This was
#wetechtogetherconference  2020

Yvonne Bettkober

Yvonne is an international executive with extensive of experience in the conception and operationalization of technology-driven transformation processes. She has led teams and businesses across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

She started her professional career in Germany at Siemens and then worked for various software vendors (TelesensKSCL and Tibco software amongst others).

For more than 15 years, Yvonne Bettkober has been working with new technologies and their innovation and transformation potential for companies of all sizes.

She spent over a decade at Microsoft in various roles and regions leading teams in more than 20 countries. She led the Incubation Sales teams in Germany, Central-Eastern Europe and Middle East and Africa, then served on the Board of Directors for Microsoft South Saharan Africa and Indian Ocean. In 2015, she joined the Swiss Executive Board of Microsoft where she initially took over the SME, corporate and partner business; leading the reorganization of that segment to a cloud-based model. She was  subsequently appointed Director for new business development and Enterprise Solutions (Microsoft’s technical sales unit).

Yvonne Bettkober, who grew up in Cameroon and France, moved to Germany in 1992 to study at the Technical University of Berlin. She holds a master’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering and an MBA from Warwick Business School. She has been living in Switzerland with her husband and three sons since 2006.

Jauwairia Nasir

Jauwairia is a doctoral candidate and a Marie Curie ITN Fellow in the field of Robotics at Computer-Human Interaction for Learning and Instruction Lab at EPFL where she currently works towards building Human-Robot Interaction technologies, leveraging AI, to help improve learning environments for kids.  

Her other research interests include path planning algorithms for mobile robots and autonomous household robots for elderly. She also serves as a reviewer on several IEEE, Springer, and ACM conferences and journals.  

As the Women in AI Education Lead in Switzerland, she organizes WAI educational activities in the country such as WaiCAMPs and is also a part of WAI’s Global Education Task Force. She also serves as a mentor on the biggest volunteer scholarship platform in her home country Pakistan, with more than 500,000 members. She is passionate about causes such as safe and unbiased AI, gender empowerment, education for all, and discrimination free society. Apart from work, she enjoys travelling, photography, art, volunteering, exploring nature, etc.

Alexander E. Brunner

Alexander E. Brunner studied business administration at the University of St. Gallen and subsequently worked for many years in the financial industry. Today he is the Commercial Director for the Swiss big data and machine learning company Utopia Music. Alexander is also a member of the Zurich parliament and founder of the Urban Innovation Association and the Swiss Unicorn Club for Swiss start-ups. In 2019 Alexander published the book Crypto Nation Switzerland. The book is based on more than 90 interviews with startups, investors, professors, lawyers, bankers and financial market regulators. The foreword was written by former federal councilor Johann Schneider-Ammann.

Jasmine Ho

Jasmine completed her Bachelor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), graduating with honors. During her undergraduate education at UCLA, she worked as a researcher in the Social-Affective Neuroscience Lab, and as a Study Coordinator for the Relationships and Health Psychology Lab. Her Master’s thesis, completed at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), examined the influence of body lateralization differences on distinct measures of executive functioning. As a current PhD candidate at the University of Zurich, Jasmine’s research focuses on the potential therapeutic applications of bodily illusions in virtual and augmented realities, particularly for pain and conditions of aberrant body perceptions. Parallel to her doctoral studies, Jasmine also functions as a research fellow at Brainability GmBH, assisting the company in the design of transdisciplinary networks between research and practical clinical applications. Having recently been awarded Best Digital Entrepreneur Business Pitch, Jasmine is increasingly focusing on the practical implementations of virtual bodily illusions for treatment of chronic pain conditions.

Anna Stando

From Poland, through the Netherlands, Guatemala, Mexico, Denmark, Thailand and ultimately to Switzerland. Driven by a desire to create for herself a fulfilling life and having more than ‘just a job’, Anna has sought out opportunities and taken risks that have allowed her to grow quickly and acquired skills to reinvent herself all over again.

Her own experiences, combined with her work at Advance – Gender Equality in Business, Capacity – a talent & start-up incubator for refugees and migrants and LEAN IN – a female network of business professionals, have equipped her with a wealth of knowledge about challenges women face at work and a burning desire to close the gender gap and create an inclusive world for all.

Anna holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish Language and Culture, a Master’s Degree in Intercultural Communication (Cum Laude) from the Utrecht University and has held multiple sales positions with responsibilities on a country and regional levels (EMEA, APAC, Americas) at ECCO and Virgin Pulse. She speaks five languages, loves learning and reading and lives near Zurich with her family.

Janet T. Phan

Janet T. Phan is the Founder and Executive Director of Thriving Elements, a nonprofit dedicated to helping underrepresented, underserved girls with long-term 1:1 mentorship in STEM (Science, Technology, Mathematics, & Engineering) fields. She is also the EMEA (Europe-Middle East-Africa) Technology Program Manager responsible for rolling out one of PwC’s key global digital transformation programs. Janet has been working with teams around the world for over nine years to drive executive-level technology initiatives and systems improvements for Fortune 500 companies. Her passion is using technology to make an impact in society.

Janet has found that she is often the only girl at the table, not only in the U.S. and Europe but also across the world.

As a beneficiary of exemplary mentoring, Thriving Elements was born with the goal to replicate the quality mentoring she received and scale it to reach as many under-resourced girls as possible. The mission is to create access and opportunities to help them go beyond their potential by providing guidance, instilling confidence, and establishing independence in STEM. As Janet began globalizing Thriving Elements in the Fall of 2019, she noticed a considerable lack of reliable internet connection among the territory ambassadors in Uganda, Botswana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and India who are working with her to bring the STEM mentoring program into their communities. This lack of access to basic internet led her to partner with Microsoft’s Airband initiative to figure out how to bring the internet to them.

Janet has written an inspirational book for the next generation of women leaders in STEM. This is a story of a young woman who needed to figure out a path to a better life. For girls with immigrant parents, low socioeconomic status, or who are living in a difficult home situation, they’ll be able to identify themselves through Janet’s stories and realize that they, too, can rise up out of their situation and do something with themselves. Grit. Resilience. Perseverance. Her book will be published in the Summer/Fall of 2021.

Natalie Hirsch

Natalie Hirsch started her career in the security business 14 years ago. During this time she implemented countless solutions across Europe for national or international companies – for huge and small ones.

Her skills are build up on the newest technologies around firewalls, networking as well as endpoint-, mail and data security. Today she works for Swisscom enterprise as lead engineer in the professional services department, dedicating her time exclusively towards large scale and high end solutions within the Swiss market.

Alan Cabello

Alan holds a PhD from EPFL focused on human-centered innovation processes, having been a Visiting Researcher at Stanford’s d.school and a participant at Potsdam HPI’s d.school. He also holds a M.Sc. in Management and a Dip.Eng. in Mechatronics. He is a co-founder of Spark Works, CEO of Sparkademy, is a business angel and sits on the board of a couple of start-ups and lectures at ETHZ.

Tanya König

Tanya is a reporter, moderator and TV-host based in Zurich. In her past role at CNNMoney Switzerland, she focused on creating content for the channel’s digital platforms, as well as contributing to the TV programming.

Tanya began her career in journalism as a volunteer with her local newspaper in Rapperswil, the Linth-Zeitung. Afterwards she was chosen to enter the Ringier School of Journalism in 2008 where she trained as a Video Journalist at Ringier webTV. From there she went on to work for Ringier, SRF and Portuguese National TV RTP as a multimedia editor, host and reporter, before starting with CNNMoney Switzerland in 2017. 

Her studies include Sinology, Film Science, and Political Science at the University of Zurich. You can find her on twitter @tanyaOnAir. Personal website: www.tanyakoenig.com

Ana Maria Montero

Ana Maria Montero (AM) is an international TV, radio and print journalist with 20 years of experience who grew up professionally within the CNN family – from intern to anchor desk – working for CNN International, CNN Español, CNN domestic and HLN, in English and Spanish.
During this time, she hosted ‘Escenario’, a Los Angeles-based daily entertainment news show focused on all things arts and entertainment: Hollywood, premieres, celebrity interviews, set visits, film festivals, concerts, etc., including live coverage of the Academy Awards®, Grammys® and other high-profile events around the globe for CNN and TNT. She rounded out her experience as a live news correspondent working out of the Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City Bureaus.
In 2017 AM traded red carpets for stock markets and joined the CNNMoney Switzerland team as an anchor for their flagship business and finance show, The Swiss Pulse. She also became host of the long-format interview show, The Newsmaker, as well as Tech Talk, a show about all things tech, with a focus on sustainability, the Swiss start-up scene and women in tech, covering such international events like CES Las Vegas and Viva Tech in Paris.