Thomas Møller Jeppesen

The LEGO Group

HR Director

Thomas Jeppesen is an experienced people partner and HR leader with a love for everything digital and is a self-proclaimed “people geek”. Thomas will be sharing his experience from his time at Facebook and what he is doing right now at the LEGO Group – so be ready to learn how to leverage the power of play.

Lily Benjamin, Ph.D.

Global Talent & Organization Optimization Leader

Dr. Lily Benjamin is a business psychologist with experience optimizing organizational health to increase engagement, productivity, and safety through high -impact large-scale change management strategies. She integrates DEI in all people and processes, specializing in organization diagnosis, organizational design, cost-effectiveness, disputes mediation, negotiation, leadership development, talent management, succession planning, performance management, and executive coaching. Dr. Benjamin is recognized as a strategic, decisive, and visionary leader who motivates multicultural teams to perform at their peak. She attributes her success in navigating through change-intensive business environments to being a keen assessor of risk and opportunity with tested business judgment. 

Harbir Singh Rissam

AstraZeneca UK

HR Business Partner

Harbir has excelled in multiple HR roles over 15 years at Deloitte and AstraZeneca across multiple countries (UK, Singapore and India), post MBA with specialization in HR from XLRI Jamshedpur. 
In his current role of HR Business Partner at AstraZeneca UK, he partners with senior leaders responsible for $600+ million business. In his previous role he was deployed to Singapore as the Talent and Inclusion Lead for AstraZeneca Singapore. He has also held the role as interim HR-Head of the AstraZeneca India factory, while serving as a partner to the R&D and commercial teams.
In his previous stint at Deloitte he’s led a team of 15 HR professionals, as the Talent leader for one out of the five business-units of Deloitte.
 

Nicholas Pearce

Nokia

Strategic Program Lead

Nicholas Pearce holds a pivotal role as the Strategic Program Lead at Nokia. Hailing from South Australia, Nicholas pursued Business Management at the University of South Australia and expanded his horizons with international studies at WHU near Bonn, Germany.

His career journey commenced in Adelaide, where he ventured into diverse roles within the Telecommunications and Media sectors at renowned companies like Telstra and Nine Network. This path led him to Budapest, Hungary, where he contributed significantly as a Transformation Business Analyst at Nokia.

With over 6 years at Nokia, Nicholas has been a driving force behind organizational transformation, business turnaround, restructuring, and strategic planning initiatives on a global scale.
 

Christophe Vanden Eede

Bpostgroup

Global Head of Talent Management

Christophe has change written all over his career. After his studies in Law and general management, he started at Electrabel (now Engie), a Belgian electric company, to help shift the mindset from servicing delivery points to servicing customers. Later, he joined the HR department to build the employer brand and set up a channel strategy for the sourcing of new recruits. This is where he got the digital microbe. 
After 5 years he became L&D manager and set out to implement a new learning culture. He also participated in a project to help boost digital transformation, first for Belgium and later for all European units. From January 2016 to April 2017 he was the Chief Learning Officer at Engie (Benelux), After changing to the Telecom sector at the Telenet Group (part of Liberty Global) as the Chief Talent Officer, he decided to go into banking at the ING Group, where he held the position of Global Head of Talent Management. He recently took up the same position at Bpostgroup, an fullfillment and e-logistics company with Belgian roots growing rapidly worldwide. He is co-author of the book social technologies in business, writes a monthly column in a dutch HR magazine and is the former president of the Belgian HR digital community.

Marco Burelli

TomTom

Head of People Strategy

Marco is all about innovation in HR. Coming from several years of experience in diverse industries, such as retail, automotive and energy production, with his arrival in the world of HR 4 years ago his hunger for innovation and mindset change were the main drivers of his career.

In TomTom since February 2020, his role has evolved as much as the whole HR organisation has. Moving from internal communications, to learning and development, portfolio management and ultimately overall people strategy, the main goal was always to change the ways of working for the better.

Key aspects of the transformation he is pushing for are customer centricity and product mindset. Together with his team and TomTom’s leadership, revolution in HR is the badge he brings forward, which eventually led to a whole new innovative operational model for the people team.

Francesca Caroleo

Citibank

CHRO, Luxembourg

Business-oriented HR executive with over 20 years of international experience, from HR Operations with proven track record of driving business transformation, restructuring HR function and implementing common HR systems and global processes. 
Among various HR roles: Overlooking the full suite of HR Practises and Processes (Recruitment, Onboarding, Employer Branding, Talent Management, Strategic Workforce Planning, Leadership Capabilities Performance Management, Rewards). Design, Implementation, Continuous Improvement. SAP SuccessFactors, Cornerstone.
Certified coach (ICF certified); Certified HR Senior Professional (SHRM-SCP) ; Black Belt certified (Opex /Six Sigma), CIPD Level 7 Reward & Performance, INSEAD Innovation.
Specialties: HR Transformation; HR Analytics; Talent management; Leadership Capabilities; Change Management; Target Operating Model; Organizational Development

Martin Barner

Sandoz AG

Head People & Organization Operations and Digital Solutions

Martin Barner is the Head HR Operations & Digital Solutions at Sandoz. He joined Novartis in 2014 (former parent company of Sandoz) as part of the Corporate Strategy team in Basel, and moved into HR for the first time in 2016 as Sandoz Head HR Strategy & Program Management Office. Prior to Novartis, Martin started his career in McKinsey & Company and have since worked for several companies in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries in both global, regional and local roles across a variety of functions, including strategy, marketing, sales and finance. Martin holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Copenhagen, doing part of his studies at the California Institute of Technology.

Ivan Skender

A1 Hrvatska

Senior Director for Business Transformation, Human Resources, and Corporate Communications

Ivan Skender has over 20 years of international experience in telecommunications and IT in Central and Eastern Europe.
He joined A1 Croatia at the end of 2016 with the aim of digitally transforming the company. After that, he continued with the business transformation of the company and took over human resources and corporate communications in 2019.
Before that, he gained his career within the Deutsche Telekom group, in various positions in Croatia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, focusing on product marketing and business development in the B2B and ICT areas.
He graduated in telecommunications from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb and completed his MBA at IEDC-Bled School of Management. He has professionally advanced at many prestigious business schools in Europe. His area of interest is digital transformation and general business transformation, as well as adapting companies to the new digital age.