Archives: Speakers

As CEO of WealthTech company Velexa, Tamara Kostova works with financial and non-financial institutions on maximizing their growth opportunities through forward-thinking, customised and embedded investing services. She is a passionate advocate for the modernisation of the financial services industry, offering personalised, services with clients’ needs at the forefront. She has spent over 20 years driving client and partner strategies in top-tier financial technology companies and banks including DXC Technology, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Thomson Reuters.

Having graduated in Tourism law and Online Marketing, Patricia began her career over 20 years ago at the corporate department of revenue management at Marriott International in Frankfurt. Following her passion for revenue management, she later joined Optims, to consult hospitality organisations around implementation of automated revenue management solutions. In 2003, Patricia founded a successful consulting and training company helping hotels to implement processes, culture, and revenue management technology. She brings her vast hospitality experience to IDeaS where she heads up new business development function for Western, Southern and Eastern Europe.

David Durko, CEO of Security Validation | SecValMSP , was an instrumental leader of the Security and Compliance team for Wyndham Hotels focused on the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. Following Wyndham’s third publicized breach he was tasked and successful in driving Wyndham to their first successful Attestation of Compliance as a Service Provider. Following his tenure at Wyndham David became the Senior Vice President of Incident and Crisis Management for MasterCard Worldwide. In his role, David leveraged his knowledge of the hospitality industry and data security to help mitigate financial damage for payment acquirers and the Mastercard brand. David is the QSA and Chief Compliance Officer of record for Security Validation | SecValMSP.

Michele “Mik” Ruberl is a veteran technologist with a 20+ year career delivering software solutions on four continents, both in the corporate world and as a (twice) startupper.

He has been involved in blockchain for traveltech since 2017, as the CTO of Sandos Hotels & Resorts and as Head of Architecture & Integration at Alpitour. Under his leadership, various projects were implemented, such as a decentralized travel loyalty federation and several NFT applications for the tourism ecosystem including the first world-wide hotel booking sold as an NFT, in occasion of the opening of Ca’ di Dio in Venice, Italy.

Now at Peakwork as Director Blockchain & Web3 Solutions, Mik leads the development of a platform to enrich traveler experience and eventually reimplement entire segments of the travel and hospitality supply chain.

Ian has over 30 years’ experience in senior roles, transforming operations across Publishing, Broadcast TV and Telecoms, laying claim to have created industry leading performance in every role. He is passionate about leading change and has recently crossed the boundary from being a user to a provider of technology and is currently the COO of ContactEngine, a NICE Company. As part of that role, Ian works with clients to define and build proactive communication solutions that reduce operational cost and improve revenue, using cutting edge Conversational AI to make a personal connection with customers. Prior to ContactEngine, Ian was one of the team that created and grew Sky Broadband and is widely considered to be an SME in the telcoms space, along with deep expertise in Billing, Credit Risk, Collections, Contact Centre Operations, Field Operations and Project & Programme Management

Waldemar Faltenberg has been responsible for market expansion in the DACH+ region for Provenir since last year. As a trained cooperative banker, he started his career at a local bank and was able to gain experience in the retail banking, mortgage lending, and corporate banking business during the almost 9 years he worked there. After a stint at Coface in corporate client sales, he returned to the cooperative financial network. At first, he was more operationally active at the former VR Leasing AG and after the reorganization and re-branding to VR Smart Finanz AG, he was responsible for the organization and management of 25 Volksbanks. Here he supported the banks at the strategic level in the area of SME financing and in the “make or buy” decision. In 2021, he moved to BFS finance Gmbh, part of Arvato Financial Solutions (now Riverty), where he worked on the cinfoni project. The idea of cinfoni was a platform to simplify the KYC process for corporates and Tier 1-2 banks with a networking mindset. Waldemar Faltenberg brings over 15 years of experience in the financial services industry in various fields. Professional development is very important to him. Thus, in addition to his professional activities, he completed a Bachelor’s degree after his apprenticeship, which he graduated from Steinbeis University Berlin in 2010. In 2019, he started an Executive MBA at the Spanish IESE Business School, which he completed in 2021. Here he was able to expand his know-how in the area of entrepreneurship, innovation and digital transformation in a very practical way and also in various projects. In his private life, the father of three girls is active as the chairman of the board for the non-profit organisation “Leben ist mehr e.V.” (Life is more), which is currently setting up a training workshop in a children’s home with a primary and secondary school in Kenya.

Matthias Grossmann is the CEO for the Commercial Finance business of Siemens Financial Services. Matthias has almost 30 years’ experience with the Siemens Group. He has worked in the US and Germany; and was until 2019 based in Sweden where he was CFO for the Siemens Nordic region. He was also Head of Corporate Pensions, the unit responsible for group-wide and Siemens AG pension management. Matthias has extensive experience and knowledge of both the finance and industry markets. He also has a keen interest in sustainability, and is leading the SFS Commercial Finance drive to enable businesses across the global to invest in more sustainable equipment and technology. Matthias holds a degree in Business Administration from the Technical University Berlin, Germany.