Mentors: EWoB 2021/2022

Kristen reports to the CEO of Barilla and leads a 12-member D&I Board, comprised of internal members from eight key countries and two external advisors. Previously, Kristen was VP of R&D for the Asia, Africa and Australia region for Barilla, based in Singapore.  She joined Barilla in 2010 as VP of Research, and she is now based at the Barilla Headquarters in Parma, Italy.

with special knowledge in IT and solution sales with digital leadership focus, strategy implementation, goal setting, and project management.

Vera’s sector expertise includes family business governance, healthcare industry and biosciences. She has experience as a Board member in listed and private companies and as a nomination committee member. Her experience ranges from large global corporation to medium sized, small and start-up companies. Vera is a believer in purposeful businesses & sustainability. Integrity is present in everything she does.

Elena Bianchini is an experienced product management professional, diversity and inclusion evangelist, and pro-bono consultant. She believes the key to creating great products is to refer back to the customers.

Elena has a Master’s degree in Information Engineering and Management from Politecnico di Milano.
She’s a proud mum of 2, a fashion blogger for women over 40 (with over 10K followers)

Elena is the Head Product of Customer Conversion in Zalando. Former Director of Checkout and Customer Products in lastminute.com, Elena launched the SelfService and App, increasing revenues by building the postsale journey. Before lastminute.com, Elena was a Head of Product at Vodafone, covering a wide range of Customer segments from Consumer to Large Corporates both for Vodafone Italy and the Group.
She is an IntheBoardRoom 2019 Alumna and she’s now part of the GirlsRestart association, helping women-led companies to reshape their business strategy to face the Pandemic challenges.

Antigoni is a highly self-motivated and energetic senior leader with a 
proven 20-year track record of business achievements in Sales, High 
Performance Computing (HPC), IT-Outsourcing, Services, leading large IT 
portfolios and business transformation. She holds a PhD in physics and 
started her career with fundamental research. Next milestones include 
various local, EMEA wide and global leadership positions at IBM and 
Lenovo. In her current role, as EMEA Business Leader for Azure HPC at 
Microsoft, she is responsible for driving the digital transformation of 
Microsoft’s customers by moving their complex workloads to the cloud 
combining HPC with AI, IoT and many other scenarios to deliver 
innovation.

She will soon be nominated on the board and audit committee of a digital marketing group, active internationally.

She previously was chief executive officer and chairwoman of the Executive Committee of Aviabel, a leading aviation insurer and reinsurer worldwide. Before Aviabel, she was a partner at Liedekerke, a prominent Belgian law firm, where she developed and headed the insurance practice. Prior to this, Cécile Coune spent over 15 years in the insurance sector in CEO’s and other senior executive roles.

Cécile Coune is also a founding member of Women on Board (Belgium) since 2009 and she initiated European Women on Boards, which she co-founded in 2013. Those two associations focus on increasing the participation of qualified women on boards of directors in all sectors, cross-borders. Committed to corporate social responsibility, she also sits on the board of a mental health hospitals organization and is a mentor for EWoB and for Duo for a Job, an association helping young immigrants define their professional future.

Forward-thinking executive working in the Healthcare industry (pharmaceutical, medical devices, cosmetic) with a proven record in leading global R&D and Medical Affairs’ activities, business development, building/re-engineering organisations to improve company performance, recruiting talented people internationally, and ensuring consistent succession plans. 

Corinne has extensive international experience opening new overseas structures across developed and developing countries: Europe, Americas, Asia, India and Australia.

Organization Transformation & Cultural Changes.  Alicia is a charismatic high-energy people person with excellent relationship skills. With a strong work ethic, Alicia also strives to make a difference by mentoring and advocates for more diversity and inclusion in corporates and society.

Alicia focuses on achieving results and thinking long-term.  She is always curious about learning more and develops continuously her skills and competences of strategy, leadership and service design. She is a Darwinist.

Prior to being appointed into the GM role, Adriana was leading LEGO marketing teams in 100 countries within Russia, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa. Adriana has lived in 6 countries and has 23 years of experience in Marketing and Sales in companies including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and SABMiller.  Adriana is a lector at ELAI – Innovative thinking.

localization and maintenance of SAP solutions, especially SAP S/4HANA Finance. Martin started in SAP headquarters in Germany in 2001 as a Software Developer and later worked in various roles as Consultant, ISO Auditor, Coach, Development Manager and Vice President.

Martin is a water sport enthusiast who also dedicates his spare time by supporting non-profit organizations including EWoB Digital Strategy Mentoring, Odyssey Mentoring and Czechitas.  He coaches internally within SAP and people development is core to his leadership approach and values.

She is passionate about the exiting interactions between brands and customers, which leads to always new challenges for brand management. She has elaborated on that challenge as well in her latest book on consumer-centric brand management.

Tiina has a good functional overview for both eCommerce and social media and loves creative problem solving.

As a long-term planner with strong organizational and project management skills, Tiina and is a driver with the ability to effectively prioritize.  With years of experience working in the digital world, she is highly motivated and driven by the challenges arising from working in the digital environment.

Tiina’s core areas of interest lay in service design, customer experience (b2c), content strategy, holistic web traffic creation, analytics, cost effective and agile implementation processes.

Specialties: digital marketing and communication, eCommerce, digital fundraising, concepting, process development, service design, web metrics, team leading, project management, hands-on implementation.

He has experience in the management of large-scale software development projects and in the operations management for a landscape of several hundred applications.  With a proven track-record in the management of IT providers, he has exceled at leading iT performance and improvement programs.

Before becoming a coach, she spent more than 15 years as a senior executive in the advertising business at the Wunderman agency in Prague and New York. In New York, she was later responsible for the development, new business acquisition and internal relations for more than 60 agencies worldwide of the Euro RSCG group. After maternity leave, Kristin became a certified coach. Her success in the business world is only a part of her story; Kristin is also very passionate about helping others and spends a lot of time supporting non-profits.

working at the intersection of Business and IT in the IT and banking sector.  During this time, she worked 16 years in leading positions at SAP and 8 years as CEO of medium-sized companies in the IT industry.

Today, Bettina acts as a Senior Advisor predominantly for Start-Ups and FinTechs and she is a Board Member of a Start-Up in Frankfurt.

Since many years, she has committed herself to the topics of leadership and diversity which she promotes in several voluntary commitments.

She is regional board member of FidAR Rhein-Main (Women into executive boards), serves as a supporting Member at Femtec.Alumnae e.V. and is a mentor for the entrepreneurship program of the TU (technical university) in Darmstadt.

Since 2016, she supports the PwC European Women on Boards Mentoring Program as a mentor. Bettina is married and has a 23-year-old son.

She currently heads the International Banking Federation representing the banking industry at international level. The International Banking Federation (IBFed) includes all the major national banking associations (United States, European Union, Japan, Australia, Canada, South Africa, China, Brazil, India and Korea) covering more than 95% of the banking industry. Hedwige leads the IBFed’s policy advocacy, contributing to increase the effectiveness of the financial services industry’s response to the multilateral and national government issues affecting their common interests. Previously she was Head of Group Prudential Affairs within BNP Paribas, CFO of the Catholic University Louvain and CRO of ABN Amro Bank in Belgium. 

Hedwige holds a Faculty of Law and a Master Financial Sciences from the Catholic University Louvain and a Master in Business Administration and Finance from the EHSAL Brussels.

She has extensive experience in leading crossfunctional global and virtual teams to sell and deliver innovative, complex, multi-market products, digital programs and services in the Benelux, France, Nordics and Baltics. Her career includes management roles in business development and key account sales in the US and Europe within the courier, internet, airline and financial technology industries.
She is a member of the Mastercard Women’s Leadership Network steering committee since 2008, an
Advisory Board member of PWI Brussels since 2018 and an active contributor to their women in
technology STEAM (STEM + Arts) Programme.
Speaker, mentor and influencer, she is a passionate change agent to promote gender balance, diversity
and inclusion.

contributing to digital transformation and aligning business and IT strategies. Her main expertise lies in setting strategic transformation vision, driving complex changes leading to creation of customer value and coaching of agile teams for business success.
Throughout her career as business and technology leader with almost 20 years of multi-industry experience, she has provided know-how and direction for leading-edge initiatives that included enterprise-wide agile transformations, process reengineering solutions, digital transformation, ERP implementations and Internet of Things innovations.

Lenka earned Master of Science Degree in Computer Sciences, Software Engineering, and has several international certifications in the area of digital transformation, traditional and agile delivery methods including large scale agile approaches.

Apart from my job assignments, Lenka volunteers as President for the Czech Republic chapter of the global NGO Project Management Institute.

She is a founding partner of Angels4Women and an investor in female startups.

Francesca gained extensive managerial experience in the Telecom Italia Group, first as Strategy Director of the Media area, then as Marketing Director of the fixed and convergent offer, including the launch of 4-play and the IPTV offer, and finally in the role of Digital Market & Services Director, dealing with digital controls and digital services for consumer customers, such as digital ID and payment and smart home.

Francesca was also Chief Marketing and Communication Officer of ePRICE, the Italian ecommerce site.

Graduated in management engineering from the Milan Polytechnic, Francesca began her career with an international experience in the Boston Consulting Group in the Milan and Boston offices.

She has an MBA in finance from Columbia University in New York.

10 years international management experience from various global and regional roles.

Zuzana’s approach brings a combination of both strong technical and people oriented to project to project and program management.  A dedicated mentor, Zuzana invests time with her mentees to help them reach the full potential.

running significant projects and advising on issues relating to the transformation of their businesses through technology, organisation, shared services and process change. As a Vice-President at IBM, much of her work has been international with periods seconded to offices in Warsaw, Madrid, Prague and Dubai.

Caroline is a qualified accountant gaining her qualifications in industry (Guinness and Shell) before joining Deloitte Haskins and Sells as a consultant and then becoming a Partner in Coopers & Lybrand. She was a partner in PWC after which she joined IBM as an Executive Partner.  She has experience serving on Audit Committees (Metropolitan Housing Partnership).

Dita has been a trusted advisor to executives for more than 25 years through a wide variety of business cycles, including: image and public relations, internal communications, re-branding, IPO analyst/investor interface and crisis communications.

In a word, she is a leader. The Ogilvy team has been one of the most successful in the Czech PR Awards and Effies, no doubt thanks to the many successful PR careers that she has guided of the many professionals who have grown under her leadership in Ogilvy. Dita has also taken her leadership into the wider business community as a founding member of Odyssey 2010, a mentoring program for Czech businesswomen. Formerly Chairperson of the Czech Association of Public Relations Agencies (APRA), she has also co-authored books on corporate communications strategies and her pro bono involvement in the not-for-profit sector is also considerable.

In 2020, the Association of PR Agencies APRA awarded Dita for her long-term contribution to public relations industry. Dita is an active mentor in the Odyssey program for businesswomen, European Women on Boards and Femme Palette. She is a board member of the NEURON Fund for the Support of Science and the BONA Foundation. In 2019, she was a member of the jury in the PR category at the Cannes Lions, international festival of creativity.

Dita is a graduate of the University of Economics in Prague, Faculty of International Trade. She studied NLP in Great Britain. Dita has a renaissance approach to her work, fascinated by how the human mind works and connecting various inspirations from sources including psychology, science, the environment, and the arts. Not surprisingly, she has a passion for bridges as monuments of engineering genius and a great symbolism of connection and communication.

She has strong expertise especially in cross border outbound sales and marketing, as well as the efficient use of IT development (automatization/ digitalization) in order to create smooth customer experiences as well as profitable business inhouse.
Certified board member (HHJ).

Very passionate about leading and managing the Positive Digital Flow within organizations in all aspect such as: business definition, customer segmentation, new ecosystem building, organization, competences and culture.  Mastering essential characteristics needed for such a role such as leadership, critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills.  Saskia is result oriented and knows how to collaborate in an inclusive world.

Board member and advisor to companies and organizations in Europe and North America, with an edge in Cross-Sector Innovation, International Business and Strategic Marketing, Sustainability, Deep tech (AI, IoT, …), Industry 4.0 and Digital transformation.

25 years of international management and leadership experience with Technology Blue Chips in the IT & telecom convergent services (Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, Microsoft, Volkswagen), in the International Public Sector and as an Entrepreneur.

360° business innovation experience spanning from IT R&D, strategic positioning and multi-million business development, up to C-level P&L executive roles (in Europe and beyond), growing businesses in corporate roles as well as in mid-size companies.

Entrepreneurial track leading the international development of the family-owned High-Tech company – electro-mechanical engineering and manufacturing in the medical devices’ sector – obtaining a.o. a new technology patent in the USA (non-invasive bio-medical sensors) and negotiating the creation of a new technology spin-off.