MACH ONE

Julia Paulsen is the Director of eCom Nordics at the biggest electronics retailer Elkjøp and pushing the Coaching Leadership further with experience from her previous roles as Head of Marketing and Digital Sales at SME startup Aprila Bank, Head of Digital Sales and Service at Nordics largest bank DNB, Director of Digital Strategy at international telecom leader Telenor Digital and Brand Manager of Nordics at the eCommerce giant Zalando.

She is a tech and data enthusiasts, and an author of a practical book how to do digital transformation “Smells like team spirit. Your practical guide to agile and all that buzz”.

Katie is an eCommerce Merchant Lead for Crate & Barrel's Chicago-based brand team, overseeing Furniture, Decor, and Textiles. With 10 years of retail and ecommerce experience, Katie leads the team to provide innovative and best-in-class customer experiences.

Emma Ford has 20 years’ worth of experience in Retail with the last 10 in ecommerce/omni channel roles. She is currently leading one of the largest ecommerce transformation program in Europe following the divestment of Asda from Walmart. Her remit spans the replatform of the entire ecommerce business whilst also revolutionising the Customer experience. Her previous roles at Asda have delivered double digit growth (pre Covid) and led the addition of Asda groceries to 3rd party platforms. Previously she worked for Walmart International as an internal consultant on ecommerce and started her career with Waitrose in numerous roles including developing a new convenience format in London. Emma is also a mum to a 20 month daughter and lives in Surrey with her and her husband.

Charlotte Chambers is an accomplished technology professional, with 20+ years of service and operational experience across multiple sectors. Charlotte has experience working in several different sectors, including 10+ years in retail. Charlotte has a proven track record in building high performing teams, is passionate about colleague development, and leads the women in leadership programme across Asda Technology. Charlotte is currently leading on one of the largest eCommerce technology transformation programmes in Europe, following Asda’s divesture from Walmart, with her remit spanning all of eCommerce Technology for Asda.

Rainer Knapp was appointed Global Director IT and Digital in May 2020 and has since been driving the digital transformation at Wolford, connecting the dots.

He has more than 20 years of experience in the retail and consumer industry, making him an international expert in designing comprehensive digital brand worlds and in implementing innovative Omnichannel architectures.

Rainer looks back on an international career as a technology leader, with Global Director positions at Oberalp (mountain sporting goods with brands such as Salewa and Dynafit), Willy Bogner (premium fashion), as well as many years of IT leadership experience in the media industry.

Jim is an experienced and passionate product and technology leader.  He has built many product & tech teams who are hellbent on delivering a great customer experience. His career in eCommerce, telecoms, health & fitness & retail has given broad experience to with wide range of digital technologies & complex programmes.

He is currently the Digital Product Director at the Gym Group, a gym chain with over 230 gyms. Their mission is to make health & fitness accessible for all.  Jim has built & leads a digital product & technology function who power the Gym Group’s member’s experience and support them reaching their health & fitness goals.

For the last 25 years, Paul has been leading technology innovation to improve customer experience in a variety of markets and roles across various sectors, covering local and central government, telecommunications and retail through stores, e-commerce and omnichannel solutions. Organisations Paul has worked with include the NHS, Post Office, EE, Reed Publishing, Superdry, Aptos Retail, AOL and Lovehoney. Paul is currently leading the digital enablement at Primark as the Head of Digital Technology.

I grew up with computers since childhood, did my first steps on the Internet in 1995, became an Internet software enthusiast and, eventually, a computer scientist. But it was until I worked in consultancy, that I realized that my second passion is to fundamentally design, structure and implement tech organizations that can develop amazing software. Since then, I have worked as a software engineer, delivered international consulting projects in 11 countries, lead teams at Zalando through Radical Agility, became CTO of a PropTech and eventually at Emma, Europe's fastest growing scale-up.

Bettina builds impactful product teams, inspires through storytelling, and loves to create digital capabilities for organizations. She drives the Digital Product Management for e-Commerce Technology at PUMA SE, where she focuses on change management, product management and driving business value.

End of 2021, her team delivered a replatform project from a Salesforce legacy application to a Headless React web application, co-creating the path to composable commerce, structured content and content orchestration for digital experiences.

She’s always been fascinated by the intersection of design, technology, and culture. She’s been working in the airline industry for over ten years with the focus on e-Commerce, Digital Marketing, centralized Content Management and Localization, often with the focus on replatforming and unified brand experiences.

Outside of work, she enjoys contributing to a healthy working mom mindset through Social Media (@veryimportantmother), juggling four daily languages in her family and keeping growing her knowledge of the world by currently learning Korean.

Sezin Cagil is the Agile Delivery Manager for Global Consumer Experiences at Costa Coffee. She has started to work at Costa Coffee just before the start of the pandemic and has experienced an amazing journey from 1 website launch in the UK to launching 7 websites around the world in multiple languages including Japanese and Arabic. Sezin used to be an interior designer.

Angela Wormald a proficient Product Manager, with over 15 years’ experience, and proven ability of delivering value through enhancing customer and user experiences across retail and commerce platforms. She is passionate about Retail and solving problems, along with understanding company goals to help lead a multi-disciplined team from define, design through to solution that is fit for purpose. Angela is currently leading FootAsylums Product Community through significant digital transformation, changing how they think about the solutions that will help sustain, scale and deliver value to the business.

Dr Anjali Subburaj earned her doctorate in physics and became a researcher and lecturer in physics at University of Mumbai in India before emigrating to the UK in 1999. She then changed her career -starting in an IT support role in a start-up company and progressed to becoming a technology architect. Anjali joined Salesforce in 2015, where she gained expertise in cloud architecture and achieved Salesforce Certified Technical Architect status.  Dedicated to her continuous professional development, Anjali then joined Mars, where she applies her extensive knowledge and expertise to develop innovative strategies in Digital Commerce.  Anjali has won Computing UK’s Technology Hero of 2020 award. She is a MACH Alliance Ambassador advocating modern architectures.

James is a Senior Interactive Developer for Crate & Barrel's Chicago-based brand team. After a decade working in SEO and content marketing, James now specializes in web development, UX/UI, web accessibility and personalization and testing at Crate & Barrel.

Kathryn is responsible for shaping the experience across Halfords stores, garages and mobile services, using data and insight to drive customer strategy and deliver positive change for our customers. Kathryn previously worked for Hammerson Plc, working across their portfolio of shopping centres and retail parks to help create destinations that excited shoppers and attracted brands. During her time at Hammerson she led a number of innovative projects, including the launch of 'Style Seeker' which used AI visual search technology to help shoppers find products easily. Kathryn also worked for Home Retail Group where she successfully delivered a number of large scale multi-channel transformation projects, including the implementation of click & collect for Homebase.com.

In this fireside chat, Ralph Urmel will discuss why Alpro seized this opportunity to migrate to MACH architecture, and the impressive results they’re seeing so far. Along with Chris Bach co-founder of Netlify, they will discuss the strategic objectives that MACH principles allow web teams to achieve, including better workflows, faster time to market, and best of all: the ability to internationalize and localize multiple sites with ease.

Ian Rosen is responsible for driving profitable growth across each of the company’s three banners: Harry Rosen, FinalCut and The Outlet by Harry Rosen. In his role, Ian works with Executives across Sales Management, Merchandising, Marketing, Digital and IT functions to ensure operations are aligned towards delivering on the Harry Rosen brand promise to provide exceptional service to clients throughout every touchpoint. Since joining Harry Rosen in 2018, Ian has led the company’s transformation to extend relationships with customers onto digital channels and enhance the shopping experience with technology (both online and in-store). Ian marks the third generation of Rosen’s that have joined the company founded by his Grandfather.

Andrew started his career in retail at Sainsbury’s and has since accumulated over 20 years’ global multi-sector experience having held senior technology leadership positions at IBM, Whitbread, TCC Group and Albert Heijn. Prior to Primark he was the European CIO of Ahold Delhaize, based in the Netherlands, where he led the technology agenda across their retail businesses in Europe and Indonesia. Andrew is now the Global CIO for Primark responsible for the Technology and Data agenda across the group.

Louis recently returned to Loaf in a new role as Technology Director. He's currently focused on ensuring Loaf continues its growth by carefully taking advantage of available technology with one eye on the future.

As well as owning the tech stack, Louis is developing a long-term eCommerce and tech roadmap for the business, incorporating everything from UX enhancements, payments optimisation, conversion rate optimisation, and SEO through to the implementation of a new customer marketing platform.

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With over 18 years’ experience across retail (Tesco International & UK Stores, M&S, Comet Group) and retail consulting (Accenture), I have experience across a number of complex transformation and change programmes. I have a proven track record of designing and planning for successful delivery of customer outcomes, building, leading and coaching successful teams and have a passion for bringing digital experiences into the physical store environment to create exciting and great customer experiences.

Justin is the Head of Digital Consumer Experience and Product at Kraft Heinz North America. Justin earned his Masters of Business Administration from Queen’s University and has since gone on to work in product management, user experience design, and new venture innovation. Justin is now leading the fast-paced transformation of Kraft Heinz’s digital experience to drive deeper and more meaningful consumer engagement. He is passionate about the role technology, design, and data can play in unlocking creativity and innovation within the food landscape.

Engineer, consultant, architect and leader for longer than I care to remember who has navigated Y2K, .COM bubble, financial crash, a global pandemic and Brexit. I dedicate my professional life to making macro improvements in organisations whilst modernising and future proofing technology platforms, tools and services. If that wasn’t enough I am also dad/taxi driver/bank to three demanding tweenager boys.

A people-orientated technical leader with over 20 years’ experience managing and leading product engineering teams using a variety of different methods. I love the challenge of scaling people and process in Technology teams and interfacing across a whole business. I proactively lead change and inspire others, having a positive impact in the workplace, mentoring and coaching teams and individuals to be at their best along the way. A versatile and adaptable leader, I have managed both large distributed teams of up to 200 people, (as well as very small ones) with experience of in house, using suppliers, nearshoring and remote teams in multiple timezones.

Gordon Lucas is the Global Head of Digital Engineering at Costa Coffee where he heads up technology builds for global consumer experiences. Prior to joining Costa he held a number of roles in software engineering, digital agencies, and eCommerce. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Gordon has a passion for the outdoors.

Niall is responsible for the LEGO Groups e-commerce, retail, marketing customer and consumer facing technology. He joined the LEGO Group in 2016 where we was responsible for all shopper-related digital solutions and was promoted to his current role in March 2021 with an expanded remit to look after all technology that enables shopper and customer experiences, transactions and engagement. Niall has been defining and building e-commerce, marketing and retail technology solutions for leading brands for nearly 20 years. Prior to the LEGO Group he was responsible for e-commerce and digital marketing for ACCO brands, a leading global office and consumer products company as well as retailers such as ToysRUs and UNIQLO.

Scott has over 20 years experience building digital products, although not always recognisable as products – remember when they used to be projects? Having spent time across numerous big businesses in Retail, Financial Services, Telecommunications and Hospitality, Scott loves the challenge of delivering digital transformation and then evolving and building ongoing feature teams to leverage the commercial and customer value. When not at work you’ll find me on the bike, on the rowing machine or, more likely, playing taxi to my boys.

Dylan believes anything can be improved. With enough imagination and curiosity we can make life more joyful, especially at work. It is exciting to see a renewed spirit of collaboration and exploration with the MACH approach. Demands for growth, acquisition and iteration are best met with tools and processes that can work together with limited dependency. It sounds so simple but finding and connecting these systems and people with this mindset and enterprise experience is challenging. Seeing the smiles and continued wins after teams adopt the improvements is the constant reward on his journey.

Giles is a digital technology leader who has first-hand experience in transforming customer capabilities and digital technologies. Adopting a modern microservices and headless based approach he has led engineering and business teams through the entire journey from selection through to successfully landing platforms. Starting this voyage before MACH was coined and when the top-right quadrants were still calling the now market leaders new entries or emerging trends. He is an active member of the MACH alliance and brings a unique luxury retail customer perspective with humility on the victories and lessons-learned that such a programme brings.

Balki is currently the Global Vice President of Digital Technologies at the 42B$ Mars Inc across all key Business segments of Confectionery, Petcare and Food. His focus is on Consumer experiences powered by Digital Content, Commerce and Marketing capabilities. In the last 2+ years, under his leadership the aim has been to build a connected digital eco system.

Steve Nolan is Technology Director for Boohoo Group across their online digital web and apps.

Steve has been with Boohoo over the past 3 years where he's led the back-end transformation with the addition of Product Inventory Management, Product ordering apps and the initiation of MACH services.

Transitioning into the front end technology stack last December, Steve is responsible for 86 websites and apps across the Boohoo group.

Ed Alford is currently the Chief Technology Officer for the fashion retailer New Look, who are embarking on a journey to enable the organisation be the best Omni Channel retailer for their customers, thru the use of technology and data.   In this role he is leading the organisation through a complete technology refresh, transforming all Networks, Infrastructure , Cloud, Development and Data to be platform driven.

A long time everywoman Ambassador and advocate for gender diversity in technology, Ed was recognised by the government’s Women’s Business Council and  Management Today in their inaugural 2017, 30 Agents of Change.  

As SVP Product, Agnes is responsible for the strategic direction of Fluent Order Management. Agnes is laser focussed on delivering value at every release so Fluent Commerce clients can be safe in the knowledge that they are using the best Order Management platform currently on the market. Agnes has over 20 years of technology and product development with in-depth global commerce expertise and an engineering background. She leverages her 2 decades of experience leading high performing teams and bringing to market large-scale international online projects, for a range of global businesses, including the world largest online retailer Amazon.com.

As a strong voice in the cloud native and MACH world, Dom brings a wealth of experience at all levels of technology. Having performed the role of CTO for almost a decade working with some of the largest and most complex eCommerce sites out there, he is able to bring this experience to bear building enterprise and internet scale software for the modern era.  As co-chair of the MACH Alliance Tech Council and as CTO at E2X, Dom is well placed to offer insight and expertise on the composable world of eCommerce.

Krithika Ganesamoorthi is the Global Technical Lead for AWS Partners in Retail. Leveraging her retail experience, she is responsible for solutions architecture and technical strategy for Retail technology and consulting partners on AWS. She recruits, nurtures, and helps partners transform their solutions on AWS. She is an advocate for partners within Amazon Retail, AWS Sales, and AWS Product teams.

Sonja is the co-Founder and President of the MACH Alliance, a group of independent tech companies dedicated to advocating for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless technology ecosystems. She also leads Product Marketing for Contentstack. The Alliance was formed in June 2020 with a vision for MACH to become an enterprise tech standard, and has grown to 55+ global tech company members including start-ups and leading enabler brands like AWS. The Alliance has been coined the ‘coolest tech in town club’ by Forrester, and Sonja is a leading proponent for this rapidly growing movement.

Neha is a recognized industry leader, a proponent of diversity, and an outspoken advocate for women in leadership. She is also host of the Dreammakers podcast, where candid conversations between trailblazing women change the way you see success and purpose. She was one of “50 Women in Tech Dominating Silicon Valley” in 2015, was named in “San Francisco Business Times Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” in 2017, and is a “San Francisco Business Times 40 under 40” honoree. Neha was also honored as “CEO of the Year” by Aragon Research in December 2018 and Female Tech Trailblazer of the Year in 2020. Most recently, she was recognized as “Best CEO for Diversity” and “Best CEO for Women” in the 2020 Comparably Best Places to Work Awards.

Roberto has 17 years’ experience developing and designing software applications, providing technical leadership and technology consulting to organisations that work on the digital space. His primary focus is on composable ecosystems that are supported by cloud native technologies that follow modern development approaches. Roberto joined the MACH Alliance on November 2020 as part of the tech council, and since January 2021 he has been co-chairing the council with fellow member Dom Selvon.

Mihaela has over 20 years of experience driving digital transformations and architecting best-in-breed SaaS and business-critical software solutions in high availability environments. As an accomplished CTO, she has a strong focus on strategy, product development, and end-to-end technology operations; able to mesh a culture of innovation with driving business value through solutions ranging from behavioral engagement to composable and headless architectures. She led a dynamic and fast-paced journey through a massive lift from traditional monolithic suite to a microservice-based, API-first, cloud-native, and headless (MACH) solution in the eCommerce space for a pre-internet iconic brand.

Kelly Goetsch is Chief Strategy Officer at commercetools. He came to commercetools in 2016 from Oracle, where he led product management for their microservices initiatives. Before that, he was an architect with ATG. He is the author of four books - GraphQL for Modern Commerce (O'Reilly, 2020), APIs for Modern Commerce (O'Reilly, 2017), Microservices for Modern Commerce (O'Reilly, 2016) and E-Commerce in the Cloud (O'Reilly, 2014). He is also co-founder and chairman of the MACH Alliance, a consortium of 60+ vendors dedicated to making Microservices, APIs, Cloud and Headless the default in enterprise digital experience.

Natalie is recognised as one of the top three influential digital professionals in the UK (eConsultancy). She has spent the last 20 years leading and growing agencies, including spending seven years as CEO of Global Marketing and Technology Agency Amaze, before joining TH_NK, acquired by EPAM in November 2018.

She has deep level expertise in building digital capability for agencies and their clients. She is well versed in M&A, agency integration, setting out digital visions and operating models, advising on global/local operations and developing talent and teams.

Tomas A. Krag is an experienced technology leader with more than 25 years of experience in various corners of Digital Technology. A desire to make a difference and leave a mark on the world has paved the way for some unique experiences and a career that has spanned the non-profit sector as well as digital marketing and enterprise consulting. Tomas is also an accomplished conference speaker, co-author of 2 technology books and co-founded and managed a non-profit organization working with wireless and mobile technologies in the developing world. As CTO at Hilding Anders, he is drove the technical side of a D2C transformation, including building and maintaining a modern D2C technology stack.

Neil Memmott is Head of Technology for the Very Group’s Digital Customer Experience, responsible for an engineering team of circa 100.  Currently undertaking a multi-year technology transformation from a monolithic eCommerce platform to a MACH architecture.  Prior to joining Very, Neil was Head of Software Engineering for BBC iPlayer and Sounds during a period of accelerated migration to streaming services.  Before that Technology Director at Auto Trader during their transition from magazine publisher to pure digital player.

David Dorf is a Worldwide Retail Specialist at AWS where he assists retailers with go-to-market strategies. Before he joined AWS, David developed retail technology systems at Infor Retail, Oracle Retail, 360Commerce, Circuit City, AMF Bowling, and Schlumberger’s retail and banking divisions. David spent several years working with NRF-ARTS on technology standards, and he continues to support the Retail Orphan Initiative charity. He holds degrees from Virginia Tech and Penn State.

Mark has 25 years e-commerce experience,  a future thinking technology leader working globally with some of the most innovative online retailers.  Since joining Boohoo group in 2020 Mark has pushed the MACH architecture agenda, Spearheading the launch of the new  Debenhams online marketplace.

With over 15 years of experience in the digital marketing Industry, Telmo is part of the IT Architecture guild at EF, Education First - helping to define Architectural and Engineering standards, as well as plan and oversee execution of web platforms, digital marketing systems and tooling.