All Eyes on Automation USA 2024

Aaron, an accomplished Middle Manager specializing in Hyperautomation, Transformation, and Strategy, brings a wealth of expertise to his clients. With a diverse background spanning various industries, including roles at McKesson Corporation, Protiviti, EY, and HighRadius, Aaron has consistently driven operational excellence and spearheaded digital transformation initiatives. He has led numerous transformative projects aimed at enhancing organizational efficiency and agility. Armed with a Master of Arts in Financial Economics from the Farmer School of Business at Miami University of Ohio and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Utah, Aaron’s credentials include a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, highlighting his commitment to excellence and continuous improvement in strategic and transformational pursuits.

Amol is an experienced IT professional an experience of over 25 years. Always curious about new technological developments, he harnesses this knowledge to enhance his work. Amol’s areas of expertise encompass several other cutting-edge concepts like Robotics Process Automation, Process Mining, Generative AI, and Low Code Application Platforms in the digital transformation realm.

I’m an experienced Ex-BCG Strategy Consultant, Guide, Senior Expert and advisor for IT, IT Projects, Digital Strategy/Transformation, M&A and Infrastructure based on a long-lasting experience in several industries.
Strong track record in IT Reviews, strategy and management consulting until today.

Blake Treu is an experienced leader in intelligent automation whose most recent work was to establish and lead PetSmart’s enterprise automation capability as the CoE’s director. Blake is also a Certified Public Accountant with prior experience working in tax technology, data analytics, and tax services for Ernst & Young. Blake has a BS in Accounting and a law degree, both from Brigham Young University.

Brent is a highly skilled and experienced professional leader with a background in the US Army, industrial manufacturing, and service industries. He is a Six Sigma Green Belt and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, as well as a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP) with a specialization in reliability and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). With years of process improvement and industry experience, Brent brings invaluable insights and expertise to Roboyo Academy training programs.

Brian Klochkoff is UiPath’s VP, Customer Engagement. In that role, he is accountable for elevating the voice of UiPath’s customers as the foundation and connective tissue for UiPath’s evolution and growth strategy. Brian is uniquely positioned in this role as he joined UiPath from one of the largest advertising and media companies in the world (dentsu) where he was a UiPath customer for 7 years and led dentsu’s Innovation & Emerging Technologies group for all 72k employees across regions. Prior to joining dentsu for 11 years, Brian worked at Aon where he managed large on-premises to cloud migration projects for large cap financial services customers.

Carlos Cardona is a highly experienced IT executive with over 30 years of experience in the field. He currently serves as the Vice President of Intelligent Automation Operations at Virgin Pulse, where he is responsible for driving the company’s automation strategy and overseeing a team of RPA and low-code developers to improve operational efficiency across the organization.
Throughout his career, Carlos has demonstrated exceptional leadership skills and business acumen, having co-founded two successful companies, Welltok, Inc and Yupi Internet, which were both acquired by industry leaders, Virgin Pulse and Microsoft respectively. He has also held various executive roles in Product Management, Product Development, Client Operations, System & Data Architecture, and RPA.
Carlos possesses a deep understanding of the latest technological advancements and is committed to staying ahead of the curve. He is always seeking new opportunities to drive growth and innovation, whether through starting new companies or bringing new ideas to existing organizations. He has a proven track record of driving the implementation of cutting-edge technologies such as Robotic Process Automation, Low-code Development, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Architecture to improve business operations and drive growth.

Derk, CEO of Roboyo, has an extensive experience in professional services and technology businesses and is here to take Roboyo to the next level of growth and success, and most importantly accelerate digital transformation initiatives for its customers globally.

With deep experience delivering digitally enabled process transformation for multinational organizations, Derk is adept at leading organizational change and leveraging Roboyo’s emerging technologies. Delivering more effective ways of working, unlocking investment capacity, and driving Next Level continuous improvement across front, middle, and back-office operations.

Emily leads Process Optimization, Automation, and Analytics at AmerCare Royal. Throughout her career, she has utilized process mining and automation to reach strategic goals and maximize efficiency. She focuses on delivering solutions that creates measurable business value and aligns to her organization’s top-down strategy.

Emily is an experienced finance leader with a demonstrated history of enabling global Shared Services and finance transformation programs. Highly skilled in accounting, audit, change management, and RPA, she’s a prominent advocate of adding value by implementing control-focused and scalable, process improvements and efficiencies with Intelligent Automation.

Jason Townsend brings over 24 years of expertise in solution engineering as the Director of Application and Automation Development at ConocoPhillips. Prior to his current role, he led the asset level engagement for the Advanced Analytics Center of Excellence, shaping its early development. As the leader of the global Citizen Development Program, Jason has driven transformative initiatives that effectively scale intelligent application and automation development programs and enhance employee engagement.

Jesper Blomster is a highly experienced professional in automation and digitalization, with over 15 years in the Finance Domain. He excels in driving change and delivering scalable solutions through agile methodologies and continuous learning. With a strategic mindset, Jesper leads teams in prioritizing robust technical designs for seamless and scalable outcomes. He embraces digitalization to solve challenges and has successfully implemented upscaling initiatives in the finance community. Jesper’s extensive experience and commitment to continuous learning make him a leader in automation, delivering exceptional results.

Jose Manuel is a hands-on leader with over 20 years as Financial, Quality and AI Leader working primarily in the Financial Service industries. He received his BS from Javeriana University (Colombia) and his MBA from Wales University (UK), with different certification in IA from Oxford University, FIU, RPA Academy, Uipath, Nintex, AA also expert on six sigma and Agile methodology. Under his experience, he has created a successful CoE with more than 200 implementations, currently he is leading the CoE of the biggest bank in Florida, City National Bank of Florida, where the bank is transitioning from a traditional CoE (Center of Excellence RPA based) to a EoE (Ecosystem of Excellence) including CI, RPA, BPM, IDP, AI.

Kirk Hunter is the Process Lead for the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Team at Southern Company. A futurist and graduate of the University of Miami with certifications in Agile, Lean Six Sigma, SCRUM & Blue Prism with a proprietary blend of creativity, intelligence and decisiveness. Award winning public speaker (Toastmaster DTM), author and thought leader with extensive experience in Sales, Logistics, Supply Chain, eCommerce, Robotic Process Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Digital Media. Kirk has a passion for providing financial education and empowerment to underserved communities, receiving the 2022 Distinguished Educator of Personal Finance Award.

Linda Grubb is the Supervisor of Application Development and plays a pivotal role as Citizen Development Center of Enablement Lead at ConocoPhillips. Throughout her 25-year career at ConocoPhillips, she has gained valuable insights and expertise working with different business units and Information Technology functions. Linda is passionate about empowering her team members and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. She believes that low-code development can enable faster delivery of business value and enhance customer satisfaction.

Prior to Permira, Lionel has had CTO roles at both Revantage, a Blackstone company and CBRE, where he spent 10 years in the Real Estate industry. Before real estate, Lionel spent 20 years working in real-time financial data split between Bloomberg, Reuters and UBS.
Qualifications
Lionel has a Masters in Economics & Management Studies from the University of Cambridge, England.

Lionel is also qualified in Data Science. He has always been interested in AI and Machine Learning, working on algorithmic trading at UBS, lease abstraction at CBRE and most recently, generative AI at Permira.

Maxim Ioffe started WESCO Intelligent Automation program in early 2019 and has been driving it ever since. Max leads Global Intelligent Automation COE that is responsible for the vision, strategy, governance, and execution of the program and takes pragmatic value driven approach to opportunity identification, solution design and implementation, production support, employee education, and citizen developers.

Nadeem Saeed is a technology executive with extensive experience leading major business transformations. With Honeywell, Motorola Solutions, Nokia, Microsoft, INRIX, and Verizon, Nadeem led teams for category-leading offerings in retail, logistics, healthcare, automotive, enterprise, government, and consumer sectors. Nadeem has also led integration teams during medium to large-scale M&A activities at Motorola Solutions, Microsoft, and INRIX.
Nadeem is a Motorola-certified Digital Six Sigma Master Black Belt (MBB). He holds a Master’s in Software Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Ryan is a seasoned digital transformation leader with over a decade of experience driving organizational change and innovation. As a passionate advocate for leveraging technology to achieve strategic objectives, Ryan has successfully led numerous transformation initiatives.
With a background in program management and a deep understanding of emerging technologies, Ryan possesses a unique ability to align business goals with technological solutions, resulting in tangible improvements in efficiency, productivity, and customer experience.
Passionate about driving positive change in the digital age, Ryan is committed to harnessing the full potential of technology to thrive in an ever-evolving landscape.
His collaborative leadership style fosters a culture of continuous learning and adaptation, empowering teams to embrace change and drive sustainable growth.

Shail is the Founder and CEO of Plutoshift AI with a mission to drive AI powered Industrial Excellence. As visionary leader in Intelligent Automation and AI, his tenure spans North America, Europe, and Asia, where he has been instrumental in leading public and venture-backed technology firms driving growth, executing turnarounds, and leading acquisitions while building world class teams.

He has served as the Chief Customer Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and UiPath. His book, “Intelligent Automation – Bridging the Gap between Business & Academia,” offers a unique blend of strategic insights and practical execution that has become indispensable in the field.

To give back to the community Shail founded VOCAL (Voice of Customer in the AI/Automation Landscape), a global initiative uniting over 90 worldwide leading brands to foster collaboration among automation and AI leaders, demonstrating his commitment to driving innovation and thought leadership in the industry. Shail holds and MBA from Yale University and an MS in Structural Engineering.

Steve is highly experienced in Process Mining, Automation, Data, and Analytics Industry Leader with a history of success managing high-performance departments for Fortune 100 multi-national corporations. Leads Merck’s GBS Digital Services organization in an effort to drive Process Transformation across the Enterprise.

Susan Ann Carroll-Boser started her career with White Castle in 1994 as a systems administrator. She has consistently advanced in the company during her 30-year career and now serves as the Chief Information Officer. In this position, Susan has the overall responsibility for the company’s technology strategy, leading the tech shared services, IT and information services departments. Her teams are responsible or software development, software implementation, the server/data center, network services, cybersecurity and business intelligence and data services. Susan also serves on White Castle’s restaurant leadership team and leads the company’s technology strategy team.

Tom Kelly is the Senior Manager of Digital Automation, Center of Excellence at Altria with more than 30 years of IT experience, 20 of those at Altria. His last 6 years have been instrumental in the expansion of the Digital Automation at Altria, that has saved more than 40,000 hours of labor. He has spent his last 5 years on new technology services such as Office365, Azure and RPA.

Yuliya, as a Senior Manager in Roboyo’s Americas practice, leads Hyperautomation Transformation and Strategy programs. With a background in process excellence and automation transformation, Yuliya drives enhancements to automation solutions and develops cutting-edge strategies for global clients across retail/CPG, manufacturing, and banking sectors. Yuliya brings valuable experience from previous roles at PwC, local government, and higher education.