Speakers Bios – Conference 2024

Thanks to the initiative of Ms. Valéria Faure-Muntian, she also co-authored the Charter of best practices for recruiting and retaining female talent in cybersecurity, a guide aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion within the cybersecurity field by providing actionable strategies.

She is CEO of CyEx.hu, a knowledge-based cyber security service provider offering proactive cyber solutions for both domestic and international markets, primarily for large corporations and governments. Besides, she is the President of Women4Cyber Initiative and Foundation launched by European Cyber Security Organisation and the European Commission.

As part of ECSO’s mission to strengthen the digital strategic autonomy of Europe and a educate professionals and citizens, he manages the European Cyber Recruitment Initiative to boost the recruitment process, monitors EU policies and initiatives on skills, and contributes to the creation and launch of the platform Road2Cyber to encourage career paths in the field and increase workforce in Europe.

In this role, Elena builds trust and credibility with customer executives, provides guidance on cybersecurity strategies, and serves as the primary contact for CISOs on cybersecurity strategy and incident response.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Elena was the CISO at Indra from June 2018 to April 2024. In this role, Elena was responsible for defining, developing, and monitoring security strategies and services at a global level.

Elena’s career also includes significant roles at the National Institute of Cybersecurity, ISDEFE, Tecsidel, and IDOM. Elena has been recognized as one of the 50 most influential women in cybersecurity in 2019 by SC Media UK and was a finalist for CISO of the year by CIONET in 20221. She is founder member of Women4Cyber Foundation since its creation and board member on the Spanish Chapter.

Elena holds a degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Cantabria and has various certifications in project management, technology and cybersecurity.

Furthermore, Mrs Santiago Cid is Vice-President of the Women4Cyber foundation which promotes, encourages, and supports the participation of women in the field of cybersecurity.

Emily is a keynote speaker who champions inclusivity for women and girls in tech. As a mother of three, she is dedicated to creating a safe and inclusive digital future for children worldwide.  

Previously …

Gonçalo joined initially Europol as Cybercrime Specialist at EC3 particularly at AP Cyborg coordinating the agency’s operational support to cross-border cybercrime investigations. Still within Europol, he is also the Business Product Manager for some Law Enforcement restricted projects within threat intelligence scope.

Gonçalo previously worked as the Head of Digital Investigations Technical Team (ETID) within the National Cybercrime Unit (UNC3T) of Portuguese Judiciary Policy (PJ) and served as the Vice-Chair of European Cybercrime Training and Education Group (ECTEG). He was also the Head of Digital Forensics and Special Operations Technical Group within Lisbon Division of Portuguese Judiciary Policy (PJ). Moreover actively engaged with several international intelligence communities such as the Competitive Intelligence & Information Warfare Association.

In her work, she advocates for participatory research practices and embracing intersectionality as a core value in governance strategies, and a way towards actionable diversity.

In his daily work, Schipper deals with complex threats and incidents, as well as compliance issues or stakeholder management. In doing so, he knows how to connect and inspire people. In 2024 he was the winner of the first NL CISO of the year award. 

Through her work on the American Chamber of Commerce, Netherlands (AmCham) Diversity and Inclusion Council, she influences inclusive practices across EMEA. Kimberly is also active in community initiatives, opening doors for underrepresented groups in tech through organizations like Stichting Zwarte Vrouwen voor Technologie. Known for her sharp project management and strategic leadership, she blends corporate success with a deep commitment to advocacy and mentorship. Her impact extends beyond Microsoft, as she inspires change and fosters innovation through her speaking engagements and mentorship efforts. 

She implements robust cyber defense strategies, leveraging cutting-edge technologies for SIEM, and SOAR projects. She is the co-founder and President of Women4Cyber Austria, where through her volunteering activities and initiatives, she promotes, encourages, and supports women in joining and succeeding in the cybersecurity field. 

Technology can bring a lot to our world if we think carefully about why and how we use it. Technology is always a means to an end. She think it’s important that we take care of each other. Her background in healthcare management has been helping her to get and keep data and information safe since she started working in cybersecurity about ten years ago.

“You can’t be what you can’t see. We all have certain (subconscious) expectations of different people. I think it’s very important to show each other that things can be done differently. That people don’t have to fit into a box and that every person is unique. Diversity in teams, and especially that all those different voices are heard, is important to achieve better results. With all these different people, we can help each other to grow and work in different positions than we previously would have thought.”

And now, under his leadership, BforeAI is pioneering predictive security through its PreCrime solutions. Since childhood, Luigi has had a passion for IT. Over his 30-year career, he gained a range of experience and skills from IT operations to M&A and cybersecurity before launching several entrepreneurial ventures. Today, he is committed to advancing innovation in predictive security and ensuring organizations stay one step ahead of cyber threats. Luigi is a dedicated supporter of initiatives fostering the next generation of diverse tech talent and entrepreneurship. Originally from Naples, Italy, Luigi can be found between Montpellier, France and New York City, US – he is an active participant in a multitude of associations (ECSO, GCA, ABA, IAFCI, APWG) seminars and, in his off-time, indulges his love of speed tracking his Dallara Stradale. 

Luisella is known for her expertise in creating proactive security strategies. Passionate about innovation and collaboration, she advocates for a balanced approach to risk management and serves as the vice chair and secretary of the CISO Platform’s board.

Throughout her career in both the government and the private sector in Asia, Africa, Europe and the USA, she dedicated herself to enhancing knowledge exchange and solution development to resolve international and intercultural challenges. Prior to her current position Marjo has had a key role as Project Leader in the organization of the Global Conference on Cyber Space 2015, during which time the GFCE was established. From that point, she leads the operational and strategic management of the GFCE Secretariat in facilitating the GFCE Community towards the ultimate vision for the GFCE to become the global coordinating platform for cyber capacity building. Marjo holds an MSc in Public Administration and Public Policy from Technical University Twente.

With the advancement of AI models in recent years, she finds it exciting to see the potential of LLM’s contextual understanding and its application in accurately identifying scam content. 

Before working at Gen she spent over 2 years working on building custom costumer NLP solutions. These solutions primarily utilized models in the Transformers family and later also Information retrieval systems. Later with the surge of LLMs her areas of interest moved towards using LLM and their in-context learning abilities for feature extraction tasks. 

Octavia is an outspoken advocate for an open, free and secure Internet for all. She believes in the power of the Internet community to organize itself and tackle problems together. Based on the idea that the common good comes before individual interest, Octavia is committed to fighting Internet abuse and strengthening cyber resilience. She actively engages in a broad cybersecurity network and is involved in building public-private partnerships. Octavia is also very dedicated to strengthening the position of women in the cybersecurity field.

Today, Octavia is the general director of NBIP Foundation (national management organization internet providers). NBIP was founded more than 20 years ago by ISPs. The foundation provides lawful intercept and disclosure services, DDoS mitigation through the largest non profit European scrubbing center NaWas and threat intelligence with the Clean Networks Platform. All these services are on a nonprofit basis, by and for the Internet community.

As a security professional and enthusiast, Sabika has been involved in transformative security initiatives where she combined her strong business focus with deep analytical background to bring constructive change. Sabika holds a Master’s degree in Information Security and Management from The London School of Economics and Political Sciences and is a part of notable Security platforms across Europe. 

Her career started at CMG in 1997 as a management consultant in the Telecom sector.

She held many IT roles in a broad range of organisations such as (international) corporates and companies in the energy sector. She is passionate about understanding and improving the risk posture of organisations. With her experience as Information Manager, Security Risk Advisor and Interim CISO she is able to add value in an effective manner.

Reshma holds a MSc in Applied Physics and an executive MSc in cyber security.

With more than ten years of extensive experience in security
engineering, Ron has positioned himself as an advocate for fostering young talent in the
cybersecurity arena.

His commitment to excellence extends to his involvement with Challenge the Cyber, an
organization dedicated to enhancing cybersecurity awareness and skills among youth.
In addition to his professional endeavors, Ron is a mentor in the Women4Cyber
program, where he works to empower women and promote their participation in the
cybersecurity field.

Outside of his professional commitments, Ron embraces life with enthusiasm,
particularly through his love for dance. On weekends, he can often be found at salsa
parties, where he enjoys dancing rueda de casino.

Committed to enhancing educational methodologies, Ron sometimes shares insights
through his speeches, including a presentation on the future of learning. In this talk, he
explores innovative approaches to education and provides strategies for identifying
cybersecurity talent.

Sandra is a U.S. Air Force Reserve officer, serving as a faculty member and on the Board of Visitors at the National Intelligence University. She is a member of the Aspen Institute Cybersecurity Working Group, the strategic council of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, and the Institute for Security and Technology’s Ransomware Task Force Steering Committee. Sandra also joined the
Board of Directors at Crane NXT.

Sandra is pursuing her PhD at Johns Hopkins University as an Alperovitch Institute Fellow. She has an MBA from MIT and holds four additional master’s degrees in cyber-policy, international affairs, science and technology intelligence, and military operational art and science. Sandra speaks English, Spanish, and German and resides in Virginia.

Currently she follows the day-to-day implementation of the Digital Skills and Jobs Platform initiative, which hosts the Cyber Skills Academy.  The Cyber Skills Academy is a European policy initiative, part of the 2023 European Year of Skills, that aims to bring together and improve the coordination of existing cyber skills initiatives in order to close the cyber security talent gap, strengthen the EU cyber workforce and boost EU competitiveness, growth and resilience.