Judges

SAP Innovation Awards 2022

2022 Judges

Meet the 2022 Judging Panel.

Judges Snowflake: NOTE: If the first SAP judges changes the code will need to manually be updated.

Thought and Community Leaders

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Carl Olofson

Carl Olofson has performed research and analysis for IDC since 1997, and manages IDC’s Database Management Software service, as well as supporting the Data Integration Software and Data Streaming Pipelines services. Mr. Olofson’s research involves following sales and technical developments in the structured data management (SDM) markets, including database management systems (DBMS), which includes non-schematic database management systems, data lake managers, navigational database management systems, low code database management systems, and memory-optimized shared data managers. Also covered is the database administration and development software market. He also contributes to Big Data research and provides specialized coverage of Hadoop and other Big Data technologies. He advises clients on market and technology directions as well as performing supply and demand-side primary research to size, forecast, and segment the database and related software markets.

Mr. Olofson has worked in the IT industry since 1978, including two years of application development consulting, 10 years of database and tools software development, four years of product consulting, and three years as a senior product manager. His career has been dedicated to effective and practical data and metadata design, development, and management for enterprises.

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Chandra Gnanasambandam

Chandra co-leads McKinsey’s Global Software, Hardware and Services practices. Chandra was also the co-founder of Fuel, McKinsey’s practice that works with Startups and the investor ecosystem. Chandra focuses on serving some of the world’s large Cloud software companies on topics related to Product and GTM Transformations.

Prior to McKinsey, Chandra held several operating roles at BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems. Chandra has graduate engineering degrees from Georgia Tech in the US and University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

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Geoff Scott

Geoff Scott, CEO of ASUG, believes that the connections we make for our members have the potential to become career-defining relationships that inspire innovation and success for their organizations. His forward-thinking leadership prioritizes helping our members make the most of their investment in SAP technologies. To that end, Geoff works closely with customers, members, the SAP Executive Board, and the extensive partner ecosystem to amplify the voice of the SAP customer. Additionally, he enjoys the time he’s able to spend with our
members at ASUG conferences, events, as well as in informal meetings.

Geoff has more than 20 years of leadership and technology experience, including seven years of extensive SAP implementation and operations experience. His background in the automotive, food, retail, and startup spaces brings valuable,
broad-based experience to ASUG. Past positions include CIO for TOMS Shoes,
where he led the implementation of SAP; CIO at JBS; and senior leadership
positions at Ford Motor Company. Before becoming CEO, Geoff was an ASUG member and served on the board.

Geoff has served on a number of philanthropic boards and is the founding member of the Denver CIO Executive Council. He is a proud Spartan and alum of Michigan State University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in accounting as well as his MBA. In his spare time, Geoff is an avid sports photographer in his
community and challenges himself to keep up his application development skills
by creating apps for his own enjoyment and use. Connect with Geoff on Twitter
@gscott16.

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Helge Sanden

Helge Sanden is the publisher of the SAP community portal IT-Onlinemagazin.de and founder of the 'Forum for SAP®', the largest SAP group on the XING business network with more than 32,000 members and aims to connect all German SAP managers, experts and top-level employees.

The IT-Onlinemagazin.de is a compact and entertaining guide, focussing on the economic benefits of matching SAP, partner and add-on solutions. And it offers suggestions and impulses for one's own area of responsibility in company environments.

Helge also presents this as a speaker at conferences and professional events, giving the idea of a beneficial community an even wider audience.

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Jens Hungershausen

Jens Hungershausen has been the chairman of DSAG since October 2020. Since 2012 he is CIO of the MEGA Group, a leading wholesaler in Germany for paints, varnishes, wall and floor coverings. Prior to this, he had been responsible for SAP processes and projects in various roles at MEGA since 1999.

The German-speaking SAP User Group (Deutschsprachige SAP-Anwendergruppe e. V., DSAG) is one of the most influential SAP user groups in the world. Its strong network comprises more than 60,000 members from over 3,600 companies, ranging from medium-sized businesses to DAX corporations, and representing all industries in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

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Jon Reed

Jon Reed is an independent analyst and Enterprise Irregular who blogs and videocasts on enterprise trends.

He is a cofounder of diginomica.com. Launched in the spring of 2013 by Jon and four other enterprise bloggers, diginomica.com provides original commentary and reporting on the digital enterprise. Jon has been involved in enterprise communities since 1995, including time spent building ERP recruiting and training firms.

These days, Jon is a roving blogger/analyst, and also counsels vendors and startups on go-to-market strategy.

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Laurie Ruettimann

For over 20 years, Laurie Ruettimann has been telling work-life
stories and building groundbreaking solutions to drive better employment
experiences, increase retention rates, and improve job satisfaction. Laurie is
a former human resources leader turned writer, entrepreneur, and speaker. CNN
recognized her as one of the top five career advisers in the United States, and
her work has been featured on NPR, The New Yorker, USA Today, The Wall Street
Journal, and Vox. She frequently delivers keynote speeches at business and
management events around the world and hosts a popular podcast focused on
fixing work. She lives with her husband and cats in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Laurie keynotes events all around the world and is featured on major media websites where she shares wisdom about HR, hiring trends, and technology. Her book Betting On You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career was published by Henry Holt & Company in January 2021.

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Owen Pettiford

Owen Pettiford has been working with SAP systems since 1994. His broad experience enables him to help clients understand how to implement SAP to maximize flexibility and value in ways that are approved by SAP. Since 2005, Owen has mainly worked to create architecture and designs based on the SAP reference architecture embracing cloud, APIs, in-memory and Fiori. He has completed 50+ SAP roadmaps across 12 industry sectors. After many years in consulting, Owen now works client side for Xoserve as a Senior Solution Architect and also blogs for Diginomica. He is also passonate about fitness in later life after becoming a qualified Personal Trainer at 50 and starting www.strive4.uk.

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Ronald van Loon

Ronald van Loon, Founder & CEO of Intelligent World a global tech event educational platform for global thought leaders, analysts & influencers, and Advisory Board Member & course advisor for leading professional certification training company Simplilearn, is an influencer & frequent public speaker for major AI, Big Data, IoT, and Data Science events. He is a globally recognized thought leader in the industry and has been globally ranked by Onalytica, Refenitiv, GlobalData research & Verdict Media and many others:

Nr 1 for AI, Big Data & Analytics, and Automation
Nr 2 Influencer in Cloud, Internet of Things, AI & Digital Transformation.

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Tamara McCleary

Tamara McCleary is a research scientist and full-time graduate student in-residence at Harvard University pursuing dual degrees. Research includes science, technology and public good; global catastrophic events, existential risk, life extension technologies, synthetic life, artificial general intelligence, and posthumanism.

Tamara is an active crew member for off-world projects with Proudly Human devoted to research into preparation for life off-world on the Moon, Mars and beyond including devising solutions for humans living in harsh conditions and resource-constrained environments on Earth.

Tamara is founder and CEO of global digital marketing agency, Thulium, and serves as a technology futurist and an advisor to leading global tech companies Amazon, Alexa, Oracle, SAP, Cisco, Dell, IBM, Mercer, Marsh & McLennan Companies, AT&T, Verizon, Citrix, and RSA Security.

SAP Judges

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Andre Bechtold

Andre Bechtold, SVP, Head of Value Experience, SAP SE, epitomizes a modernist vanguard. Unafraid of challenging the status quo, he has proven that efficiency and entrepreneurial thinking expedites attainment of business goals and objectives.

Since joining SAP in 2007, Andre has held a variety of senior management positions covering business critical areas such as development manager for the Digital Boardroom, chief of staff to the CEO and Head of Strategic & Corporate Services. Andre currently leads a cross-functional, multi-generational, diverse team of multi-potentialities as Head of Value Experience at SAP SE.

With a background in professional sport, Andre’s work ethic is that of a true team player who believes in the power of collective wisdom, which continues to be proven in the successful roll-out of new products and feature enhancements.
In 2020, Andre was awarded the prestigious Handelsblatt & Boston Consulting Group Forward Thinker Award for excellence in corporate strategy.

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Amogh Umbarkar

Amogh Umbarkar is VP, SAP Strategic Customer Engagements, Industry 4.0. He is a business development executive with core competencies in innovation centric strategy, growth execution and managing customer success. 20+ years of Industry experience focused on Enterprise software growth, business strategy, innovative product and market strategy, thought leadership and scaling ecosystem partnerships.

Specializes in bringing the right combination of industry expertise to drive continuous innovation by adopting Digital Transformation to create new business models. Amogh’s engagements put new ways of leveraging Industry 4.0, Intelligent technologies like Big Data, Machine Learning, IoT etc. at the core of driving measurable business outcomes.

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Benedikt Lehnert

Benedikt Lehnert is Chief Design Officer at SAP. He joined Microsoft in 2015 through the acquisition of Wunderlist, the world’s most loved cross-platform productivity app, where he was the Chief Design Officer. During his 4 years at Wunderlist he scaled the product team, helped raise funding from world-renowned investors such as Atomico and Sequoia Capital, making Wunderlist the first ever investment in a German startup by the legendary Silicon Valley firm.

Benedikt’s work is grounded in the belief that in the drastically changing 21st century, experience-led companies are the more successful businesses, which has led to Wunderlist secure numerous awards and still a cult-like following, and has driven his transformational work at Microsoft.

Benedikt is also a co-founder of Lyra, the best symbol-to-speech app for children with autism, and the color-blind simulator and contrast checker Stark. Benedikt is also the author of Typoguide, an international keynote speaker and angel investor in design-driven startups. His award-winning work has been featured in publications around the world.

Benedikt was born in a small town in Saarland, Germany where he grew up in a family of craftspeople, shaping his appreciation for things that have purpose and are well-made. In 2011, he then moved to Berlin to help build and shape the now thriving tech startup community. Today, Benedikt lives with his family in Greystones, Ireland and Princeton, NJ.

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Dan Lahl

Daniel Lahl, Global Vice President of Product Marketing at SAP, has extensive executive experience in cloud, data management, data warehousing and analytics. While at SAP, Dan has led Product Marketing for emerging technology initiatives, including Cloud Platforms, Data Integration, In-Memory Database and Mobility.

In 2019 and 2020, Dan was named one of the world’s most influential Product Marketing professionals by the Product Marketing Alliance.

Dan is currently focused on growing SAP’s Cloud Business Technology Platform business; expanding the reach of SAP’s Cloud Database, EIM, Integration, Extension, and Intelligent Technologies portfolios. Dan has degrees from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago.

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Daniel Foerderer

Daniel Foerderer is Chief Operating Officer for Customer Engagement & Experience (CE&X), Customer Success.

Daniel is responsible for securing, steering, and transforming the CE&X business while propelling the Customer First, SAP Second, LoB Third mindset. CE&X COO and his office enable and fuel the ongoing CE&X transformation, providing a consistent and scalable framework and service level across all LoBs as well as a strong interlock across the Customer Success board area and beyond – to reach our North Star, Customer Success.

Having over 15 years’ experience at SAP and a diploma in informatics and business economics from the University of Mannheim, Daniel is a senior executive demonstrating excellence in driving efficient business operations, successfully implementing frameworks and processes, and change management.

During his career path, he has led several global teams and programs in Business Intelligence and Analytics, Governance Risk and Compliance, Corporate Audit, Maintenance Go-To-Market, DBS COO, and, lastly, acting as DBS Customer Success Services COO.

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Eamon Ida

Eamon Ida is from beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
After earning his BBA in Marketing from Simon Fraser University, he spent three
years in B2C marketing in the financial and consumer products industries. Eamon
then joined SAP in 2015 as a product marketer specializing in SAP analytics and
business intelligence solutions. He then joined SAP Ariba in 2017 to lead
solution marketing for Ariba Network supplier solutions. Based in New York City
since 2020, Eamon now leads SAP Business Network Solution Marketing.

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Helen Dwight

Helen Dwight is Global Head of Marketing for Industries at SAP, with over 20 years experience in the IT industry spanning regional, country and global roles based in the US, UK, Brazil and Latin America. Besides Marketing, her management experience spans technical pre-sales, product management and field/channel marketing.

As someone that enjoys driving projects from strategy to execution, her passion is in helping clients and partners to articulate the real value of technology and use it to drive greater purpose within their own organizations.

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Katrin Lehmann

Katrin Lehmann is SVP and Head of Customer Innovation & Maintenance for SAP SE. Katrin joined SAP in 2004. Since then, she has held several leadership positions, including Chief Data Officer and Head of S/4HANA Cloud Data Management. Throughout her career, Katrin has always had a strong focus on driving challenging topics to achieve customer success, operational excellence and a superior employee experience. Currently, Katrin is the Head of SAP’s Customer Innovation & Maintenance.

Customer Innovation & Maintenance accelerates customer success through an end-to-end customer engagement of defining, building, and maintaining products. Fostering SAP’s cloud strategy, the unit reinvents businesses by building new applications for strategic markets on BTP, by providing customers with essential solutions for their business transformation, and by supporting and maintaining hybrid realities for our customers.

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Kurt Bauer

Kurt Bauer is Global SVP of SAP Premium Engagements which provides premium services to SAP’s top customers, especially with its flagship product SAP MaxAttention. SAP Premium Engagements is a key pillar of SAP's Customer Success DNA and committed to guide SAP accounts with expertise from across SAP safely on their journey to cloud-enabled intelligent enterprises. Kurt also
touches on what the future of SAP Services & Support will look like to
continue adding value to our customers' success with SAP.

In 2013, Kurt engaged into the SAP China Growth Plan and was living in Beijing from 2015 to 2021, serving in different executive roles. Most recently he was the General Manager for SAP Services in GC and the Region Head for SAP Customer Engagement & Experience in GC. SAP Executive and Supervisory Boards leverage Kurt’s GC expertise for strategic business advisory.

Kurt joined SAP in 1995 as an Oracle database expert and developed his career in services, product, and education functions. He has built a global network and gained deep expertise in all kinds of customer situations. Kurt also developed several SAP patents. 

His credo: "Only our customers' success can be our success!"

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Michael Bruchey

Michael Bruchey has over 35 years’ experience working for hardware, software and consulting organizations.

As a graduate of Florida International University, Michael started his career as a college new hire for a major computer hardware company as a sales representative. He has held Director and Vice President level positions at several leading software and services companies.

Michael has been with SAP for thirteen years, where he has lead organizations focused on supporting the partner ecosystem. He presently serves as Global VP working closely with SAP’s largest and most strategic system integration partners.

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Michelle Craig

Michelle Craig is VP of Thought Leadership & Integrated Marketing at SAP Concur and a strategic marketing leader and business partner—guiding high-profile strategies and campaigns and driving global business results.

Michelle works across the global marketing team to unify messaging across channels, elevating SAP Concur thought leadership presence and accelerating business transformation.

Michelle’s earlier roles included senior corporate communications and agency leadership positions, working with both start-ups and established global companies in the tech sector, and leading creative programs and high-performing teams with results beyond expectations.

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Mike Keilen

Mike Keilen has over 30 years’ experience in the enterprise software industry, specializing in Integration, Enterprise Information Management, Process Automation and Application Development Solutions. Over his career he has built and led teams responsible for solution/product management, product marketing, product development and channel sales.

Currently Mike serves as a Global VP leading SAP’s Business Technology Platform Integration and Data Management (EIM) Product Marketing and Solutions group. Mike holds a degree in Computer Science and an MBA.

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Neil McGovern

Neil McGovern has over 30 years’ experience in the software industry. Neil leads product marketing worldwide for SAP HANA and SAP HANA Cloud. Neil has also led product marketing for the Data Warehousing, Mobility, and Financial Services teams for SAP.

Prior to SAP, Neil ran marketing for Sybase’s top vertical, Financial Services. Neil was VP Engineering at New Era of Networks, and CTO of Convoy Corporation, where he was a pioneer in the Enterprise Application Integration market. Neil has a degree in Computer Science and an MBA.

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Peter Maier

Peter is President of Industries and Customer Advisory at SAP. In his role, Peter is responsible for the SAP business with our customers in their industries, making SAP and partner products relevant for them. The Customer Advisory group showcases SAP solutions and consults SAP customers on realizing the business value generated by the SAP portfolio.

Peter is passionately driving innovation that makes his customers more successful and he frequently shares his strategy and insights with customers, SAP partners, press, and analysts. He is regularly invited to deliver keynote speeches and to moderate panel discussions. In strategy meetings he advises leading customers how to become intelligent and sustainable enterprises in the experience economy.

Peter joined SAP in 1991 as a consultant for the chemical industry. In 1995 he assumed responsibility for global business development for the oil & gas industry. He is a valued expert for trends, challenges and best practices in the process industries and has earned the trust of strategic customers as an executive sponsor. Peter is connected to executives and experts from customers, partners, and influencers across the energy and natural resources industries and beyond.

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Richard Howells

Richard Howells has been working in the supply chain management and manufacturing space for over 25 years, and is responsible for driving the market direction and positioning of SAP’s Supply Chain Management and IOT solutions.

Prior to joining SAP in 2004, he spent 15 years with Marcam Solutions where he was VP of Marketing for the companies Process ERP solutions.

He has also implemented ERP and SCM systems at companies such as Nestle, Gillette, Colgate Palmolive, Rohm & Haas, Wyeth, Royal Worcester Spode and Dairy Crest. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Mid Glamorgan in the UK.

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Seema Vishnoi

Seema Vishnoi is VP of Product Strategy in Customer Experience organization. Seema is passionate about innovation & adoption of SAP Products to help customers succeed in the digitally transformative projects leveraging intelligent technologies. She has played key roles in product and engineering organization, sales go to market, sales operations, Innovative business solutions and successfully lead various strategic initiatives with customers and within SAP.

Seema is also an adjunct professor and teaches in the Villanova School of Business at Villanova University. She earned her MBA from Villanova University and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Sciences.

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Sven Denecken

Sven Denecken is Senior Vice President, COO SAP S/4HANA and Head of Product Successat SAP. In this role, next to the COO function, which is implementing business operations to developing the organization and its people, controlling, and communications, Sven is assessing customer and market requirements and supporting SAP S/4HANA's strategy.

Sven’s many years of experience working with customers and partners together with an extensive network that includes the SAP field organization and industry analysts, enable the SAP S/4HANA development teams to respond quickly to changing markets to ultimately provide a solution that helps customers gain a competitive advantage.

As member of SAP´s executive leadership and closely cooperating with the respective teams, Sven supports the strategy of SAP´s solutions and its alignment with customers and the ecosystem.

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Timo Elliott

Timo Elliott is an Innovation Advocate for SAP and a passionate advocate of using the power of technology to transform the world.

For the last 28 years, he has worked closely with SAP customers around the world on new technology directions and their impact on real-world organizations. His articles appear regularly in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, ZDNet, and Digitalist Magazine.

He has worked in the UK, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and the US, and currently lives in Paris, France. He has a degree in Econometrics, is a published photographer and cartoonist, and holds a patent in the area of mobile analytics.

Inherited Snowflake