2023 Speakers

Gilad joined Pollen Street in May 2018 as an EIR and came on board as Digital Operating Partner in September 2020 with a focus on supporting the digital transformation of the portfolio companies and supporting the Private Equity team with the pre/post deal tech-related activities.

Prior to PSC, Gilad was the Head of Fintech at Lloyds Banking Group. Prior to joining Lloyds, Gilad worked in a variety of roles as a founder, CEO, CFO, Board member and advisory board member in multiple fintechs and cyber including EZBOB, Satago, Paze, Insightix and others.

Gilad is a Chartered Accountant and an E&Y alumni (hi-tech and M&A practice).

Sachin Anandikar joined Pemberton in 2021 as a Managing Director for Working Capital Finance and has taken on an extended role as a Chief Technology Officer for Pemberton. He is responsible for setting vision and strategy for technology including platforms, innovation and change, resourcing, and prioritization of technology initiatives across the firm. He brings over 20 years’ experience in financial services at Greensill Capital, HSBC, Citi and Morgan Stanley.

Sachin has led large teams in various verticals including technology, risk and product functions and has extensive experience in a wide range of products including loans, receivables finance, securitisations and credit cards. Sachin was responsible for creating the distribution desk for HSBC’s Global Trade and Receivables Finance business in Singapore, Hong Kong, London and New York.

Sachin holds an MS in Computer Science from Illinois State University, US and an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago, US.

A digital and technology leader with over 20 years of experience, Lyndon began his career with international Banking Group Societe Generale where he held the roles of Chief Technology Officer at Kleinwort Hambros and as UK Chief Technology Officer at Société Générale. After serving as the Group Technology Director at Amalgamated Metal Corporation, Lyndon joined the Business Growth Fund, where he was Head of Information Technology and Business Intelligence. In 2021, Lyndon joined Triton Partners to lead a multi-year business and digital transformation strategy.

Christophe Aulnette joined Apax Partners in 2020 as a Senior Advisor for Tech & Telecom, with the aim to help build a portfolio of new investments with high growth potential. He has more than 30 years of experience in the management of international technology companies. After serving as CEO of Microsoft South Asia and Microsoft France and then Chairman of the Management Board of Altran Technologies, Christophe joined Netgem as its CEO in 2009 to lead the company’s international expansion. Starting in 2013, first in Singapore and later in Paris, he developed an investment and operations consulting business for companies in the Technology sector. Christophe holds an engineering degree from Telecom ParisTech.

Thomas has worked professionally with cyber security since 2016, and have experience from roles as CISO, Team lead and cyber security advisor, mainly within the industries of IT, Finance and Government.

Thomas joined Verdane in 2022. As part of the Elevate team, Verdane’s team of in-house operational experts, he is responsible for leading the cyber security area. This includes enabling portfolio companies to build effective cyber security programs, support the investment team in DDs and investment opportunities, and continuously improve security internally.

David is joint Managing Partner and co-founder of FPE Capital. He worked in the telecoms and corporate advisory worlds before moving into private equity investing. His advisory career was at the Fleming investment bank and then JP Morgan, at both of which his experience helping small technology and telecoms firms to raise equity built on his interest in growth company financing.

David focuses on the data, IT services and cyber sectors. He also leads the firm’s investor relations and fundraising activities, including the recent close of FPE Fund III at £185m.

When not working he can be found walking dogs, playing tennis or planting trees in London or Dorset.

Ami is one of the pioneers of the digital securities tokenization market and Co-Founder and CEO of Ownera. Ownera delivers a distribution and liquidity network for tokenized assets, where all nodes are regulated financial institutions. The network is based on the the FinP2P open-source interoperability protocol, which Ami was instrumental in designing. Prior to Ownera Ami was a co-founder and managing partner of SPiCE VC, where he co-founded Securitize and invested in multiple companies in the security token and Blockchain space. Ami arrived in the blockchain world after co-founding and leading several startups and investing as a VC in the tech industry.

Henrik joined Elevate, Verdane’s team of in-house operational experts, as Chief Technology Officer in June 2020. As CTO of Verdane Elevate, Henrik supports the technology and product organisations in our portfolio with architectural and organisational expertise to help them successfully deliver on high-priority projects. Through Henrik, Verdane connects relevant persons within our holdings to leverage the technology and methodology knowledge present in the Verdane portfolio and to help all our companies to scale and succeed. Henrik is an experienced CTO and has been key in scaling several SaaS companies through his expertise in both Agile methods and System Architecture.

Co-Founder of InReach Ventures, where he has been pioneering the use of technology and data in Venture Capital. Previously Partner at Balderton Capital (Benchmark Europe).

During the last 18 years Roberto has invested in companies across Europe, including Wooga (acquired by Playtika), Depop (acquired by Etsy), Contentful, Vivino, Oberlo (acquired by Shopify), Soldo, Eneba, Craft and others.

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Christopher works as a CDO for FSN Capital, based out of Oslo, Norway, where he works to bring private equity into the modern age. His background from Google brings a different approach to innovation to the finance industry. Chris is known for challenging the status quo, and having an untraditional approach to solving problems.

Alban started his professional career in 2003 as ISD and CFO in an SME (Le Delas). He then implemented the accounting, supply chain and sales systems as well as the website. He was responsible for the organization of the financial management: reporting, cash-flow and banking relationships.

In 2005, Alban became a sales and marketing manager in SSII (ECS and Neurons). In 2007 he became project director at Pierre & Vacances. He was then responsible for the restructuring post integration of Center Parcs: HR, purchasing and IT.
In 2012 he became a manager and a technical leader at Criteo. He was in charge of big data management (Hadoop, Vertica, Spark, Kafka), scalability (30 billion requests per day) and innovation (patent filed for user tracking), as well as the recruitment, management and motivation of high-level teams.
Since 2008, Alban is Partner at Ring Capital an Impact Growth Fund.

Alban is a web/tech expert with broad operational experience and graduated from Ecole Centrale de Lyon (2001).

Hind El Gaidi oversees financial information and valuation activities at Astorg across funds.

In her capacity, she is responsible for the financial communication to LPs for reporting and fundraising activities.
Next to that, she is closely involved on the design of the data strategy at Astorg.
Hind started her career in the Deals & Valuations team at PwC Amsterdam where she advised corporations on mergers and acquisitions, business restructurings and strategy. During her time in Luxembourg, she was responsible for advising on valuations to funds investing in Private Equity, Private Debt, Venture Capital and Infrastructure.
Hind is a board member of the Luxembourg Private Equity Association (LPEA) and is a representative & founding member of the Luxembourg Valuation Professionals Association (LVPA)
She is a Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, and holds an Executive MBA from Groningen University, The Netherlands and an MSc. in Financial Management from Nyenrode University, The Netherlands. Prior to that, she obtained her Bachelor in Economics & International Law at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France.

Piers Evans is Chief Commercial Officer at AtomInvest, who build next-gen technologies for the private markets and asset management space. Before Atominvest, Piers worked in Business Development at Cinnober and IHS Markit. Piers has a Masters in Computer Science from Birkbeck, University of London.

Walid leads Soho Square’s fundraising activities and has overall responsibility for the operations of the firm. Prior to Soho Square, he co-founded the private equity firm Core Capital in 2004, having worked previously in strategy consulting, operations and investment banking. Walid also founded and sold one of the largest internet service providers in the Middle East.

He has a BSc in Mechanical Engineering, a BSc in Finance and an Msc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT).

Marco is an Operating Partner focused on technology enablement, digital transformation, and product development.

He has founded several technology start-ups including Ship2Shop (now part of DPD) and is an active business angel. Previously, Marco spent 12 years as Director of equity sales & trading with Wells Fargo and Baird in London and San Francisco.

Marco received an MBA from IESE in Barcelona and a Masters in Astrophysics from University College London.

He speaks fluent Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Josh’s career has been devoted to helping growth stage companies navigate through and solve complex problems—from operations, to go-to-market, and strategy—and achieve milestones. Most recently, Josh helped build SourceScrub, the leading Deal-Sourcing and Private Company Intelligence platform that M&A professionals use to find, research, track, and engage businesses of interest.

Over the past five years and as one of the first employees, Josh has operated in a number of roles, starting with building the Customer Success function and most recently with leading Product strategy. SourceScrub has now been through two successful recapitalizations and has established itself as the market leader for private company information.

Matt focuses on business transformation for Federated Hermes Private Markets, with his work centred on Global Private Equity. Projects include implementation of operating models for new fund products and jurisdictions, fund structuring, fund finance solutions, and driving operational efficiency and effectiveness through the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Matt is leading the private markets data platform project to democratise and disseminate information via dashboards to clients and management. Prior to this, Matt was a Commercial Advisor for the Cabinet Office at the UK Government and worked in audit at KPMG in their Private Equity Group. He is a Chartered Accountant and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Accountancy.

James leads Origination at NorthEdge having spent seven years in Corporate Finance at Clearwater International where he was a Director responsible for generating mid-market opportunities and managing the Deal Origination team.

James has experience across a number of sectors meeting with management teams to understand their plans and joined NorthEdge to identify new investment opportunities via growth and development capital, management buy-outs, equity release and buy-and-build opportunities.

Frister founded Gain.pro in 2018. Today, he leads the company as CEO with a mission to build it out into a global market leader. Prior to Gain.pro, Frister spent his career in consulting and private equity with Bain, Gilde and Bridgepoint. He combines this experience with a deep passion for technology.

Vera Huang is responsible for product and Go-To-Market strategy for Data Services, a tech-enabled offering that streamlines and automates data aggregation and reporting for alternatives investors.

Currently based in London, Vera has over 10 years of experiences across financial services, fintech, and consulting. Prior to IQ-EQ, Vera has spent more than 3 years at BlackRock’s alternatives technology business eFront as Presales/Solutions Engineer. Based out of Singapore, Vera was responsible for driving product adoption in the APAC region as functional expert in a client facing capacity.

Paul is the Director of International Sales at Anduin, a Silicon Valley technology company revolutionizing the investor experience in the private markets so it’s as efficient and transparent as the public markets. Prior to Anduin, Paul held roles at Natixis Investment Managers and COMGEST, where he spent years designing investment solutions for institutional investors in Europe and APAC. Paul is a graduate of EDHEC Business School, where he received his Master’s Degree in Corporate Finance & Banking.

Vivan is the Head of Data at Glendower Capital, responsible for data management and strategy across the platform. Prior to Glendower, Vivan was at HPS Investment Partners as a Vice President of Data Analytics, responsible for the risk and front-office focused technology and data initiatives. Previously, Vivan was a Technology Analyst at Hayfin Capital Management for four years and Finisterre Capital for three years.

Vivan holds a BSc in Economics with Applied Computing from the University of Buckingham.

Jérôme is a member of Hamilton Lane’s Direct Equity investment team, based in London. He works on the origination, evaluation and due diligence of direct equity opportunities, with a focus on Impact transactions, which he leads in EMEA.

Prior to joining Hamilton Lane in 2017, he worked at HSBC and Greenhill & Co.

Jérôme received a B.A. in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford

Brian Mason joined BC Partners in Jan 2022. Previously, Brian was Head of Private Assets Technology & Change at Schroders Capital where he was responsible for technology transformation projects and software development. Prior to this, Brian was Global Head of Client Ops Technology at HSBC for nearly 5 years responsible for a range of technology change initiatives. In his career he has also worked across multiple Investment Banks, Barclays, RBS & UBS in other senior technology roles.

Katie May is a Managing Director at leading legal technology company, Ontra. Formerly a lawyer in the debt finance team at Norton Rose Fulbright, she joined Ontra in 2019 to expand the company’s international business. Ontra provides legal technology solutions to over 500 private investment firms to expedite and optimise contracting, dealmaking and fundraising. Ontra received $200m in Series B funding from Blackstone in 2021.

Laura joined Cinven in October 2022 as ESG Director. Prior to joining Cinven, she was Global Head of Sustainability at Compass Group PLC where she led the ESG and sustainability agenda internally and externally including across 45 markets on climate action, food waste, and human rights. In addition, she has worked in sustainability consulting across a range of corporate clients and has helped several tech start-ups reach scale. She started her career in infrastructure finance at Macquarie Capital Funds. Laura has an MBA from INSEAD and a degree from the University of Oxford and was named in Sustainability Magazine’s top 100 women in sustainability 2022.

Ash has more than 25 years of experience in IT Management and Cyber. As joined ECI in 2000, where he is IT Director and Head of Cyber. Ash’s role involves directing and controlling the development, implementation, and maintenance of ECI’s information and communications strategy and systems against business objectives. Ash also works with ECI’s portfolio using his cyber expertise to help build their cyber roadmaps based on gap analysis. Prior to joining ECI, Ash worked at an independent IT consultancy working for the likes of Boots and Cadburys.

ECI is a leading private equity investor, investing in growth businesses valued up to £300m. It has over 45 years of experience, collaborating with management teams to build successful global businesses. With a track record of 266 investments, ECI invests as either a majority or a minority investor. ECI is currently investing its eleventh buyout fund and manages approximately £1.7 billion on behalf of our institutional investors.

Suzanne is the Partner responsible for deal origination and advisory relationships at ECI, the growth-focused mid-market private equity firm. Since joining ECI in 2011, Suzanne has driven the digitization of the origination function, implementing Salesforce in 2016 and championing the effective use of data and machine learning for sourcing and pipeline management in the business, including the development of Amplifind, ECI’s proprietary AI lead sourcing and prioritisation tool for platform deals and bolt-ons.

With the penetration at which cloud software continues to be consumed today, companies have become major prosumers of data. Mina’s focus is on the next generation of security the enterprise will need to adopt to ensure data is protected and reputations are kept intact. He led MMC’s investments into cyber security businesses Red Sift and Senseon.

When he is not obsessing about data and security, the engineer in Mina naturally pulls him towards entrepreneurs who pursue what are often IP-rich or ‘deep tech’ ideas - which if pulled off, would lead to profound shifts in the way in which industries and societies operate. This theme includes investments he has led in Agile Analog, which is automating analog IP design for the semiconductor industry; SLAMcore, which uses computer vision to provide spatial understanding for autonomous robotics; and Synthesia, which uses deep learning to create a new generation of synthetic media - enabling new methods of communication.

Mina has a First-Class Honours in MEng Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College London and previously worked as an aerodynamics engineer for Williams Formula 1 team. At Williams he worked on race-car design and development as well as control software and testing. Prior to joining MMC, Mina worked at Lazard in London, advising companies on Equity Capital Markets and M&A transactions across sectors including industrials and technology. Going deeper Mina is a keen basketball player (though his standards have dropped, he is still playing in a local league!) and in the past, he built and developed software for a 3D printer capable of generating miniature objects (for use cases he can tell you about in person).

As President & Managing Partner, Jean has driven Jolt’s vision and led its development since 2012. The impetus behind the founding of Jolt was Jean’s realization that the best risk-adjusted returns typically come from late stage & growth rounds in companies that no longer face technology risk.

Prior to founding Jolt Capital, Jean was Managing Partner at Sofinnova Partners, running the IT practice with a focus on telecom and wireless markets. Preceding his career as an investor, Jean was the CEO and founder of 4 companies with successful exits, including SLP InfoWare, which he sold to Gemplus (now Gemalto, XPAR:GTO) in 2000 for $60m and then became VP Telecom Solutions & Applications for the larger group.

Jean graduated from Telecom ParisTech and has a post-graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence. He is senior lecturer at Telecom ParisTech and HEC Paris, a former Chairman of the International Venture Club and a Member of Henkel’s Henkel X mentorship program.

Jean is currently a board member of Sinequa, NIL Technology, Interel, and Virta. Previously, Jean was a board member of; Esmertec/Myriad (SIX:MYRN), Authentec (NASDAQ:AUTH) before its acquisition by Apple in 2012 for $356m, Heptagon before its acquisition by AMS (SIX:AMS) in 2016 for close to $1b, FOGALE Sensation before its sale to a consumer electronics giant, and most recently Skill & You before its sale to Andera Partners. Jean also led Jolt Capital’s successful investment and exit in Verimatrix (EURONEXT:VMX).

David is an Investment Director at River Capital and launched fund:AI – the Norths first dedicated AI, ML and Data Science fund in October 22. He has spent the last 10 years combining investment and operational roles including leading AI practices and as a CTO for a number of private equity backed tech enabled companies.