Leadership Team

Globally rewinded CX professional who has a thing for Consumer Psychology. I believe that customers experinces’ feedback and data can tell us so much more about human behavior. Telecommunications and Banking are my two main battlefields.

Almohannad has extensive expertise in Market Research and Customer Experience with a record of +14 Years of experience; he has worked for multiple local and multinational companies. He has substantial exposure to multiple industries, including Banking, FMCG, Telecom,  IT, NGO, FNB, and the public sector.

He has published more th70 articles online (in Arabic; his native language) to increase awareness about CX industry. As he was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, he has a very good understanding of the GCC people’s culture. Hence he can easily connect with local consumers and appreciate cultural nuances.

Medical and Operational Professional with superb leadership skills, impressive record of growth and success for more than 13 years of experience in healthcare, Operational and Customer Experience sectors

Leading the customer strategy and engagement which embark on a journey of customer-centric culture change to put the customer at the heart of all we do. I strongly believe in passionate and inspirational business leadership which energizes both organizations and individuals. Investment in people is a crucial pre-requisite when embarking on the new opportunity, Certified Coach Building Influence, Impact & Inspiration.

Leading, executing and growing successful strategies that help ensure all businesses and groups are empowered and aligned to deliver outstanding customer experiences.

I drive customer-focused change in a holistic way throughout organisations by pulling together insights through Customer Journey Mapping, Customer Success Mapping, Customer Listening (NPS and CES programs), Customer Advocacy and Health Metrics to build compelling business cases for change and prioritising CX improvement programs internally that drive customer utilisation and adoption whilst demonstrating the value that earns and retains customer loyalty.

I am a member of Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), Technology Services Industry Association member (TSIA) and a Certified Knowledge Centered Service (KCS) Practitioner. I am also an advisory board member/ speaker at Contact Center World (CCW) and speaker at Customer Contact Europe Executive MindExchange (Frost and Sullivan) and PulseEurope (Gainsight).

Sharon is the Chief Customer Officer for MKL Innovation, an IoT House in the UK. Our ethos at MKL is very much about partnering Cutting Edge Technology with World Class Customer Experience – hence we are very passionate about (and have a name for) CX in Tech.

Sharon has 20 years experience in Customer facing Operations, leading £multi-million digital transformation programmes, for large blue chip companies in the UK. Most of these programmes have been around software and hardware, in varied sectors; I.T., aviation, retail, hospitality and telecoms. Programmes included implementation of payment initiatives, (such as contactless into easyJet’s aircraft cabin to provide customers with quick and seamless purchase to payment journeys), or transformation of an older, analogue retail environment to an optimised digital solution (such as Argos stores or Welcome Break Service Station kiosks).

Sharon is also a global best-selling author with a CX book, where she wrote about CX strategy in tech. She is a CCXP, a judge at the UK CX awards, is speaking at the Customer Technology World event, and is currently doing her Masters in Business.

Linden has worked as a management consultant, academic and an entrepreneur in start-up organizations. For more than 20 years he has worked with multi-national firms in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific to develop their market-focus capabilities and business strategies. He has had Visiting Professor appointments at several universities including INSEAD (France), Cranfield (England) and the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia). Linden has published 14 books on management, marketing and strategy.

Olga Budieri is the Global Head of Customer Experience at Dubai-based international courier, transportation and logistics services company Aramex International.

Olga has over 12 years’ experience in logistics, which has equipped her with a laser-focus on customer expectations, needs and experience landscape.

In 2020, she founded her own training initiative, Customer Experience by Olga, with which she is “on a mission to ignite the passion for Customer Experience in the Arab region”.

Olga is highly experienced in enterprise level experience transformation programs, change management, experience design, voice of customer, journey management & orchestration, and strategic planning to uplift B2B and B2C experience programs.

Starting off with Industrial Engineering, Olga has moved on to get an MBA in Management, as well as many qualifications in Account Management, Strategy and Customer Experience. She is Jordan’s ONLY Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP).

Olga is passionate about building awesome human centered experiences, CX thought leadership, value co-creation, mentoring and women rights advocacy.

Codin has 20 years of experience in banking, management consulting and energy sectors in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. 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.

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 top 10 banks in the Middle East, as Senior Vice President, Head of BPM Centre of Excellence and Experience Design. Currently he is the Chief Manager, Head of Customer Experience for the largest bank in Oman, Bank Muscat.

Codin has a Bachelor and Master degree in Organizational Management. He is also a certified Lean Six Sigma black belt. He is a frequent speaker and publisher for his expertise areas and enjoys challenging different organizational management practices for the benefits of the customers and the employees. He advocates upon designing the organization around the successful customer outcome, removing the silos, 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, sport practitioner, investor, heavy traveler and reader, tech savvy, gourmet and art collector.

Gabriela has 17 years experience in retail and banking industries.

Her main areas of expertise cover development of strategic partnerships and Customer Experience design and implementation.

During the last four years, Gabriela was in charge with the leadership of the CX function in BNP Paribas Personal Finance as well as with the transformation management of the brokers partnership experience.

She is passionate with the Customer Centric Culture and she was actively involved in the international activity starting with 2019 in conferences and as judge of the CX Awards.

Hussein has over 18 years of solid holistic Omnichannel Marketing Communication experience in the space leading and building seamless Phygital Customer Experience Journeys within multinational agencies (JWT, Leo Burnett, and TBWA) and Fortune 500 companies (Virgin Mobile, Red Bull, Nissan Motor Co.), across the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and India region.

He was among the first batch of WPP MENA employees to receive the renowned WPP Young High Potential Leaders award from Sir Martin Sorrell (ex Chairman and Worldwide President of WPP) and Bob Jeffrey (ex Chairman and Worldwide President of JWT). In 2017, by nomination from the Global Chairman and Patron of the World Marketing Congress, Hussein has been featured in the 50 most influential digital marketing leaders listing. Furthermore, Hussein has been voted by the Huffington Post as among the 10 people changing the marcomm landscape in the MENA region, and in Gulf Marketing Review’s GMR’s list of 40 of the brightest marketing professionals under the age of 40 in the Middle East. After a 2 years stint with hug digital, as its Chief Digital and Operating Officer, which he grew exponentially till he lead to its sale to WPP, Hussein joins Nissan Motor Co. as General Manager Digital and Customer Experience for Africa, Middle East, India, and Turkey, for Nissan and Datsun brands, to be responsible for its Digital Transformation. Furthermore, Hussein plays an active role in the advisory council of the World Marketing Congress, as a Director with the Customer Institute, and as an expert advisor in ISMA (International Social Media Association).

Hussein is also a speaker at various conferences throughout the EMEA region, a weekly guest speaker on numerous TV and Radio stations, and a jury member in renowned global festivals.

Elly Domene is a globally recognized thought leader in customer experience who firmly believes that when customer insights form the foundation of corporate strategy and execution – businesses, employees, customers and partners thrive.

As a member of the leadership team, Elly’s mission is to collaborate across all functions and evolve the organization strategically and steadily towards competitive distinction in customer experience.

Customer experience at global scale is her life’s work and personal joy. As a certified, Executive Customer Experience professional (CCXP), she is an expert at designing and implementing integrated feedback systems that fuel Sales, Marketing, HR, Product, Engineering and Executive Teams with macro and micro trends and insights needed to continually optimize the customer and employee experience.

Elly is also certified in business process management and in human centred design –  enabling value optimization at the human level.

Sue has more than 20 years of experience working in the B2B high-tech sector as CMO, VP of Marketing, chief CX strategist, and other key organizational leadership roles. She focuses her time in helping organizations differentiate and grow by coaching them how to be customer-centric, advising them on their digital transformation initiatives, and collaborating with them to design omnichannel experiences that engage employees and deliver customer value. Other areas of focus include customer journey mapping, root cause analysis, VoE, VoC, and CX performance. She believes strongly that aligning culture, EX, and CX drives growth.

Rodrigo has over 15+ years implementing Customer Experience (CX), Employee Experience (EX) and Net Promoter System (NPS) programs throughout Latin America both as an executive and as a consultant.
Rodrigo founded Loyalty Metrics in 2014, a Customer Experience Management consulting and training firm helping businesses achieve customer centric growth.
He has a firm conviction that the future and sustainability of businesses is in understanding their customers’ needs, acting on their feedback and then continuously evolving their strategy and operations to achieve customer loyalty and profitable growth.

Rodrigo holds a Master´s degree in Management from Harvard University and is a Customer
Loyalty and NPS® Certified expert from Satmetrix.

Mohamad is a Customer Experience Advisor and Consultant, focusing on research, development, training and delivery of Customer Experience Management frameworks and solutions.

He has more than 15 years of experience in consulting and cross-functional leadership roles and had several engagements with organizations in the United States, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Sudan.

He is also one of only ten globally authorized resource and training providers for Certified Customer Experience Professionals (CCXP) and has published many articles on the topic of Customer Experience on designated platforms like CXPA Blog, Customer Think, Customer Value Creation Blog and CXM.world.

Francis has >20+ years of international experience in the technology and energy industries, having had numerous P&L and high impact leadership roles with global leaders such as Accenture, SAP, HP, Microsoft and ExxonMobil. During this time, Francis has worked across Asia, Europe and the United States.

Gökhan is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). He is the first and the only CCXP in Turkey, one of the 1000 in the world. He is founder and leads the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) Istanbul Network since 2018. Also he’s selected as 2020 Board of Directors of CXPA. He’s a jury member and chair of  judges in prestigious customer experience awards such as International CX Awards, UK CX Awards and European Customer Centricity Awards.

He’s the winner of “2019 CX Impact Awards” and selected as “2019 Top 25 CX Leader of The Year” and “2020 Top 150 Global Thought Leader and Influencer”. He worked as a CX practitioner in Telecom, Banking and Energy sectors for almost 10 years. Currently, he works as Customer Experience Advisor at Pisano. He’s writing articles for Harvard Business Review Turkey, CX Magazine and CX Network. He is a part time lecturer at MEF University and gives Customer Experience Management courses. He’s an international keynote speaker and gives training and consultancy to companies for better customer experiences.

Dr. Michael Karchov is a recognized business design innovation leader, specializing in business consulting, customer value analysis and value proposition design.

Michael is currently a Managing Partner, a global executive in charge of a portfolio of business consulting and training services at Entrespace Group, a business design firm.

Prior to Entrespace, Michael enjoyed a 20-year career in IBM, which spun a range of global executive and consulting roles, and where he founded and led consulting practices, providing business and technology services to IBM corporate clients across many industries and continents.

Michael holds a M.Sc. with Honors and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics

As founder and CEO of Futurelab, Stefan has been developing winning customer strategies, CEM, CX, customer journey management and customer centric innovation, for over 20 years now. He has learned the hard way how to bring you profit opportunities, practical ideas and concepts that allow you to create a great customer experience, differentiate your business in the market place and even transform your industry. In other words –  practices that make your customers more loyal, happier, and more likely to recommend you.
Stefan has had the opportunity towork with senior teams at companies like Volkswagen, Vodafone,  Lexus, Toyota, Vodafone Group, ING,  Heineken, Philips,  and many B2B stars.
Stefan is an accomplished speaker with a long trackrecord. He regularly publishes whitepapers and delivered many webinars, which can be found here: https://www.futurelab.net/inspiration
Stefan is Net Promoter® Certified Associate, and  a juror at the International CX Award, the Webbies Awards, and the LOVIE Awards.

Having worked across various industries in People and Customer Leadership and Transformation roles, Amjad is a multi-award winning leader and has recently been recognised amongst the Top Customer Experience Leaders globally and Top CX Stars 2021.

Aimal Khan is a Certified Experience Economy Expert, Six Sigma Green Belt and Strategic Pyramids Professional with over 19 years of cross-industry experience, he worked in Management Consulting, Sales, Delivery and Solutions. Over the years working extensively with clients he evolved professionally by developing niche expertise blending best of both worlds Customer Experience and Data Analytics. He has the unique ability to adopt a holistic approach across the value chain and key data points focusing on the right people, right processes, the right culture, right tools, and right use cases maximizing value generation, customer-centric innovation, and business growth.

Passionate experience transformation executive and change agent. Sherpa for new and developing experience obsessed organizations. Thought leader and innovator for ways of engaging associates, customers and partners. Believes sustainable change requires embedding customer and experience capabilities into all parts of an organization.

Skilled in creating CX business value and systematically changing organizations to align around experience and drive financial impact. She specializes in enabling brands with skills and competencies like design thinking, journey management and value mapping to drive sustainable shifts in how organizations work to achieve results. Over 25 years of transforming experiences working in and with brands such as Sysco, AT&T, State Farm, Dale Carnegie, CommScope, Invisalign, Ciena, Freeman, Sodexho, Equifax and MoneyGram.

Diane is the Emeritus Chair and recent CEO for the Customer Experience Professionals Association, speaks and conducts workshops all over the world to help transform CX strategy into action. Diane earned a Master’s in Clinical Psychology and a Masters of Business Administration. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), and holds certifications in Voice of Customer, Customer Experience Management, Net Promoter Score and CX Design and Innovation LUMA certified.

A little bit more personal me….
Passionate experience transformation professional and change agent. Sherpa for new and developing customer and employee obsessed leaders. Thought leader and innovator for ways of engaging associates and customers. Spirited entrepreneur. Skilled in business benefits development and systematically embedding experience into an organization. Believe that brands who win choose to focus on human and emotional elements. Develops the hearts and minds of others. Firm executor in the ‘pay it forward’ model. Writer, speaker and artist.

Olivier is as passionate about customers as he is driven toward results. The customer experience radical change plans that he led as executive at Orange and E.ON for over 12 years achieved spectacular customer results (average +10 points NPS per year). These plans are  used as case studies by leading consultancy and analysts firms. Holding executive positions at Orange and E.ON helped him develop his customer operations skills with ‘practical inspiration.’ Olivier provides through Paris-based CX-Impact, personalized advice and coaching support for leaders who want to start, accelerate or reboot their customer experience strategies. That covers the overall orchestration of a management system and goes from mobilizing the organisation and creating a coalition around the opportunity, to understanding what capabilities are required, how to fill the gaps and measure success. Olivier’s credibility and rare energy levels help leaders and board members stay confident and relentlessly focused on the desired outcomes despite the odd resistance to change!

Prof. Rath has been active in a variety of teaching positions since 2008.  She has taught general business administration, economics, customer experience and international management at the University of Hamburg and at various private universities.

Prof. Rath gained international industry experience through various organizational and management tasks in international mechanical engineering, the international textile industry and the waste disposal and recycling industry.

In research and teaching, she is particularly concerned with service management, customer experience and international human resources.

Holly Richardson is a digital marketing and CX transformation specialist with more than 16 years’ experience in London, Dubai, Madrid, Germany and the United States. For several years, she helped the B2B arm of Unilever transform its data, systems, people and capability in order to increase the company’s customer centricity, operational efficiency and sales effectiveness. She recently joined Microsoft as their Digital Marketing Director – Middle East and Africa on the mission to empower every company and every individual achieve more.
Holly has won several external awards for her use of innovation, data-driven marketing and purpose-driven strategy. She has also been recognized globally for the impact she has made on Unilever’s business, and was a finalist for CX Leader of the Year. More than anything, Holly is passionate about driving real value for real people – customers, employees and the wider community.

As CX Leader of the Year 2020, James is recognised as one of the UK’s leading Experience Management experts. James is a Customer Experience strategist and Business Transformation expert with a unique value add proposition across Sales, Operations, IT/CRM/Digital, Strategy and governance.

Jaap Wilms consults and supports international companies and especially CX Programme Managers in bringing their VOC, CX and NPS Programmes to the next level. With 20 years of international experience in CX, he e.g. designed and ran best-in-class NPS Programmes in several countries in Europe and Asia. With this real-life leading corporate experience, combined with a broad and in-depth expertise and his original, energetic thinking he is sure to inspire, challenge and support you.

Jaap is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP, GlobalCEM, SMX), a frequently asked speaker, a guest lecturer at universities on CX and Strategic Innovation, and holds an off-beat degree in Iconology. Most important, he loves anchovies, roquefort and coffee (though not mixed).

Over three decades, Mike Wittenstein has successfully advised leaders and their teams during times of immense change. His robust story-driven process helps bring clarity to their stories, strategic plans, brands, reorganizations, customer experiences, and game plans. A serial innovator, Mike started one of the world’s first digital agencies (GALILEO), customer experience practices (IBM), and a hybrid strategy/experience/story consultancy (Storyminers). He has advised leaders in specialty retail and healthcare, hospitality, professional services, associations, technology, and other services-based industries on change, digital transformation, design thinking, business storytelling, innovation, employee and customer experience, service design, and strategic communications.

Mike’s client roster includes: AT&T, Adobe, Apple, Chick-fil-A, Delta Airlines, Holiday Inn, IBM, the University of Phoenix, Piedmont Hospital, Transitions Optical, and hundreds of others. Together, his clients have captured almost $2 billion in added value by applying his ideas and processes. Mike is an award-winning speaker, experience designer, advisor, coach, and consultant with experience in 24 countries. Based on two years of study and work abroad, Mike brings cross-cultural awareness and the ability to work in four languages – English (fluent), Portuguese (stage-capable), Spanish (conversational), and Russian (basic). Meeting planners, event organizers, and corporate trainers recognize him for his approachable, understandable, and positive presence.

Mike is an often-quoted thought leader, interview guest, and top-ranked social media contributor. Mike travels from Atlanta and works in all national and international markets virtually, in live sessions, in-person, on-stage, in hybrid events, as part of recorded events, and with the press.

Betül is a customer experience professional and founder of Elephant.
She works with organizations to create value to their customers, employees and partners, to provide a competitive advantage and set sustainable and measurable values.
Prior to that, she was Head of Marketing and Customer Experience at TEB BNP Paribas and taken various positions in multiple countries leading the customer experience, marketing and sales teams. She had the opportunity to work on an international start-up bank as Head of Sales and Marketing.
She is expert in customer journey mapping, design and implementation of voice of customer programs and design thinking methodology.
She is a regular judge at the customer experience awards, a member of Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) and also a global best-selling author with a CX book. She is a professional executive coach and a lean change agent.