Conference Speakers

Marty Cagan

Before founding the Silicon Valley Product Group to pursue his interests in helping others create successful products through his writing, speaking, advising and coaching, Marty Cagan served as an executive responsible for defining and building products for some of the most successful companies in the world, including Hewlett-Packard, Netscape Communications, and eBay.

During his career, Marty has personally performed and managed most of the roles of a modern technology product organization, including product management, software development, product marketing, user experience design, software testing, engineering management, and general management.

As part of his work with SVPG, Marty is an invited speaker at major conferences and top companies across the globe. Marty is the author of INSPIRED: How To Create Tech Products Customers Love, co-author of EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products, and co-author of TRANSFORMED: Moving To The Product Operating Model

Elena Verna

Elena Verna is a seasoned growth and B2B SaaS operator with over 15 years of experience scaling companies through product-led strategies. She has held leadership roles at companies like Miro, SurveyMonkey, Amplitude, and Dropbox, overseeing growth, marketing, and analytics. Additionally, Elena has advised numerous companies, including Superhuman, Sanity, Veed, and MongoDB. She is an avid learner and a dedicated Reforge enthusiast, where she has also contributed as a course creator.

Afonso Malo Franco

Based in Norway, Afonso is a former VP of Product in one of the world´s largest edtech for healthcare companies and a former Product Director at one of the fastest-growing scaleups in Europe.

He is the founder of Scandinavian Product Group, working as a Product Coach helping companies discover value and transform to a product operating model within their context.

Afonso serves on several advisory boards and is the host of the Scandinavian Product Podcast - the #1 Product podcast in the Nordics with thousands of listeners - where he interviews global product & growth thought leaders and Scandinavian-based product minds.

Henrik Kniberg

Henrik Kniberg is Chief Scientist and cofounder of Ymnig.ai. He is an AI whisperer, trainer, product developer, and author. He created the viral video "Generative AI in a Nutshell" and the book with the same name. He is also famous for his videos "Spotify Engineering Culture", "Product Ownership in a Nutshell", and for silly metaphors such as the skateboard metaphor for product development, and for his work as Minecraft developer. He lives in Stockholm with his wife and four kids and a bunch of random music instruments.

Ronnie Varghese

Ronnie is the Principal Coach, Advisor, and Founder of Mindful Leadership Coaching and Consulting. He has over 21 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur, tech leader, transformation advisor, and leadership coach. He founded and scaled multiple tech startups to acquisition as CEO/CPO. He then joined Almosafer in its growth and transformation from a small, founder-driven startup to an empowered organization using the Product Operating Model.

Over seven years, he matured into the Chief Digital Officer, leading B2C and B2B products and platforms, design, data analytics, data science, partner platforms, and business process design. During his tenure, Almosafer grew from a scaling startup into a profitable $9 billion enterprise with over 70% market share.

Marc Roulet

Marc Roulet is the Vice President of Data and Analytics at sevdesk, where he leads the Data Science, Data Engineering and Analytics teams as part of the company’s management. In this role, Marc ensures that data is leveraged effectively to drive business growth and operational excellence. With over a decade of leadership experience at companies such as eBay, mobile.de and XING, Marc is a data evangelist at heart, focussed on building high-impact data organizations and fostering a truly data driven culture. His expertise lies in transforming complex datasets into actionable insights and developing data products that deliver measurable value to businesses.

In addition to his role at sevdesk, Marc is the founder of Roulet D&A Consulting, where he serves as a Data & Analytics Consultant. Through this venture, he supports organizations on their data transformation journeys, helping them unlock the full potential of their data ecosystems.

Stephanie Leue

Stephanie is a seasoned Product Executive with 17+ years of experience driving product vision, strategy, and leadership. She has built impactful products at PayPal, Contentful, Doodle, and now serves as CPO at Ringier Medien Schweiz.

Andrew Skotzko

Andrew Skotzko is a product leadership coach, writer, and host of the Make Things That Matter podcast. As a coach and strategy advisor, he helps tech execs navigate complexity and build highly effective, empowered, and ethical tech product companies. Previously, he led product teams for 15 years across 9 different industries and across all company stages ranging from small startups to the Fortune 100. He’s endlessly fascinated by what makes people tick, helps them thrive, and how to enliven creative potential.

Yi-Wei Ang

Yi-Wei is on a mission to build product-led organizations.

Product-led organizations are customer obsessed, data-driven, and experimentation-focused organizations that leverage the power of technology to solve problems across the company.

Yi-Wei is currently the Chief Product Officer at talabat, the largest Food Delivery and Q-Commerce company in the MENA region. talabat has 4000+ employees and is headquartered in Dubai, with Tech Hubs in Dubai & Cairo.

Yi-Wei has lived in Dubai, Singapore, Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, Beijing, Hong Kong, And Kuala Lumpur.

Zamina Ahmad

Zamina Ahmad is the founder of shades&contrast, a consultancy dedicated to fair and responsible AI. With over 15 years of experience in data and technology, Zamina has collaborated with global leaders like Bosch and Siemens Energy to implement innovative, ethical solutions. As speaker, Zamina raises awareness about bias in AI, advocating for ethical and inclusive technology—a mission that earned her the Digital Female Leader Award 2023 and recognition as one of 4x4 under 40 in 2024.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan Evens is an AI Product Leader, with a decade of experience building disruptive AI products in frontier domains such as AI-first search engines, recommendation systems optimized for long-term user value in cloud and video platforms, satellite imagery, nuclear fusion and virtual power plants. He is also Chairman of the Evens Foundation, a philanthropic organisation at the intersection of youth, technology and democracy, dedicated to increasing the resilience of European democracy.

Gabrielle Bufrem

Gabrielle Bufrem is a seasoned product leadership coach. She loves partnering with product leaders and companies to push what they think is possible and help them build products customers love and teams that drive business results.

She has trained hundreds of Product Managers across organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Before transitioning to coaching, Gabrielle developed products across 9 industries in B2B, B2C, and B2B2C markets, gaining extensive experience across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Originally from Brazil, Gabrielle is fluent in Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish. Now based in New York City, she balances her coaching work with a passion for dancing, cooking, traveling, surfing, and savoring flat whites—her coffee of choice.

Kirstine Ploug Sørensen

Kirstine is a transformational leader heading the Agile, Product Management, and Design Center of Excellence at Ørsted, a global leader in green energy. With 15 years of product management experience, she is leading Ørsted’s shift from a traditional IT setup to a modern digital product organization, embedding a user-centric product mindset across all levels.

Before Ørsted, Kirstine led digital portfolio and strategy in Clinical Drug Development at Novo Nordisk, driving global product management initiatives and strategic digital transformations. She has a background in digital agencies like AKQA and holds a Cand.IT degree from ITU Copenhagen.

Julia Bastian

Julia has been the VP of Product at Alasco, a fast-scaling prop tech startup in Munich. Her passion in proudct is discovery, and she brings a large toolbox of product and innovation frameworks to the table. In her previous job as innovation consultant she supported various customers in the finance, automotive and travel industry in developing, testing and launching customer-centric products and services.

She joined Alasco during the first financing round and has thus been able to witness how the product department has evolved throughout the different startup phases. By now, she is leading at team of 15 product managers and designers and is in charge of the Customer Enablement Team which is focused on ensuring customer success by collaborating closely with their B2B clients. Her ability to think in pictures and to visualize has helped her synthetisize information, structure complex topics and share her knowledge with others.

Julia holds a degree in business psychology and is certified as systemic coach.

Andrey Vinitsky

Andrey Vinitsky is a product-led founder with a passion for clear communication and the power of storytelling through data. Frustrated by the “last mile” problem of turning data into action, he co-founded Graphy, an AI-powered data storytelling platform used by hundreds of thousands to make complex data both beautiful and impactful.

Through Graphy, Andrey has worked with a diverse range of customers, from analysts to executives and product teams, gaining deep insights into how data can drive understanding and action. He believes that great decisions start with great storytelling and is on a mission to help teams move beyond raw numbers, transforming data into compelling, easy-to-understand narratives that drive real outcomes.

His experience bridging the gap between data and action has shaped his perspective on how teams can leverage insights not just for reporting but to inform strategy, build better experiences, and drive impact.