2026 Speakers

My work is situated at the intersection of people, technology, and the underlying dynamics that influence how Nestlé employees interact with digital tools in the workplace. At the Global IT Hub, I’m the User Research Product Owner, responsible for defining the vision and roadmap for User Research as a Service. This involves scouting and partnering with suitable technology providers, and developing a modular research framework—complete with governance, templates, assets, and resources—that empowers UX researchers to operate at their best. My goal is to scale research globally, automate repetitive tasks, and free researchers to focus on the uniquely human aspects of the job: strategy, interpretation, and meaningful storytelling.

Prior to my current global position, I worked as a UX researcher in the healthcare sector. Collaborating closely with doctors, scientists, and biomedical engineers provided me with a robust foundation in methodological rigor and evidence-based practice—principles that continue to guide my professional approach.

Dalia is an engineer-turned-academic-turned-user-researcher. She is currently the Director of UX Research at Wise, and before that was the Head of UX Research at Miro, where she helped build the team and discipline from the ground up. She started her career as a human-computer interaction researcher, then joined Shopify, where she helped scale the UX Research practice from a few researchers to a team of 60+ strong and co-led the craft across the entire organisation. When she’s not busy asking too many questions, she enjoys baking, eating, reading, and obsessing over all things David Bowie.

Remy currently leads UX Connected Ecosystem at Volvo Cars, a multi-disciplinary team of designers crafting purposeful connected experiences across the car and mobile platforms. Her decade-long career spans product design and go-to-market strategy across fine art (Artsy), consumer electronics (Electrolux), and deep-tech (Ericsson ONE). She's worked with cars, drones, and robot vacuum cleaners and developed a love for complex, multi-device systems. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

Katie Tzanidou is a User Experience leader with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of human behavior and global product strategy. Currently the Head of UX Research for the Creator Org at YouTube, she leads the research strategy to empower digital storytellers. Most recently, Katie has focused on the evolution of the UX function in the age of AI, exploring how emerging technologies can enhance research methodologies and product innovation. Previously, she served as the VP of Research at Thomson Reuters and held leadership roles at Google and PayPal. Katie holds a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction and is a frequent speaker and mentor within the global UX community.

Asma Karoobi is a Director of Customer Experience at Mastercard, where she works on the design and strategy of next-generation consumer payment experiences. With over 17 years of experience across product, design, and leadership—including serving as CEO and Chief Product Officer—she specializes in building scalable, user-centric systems that drive real business impact. At Mastercard, she focuses on reimagining how cardholders discover and engage with benefits, combining AI, behavioral design, and platform thinking to create seamless, intelligent experiences. Her work sits at the intersection of fintech, loyalty, and product innovation, with a strong emphasis on turning complex ecosystems into intuitive, high-value user journeys.

An expert in ethical AI and future human-machine interaction, Sophie Kleber deeply understands the emotional development of automated assistants, artificial intelligence, and physical spaces. Sophie believes technology can improve lives when an invisible power is in the background, enabling individuals to be their best selves, and her focus is crafting user experiences that drive business transformation and redefine interactions with technology. Sophie is the UX Director for the Future of Work at Google.

Before joining Google, Sophie held the Global Executive Creative Director role at Huge, collaborating with brands like IKEA and Thomson Reuters. Sophie is a regular House of Beautiful Business and SXSW speaker and occasionally writes for Harvard Business Review. She holds an MA in Communication Design and an MBA in Product Design. She is a Fulbright fellow and taught at the University of the Arts in Berlin, HyperIsland in Stockholm, and the Parsons School of Design in NYC.

Karen is a seasoned UX leader who believes research is more than just a service—it’s a superpower for transformation. Throughout a career that spans scrappy startups, agency ownership, and leadership roles at global giants like Workday and Maersk, Karen has spent over a decade proving that UX isn't just about the final output; it’s the strategic engine that drives a company forward.

Karen’s perspective is built on a "path of two halves." She merges the deep, hands-on curiosity of a researcher and designer with the pragmatic business thinking required to lead at scale. She is a vocal advocate for the rebirth of UX Research, pushing for a world where researchers aren't just "information providers," but key navigators who help businesses make sense of uncertainty and steer toward long-term innovation.

Karen is the creator of "Improvise to Empathize”, an interactive workshop that takes people back to being… people. She believes that as AI changes our industry, our true competitive advantage lies in our "human superpower"—the ability to connect, listen, and adapt. By bringing the principles of improvisation into the lab, Karen helps teams turn empathy into a rigorous tool that solves real business problems and builds influential, human-centered practices.

Kelly Frontani is the Global Head of UX/UI at Schneider Electric, where she leads the vision and strategy for delivering intuitive, scalable, and human‑centered digital experiences across a complex global portfolio. She partners with multidisciplinary teams worldwide to elevate design maturity, drive consistency, and ensure user insights shape every stage of the product journey. Before joining Schneider Electric, Kelly led the teams behind digital content for Nike.com and the Nike apps in Europe, refining her ability to create cohesive experiences at scale. Known for her curiosity, empathetic leadership, and her instinct to challenge the rules rather than simply follow them, she brings a bold, insight‑driven approach to modern UX.

Chemsseddine “Chemss” Salem is a Lead UX Research & Design professional specializing in Enterprise UX Strategy & Governance across finance, energy, and public sector systems. His current work focuses on complex digital platforms within the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy (DG ENER - Euratom), where user experience must operate within strict governance, security, and regulatory frameworks. Working in these highly regulated environments, he contributes to shaping large-scale enterprise systems where decision structures, compliance constraints, and institutional processes directly influence how digital services are designed and operated.

In parallel, he leads Chemss Labs, a Europe-based research and thought-leadership initiative examining UX in complex institutional systems. The initiative explores how decision architecture, governance models, and regulatory oversight shape AI-enabled platforms beyond interface design.

Jorge Márquez Moreno is a European UX leader operating where strategy, design and culture collide. As Head of Experience Design & Research at NTT DATA Europe & Latam, he leads large-scale teams and complex digital transformations with a distinctly human-centred, future-facing approach. He is the author of UX para empresas, a widely referenced book on applying UX thinking at enterprise scale, and a recognised international voice in experience design, regularly invited to speak on the future of digital products, organisations and AI-driven services.

Beyond the corporate sphere, Jorge serves on the Board of Trustees of ESDi School of Design in Barcelona and lectures at several design schools. His work explores how design can move beyond interfaces to become a cultural and organisational force—one that balances technology, ethics and human experience in a rapidly changing context.

Dina is an Expert Product Manager with extensive expertise delivering enterprise software products that balance user needs with business goals. A visionary leader, she has a gift for spotting opportunities others overlook. Consistently translating emerging trends and unmet needs into product ideas that are both innovative and commercially grounded. Her extended background as a business analyst gives her a sharp analytical edge, enabling her to dissect complex business processes, surface meaningful insights, and turn them into clear, actionable product direction. This combination of analytical rigor and forward-thinking vision allows her to bridge the gap between what businesses need today and what users will expect tomorrow.

Alina Efimova is a Senior UX Researcher focused on making complex enterprise software more intuitive and meaningful for the people who use it every day. She uncovers insights that help teams navigate complexity and turn it into clear, user-centered direction. She excels at connecting the dots across teams—bringing together product, design, and business perspectives to see the bigger picture. Through a mix of deep research and collaborative work, she enables teams to make confident, insight-driven decisions. Her work is closely tied to business process transformation, with a strong interest in shaping the future of work — creating tools that not only drive efficiency but also make everyday work more enjoyable.

Simon Truckenmüller is a seasoned UX and digital product expert with nearly three decades of experience in e-commerce, UX strategy, and organizational transformation. As Principal Experience Designer at Mercedes-Benz.io, he has led UX strategy, community development, and digital accessibility initiatives, shaping design systems and global UX frameworks. With a strong background in leadership, team building, and mentoring, he excels in aligning business needs with user experience. Passionate about holistic digital experiences, he combines technical expertise with a deep understanding of frontend, backend, and business dependencies. Since a couple of years he also regularly joins conferences and events as a speaker to share his experience. Always very informal, but hitting the nail on the head.

Hamed Yahyaei is an Intrapreneur, Design Lead & Senior Customer Success at Scania with more than 22 years of international experience in customer success, customer experience (CX), UX, service design, innovation, design thinking, and AI. At Scania, he turns a customer-first mindset into action by fostering cross-functional collaboration, championing customer satisfaction (CSAT) and the Voice of the Customer (VoC), advancing future CX and UX research in the AI era, shaping customer-focused AI strategy, and orchestrating holistic customer journeys and service ecosystems to transform customer insights into measurable business outcomes, sustainable growth, and long-term value.
Beyond Scania, Hamed brings extensive international management and leadership experience spanning corporate, entrepreneurial, and global design organizations. He is a UX Ambassador for the UX Design Awards, an entrepreneurship, business development, and UX mentor, and an international keynote speaker, conference chair, moderator, and panelist. He is regularly invited to deliver keynotes, join expert panels, chair sessions, and moderate discussions at leading global conferences and industry summits, sharing practical perspectives on customer experience, UX, service design, Human–Machine Interaction (HMI), innovation, AI, and design leadership.
Hamed is passionate about connecting customer experience, innovation, and emerging technologies. He advocates for bringing the human touch to AI and technology and believes exceptional customer experiences are created by balancing customer needs, employee experiences, business outcomes, and long-term profitability to create sustainable value for both customers and businesses.

With nearly 20 years of international experience, Shuo-hsiu Hsu’s design career is built on a unique foundation of industrial design, computer science, and hands-on UX practices. After advancing UX research and innovation at Philips and Orange Labs—resulting in significant scientific publications and patents—he channeled this deep practitioner experience into his role in aviation. With his demonstrated vision in maturing the design practice, he introduced DesignOps frameworks and contributed to the foundations of ResearchOps. Today, he leads UX/UI governance and manages the cross-divisional UX community at Airbus, continuing to scale design excellence across the company.

Michael is a UX Researcher at Lely Industries. He started his career with a degree in Applied Cognitive Psychology and has been working as a researcher for about six years. At Lely, an industry leader in automated solutions for dairy farming, he translates user needs into insights that guide the design of interfaces, workflows, and human‑robot interactions. He is a big fan of "just enough research" and thrives best when things get a bit chaotic.

Evangelos Tzortzis is Head of Design at Hellas Direct, a next-generation digital insurance company operating across multiple countries, where he leads design strategy and helps teams turn complex problems into clear, human-centered experiences. Before joining Hellas Direct, he helped shape and scale core design practices at global companies such as Deel and Skroutz. With a background that spans both coding and design, Evangelos enjoys working at the intersection of these two world, bridging technology and human needs to build products that are practical, thoughtful, and resilient.

Marine Wolffhugel is the Director and Co-founder of BilendiUX (formerly Tandemz), a solution designed to simplify participant recruitment for UX research and product discovery, now trusted by over 160 clients France such as Air France KLM, Alan and many more.

With years of expertise in the field, she supports UX and Product teams in setting up high-quality research and defining effective user-centered strategies.

Before diving into the world of Research Tech, Marine honed her product-centric vision as a Product Owner and CSM at Lucca, a leading SaaS HRIS provider. This dual background allows her to bridge the gap between technical constraints, business goals, and user needs.

Guewen Loussouarn is a distinguished marketing strategist and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience guiding global organizations through the evolution of the connected consumer. Following a career at Artefact, Nurun and Google, during which he spearheaded award-winning European campaigns for icons like Lacoste, Orange, and ING, Guewen pivoted to human-centric consultancy.

Since 2015, he has been a driving force at Haigo, championing a signature methodology that transforms latent human needs into viable, high-impact products and services. This approach has become a cornerstone of his curriculum at HEC Paris. In 2020, Haigo joined the Kyu Collective, aligning with industry pioneers like IDEO to expand its global influence. Today, Guewen leads Haigo’s expansion across Europe and North America, helping market leaders, including L'Oréal, Nike, AXA, Louis Vuitton, Chanel or Sephora collect, analyze, and activate consumer insights at scale.

Sebastien oversees product design strategy for key AMEX GBT solutions, including GBT Neo and Select, which are used by millions of business travelers and expense managers globally. In this role, he has contributed to the ongoing development of these platforms within the travel and expense technology sector.

His experience is particularly relevant to today’s discussion due to his involvement in AMEX GBT’s AI transformation initiatives. Sebastien focuses on integrating artificial intelligence into business processes, while maintaining a strong emphasis on user experience as a central priority in all innovations.

Sebastien’s approach to product design is grounded in the belief that successful experiences are creating experiences that don't just function but truly resonate with users on an emotional level.

With over a decade of experience in UX/UI design, Anna has worked across FinTech and startups, building and scaling products. Now at Flix, she is on a mission to revolutionize customer service by combining empathy-driven design with cutting-edge AI. In close collaboration with UserTesting, her team leverages continuous customer insight to better understand the customer perspective and to validate and optimize AI-driven experiences at scale, driving meaningful business results across 40+ markets.

Charles Allison is Research Lead at Conveo, where he designs research methodologies that capture consumer behaviour in the moment it happens — rather than hours after, in a survey, when the emotional response has already faded. Before Conveo, Charles ran the customer experience programme for Starbucks across the US and Canada, where the team gathered twelve million surveys a year at its peak. Prior to that, he led market research at Instacart, where he developed his own three-phase Barriers Research methodology. At Conveo, his recent works include creating a new version of MaxDiff with AI probing, in-the-moment QSR research, and large-scale ethnographic studies for global brands including Unilever.

Andrea Lewis is currently the Director of Product Design and UX for the Netherlands based edtech scale-up, GoodHabitz, overseeing a team of product designers, content designers, and researchers. With over 20 years of experience in digital product, Andrea has led design and research for global clients in ecommerce, financial services and government across the US and Europe. Her passion is understanding and prioritising user needs for products or services.

Caitlin Vestal is a Berlin-based content designer with an accidental edtech specialisation and a past life as a birth doula. In her current role at GoodHabitz, an international edtech company creating human skills training, she's building the content design function from the ground up and shaping how UX writing and content strategy fit into product development at scale. Her work sits at the intersection of sensemaking, systems thinking, and human-centered design—grounded in the belief that “soft” skills are the most important work we do.

Naz Tugtekin is Associate Director, Research & Design at Bolt Insight, where she designs & leads qualitative, quantitative, and UX research initiatives for global brands. With many years of experience at Ipsos, she brings deep expertise across methodologies and industries. Naz is known for embedding emerging trends into research design and translating insights into impact not only for clients, but for the broader research community.

Cédric Lemy has built extensive experience navigating the market research industry across project management, account management, and business development at leading players such as Toluna, Bilendi, and Nielsen. Drawing on a rich track record of managing complex, multi-country projects and high-profile client relationships, he brings concrete, field-tested perspectives on consumer intelligence, agile research methodologies, and the challenges shaping the industry today.

Kristina Mann studied Cultural Studies before joining Telekom Innovation Laboratories, the research and development department of Deutsche Telekom and an affiliated institute of the Technical University. After a period at a Berlin-based agency specializing in qualitative and ethnographic research for international clients, she joined Deutsche Telekom. Today, she works in the Product & Innovation Experience (PIX) department as Domain Research Lead, where she is responsible for research across the Home, TV, and Hardware products and services.

As a Senior Marketing Manager for TestingTime, Aileen focuses on creating unique customer experiences, bringing the UX Community together in local events, leading panel discussions and elevating customer voices in TestingTime's recent "From Insight to Impact" podcast. Aileen started her career with a UX project on "Customer perception of Automated retail stores" for Swyft, a San Francisco start up and made the switch to Marketing afterwards.

Christopher Monnier is the Principal UX Researcher at Microsoft, where he helps shape the future of AI-powered experiences, including work on Copilot and emerging human-AI interaction models. With deep expertise spanning qualitative and quantitative research, Christopher is known for advancing innovative approaches to understanding user behavior at scale and turning complex human insights into product impact. His work explores how research evolves alongside AI, helping teams build products that are not only intelligent, but deeply grounded in real human needs. Christopher is also a respected voice in the UX research community, frequently speaking on curiosity, innovation, and the future of research in an AI-first world.

Michael Hess is co-founder and president of Outset, an AI-powered research platform transforming how organizations gather and act on human insight. Outset enables teams to conduct and synthesize qualitative interviews at unprecedented speed and scale – bridging the long-standing gap between the depth of conversations and the efficiency of surveys. At Outset, Michael is focused on reimagining how organizations access human insight – using AI to scale meaningful conversations without sacrificing depth or quality. His work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human behavior and product innovation, helping teams move from questions to clarity faster than ever before.

Helen is a user focused research expert who’s equally at home planning high level strategy and sitting down with real people talking about what matters to them. Her career spans Insight, Design and User Research across the commercial, government and non-profit sectors. She has set up UX research functions from scratch, led voice of the customer programs and defined priorities for award winning user journeys. Following Design and UX Research positions at Lloyds Banking Group, The Guardian and The Economist, Helen now leads Strategic User Research for GOV.UK. In her role, she pushes for action for the users who need it most through innovative research and analysis approaches, narrative driven, super engaging insight outputs and building great relationships with colleagues at all levels.