria. He has worked with government clients and offered strategic advice that has contributed towards the development and implementation of national visions and smart cities.
Antti Arponen
CDO
Virgin Mobile
Antti Arponen is the Group Chief Digital Officer for Virgin Mobile MEA, the biggest virtual
mobile operator (MVNO) in the region. Globally Virgin Mobile serves more than 20 million
customers. Arponen is responsible for the digital transformation and business model, with
Virgin Mobile MEA having received various awards for its digitalisation, including Best Overall
Digital Experience 2017 and Best App 2017, while proudly applying strictest security and
compliance measures.
Nigel Ashworth
Technical Director MEA
F5 Networks (UK)
Specialising in DNS large scale architectures and security for ISP's and Enterprise
IOT deployments, Security Scale and Visibility and how to make deployments work
SSL delivery and offload to the enterprise and cloud.
Andrey Nikishin
Special Project Director
Kaspersky Labs
In a career that stretches back to the early days of Kaspersky Lab, Andrey worked as a
Senior Software Engineer and Architect before moving to the Strategic Marketing Department
as a Product Strategy Manager. Prior to his present role, Andrey headed the Cloud and
Content Technologies Research and Development Department. Before joining Kaspersky
Lab, Andrey had several years of experience developing his own antivirus programs. Andrey
has a degree from the Baltic State Technical University in St. Petersburg and received his
MBA from the London Business School.
Ismail Al Kamal
CEO
Nawatt
A focused project manager at AlKamal International delivering the company's most ambitious projects such as Jabal Omar’s villas, apartments and penthouses between 2011 and 2015 executed in record time.
