Guest Speakers
- in approximate alphabetical order

The Conference Board
Maria Demertzis joined The Conference Board in September 2024 as the Economy Strategy and Finance Center Leader, Europe. She also serves as Part-time Professor of Economic Policy at the Florence School of Transnational Governance, European University Institute. Prior to joining The Conference Board, Maria was the Deputy Director at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economics think-tank that specializes in European policy.
She has previously worked at the European Commission and the research department of the Dutch Central Bank. She has also held academic positions at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in the USA, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Strathclyde in the UK, from where she holds a Ph.D. in economics. Demertzis contributes opinion pieces regularly to broader national and international newspapers. She is a regular speaker at national and international events.
INSEAD
Katell Le Goulven joined INSEAD in April 2018 as the Executive Director of the Hoffmann Institute. Previously with UNICEF, she founded a Policy Planning unit to analyze global trends and emerging issues and inform UNICEF’s strategic positioning, and led UNICEF’s corporate engagement with International Financial Institutions.
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She has held senior positions with high-level commissions that defined the policy implications of the data revolution, climate change, and global public goods for the development agenda. She has 19 years of professional experience at the interface of research and decision-making designing policies and strategies and advising senior executives in international organizations and governments. She holds a PhD in agricultural economics, a MSc. in tropical agronomy, and an engineering degree.


SoftwareOne
Serena Gonsalves-Fersch is the Global Head of Talent Management for SoftwareOne and the 2024 winner of the Colin Steed Award for Outstanding Contribution to Learning. Serena is a Talent and Learning & Development leader and holds a doctorate from Middlesex university on the future of learning & the learning and development function in technology accelerating organisations.
She is a Fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute and a Founding Member of W.I.L.L. – Women’s Inclusion in Learning and leadership – a body committed to supporting women on leadership pathways, whilst giving back to charities supporting girls’ education and women in regions of crisis. Her current role includes Performance Management, Succession Planning, Talent Identification, Workforce Planning, DEIB, and leadership of the SoftwareOne Academy – the organisation’s corporate university. She has a wealth of experience both as a management consultant, and in internal leadership roles, in setting learning strategies, managing talent and career development and predictive learning solutions.
INSEAD
Gianpiero Petriglieri is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD and an expert on leadership and learning in the workplace. His award-winning research and teaching focus on what it means, and what it takes, to become a leader. He is particularly interested in the meaning and practice of leadership in the age of “nomadic professionalism,” an age in which people have deep bonds to work but loose affiliations to organisations, and authenticity and mobility have replaced loyalty and advancement as hallmarks of virtue and success.
The intent of all of Gianpiero’s work is to humanise leadership, that is, to account for the complexities and contradictions within and between people and organisations, and to help leaders be grounded as well as flexible, sustainable as well as effective, purposeful as well as portable. This work has earned him a spot among the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world.


Ericsson
Peter Sheppard heads up the Learning Ecosystem team at Ericsson. A Company of over 100,000 employees connecting people all over the world through mobile networks. In his current role Peter has global responsibility for creating the environment and infrastructure for learning in Ericsson through leading a central group of learning experts. His team have picked up Brandon Hall and Learning Technologies awards for their work to date. In addition to his day job over the last 3 years he has led a cross functional team to design and implement a simple, dynamic and automated job and skills architecture.
The focus of this work now is to utilise the infrastructure to drive a shift towards being a skills powered organisation. A fellow of the CIPD with over 35 years’ experience in HR and Learning & Development having previously worked for Philips Electronics and IBM. Peter is driven by a strong belief in the business value of learning and the desire to support individuals to achieve the best of who they are.
INSEAD
Peter Zemsky s the Eli Lilly Chaired Professor of Strategy and Innovation at INSEAD and a noted expert on driving business value from technology. He was an integral part of the school’s leadership team from 2010 to 2023 and has led all major departments at the school including faculty & research, advancement, degree programmes, and executive education. He served as Deputy Dean/Dean of Innovation from 2013 to 2023. He was responsible for launching the school’s award-winning online education unit and opening its latest facility in San Francisco.
Currently enjoying an academic sabbatical, he is actively working on the application of AI to management education. A dual US and French citizen, he recently relocated to the school’s Abu Dhabi campus after almost 30 years at its Europe Campus in Fontainebleau, France. He holds a PhD from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
