Archives: Speakers

Extensive sales experience in glass industry coordinating pilot project with customer Mohrenbrauerei

Amine El-Hattami is an Applied Research Scientist at ServiceNow Research. His main work is around natural language processing and deep learning. Specifically, he contributes to projects that use large language models to enhance ServiceNow’s product. Amine holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, a master’s degree in NLP and deep learning, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the same field at Mila. Before joining ServiceNow, Amine held multiple software engineering positions in various industries like video processing, where he worked on embedded systems design, virtual assistant design, and the finance industry, where he designed training and deployment pipelines for large language models.

Kevin Mettenberger, a computer science graduate with a keen interest in digital transformation and organizational change management, is an Enterprise Account Executive at ServiceNow. Since 2014, he has helped customers transform unstructured processes and cluttered ways of working into structured workflows using the ServiceNow platform – improving the customer experience and eliminating inefficiencies. Kevin is now focused on identifying digital transformation opportunities for the company’s key clients in the banking and wealth management industry.

Philippe Meyer has extensive experience in the blockchain development and implementation in leading companies such as BBVA or Avaloq Evolution. He has an international career that he has developed in countries such as Germany, at UniCredit or France where he started his professional career with CACIB, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank.

His interest in technology and the Blockchain world has led him to be part of the steering committee of the Fintech Association of Scotland, as well as the OpenVASP Association, an association that created an open protocol complying with the FATF travel rules. He recently leveraged his blockchain knowledge to create NFTs for an exhibition of a contemporary artist.

As a joyful father of three children, Philippe recently embraced the role of a grandfather and takes immense pleasure in witnessing the remarkable growth and development of a new addition to the family.

Dalal Buhejji is an Executive Director in Business Development at the Bahrain Economic Development Board
(EDB), responsible for attracting new inward investment opportunities to Bahrain’s Financial Services sector
through international outreach.

With a career spanning over 16 years, Dalal has worked heavily in the financial services industry and has closely
engaged with key stakeholders such as the Central Bank of Bahrain to create a business friendly environment for
businesses and investors in Bahrain. This work has led to the introduction of Bahrain’s Regulatory Sandbox,
number of new regulations such as crowdfunding, open banking, crypto assets, and the launch of Bahrain
Fintech Bay, one of the MENA’s leading fintech hubs.

Dalal has Bachelor’s in Business Administration from George Washington University and a Master of Business
Administration from DePaul University.

Michel Sawaya was appointed as the Citi Country Officer of Citi Bahrain with effect from 5th of May 2021.

Prior to this appointment and since April 2016 Michel was the CCO and Head of Corporate Banking for Citi Lebanon He joined Citi in October 1995 as part of a team responsible for the re-establishment of the franchise in the country Since that time, he has held several positions in Operations Technology and Internal Controls before moving to Treasury Trade Solutions in June 2006 he expanded that role to become Head of TTS for Levant Cluster in 2010 In 2013 Michel was appointed as Head of Corporate Banking in addition to his role as the Lebanon TTS Head He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the American University of Beirut.

As part of Michel’s community involvement, he is a Board Member at the American Chamber of Commerce in Bahrain and Injaz Junior Achievement Bahrain, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating students about work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through hands on training programs He also is a board member at the Bahrain International School Association.

Shin-Il Kim is currently a CSO of Therabest Co., Ltd., a biopharmaceutical company that develops a platform for iPSC-derived immune cells. Prior to joining, he was a R & D director at aceRNA Technologies Co., Ltd., spun off from Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Kyoto University.

Dr. Kim obtained his Ph.D. in molecular biology from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008. He then began his studies of TGF-b signaling in cancer models as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-San Francisco. In 2011, he moved to CiRA where Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka who first succeeded in establishment of iPS cells and became an assistant professor in 2017. He has extensive experience in the fields of genome engineering, iPSC differentiation, and cancer research.