The 2026 speakers

Dr. Chema Alonso is currently the Vice President and Head of International Development at Cloudflare. He was previously the CDO (Chief Digital Officer), a member of the Executive Committee, and a member of the Cybersecurity Board at Telefonica. He was also a member of the Board of Telefónica Tech and the Board of Telefonica de España. He founded, worked at, and directed ElevenPaths, a Telefónica subsidiary focused on cybersecurity, where he served as CEO. Additionally, he founded, worked at, and directed Informática 64 for 14 years—a company focused on cybersecurity.
He holds a PhD in Computer Security from the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid, a Computer Engineering degree from URJC, and a Systems Computer Engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, which named him Honorary Ambassador of its School of Computer Science in 2012. In 2020, URJC awarded him an honorary doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa). You can contact Chema Alonso directly through his public inbox at https://www.mypublicinbox.com/ChemaAlonso, and you can request a virtual meeting with him at https://www.mypublicinbox.com/chemaalonso/videocall. These are the only channels he uses for contact.

I’m a computer scientist with 15+ years of experience in tech, blending a strong technical foundation with deep business acumen. My career has evolved across sales, business development, and artificial intelligence, allowing me to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives with real-world impact.
Currently, I serve as the GenAI Go-to-Market Lead for EMEA at Amazon Web Services, where I help organizations unlock the full potential of AI at scale.

Recognized as one the most influential professionals in AI in Europe and worldwide too, I’m a regular speaker at international conferences and collaborate with academic institutions as a lecturer in master’s and postgraduate programs. I also share insights with a LinkedIn community
of 200,000+ followers, fostering meaningful conversations around GenAI, business strategy, and ecosystem growth.

Howard Wright leads NVIDIA Inception at NVIDIA, the company's global program supporting startups building on NVIDIA's AI platform — He joined NVIDIA in 2024 after leading the startup program at Amazon Web Services as VP of Global Startups, where he contributed to the business reaching a $100B annual run rate. Earlier in his career he held leadership roles at Intel and Qualcomm, and was CEO of the startup C360 Technologies (immersive video, sports/entertainment)

His work centers on connecting early-stage and growth-stage AI founders with NVIDIA's technology, engineering support, and venture network — spanning recruitment into the Inception program, partnerships with VCs, and direct engagement with founders globally. He holds a BA in quantitative economics from Stanford (class of 1989). He has a direct, recent link to Barcelona's AI ecosystem: NVIDIA's collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center on the BSC AI Factory, which he referenced publicly following VivaTech 2026.

Jaime de Mora is CTO for Startups & Unicorns at Microsoft EMEA, where he works with the most disruptive companies across Europe to help them scale through AI, cloud, and cutting-edge technology. With over 15 years in the tech industry, he previously served as General Manager of Microsoft for Startups in Western Europe and as VP of Growth at Carto, where he transformed the platform into a global leader in geospatial data analytics. An active startup advisor across Europe, the US, and Latin America, and an MBA professor at IE Business School, Jaime is one of Spain's most connected voices at the intersection of AI, entrepreneurship, and startup ecosystems.

Ilyass El Mansouri is an Forward Deployed Engineering Manager at OpenAI who works at the intersection of frontier research and real-world deployment. He focuses on turning advanced AI systems into practical, scalable solutions, with a strong emphasis on agentic AI, knowledge graphs, and retrieval-augmented generation.

He represents the new generation of AI builders: technically deep, product-minded, and oriented toward production impact rather than theory. His profile is especially relevant for audiences interested in how sophisticated AI systems are designed, connected to data, and made reliable at scale.

On stage, Ilyass would bring a sharp, credible perspective on what it really takes to move from promising AI experiments to systems that perform in the real world. He is a strong fit for a keynote that wants to feel both forward-looking and grounded in practical execution.

Nicolas Cosqueric is CIO for Southern Europe at Danone, with a background in consumer products, retail, and large-scale IT transformation. He is a seasoned people leader focused on making IT a value-adding business partner, and he brings strong executive experience in shaping technology strategy inside a global enterprise.

His recent public remarks highlight a strong interest in the combination of data and AI as a driver of clarity, anticipation, and stronger team capabilities. That makes his profile especially relevant for conversations about enterprise AI adoption, digital transformation, and how large organizations build the operating model and skills needed to use AI effectively.

His perspective is particularly valuable for audiences interested in how major consumer brands apply AI and data to improve decision-making, organizational capability, and business performance.

Steffen Fuchs is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company and global leader of McKinsey's Industrials practice, based in Dallas. He has spent more than 25 years advising CEOs and boards, with prior managerial experience at DaimlerChrysler. His focus is AI-driven transformation in industrial sectors including automotive, semiconductors, energy, and transport. He leads McKinsey's Rewired AI Immersion programme for industrial companies and advises on pricing optimisation, factory yield improvement, demand sensing, and predictive service via AI.

Orsi Nagy is a Policy Analyst at the EU Policy Lab of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, working on technology foresight and AI . She works to translate emerging trends in AI and quantum technologies into policy-relevant analysis. She also designs AI literacy courses that use games, cartoons and active learning to develop critical thinking about human–AI interaction and support the implementation of AI.

Her background spans public policy, AI and cross-disciplinary innovation, with earlier experience in health and innovation. She brings a practitioner's view of how AI meets governance and regulation, of interest to audiences working on responsible AI, foresight, and critical AI literacy.

Ignasi Belda is Director of the Department of Experimentation and Applied Technology Laboratory at the Banco de España, where he works on the evaluation and development of emerging technologies for the financial sector. He previously served as the first Director General of the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence, AESIA, helping establish Spain's institutional approach to AI oversight.

An engineer, entrepreneur, and researcher, he holds doctorates in artificial intelligence applied to the life sciences and in science and technology law. He has founded several science- and technology-based companies, including MiWEndo Solutions, which develops technology for colorectal cancer diagnosis, and has also held leadership roles at the Barcelona Science Park.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI governance, regulatory experimentation, responsible innovation, digital health, and the development of public institutions capable of guiding emerging technologies.

Dr. Jesús Barrasa is AI Field CTO at Neo4j, where he works with organisations combining large language models with knowledge graphs. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Representation, and brings over 20 years of experience across the data management space, split between industry and academic research. Before joining Neo4j in 2015, he worked at data integration companies including Denodo and Ontology Systems.

He co-authored the O'Reilly book "Building Knowledge Graphs: A Practitioner's Guide" and co-hosts the monthly webcast Going Meta, which explores semantics, knowledge graphs, and AI. His work centres on a practical problem in enterprise AI: model quality is rarely the bottleneck, but meaning that stays implicit and fragmented across systems is. Making semantics explicit through ontologies and graph structures changes how AI systems get designed, built, and operated.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in GraphRAG, enterprise data architecture, semantic layers, and moving generative AI projects from pilot into production.

John Roche is Vice President of Platform Architecture at HP, leading platform design for high-performance computing and edge inference. With 25 years spanning complete platform design, ASIC development, firmware, and application development, he works closely with the world's leading SoC and GPU vendors on the design and co-design of AI systems. His focus: why token economics, data sovereignty, data physics, and latency are pushing a growing share of inference to the edge.

Dr. Diego Perino is the Director of the AI Institute at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), where he leads a team of 150 researchers advancing multimodal foundation models, trustworthy AI, and AI for Science across multidisciplinary domains. 

Prior to joining BSC, Diego spent several years in leadership roles at Meta, heading teams in GenAI Evaluation, Safety Evals, and Responsible AI Fairness Innovation for open-source models like Llama and global product surfaces. His career spans over two decades at the intersection of AI, networking, and systems, including roles as Director of Telefónica Research and Senior Research Engineer at Bell Labs (Alcatel-Lucent) and Orange Labs. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Université de Paris Diderot, has published over 100 scientific papers, and holds more than 10 granted patents.

Ana Majó Crespo is Director of Strategic Sectors and Innovation at Barcelona Activa, where she works on economic development, innovation, entrepreneurship, and the growth of strategic sectors in Barcelona. An industrial engineer with master's degrees in business administration and communication management, she brings experience in strategic and change-management consulting, technology, smart cities, and public-private collaboration.

Her work focuses on designing and implementing innovation policies that connect institutions, companies, entrepreneurs, and communities. She previously contributed to Barcelona's 22@ innovation district and has led initiatives related to digital innovation, social and sustainable urban development, and the city's technology ecosystem.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in smart cities, digital transformation, urban innovation, economic development, and the role of collaboration in building Barcelona's future.

David Serral is the CIO of the Port of Barcelona, where he leads the organization's information systems and digital transformation strategy. He brings more than 20 years of experience in technology, with a career spanning the maritime, logistics, automotive, and transportation sectors.

His expertise covers IT strategy, automation, operations, supply chain management, and the implementation of emerging technologies in complex industrial environments. Before joining the Port of Barcelona, he held senior technology roles at APM Terminals Europe, TCB, and Mazel Group, giving him a strong understanding of how digital infrastructure can improve large-scale operations.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in smart ports, logistics innovation, industrial automation, digital infrastructure, and the role of technology in transforming critical transportation systems.

Emma Cobos is Director of Innovation and Blue Economy Strategy at the Port of Barcelona, where she works on innovation, business strategy, and the transformation of one of Europe’s major maritime and logistics hubs. She has more than 15 years of experience at the Port, with a focus on innovation, logistics, business development, and sustainable growth.

Her work explores how ports can become more connected, efficient, and environmentally responsible through technology, open innovation, and collaboration with companies, institutions, and research organizations. She has also contributed to international discussions on blue economy, smart cities, maritime innovation, and the future of urban ports.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in smart ports, blue economy, sustainable logistics, urban innovation, and the role of technology in transforming critical infrastructure.

Christian Rebernik is the CEO, Founder, and Chancellor of Tomorrow University of Applied Sciences, where he is rethinking higher education around technology, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and purpose-driven learning. He brings more than 20 years of experience in technology leadership and entrepreneurship, with previous roles including CTO and Managing Director at N26, CTO at Parship, and founder of the digital health platform Vivy.

He has also helped build digital products such as ShareTheMeal for the United Nations World Food Programme and has supported startups as a mentor, advisor, and angel investor. At Tomorrow University, he focuses on integrating AI into education while developing the critical thinking, adaptability, leadership, and practical problem-solving skills that become increasingly important in an AI-driven world.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in the future of education, AI-powered learning, technology leadership, and the skills needed to create meaningful impact in a rapidly changing world.

Ana Peleteiro is VP of Data and Applied AI at Preply, leading the company's global data ecosystem. With over 15 years in AI and machine learning, she holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and has published 40+ peer-reviewed papers. She was named Data Scientist of the Year by the DatSci Awards. Previously at Zalando, she built ML products for e-commerce at scale.

Rory Keddie is Principal Product Evangelist at Miro, helping teams get real value from AI by connecting people, agents, and the systems they already use. Before Miro, he spent a decade building digital products and services for organisations including Vogue, PepsiCo, and Bain & Co.

ChandraKumar R Pillai is an enterprise architect working with the European Commission as an external consultant to DG TAXUD, and was an independent reviewer during the formation of the EU AI Act. He holds a Master's in Computer Science and an MBA, with executive education from MIT Sloan, and brings over two decades across banking, telecommunications and public-sector IT, including roles at ACI Worldwide, Tata Consultancy Services and IBM.

He works on the gap between AI as a branding exercise and AI as something a large institution actually integrates: what regulation means once it reaches an architecture diagram, how sector-specific rules land differently in healthcare or financial services, and where governance either enables adoption or quietly blocks it. Based in Brussels, he writes a widely read daily commentary on AI policy and adoption, and volunteers with Women in Digital on bias and representation in AI systems.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in the EU AI Act, AI governance in practice, and enterprise architecture inside regulated organisations.

Antonio Fabregat is Senior Data Scientist at AstraZeneca, where he leads knowledge graph and graph database initiatives to accelerate drug discovery and biomedical research. He holds a PhD in computer science and a Masters degree in artificial intelligence, with deep expertise in knowledge graphs, graph databases, data visualization, and algorithm design applied to life sciences.

He brings a pragmatic, infrastructure-first perspective on how AI systems bridge scientific research and clinical outcomes. His work demonstrates how graph-based knowledge representation—moving beyond traditional data warehouses—unlocks new patterns in biomedical datasets and enables more efficient AI-driven research workflows. His angle is particularly relevant for enterprises grappling with complex, interconnected data at scale.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI infrastructure, knowledge representation, enterprise data architecture, and real-world AI applications in regulated, high-stakes domains like healthcare and pharmaceutical research.

Javier Torres is General Manager for Iberia, Latam and Africa at Cegid, the European cloud business management software group, and a member of its executive committee. He joined in late 2024 after executive roles at Amazon Web Services, most recently as Central Sales Director EMEA, and earlier at Oracle and McKinsey & Company. He holds a degree in Mathematics, a telecommunications engineering degree from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

He brings a commercial leader's view of AI adoption across mid-market and enterprise software, leading the execution of Cegid's Forward.ai strategy and the rollout of generative AI agents embedded across its finance, HR and retail products. His remit spans a region facing significant regulatory change, where digitalisation and compliance are driving software adoption together.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in generative AI in business software, regional scale-up strategy, and how established vendors embed AI into products used by thousands of companies.

Jan-Philipp Tebbe is Architect and Tech Lead for GenAI at Zurich's Technology Delivery Center Barcelona, where he leads the architecture behind generative AI systems for the insurer. He previously spent two years as a Platform Architect for conversational AI at Allianz Technology, and five years as an IT consultant working on conversational assistants and speech technology at Schwarz Corporate Solutions. He holds an MSc from Chemnitz University of Technology.

He brings a deeply technical architecture perspective from inside a large regulated insurer, with a career spent almost entirely on conversational and generative systems in enterprise settings. His work concerns how GenAI platforms are designed to be reliable, governed and integrated with existing systems rather than assembled as isolated experiments.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in enterprise GenAI architecture, conversational AI at scale, and AI adoption within financial services and insurance.

Anselme is Head of AI and Data Science at Pigment, where he leads the company's AI research roadmap and shapes how agentic systems and LLMs are embedded across the product. Previously, he spent six years at BCG X building and scaling AI products across personalization, optimization and generative AI.

Lisa Dal Colle is Field Marketing Manager for EMEA at Nebius, where she connects the company's global positioning with the needs and dynamics of regional markets. Her work spans field marketing, brand strategy, go-to-market programs, content, and community engagement across the AI infrastructure and cloud technology space.

Previously, Lisa worked at Salesforce as a Global Brand Digital and Web Analyst, after holding marketing and strategy roles at LinkedIn. She brings a strong understanding of how technology companies translate complex products into clear narratives, build market presence, and create meaningful connections with customers across different European markets.

Her perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in AI infrastructure, technology marketing, localization, and how AI companies communicate and grow across Europe.

Marcos Rodríguez is Partner and Head of Global Clients at SDG Group, a global consulting firm specialising in data, analytics and artificial intelligence with over 2,000 employees across Europe, North America and the Middle East. Based in Barcelona and an IESE Business School alumnus, he has built his career as a data and analytics specialist leading consulting teams and client transformation programmes.

He brings a consultant's perspective on why enterprise AI so often fails to deliver return, arguing that adoption depends less on the technology than on three things together: use cases genuinely aligned to business objectives, a sound data architecture, and change management focused on people rather than tools. He is a regular voice at industry gatherings on AI strategy for C-level audiences.

His perspective is especially relevant for audiences interested in enterprise AI strategy, data-driven transformation, and the organisational change required to move AI from pilot to production.