HAROON ABBU - Key Persons
Alexander Kwiatkowski holds a degree in technical communication with a focus on mechanical engineering from RWTH Aachen University. His research focuses on topics such as digital leadership, culture, innovation, technologies, and business strategy.
Job Titles:
- Owner and Operator, Flying Farmer LLC
Brandon Batten formed Flying Farmer LLC in 2017. Brandon is a graduate of NC State University, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in biological and agricultural engineering. Brandon started using drone technology after receiving an NC AgVentures grant from NC State and the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission to purchase a drone for his family farm. After seeing the benefits and value that the drone could add to their operation, Brandon started Flying Farmer LLC to make this technology available to other farmers. Being a farmer himself, Brandon understands every facet of crop production and can relate to other farmers and their operations, and he helps interpret the data that the drone provides. In addition to operating Flying Farmer LLC, Brandon farms with his father and uncle at Triple B Farms, Inc. in southern Johnston County. They produce flue-cured tobacco, soybeans, small grains, corn, hay, and cattle.
In 2019, Brandon and his wife, Jessica, were selected as the 2019 National Outstanding Young Farmers of the Year at the 63rd annual National Outstanding Young Farmers Awards Congress. The winners were selected from a group of ten finalists for the award based on their progress in an agricultural career, extent of soil and water conservation practices, and contributions to the well-being of the community, state, and nation.
Job Titles:
- President and Chief Executive Officer of Sykes Enterprises
Chuck Sykes was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of Sykes Enterprises in August 2004. During his 15 years of leadership, he has helped Sykes become a leading global digital marketing and customer care outsourcer. Chuck has nearly three decades of experience at Sykes in all aspects of the business, including operations support, sales, and marketing.
He received a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State University. In 2014, he was selected as a member of the North Carolina State MAE (Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering) Hall of Fame, and he was inducted to the Tampa Bay Business Hall of Fame by the Florida Council on Economic Education. In 2011 he was honored with the Boy Scouts of America's Golf Ridge Council Distinguished Citizen Award, and in 2010 and 2011 Chuck was voted Tampa Bay's Top Business Leader in the St. Petersburg Times Annual Leadership Survey of the Business Community. Chuck has a strong interest in economic and community development, education, philanthropy and volunteerism, and sports.
Sykes Enterprises (NASDAQ:SYKE) is a global leader in providing customer contact management solutions and services in the business process outsourcing (BPO) arena. Sykes provides an array of sophisticated customer contact management solutions to Fortune 1000 companies around the world, primarily in the communications, financial services, healthcare, technology, and transportation and leisure industries. Sykes specializes in providing flexible, high-quality customer support outsourcing solutions with an emphasis on inbound technical support and customer service. Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, with customer contact management centers throughout the world, Sykes provides its services through multiple communication channels, encompassing phone, e-mail, web, and chat. Utilizing its integrated onshore/offshore global delivery model, Sykes serves its clients through two geographic operating segments: the Americas (United States, Canada, Latin America, and Asia Pacific) and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa). Sykes also provides various enterprise support services in the Americas and fulfillment services in EMEA, which include multi-lingual sales order processing, payment processing, inventory control, product delivery, and product returns handling.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President of Digital Transformation Solutions at PTC
Craig Melrose is the Executive Vice President of Digital Transformation Solutions at PTC. He leads an organization that builds customer-facing solutions using industry-leading Computer Aided Design (CAD), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Internet of Things (IoT), and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies. Craig is a thought leader in operations excellence and digital transformation and an expert on large-scale Industry 4.0 programs. Prior to joining PTC, Craig led numerous operations and digital transformation initiatives during his 20-year career at McKinsey & Company. Throughout his career, he has helped companies enhance their factory automation strategies, including Toyota Motor Manufacturing, where for five years prior to joining McKinsey, he led the improvement of Toyota's lean production systems through the introduction of new products.
Dagmar Wirtz is the CEO of 3WIN. Since founding the company in 1999, she has received multiple awards for her visionary management style. She is considered a model entrepreneur by Germany's Federal Ministry of Economics, Family, and Youth. Dagmar served as a founding member of a think tank that helped regional companies adopt digital skills. German magazine Stern awarded Dagmar for her socially oriented way of managing employees and the way in which she and 3WIN handled challenging economic times in the industry. Stern also gave Dagmar top marks for 3WIN's progress in digital transformation and changing the culture and working style.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Independent Consultant
- Member of the Board
- Expert
Deborah Leff is a leading expert in outcome-driven business transformation. She is a proven advisor to senior executives on successfully identifying, prioritizing, and delivering on strategic AI initiatives that impact their most critical business objectives.
Currently, Deborah is an independent consultant, advisor, board member, and frequently requested public speaker. She served as the Global Leader and Industry CTO of Data Science and AI at IBM. In this role, Deborah worked with senior leaders of Fortune 1000 companies, helping them gain critical insights from data to drive improved customer experiences and optimized business operations. Prior to IBM, Deborah was the SVP of Business Development at GyPSii, a provider of geosocial networking applications and services, and she was the VP of Sales at Kadient, Inc.
Deborah joined the advisory board of Recruiter.com in July 2019 and was subsequently appointed to their board of directors in August 2020. In this role, she focuses on the intersection of human capital management and AI to develop strategies for eliminating bias in employee recruitment and retention, as well as leveraging AI to drive employee growth and development and enhancing the overall employee experiences.
Deborah also founded Girls Who Solve in 2019, an enrichment program for high school girls designed to spark interest in using technology and data science to solve real-world problems. Deborah uses the AI that students engage with every day and takes them beyond the scenes to understand how things work and why. Hands-on exercises teach participants how technology allows us to solve problems, capitalize on opportunities, and impact our world in new ways. After only one year, this program is in high demand, and she has been asked to replicate it in high schools across the country.
Job Titles:
- CEO of Talbot New Energy AG
Dominik Schlicht is the CEO of Talbot New Energy AG. The company was founded in 2011 by the Talbot family with the aim of developing technologies in the field of energy efficiency and to build and sell the resulting products. The Talbot STP-Steam to Power-is an innovative, production-ready energy efficiency system that uses industrial-process steam in the low-pressure range. Talbot New Energy offers the profitable generation of green electrical energy, improves the energy balance of customer companies, and sustainably relieves the burden on the environment. Prior to his role as CEO, Dominik was the Head of Engineering, Product Optimization, and Special Affairs at ABB Power Grids (now Hitachi ABB Power Grids), driving the digital, lean transformation for High Voltage Services, restructuring and leading the technical department, and transforming technical know-how into strategic key success factors. Dominik was also the Head of Aftermarket Business at Voith Turbo, a specialized company for intelligent drive technology in Essen, Germany, where he was involved in the analysis, optimization, and digitalization of service processes.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Managing Director at FIR Institute for Industrial Management
Dr. Gerhard Gudergan is the deputy managing director at FIR Institute for Industrial Management at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He is a renowned researcher with over 20 years of experience in the fields of service management, business transformation and digital leadership. Besides his research, Gudergan translates his entrepreneurial mindset into numerous spinoffs. Currently his focus is on the Metropolitan Cities Initiative, as the acting head of this latest project. The vision is to use urban innovation to transform the fifth largest metropolitan region in Europe, Rhine-Ruhr, into the most livable metropolitan area possible.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Digital
Dr. Haroon Abbu is Vice President of Digital, Data, and Analytics at Bell & Howell headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He is an accomplished leader with more than 20 years' industry experience in leading technology-enabled business transformation while building analytics and digital transformation teams ground up. Haroon brings together world-class research in partnership with NC State University and Germany's RWTH Aachen University to advance thought leadership on digital leadership. He is a frequent keynote speaker and a panelist at various industry events and has published his work in reputed business magazines and scholarly journals.
John von Stamm joined the department of business transformation at FIR institute at RWTH Aachen University as a PhD student after earning his master's degree in industrial engineering. He works on industry-wide research and consulting projects focusing on corporate strategy, digital leadership, and business culture.
Job Titles:
- Principal Key Expert and Founding Member of the T - Club, Siemens Healthineers
Paul Mugge has 35 years in product development, global business strategy, and business innovation services at IBM and 15 years of researching and teaching innovation as the Executive Director of the Center for Innovation Management at NC State University. It was through this experience that Mugge learned that more important than technology or product innovation is business model innovation. It, by far, is the hardest to copy-and the most important to establishing long-term growth. He captured these ideas-and the actual methods to perform business model innovation-in a book he co-authored with Dr. Stephen Markham titled, Traversing the Valley of Death: A practical guide for corporate innovation leaders. More recently, Mugge got caught up in the biggest business model innovation of our time-digital transformation. In his latest book titled, Trust: The Winning Formula for Digital Leaders, he and his co-authors, Abbu and Gudergan, explore how "building trust"-and not their technological competence -sets the leaders of this phenomenon apart. Most importantly, Mr. Mugge has spent his entire career, both at IBM and NC State University, listening and sharing what he has learned with scores of organizations that intend to separate themselves through managing innovation.
Rafael Götzen is deputy head of the business transformation department and responsible for the digital leadership section at FIR e.V. at RWTH Aachen University. His work experience spans a wide range of research and industry projects. He has worked on several transformation projects and focuses on the investigation of socio-technical challenges in the adoption of new technologies.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director and Global Lead for Visual Data Science, Accenture AI
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director Strategy and Organization, Porsche AG
Robert Kallenberg is Director Strategy and Organization at Porsche AG. Before taking up this position, he was the Head of Strategic Planning for Volkswagen Group at Volkswagen AG. Prior to this, he served as Vice President, Corporate Strategy at Porsche Automobil Holding SE. Robert worked at Porsche AG for ten years in various leadership roles such as Head of Strategy & Organizational Development and Head of Company-wide Porsche Improvement Process. His early career also included a consulting role at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Robert completed his Ph.D. in Mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen University.
Ruben Conrad is head of the business transformation department at RWTH Aachen University. He joined the department after his studies in mechanical engineering at the RWTH Aachen University. His work experience spans three continents, Asia, North America, and Europe, where he worked with Bayer AG and the University of St. Gallen. He has worked on several research and industry projects with a focus on the design of new value creation models and management systems in various industries.
Job Titles:
- President & CEO at Moët Hennessy 's North
- President & CEO, Moët Hennessy North America
Seth Kaufman is the President & CEO at Moët Hennessy's North America division of the wines and spirits sector of LVMH, the world-leader and creator of luxury brands that are recognized around the globe.
Prior to Moët Hennessy, Seth was an 18-year PepsiCo veteran, most recently serving as president of US nutrition businesses where he expanded and transformed PepsiCo's multi-billion dollar portfolio of nutrition brands. He's also held the roles of Chief Marketing Officer, PepsiCo North America Beverages (NAB), Senior Vice President, Pepsi Trademark and Flavors, General Manager, North America Coffee Partnership, and various other media and marketing positions within PepsiCo. He has received numerous accolades including honors from International Television and Radio Society's Hall of Mentorship, American Advertising Federation's Hall of Achievement, Business Insider's 50 Most Innovative CMOs, and AdAge's Media Maven. Seth also serves on the board of the Immune Deficiency Foundation.
Seth received his Bachelor of Science in television, radio & film management from Syracuse University and his MBA from University of Michigan.