Saikat Podder

Associate Partner, Cognitive Process Transformation

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IBM

Saikat is Associate Partner and Consulting Leader for Process Reengineering and Intelligent Workflows with IBM based in Singapore. He is a seasoned Consulting Leader with 18+ years of experience advising clients on Business Transformation & Strategy, Operating Model Design, Process Re-Engineering, Lean Strategy, Digitalization with RPA, BPM and Experience Design. Saikat’s experience spans across multiple geographies advising Financial Services clients in Asia, ANZ, US and UK. Prior to IBM, Saikat was Head of Business Consulting at Virtusa Asia Pacific. Saikat is a Deep Tech Enthusiast passionate about technology, innovation and business. He holds an MBA in Finance & Marketing from Indian School of Business (ISB) and did his Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering.

Jessy El Murr

Certified Media Trainer & Digital Journalist

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Jessy El Murr is a certified media trainer and a multilingual digital journalist who spent over 18 years writing and presenting political, military and digital news stories for international news outlets. A seasoned field journalist and former BBC and Sky News Arabia correspondent, El Murr has recently acquired several media consulting and training projects for government and private entities across GCC countries including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and the State of Kuwait. El Murr has interviewed a variety of senior officials and international personalities including Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson, Georges Clooney and several international and regional dignitaries. El Murr holds a Master’s degree in Integrated Journalism from Emerson College in Boston, MA and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the American University of Beirut.

Ewan MacLeod

Chief Transformation Officer

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Sohar International (SAOG)

Ewan is Chief Transformation Officer at Sohar International based in Muscat, Oman. He is a seasoned corporate entrepreneur with a proven track record and deep experience leading transformation change in large organizations. Ewan was previously Chief Digital Officer at Nordea Bank AB, the largest financial services player in Northern Europe. At Nordea, Ewan established Nordea Ventures to make investments into the FinTech ecosystem and was responsible for leading the bank’s digital transformation activities. Prior to Nordea, Ewan brought this expertise and passion to enterprises such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Nationwide Building Society. After finishing University, he founded a dotcom start up, and spent his twenties building and selling a host of successful digital products and services. Ewan is a current programmer with a long-standing preference of PHP/MySQL on the LAMP stack. He has created apps for iOS and Android and recently coded a system to hook into Amazon’s AWS as well as authored many online services that have reliably supported millions of users.

Eddy Aboud

CEO

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GBM Oman

As CEO at GBM Oman, Eddy Abboud helps corporates overcome the challenges they face today and accelerate their digital transformation journey. With his global perspective, entrepreneurial mindset, and 21 years of industry experience in different capacities across Europe, Middle East, and Africa, he is recognized as a leader in the corporate transformation domain. Eddy worked his way up from being an Engineer to earn his seat at the C-Suite table. His career has focused on operation, optimization, and governance, with a highlight on developing and executing business strategies to achieve great customer experience and high-performance culture. Eddy holds a degree in Leadership from Harvard Business School, as well as an MBA in Business Administration.

Codin Caragea

Head of Customer Experience

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Bank Muscat

Codin has 21 years of experience in banking, management consulting and energy sectors. His main areas of expertise cover Customer Experience framework design and implementation, Enterprise BPM, Process Architecture & Improvement, Lean Management, Organizational Design, Innovation and Performance Man­agement. He worked for Ernst & Young, leading Human Capital related projects, process improvement and due diligences for oil & gas companies, banks and retail companies. In 2005 he joined OTP Bank, the largest Hungarian bank, as Head of BPM Department with main responsibility of creating a BPM framework and running efficiency programs across the bank. He also worked for Volksbank, a leading Austrian bank, as Head of Process Excellence and Change Management. In 2013, Codin joined Riyad Bank, one of the leading banks in Saudi Arabia and GCC area, as Senior Vice President, Head of Experience Design & BPM Centre of Excellence. He was designing and implementing an integrated management framework combining CX and BPM.  Since November 2018, he became the Chief Manager, Head of Customer Experience for the largest bank in Oman, Bank Muscat and from 2019 he is also member in the Board of Directors of Customer Institute and independent global organization setting the gold standard for customer experience, as well as enabling and recognizing excellence in customer centricity. Codin has a Bachelor and Master degree in Management. He is also a Lean Six Sigma black belt and certified CCXP and . He is a frequent speaker and publisher for his expertise areas and enjoys challenging different organizational management practices for the benefits of the customer. He advocates upon designing the organization around the successful customer outcome, removing the silos and hierarchies, hiring characters, building skills and expertise for champions around the organization, leading by example based on inspiring, transparency, integrity and mutual trust. He is happily married and proud father, sport practitioner, heavy traveler, gourmet and art collector.

Asma Al Zadjali

Head of Group Banking Operations

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Oman Arab Bank

Asma Al Zadjali is Head of Banking Operations Group at Oman Arab Bank. She has 20 years of experience in foreign and local banks of Oman. Her current responsibilities include Transformation, Operational Control, Central Operations, Corporate Support, Credit Administration, Recovery & Legal. Her areas of expertise is strategy creation / execution, transformation, digitalization, process re-engineering, Lean Six-Sigma implementation, Agile methodology implementation, mentoring & coaching. She holds Masters from University of Strathclyde and is a graduate of National CEO Program Executive Leadership course from IMD, Switzerland. She is a Board Member holding Outreach Chair of International Coaching Federation, Oman Chapter. She is also a winner of AlMar’a Excellence Award for Finance and Middle East’s Woman Leaders Award.