The 2026 speakers

Gerald Mullally is CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), Europe's leading quantum computing company, driving scalable quantum hardware for real-world AI, finance, and defense applications. Appointed permanent CEO in July 2025 after 14 months interim, Gerald spearheaded the launch of the world's first Quantum-AI Data Centre with NVIDIA and Digital Realty—systems deployed in London, Tokyo, New York, and Spain, featuring OQC's fastest-benchmarked architecture for low-latency compute. Under his leadership, OQC secured Series B funding from Chevron and Sumitomo Mitsui, expanded to the US (NYC's first quantum computer for Wall Street), and built the UK's first quantum error correction testbed. Ex-Director at UK Prime Minister’s Office & Cabinet Office (nearly a decade), Gerald scaled global gov-to-gov digital/data ops across 50+ countries in EMEA/APAC/Americas. With 15+ years at Accenture/PwC, he delivered strategy/tech for life sciences, finance, logistics, energy, and defense. MSc Economics/Public Policy (LSE), Gerald keynotes on quantum-AI synergy (e.g., J.P. Morgan Tech Stars: 15% fraud reduction case; NVIDIA spotlight: "OQC = next NVIDIA")—predicting 2028 milestone for million-operation error-free runs and energy-efficient supercomputing (35kW vs. 10-14MW). Vision: Quantum powers AI via synthetic data/ML acceleration.

Pablo Vargas is an MTS on the Replit Foundry team, where the company's most ambitious, next-generation AI initiatives are built and productionized. As a core engineer behind the Replit Agent, Pablo focuses deeply on how autonomous systems interact with the real world. At just 21, he was the youngest Senior AI Consultant at EY Americas, leading GenAI and Agentic AI strategies for Fortune 500 giants across the energy, tech, and travel sectors. While there, he also served in EY’s GenAI Center of Excellence, developing agentic observability tools and contributing to emerging protocols like MCP. Pablo roots his software expertise in a strong academic background in robotics, where he has contributed to the computer vision space with novel algorithms like ORB-SAM-E for autonomous vehicles.

Daniel Traça is Director General of Esade, one of Europe's most prestigious business schools, based in Barcelona. He holds a PhD in Economics from Columbia University and previously served as Dean of Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon, where he oversaw its rise in global rankings and the construction of a landmark new campus. A Visiting Professor at INSEAD and former consultant to the World Bank and the European Commission, Daniel is a leading voice on globalization, leadership, and the role of business education in preparing the next generation of leaders for an AI-driven world.

Anita Perera is an AI strategist specializing in knowledge management and real-world AI adoption. She focuses on turning AI from hype into practical value, by rethinking how organizations capture, share, and use knowledge. Known for connecting people and ideas across the European ecosystem, she brings an international, cross-sector perspective to real-world AI transformation.

Jon Howard is the Head of Generative AI at the BBC, where he leads the organization's transition from AI experimentation to a full generative AI function across products and content. With over 15 years at the BBC and a decade specializing in AI, conversational agents, and intelligent systems, Jon has delivered multiple award-winning innovations across brands including Doctor Who, CBeebies, Bitesize, and Radio 1. He co-authored the BBC's Machine Learning Engine Principles and currently leads work on AI-personalized audio experiences and industry-wide content attribution standards alongside the Financial Times, The Guardian, and Sky News.

Dr. Rajesh Kumar K V is a distinguished AI researcher, technology leader, and international speaker with expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Agentic AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Business Analytics, Sports Analytics, Biomedical AI, and Intelligent Decision Systems.

He serves as the Chief Technological Scientist at the AI Research Centre (AIRC), Associate Dean of the School of Technology, and Associate Professor of Business Analytics at Woxsen University, India. His work focuses on developing AI-driven solutions that bridge research and real-world applications across healthcare, business, sports, and digital transformation.

Dr. Kumar has led numerous interdisciplinary research initiatives, collaborated with global academia and industry, and delivered keynote talks at leading international conferences. Recognized for his contributions to AI innovation, he continues to drive advancements in intelligent systems, data-driven decision-making, and next-generation technologies, inspiring organizations and professionals worldwide.

Mahe Bayireddi is the CEO and co-founder of Phenom, the leader in applied AI built to redesign work operations for hiring faster, developing better and retaining longer. Driven by a purpose to help a billion people find the right work, Mahe built WorkOps, an operating model that gives enterprises the precision to deploy autonomous agents at scale with the context that each role, industry, geography, and moment demands.

Under his leadership, Phenom has become one of Inc. 5000's fastest-growing private companies for six consecutive years, serving 700+ organizations with AI solutions that dramatically accelerate HR operations and condense processes that traditionally took weeks into minutes. Mahe advises some of the world's largest, most complex global brands on HR strategies, technology implementation, and advanced applications of AI across all talent personas.

Pedro Cuenca is a Machine Learning Engineer at Hugging Face, where he drives open-source innovation in multimodal AI, vision-language models, and developer tooling. He is a core contributor to the Hugging Face ecosystem with over 1,700 GitHub contributions across transformers, blog posts, Hugging Face.js, and diffusion workflows, and leads projects like FineVision – the largest open vision-language dataset with 17.3 million images. Pedro co-founded LateNiteSoft, creator of Camera+, a top photography app on iOS. Based in Spain, he holds certifications in Natural Language Understanding from Stanford and Machine Learning from the University of Washington. An influential voice in the AI community, Pedro shares cutting-edge insights on LLMs, reasoning models, and multimodal systems with 6,500+ followers on X and frequently speaks at events including Freepik's AI innovation series.

Hi,
I'm Enrique Calvo, Technology PM at GSMA.

On my day to day I generate new ideas that fit the business and transform them into real projects.

Yes, I'm a builder, but it's not what you think.
I build projects. I laverage AI to test new ideas and create new companies when they fit in the market and they are align with my values.

If you want to know how to use AI for your next idea or how to shape a whole new category, I’ll share some of the lessons I’ve gathered along the way very soon.

Dr. Kevin Kahn is a physicist and tech entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Albatross AI, a Switzerland-based company pioneering perception models, a new class of AI that learns from live user behavior and infers intent in real time. Today, Albatross is processing tens of billions requests per year, and orchestrating 150+ million products.

Prior to Albatross, Kevin led machine learning platforms at Amazon and business development at a semiconductor startup acquired by Asahi Kasei. Kevin holds a PhD in applied physics from Imperial College London and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Darrell Etherington is Head of Network Development at OMERS Ventures, where he builds strategic relationships across the venture ecosystem, and founder of The Angle, an independent newsletter exploring technology, startups, and the innovation economy. Previously, Darrell spent over a decade at TechCrunch, rising from Writer (2012) to Managing Editor (2022–2024), covering space, science, health tech, automotive, mobility, and AI—earning a reputation for insightful analysis of technological shifts and startup strategy. His TechCrunch tenure was punctuated by two industry stints: as PR Manager at Apple (2015–2016), leading product communications for Canada, and as Head of Communications at Shopify (2018–2019), directing global strategic communications campaigns. Darrell's journalism career began at GigaOM (TheAppleBlog Editor) and BetaKit (founding Senior Writer), establishing him as a trusted voice on consumer tech, enterprise AI, and developer tools. A graduate of the University of Windsor (English & Creative Writing), Darrell applies a storyteller's lens to technology, speaking internationally on AI implementation, communications strategy, and venture ecosystems—including at ITU's AI for Good Summit. Now based in Toronto, he offers advisory and consulting services to startups, venture funds, and tech companies on AI tooling, narrative development, media training, product/UX, and fundraising. Darrell also hosts Original Content, a podcast dissecting media, tech, and culture.

Justin has helped more than 30 enterprise-scale companies unlock tens of millions in value through AI, innovation, and operational strategy. Along the way, he built three businesses (including one successful exit), co-patented several industrial machine learning applications, and led AI projects across sectors from energy to industrials.
Early in his career, he worked in Silicon Valley. First at a large network computing company, then at one of the earliest startups commercializing AI. Today, he is the founder of Humyn.ai, the bounty marketplace for AI projects, and The Longview Institute for AI Leadership. Justin also serves as Head of Research at the Australian Institute for Transformation & AI (AITAI).

Zakaria Mansour is the CEO and co-founder of bsport, the leading all-in-one SaaS platform for boutique fitness and wellness studios, which has grown to serve clients across 20+ countries and +3.5 K clients after closing a €30M Series B round backed by Octopus Ventures and Base10.
Headquartered in Barcelona with over 180 employees, bsport in expanding fast across the region with offfices in Paris, Berlin and London.
A graduate of ESCP Europe 2015, Zakaria built bsport from the ground up in Barcelona, combining his passion for applied mathematics, technology, and the wellness industry to transform how thousands of studios manage, market, and grow their businesses. An active business angel and panelist at the EU-Startups Summit, he is a rising voice on AI-powered vertical SaaS, B2B growth, and building global startups from Southern Europe and Middle East.

Leslie Ann Keeler is a leadership advisor and keynote speaker working at the intersection of leadership, human behavior, and emerging technology.

Her work bridges leadership psychology, nervous system science, and ancient wisdom, exploring what happens to people under pressure and how leaders think, communicate, and make decisions during periods of rapid change and uncertainty.

Drawing from more than 15 years across corporate, entrepreneurial, and high-growth environments, Leslie advises founders, executives, and organizations navigating modern leadership challenges.

Alongside her advisory and speaking work, she supports founders within the LvlUp Ventures ecosystem building in health, wellbeing, and human-centered AI.

Her work has been featured through TEDx, Web Summit, SXSW London, LinkedIn News, Entrepreneur, and NBC.

Etienne Dilocker is Co-Founder and CTO of Weaviate, the open-source AI-native vector database powering semantic search, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and agentic AI applications for developers worldwide. In 2019, Etienne and co-founder Bob van Luijt recognized that modern AI—especially large language models—demanded an entirely new infrastructure layer, and built Weaviate to bridge the gap between unstructured data and intelligent applications. As CTO, Etienne leads development of Weaviate's HNSW-based vector search, hybrid retrieval, multi-tenancy, and distributed architecture, optimizing performance from billion-scale e-commerce product catalogs to partitioned email RAG systems serving millions of inboxes. A veteran software engineer with over 15 years of experience in cloud-native, high-performance systems, Etienne specializes in Golang, database development, and SRE-driven observability, previously working as a freelance architect and tech lead across retail, finance, and media. He contributed to the widely-used ANN Benchmarks project, integrating and tuning Weaviate's approximate nearest neighbor implementation with hands-on parameter optimization. Based in Mannheim, Germany, Etienne also runs Dilocker Software Engineering, bringing startup leadership and deep systems expertise to every layer of Weaviate—from Kubernetes operators to query optimization. His vision: transform AI from model-centric MLOps to developer-first AI Engineering, where every engineer can build stateful, memory-powered intelligent applications.

Nensi Hakobjanyan is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services, supporting enterprise Retail and CPG customers in designing and building solutions in the cloud. Alongside with her expertise in cloud technologies, Nensi has vast experience in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Faith Ruto is a globally recognised keynote speaker, executive coach, and AI leadership strategist helping organisations adopt AI ethically, responsibly, and inclusively.

With over 20 years of experience in digital transformation and leadership, she has advised and coached leaders across five continents, delivering more than 5,000 hours of executive coaching for organisations including Shell, HSBC, PWC, Capgemini, AstraZeneca, Unilever, Top Business Schools and NHS.

A TEDx Speaker and recognised by the Financial Times as one of the UK's Top 50 Leading Lights in Kindness and Leadership, Faith is also a member of the Hampshire & Solent AI Growth Alliance, where she contributes to responsible AI adoption. She has spoken at leading AI and technology events, including AI Public Sector Week.

Faith is known for translating AI into practical leadership action, enabling executives and founders to build inclusive governance, accelerate responsible adoption, and create measurable business impact while developing future-ready workforces.

Founder and CEO of Omnia (useomnia.com) - AI marketing agents for GEO.
Former General Manager Spain and Portugal at Klarna.

Astel Allame is the founder and CEO of NutriCheck, a precision health startup on a mission to democratize preventive medicine through AI-powered multi-omics analysis, at-home lab testing, and wearable data integration. With nearly 20 years of experience spanning clinic directorship and operational leadership across the health sector, he combines deep scientific expertise with entrepreneurial drive to decode individual metabolic profiles and prevent chronic disease at the cellular level. A finalist in the prestigious BFM Business Tech for Future competition, Astel is one of the emerging voices at the intersection of AI, biotechnology, and personalized nutrition.

Xavier Lombard is the CEO and Co-Founder of Leexi, a Brussels-based AI conversational intelligence platform used by over 1,000 companies to automate meeting capture and analysis in 120+ languages. A serial entrepreneur, Xavier previously founded Verdesis, a renewable energy company sold to EDF in 2013, and co-founded Seraphin (now Yago), Belgium's first digital insurance broker, which grew to 40 employees before being sold in 2021. Trained as an engineer at Ecole Nationale Superieure de Grenoble, he spent a decade as a research engineer at EDF with assignments at Hydro-Quebec, Westinghouse, and Honeywell before moving into entrepreneurship.

Siobhan is a product and engineering executive at Compliance & Risks/Adherent, where she leads the development of AI-driven regulatory intelligence solutions for global enterprises. With a background spanning platform transformation and data-centric product strategy, she has played a key role in evolving legacy systems into modern, AI-first architectures.

Beyond her work at C&R/Adherent, Siobhan is a founder and fractional CTO, advising B2B SaaS companies on scaling engineering teams, embedding AI into products, and navigating complex technical pivots. Her experience bridges deep technical execution with commercial product thinking, particularly in regulated industries and data-rich environments.

Prof. Dr. Thorsten O. Zander is Founder and Chief Scientist of Zander Labs, a German-Dutch DeepTech company pioneering passive brain-computer interfaces (pBCI) and neuroadaptive technology. A respected researcher in human-computer interaction, he invented the concept of passive BCIs that enable technology to understand and adapt to human mental states in real time without invasive procedures. Thorsten holds the Lichtenberg Professorship for Neuroadaptive Human-Computer Interaction at Brandenburg University of Technology, where he has led research since 2020. His work bridges neuroscience, AI, and ethics, addressing how neuroadaptive systems can enhance productivity and wellbeing while protecting privacy of thought. He has collaborated with Microsoft, Volkswagen, Airbus, and published extensively on RLHF integration with pBCI technology.

Ricard Garriga is the co-founder and CEO of Trioteca, one of Spain’s leading digital mortgage brokers and a pioneer in applying artificial intelligence to the mortgage industry. Under his leadership, Trioteca has built a technology-driven platform that reimagines the traditional mortgage process, combining automation, data and AI to make financing more transparent, efficient and scalable.

Before founding Trioteca, Ricard spent more than a decade in the financial sector, gaining deep experience in banking, mortgages and digital business models. His entrepreneurial vision has positioned Trioteca as one of the most innovative players in the European mortgage ecosystem.

Ricard is particularly focused on how artificial intelligence can transform financial services, especially in areas such as customer interaction, call center automation and decision-making processes.

Based in Barcelona, he frequently speaks about fintech, AI and the future of the mortgage market, and is committed to building technology that helps families access better mortgage conditions.

Jose Manuel Pérez Marzabal, LL.M. is an independent commercial and TMT lawyer specializing in AI, tech startups, platforms, and innovative ventures. He runs his own practice under MTN Projects (Modern Thinking Networks). With over 29 years of professional experience, he advises ISPs, venture capital funds, software developers, and startups on commercial law, M&A, intellectual property, privacy, regulatory compliance, and AI governance.

He serves as an External Expert to the European Commission on cybersecurity and digital governance, a designated expert in the ITU-U4SSC Working Group on AI in Smart Cities, and a selected stakeholder in the drafting of the EU AI Act Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI Models. He is a guest lecturer on AI and intellectual property law at postgraduate level, and an active speaker and investor in the European tech ecosystem.

Ebony James is Founder & CEO of Atlast, the AI-native recruiting operating system built for ambitious teams scaling without a dedicated HR or TA function. She brings more than 17 years of people and talent leadership from some of Europe's fastest-growing companies, including Facebook, Instagram, N26, Glovo, Tier, and Amenitiz, where she repeatedly owned hiring outcomes and was the person called in to build the people infrastructure that fast-moving teams lacked. That pattern, seen across six high-growth companies, became the foundation for Atlast, which she co-founded to sit as the orchestration layer to make hiring run itself. Alongside Atlast, Ebony advises early-stage founders as a fractional talent partner, helping them put in place the hiring foundations most teams only wish they had from day one. She speaks on the intersection of founder mindset, people strategy, and the systems that separate companies that scale cleanly from the ones that don't.