Martin Creaner, TM Forum

Martin Creaner has been working in the Telecommunications Industry for almost 25 years and is currently President and CEO of the TM Forum. The TM Forum is the industry body for the global communications industry. It has more than 850 member companies in over 195 countries, including all the major carriers and all the leading equipment and software Vendors.

Prior to joining the TM Forum Martin held a number of executive positions with Motorola and British Telecom.

Martin is widely published and is featured and quoted regularly in business and trade journals. Martin is also the author of the leading telecoms business book “NGOSS Distilled”.

Paul Donovan, eircom Group

Paul Donovan was appointed a Director and Chief Executive Officer of eircom on 1st July 2009. Paul has almost 20 years experience in IT and Telecoms and has worked in businesses across the globe. Before joining eircom Paul worked for ten years at Vodafone, latterly as a member of Vodafone's Group Executive Committee as Regional Chief Executive responsible for over 20 subsidiaries and investments outside of Western Europe, including those in India and China. From 2001 to 2004 Paul was CEO of Vodafone Ireland, and led the integration of eircell upon its acquisition from eircom.

He has also held senior roles in Cable and Wireless in the UK and Australia, BT, Apple Computer, Coca Cola, Schweppes Beverages and Mars.

In addition to his roles on the eircom Board, he holds a Non-Executive Directorship of Millicom which operates mobile and cable networks in 14 markets across Latin America and Africa. He is the Chairman of the Irish Telecommunications and Internet Federation and is also a member of the Board of Patrons of Special Olympics Ireland.

He holds a BA (with Honours) from University College, London and an MBA from the Bradford University Management Centre with a specialisation in finance and business policy.

Dean Elwood, Voxygen Limited

Dean Elwood is the CEO of Voxygen Limited, a London-based technology consultancy working in the telecommunications sector. Voxygen designs and implements new technologies and open-source based network systems for both encumbent operators and start ups. A self-taught technologist with a “healthy disregard of the impossible”, he is also an active writer and conference speaker on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and is a named inventor on several telecoms patents.

Earlier in his career he was a lawyer specialising in technology and company commercial issues.

He was elected to the council of The Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (www.itspa.org.uk) in August 2010.

Graham Finnie, Heavy Reading

Graham Finnie has been working as an analyst and consultant in the telecommunications sector for more than 20 years. He joined Heavy Reading in 2004, following a ten-year tenure at the Yankee Group, where he ran the European Broadband & Media Practice. He has been responsible for a wide range of research at Heavy Reading focusing primarily on next-generation broadband networks and policy management. He became Chief Analyst at Heavy Reading in 2007. Finnie's most recent report for Heavy Reading is Mobile Broadband & the Rise of Policy: Technology Review & Forecast, published in August 2011.

Finnie has also hosted numerous Webinars and Live events for Light Reading, and is a regular speaker at other major industry events. Before becoming an analyst, he was editor-in-chief of the award-winning industry paper Communications Week International.

Finnie is based in the U.K. and can be reached at finnie@heavyreading.com.

Ashish Gupta, BT Innovate & Design

Ashish Gupta is president of Portfolio & Service Design, BT Global Services. BT Global Services provides Networked IT services to BT’s global multi-national customers across UK, EMEA, Asia Pacific and the Americas. 

Gupta has dual accountability reporting into both Jeff Kelly, CEO BT Global Services and Clive Selley, CEO of BT Innovate & Design. BTI&D - designs and implements BT’s network, systems and business processes for all BT units globally. In his capacity as President P&SD,

Gupta has the responsibility for implementing global services network and IT strategy global. He is responsible for BT Global Services Portfolio offerings. His mandate is to drive increased profitability and improved customer satisfaction for BT Global Services through rationalising networks, systems and processes, standardising & enhancing portfolio offerings and supporting customers on scalable, high-performance platforms, right first time, every time.

With extensive experience across BT, he has held positions including Managing Director for BT Global Platforms where he was responsible for delivering the platform-based IT Strategy for all the businesses within BT Group. Prior to this, Gupta was the IT Director responsible for bringing new products and services to market and was Deputy CIO for BT Wholesale.

Before joining BT in 2004, he spent around 9 years with Tech Mahindra in various roles, latterly as an IT delivery director responsible for Tech Mahindra’s CRM practice. He holds an MBA (General Management) from the London Business School.

Albert Hitchcock, Vodafone

Albert Hitchcock was appointed into the role of Vodafone Group Chief Information Officer in August 2007.

In this role, he is responsible for the Vodafone Technology Information Services Organisation within Vodafone and its Operating Companies. Hitchcock is accountable for the IT Strategy and the Operations of all IT functions across the group.

Prior to joining Vodafone, Hitchcock was Global CIO with Nortel a Canadian multinational Telecommunications Solutions Provider and lived in the US and Canada. He was with Nortel for 14 years and worked in a variety of roles. He was Global CIO for 4 years.

Before joining Nortel, Hitchcock was with Racal Radio Group LTD and British Aerospace Dynamics PLC in a variety of R&D and Engineering roles.

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology- FIET and a Chartered Engineer, and in September 2006 was named to the Information Week list of most innovative users of IT.

He studied Electronic and Systems Engineering at South Devon College of Arts and Technology and was awarded a dipMBA with Distinction by the Centre of Management Studies at Exeter University. 

Hitchcock is based in Newbury, Berkshire, UK at Vodafone’s World Headquarters.

 

Dato' Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa, Telekom Malaysia

Dato’ Sri Zamzamzairani was appointed as Non-Independent Executive Director and Managing Director/Group Chief Executive Officer, Telekom Malaysia Berhad on 25 April 2008. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications Engineering from the United Kingdom and has completed the Corporate Finance, Strategies for Creating Shareholder Value program at Kellog School of Management, Northwestern University, USA.

His vast experience in the telecommunications industry spans more than 26 years. Dato’ Sri Zamzamzairani's career started in TM where he served for 13 years, before assuming key positions in several multinationals, such as Global One and then at Lucent Technologies (Malaysia) as its Chief Executive Officer. In 2005, he returned to TM as Senior Vice President, Group Strategy and Technology and thereafter as Chief Executive Officer, Malaysia Business, before being appointed to his current office.

Dato’ Sri Zamzamzairani is also the director of number of TM subsidiaries including VADS Berhad as Chairman and GITN Sdn Bhd as Vice Chairman.
Under his leadership, TM has successfully rolled out and launched the high speed broadband service in a historical collaboration with the Government of Malaysia. TM is now undergoing a total transformation to strengthen its position as the nation’s broadband champion and leading new generation communications service provider..

Phil Jordan, Telefonica O2

Phil Jordan has recently been appointed Global CIO at Telefonica after holding the position of CIO at Telefonica O2 UK, a post he had moved to from his previous commitment as Regional CIO for Vodafone UK & Ireland. He has a wealth of experience in the Telecoms sector with an excellent track record over a number of executive leadership roles in Europe and emerging markets covering IS/IT leadership, Product Development & Strategy. Prior to Telecoms, his experience includes IT leadership in the Chemical and Finance Sector.

John Lagerling, Android

As Director of Android Global Partnerships, John Lagerling is responsible for leading and managing relationships with partners, carriers and software developers around the globe. Before rejoining Google, Lagerling served as Vice President and General Manager of Japan and Korea for AdMob, where he led AdMob’s strategy, operations, and expansion in the two regions.

Previously, Lagerling oversaw Google’s mobile product and business development for Asia-Pacific. He has forged key partnerships with the major carriers in Japan, including NTT DoCoMo and KDDI as well as the major handset manufacturers. In parallel he was responsible for expanding the mobile ad-network in Japan, including partnerships with Mobile SNS sites Mixi and Gree.

He spent five years working at NTT DoCoMo, initially as a manager for regional sales and marketing, and later as executive advisor focusing on business development around i-mode and the wallet phone business. He also has a background in consulting, driving projects related to Internet marketing and Mobile services.

Lagerling has a Master of Science degree from Stockholm School of Economics in Economics, Marketing and International Business while also conducting his post-graduate research at University of Tokyo, Faculty of Economics.  

Lawrence Sugarman, RBS

Lawrence Sugarman joined RBS in March 2011 as Head of Pan European Telecoms research.

Prior to this, he was head of Pan European Telecoms research in London, at ING, he held this position from 2009 to 2010. Between, 1996 – 2008, Lawrence worked at various roles at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. He was head of Pan European Telecoms and the while he was a senior director of the team it was ranked 1st in extel and runners up in institutional investor on a number of occasions. He was also a telecoms specialist salesman, deputy head of specialist sales and prior to that a food and general retail analyst. Sugarman’s coverage universe has included all of the UK telecoms stocks, the German companies and also the Scandinavian names.

His client list includes most of the major European and US funds, and has strong ratings with accounts including, Capital, JP Morgan, Norges Bank, Scottish Widows, Aegon, ING, APG, Ontario Teachers, and Morgan Stanley. Sugarman is a qualified chartered accountant, specialised in tax and has a degree in economics and history from Manchester University.

Eric Troup, Microsoft Worldwide Communications and Media

Eric Troup was appointed Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft Worldwide Communications and Media Industries in June 2011. As the lead industry technology strategist for the Telecom, Cable and Media sectors, Eric is responsible for guiding the evolution of a growing ecosystem of enterprise solutions spanning BSS/OSS, media creation & delivery, cloud, device management, and service lifecycle management/delivery in collaboration with customers, partners, industry organizations, and Microsoft product groups.

Eric held a variety of leadership positions in the U.S. Army before joining NYNEX in 1985. He gained extensive customer service and network operations experience before transitioning to Director of System Integration Development where he was the lead for a number of major Network and IT initiatives including the largest Computing Telephony Integration (CTI) project implemented to date and a state of the art network element performance/cost analytics solution. Eric held additional leadership positions at Unisys and Cap Gemini before joining Microsoft Consulting Services in 2004.

Eric earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree from West Point and received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Utah. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

Keith Willetts, TM Forum

Keith Willetts is recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities on communications management. As co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the TM Forum, he has been the driving force behind its continuous evolution. Currently Managing Partner at Mandarin Associates Ltd. in the UK, he consults with companies on a wide variety of business development issues. He previously held executive positions at BT and TCSI. A regular presenter and writer, he co-authored the highly influential book, “The Lean Communications Provider”. His achievements have been internationally recognised, being honoured twice in the Communications Week “Top 25” awards for industry visionaries, the British Computer Society award and the BT Gold Medal.

Hannes Wittig, JP Morgan

Hannes Wittig heads the JPMorgan Cazenove European telecoms research team which has been top-rated by its clients, institutional investors, in multiple surveys. He covers a number of European telecoms operators himself, including Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, some of which have embarked on substantial efficiency drives in recent years. Major thematic publications include 'The Fibre Battle' (Dec 2006), 'The Power of Mobile Broadband' (May 2008), ‘WhatsApp in European mobile?' (June 2011), ‘The Fourth Generation of Mobile’ (Mar 2012) and ‘European fibre plans – potential implications’ (Oct 2011). Prior to his work as an equity research analyst Wittig worked for McKinsey & Co., the management consultancy, in various industries (including manufacturing, retail, broadcasting, electronics) and countries (including Germany, Italy, France, Austria, the US). Wittig holds degrees in Politics, economics, and philosophy.

Angela Yochem, AstraZeneca

Angela Yochem is the Chief Technology Officer at AstraZeneca, promoting opportunities for innovative partners to accelerate business advantage, make a meaningful difference to patient health, and bring value to society.

Yochem built a track record of driving transformation, profitability and agility in complex environments in senior roles at Dell, Bank of America, SunTrust, UPS, and IBM. Prior to her executive leadership roles, Yochem specialized in design and delivery of large-scale distributed systems and solutions to complex integration and convergence challenges.

Yochem is a published author with Prentice-Hall and Addison-Wesley, a US Patent holder, and is a frequent speaker on technology, diversity and leadership at executive forums and events in the United States and abroad.