Exclusive Interview Archives

Nicholas McQuire: Shaping the Future of Cloud and Technology

Meet Nicholas McQuire, a globally recognized thought leader and a former 20+ year technology analyst with a knack for artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and enterprise innovation. Nick presently serves as a Director in Microsoft’s Strategic Missions and Technology Organization, a scale-up innovation hub for Microsoft.

“SMT is the nexus between Microsoft’s research organisation and our solution portfolio with the goal to imagine, develop and scale the next generation of transformative technologies that will fuel the advancement of Microsoft, the future cloud as well as industries, governments, and society.”– says Nick.

Nick is also a startup advisor and a board member with a demonstrated history of advising various C-level executives and enterprise IT professionals on technology innovation. Additionally, he is the judge of the CIO 100 and Next CIO of the year awards, which recognize the most transformational CIOs and the next generation of IT leaders in the U.K each year.

The Primary Motivation

Nick’s primary motivation was the opportunity to work with such a talented and diverse group of people and customers in advanced technology and innovation. Working within Microsoft’s SMT division has made Nick feel like a kid in a candy store, as there are many vital areas that are shaping the future of technology and the cloud, whether in areas like 5G and in empowering telecommunication providers; or in research into scalable and accessible quantum computing, or connecting cloud to the satellites in space.

Nick and his team at Microsoft are incubating businesses that will eventually determine the future of the industry and our beautiful planet.

He says, “I have always loved researching, learning, and advising companies about how businesses apply the technology shifts of the future to help them innovate, change how they work, and succeed in their respective markets, so joining Microsoft to continue this effort is really rewarding.”

Nick started his career as a Senior Analyst in Pyramid Research, Economist Group, then he joined Yankee Group in 2005 as a Program Manager. Later he joined BT Global Services as a Senior Marketing Manager, Insight, Strategy, and Planning. In 2010 Nick started working for IDC as a Vice President, leading the organization’s Enterprise Mobility Strategies and research practice.

In 2013, he joined Gema International AG as the CEO, where he managed the overall strategy and operations of the organization, including overseeing its financial performance, member and partner recruitment, product development, marketing, and geographic extension. In September 2014, Nick joined CCS Insight as a Senior Vice President and rose to the ranks of Chief of Research, Enterprise, where he led the firm’s Enterprise and Artificial intelligence research.

Mission and Vision

Microsoft enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an edge. The organization’s mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. It believes that technology can and should be a force for good and meaningful innovation and will contribute to a brighter world differently. Microsoft thrives on diverse voices and engages its employees’ and customers’ experiences, strengths, and other points of view to inform, challenge, and stretch its thinking.

Nick says, “We feel that technology is a powerful force for good and are working to foster a sustainable future where everyone has access to the benefits and opportunities created by technology.”

He believes that just as every company today is a software company, every business will soon become an AI business. Microsoft aims to help organizations make this transition, foster innovation, and ultimately succeed in their future cloud technologies.

In addition to that, Microsoft is entirely focused on democratizing access to emerging technologies of the future, empowering developers to innovate, industries to transform, and helping every person in the society for the better.

Preparing for the Future

Nick says, “At Microsoft, we’re deeply invested in the future of the cloud and being at the forefront of the disruptive technologies of tomorrow that will enable broad economic growth with major business and societal advances that ultimately will help create a more prosperous and resilient world.”

The organization believes that innovation is the primary force of any enterprise, but innovation requires prioritization and investment, so it continually invests in helping businesses plan for what’s next. At the same time, the organization understands that gaining a foothold in emerging technologies is difficult for enterprises. So, the organization is entirely committed to bringing the latest technologies to a platform level, helping companies to spend less time worrying about the foundation and more time innovating. Microsoft is now seeking to create a culture of co-innovation which helps customers break through barriers in order to access the needed groundbreaking ideas.

Fai Chan: A Ground-breaking Leader stimulating growth in the Luxury Skincare Segment

A charismatic personality and resourceful leader, Fai Chan is the Founder of Deli Aroma. Founded in 2014, the company brings forth luxury skincare of the highest quality at the most competitive price. Presenting forth Fai’s professional and personal journey.

Early Days

After graduating with a Marketing Degree in Hong Kong, Fai’s career jumpstarted in the US with the American Dream for immigrants to pursue. She started as a homemaker but got involved in community charitable work.

At that time, she worked in a Chinese Christian Community Organization in Dallas as a cashier in the bookstore. She wrote articles for their monthly newspaper. After six months, her boss asked her if she wanted to get promoted to the Manager position.

She was also a member of the International Women’s Club of Dallas Chapter and they offered her a board position. If she took it, she would be the first Chinese to be on board.

Additionally, she was also the secretary of the Ikebana club in Dallas, the Japanese Floral Arrangement Club. Unlike other homemakers, she actively participated in promoting the art and cultural activities of Dallas when she was there.

Then she moved to Jackson MS with her husband’s job relocation. She stayed there for six years and then moved to Austin TX.

Fai successfully finished her aromatherapy or aroma medicine courses and has been actively helping people with aromatherapy. She had more than ten publications while she was a student.

She then went ahead to set up her clinic offering therapeutic work. Somehow, she got invited to speak at research conferences and wrote a few articles on Rheumatoid Arthritis, Alzheimer’s Disease, and High blood pressure.

In terms of career, her medical research work gains popularity and got accepted by the mainstream. This motivated her to set up a laboratory for carrying out her original invention both in products and treatment protocols.

Instead of applying for research grants, she independently published her work through marketing and promoted the work that can be monetized through treatments, product innovations, and collaboration with other labs in promoting their innovative products.

In this way, she could do things her way and need not be twisted by her original purpose in satisfying the preconditions set by her sponsors.

About the Clinic – Deli Aroma

Fai has a clinic to provide treatment work through her award-winning treatment protocols through her peer-reviewed conference speech and publications.

She sells her innovative formulations but in safe and effective dosages and usages. To be specific, she chooses her subjects for treatment to participate in a small clinical trial with the hope to provide insights for more research to follow.

Her positioning is more ideas/insights related to other participating research to do the detailing.

Motivation: A Constant Drive

When Fai started her company, she did not aim for heights. In the beginning, she just wanted to make some extra money, however, with time, as she started successfully growing, her vision for the company got clearer.

She further decided to expand her horizons to boost women’s careers, especially those who strike between ends and means.

She also shifted to support Artists who need money to develop their careers. “As I like to say, the light of a match is dim, but a bunch of matches makes the light bright. Something a person starts small and trivial, but with more people joining, the results are different. Without governmental support, what we can do is very limited. I think our government should research more good causes that really can boost our economy in meaningful ways too”, adds Fai.

Thoughts about the Asian Business Environment

The Asian business environment is super promising. One can find 100 reasons why they should invest in a place or not or where to have their headquarters.

Fai measures this by recognizing how eager a place’s/country’s people are willing to spend money. The EU people are not too eager to purchase consumer goods, and that’s why their economic conditions are very stagnant. They talk about environmental friendly which is to minimize wastage. However, without wastage, can an economy grow?

However, in Asia, this is different. People in Asia are more willing to spend, upgrade, or seek pleasure through purchasing. As the economic conditions are improving, their behaviour is more hedonistic, which makes prediction simpler and easier.

A Take on Gender Pay Gap

Fai openly expresses her pragmatic opinion regarding the gender pay gap. People always complain about the gender pay gap but Fai doesn’t think it is created by employers.

She believes the interview performance determines the pay one will get. The interview and work performance determines how much the employers will reward, even with bonuses.

When Fai was working in Hong Kong, she didn’t experience a gender pay gap. While everyone likes to express how passionate he or she has about a job, she thinks showing thoughtfulness, skills, and EQ can give you a better edge in achieving what you want to achieve.

Fai suggests an excellent way of handling the gender pay gap, “There are cases that one asks for the reward system but only finds that he or she is underpaid after they take the job. I think people’s talents and abilities are different. It would be good if you have a middleman to bargain the package for you in a more satisfying way like through a recruitment agency or talent acquisition or headhunter. They have more market information accessible and know what the market wants and is willing to pay. With the middlemen, both sides may feel more accepting and have fewer complaints.”

The Vision

Fai and her company will focus on medical research advancement and bring advanced healing to the community. It includes self-care protocols to be inclusive, apart from treatment protocols done by professionals.

Accelerating an Innovative

Future Currently, Deli Aroma is operating based on the existing theoretical frameworks. The company will be bringing in more inventive frameworks which are more laser-focused to make the treatment prediction more precise.

Recently, it is also targeting more on genetic healing and brought in a new formula to rebuild on Einstein’s relativity formula that is widely used in functional medicine.

Fai thinks their invention is more accurate and can improve conventional medicine treatment results.

From 2023, Deli Aroma will have more to disclose on new treatment frameworks. As Fai envisions, what seems impossible today, technological advancements can bring miraculous treatment results tomorrow. “So, if you are not happy with what the present medical system can provide, a little patience and good communication can bring good results. We compete with time, and many researchers work hard and burn the midnight oil to make this happens”, concludes Fai.

Fai pens Words of Wisdom

Every person has a life value if turned to the monetary value which is the money that he or she can generate in one’s whole life. I like to capitalize on one’s lifelong value in formulating my strategy. That it is not the present value, but makes use of the past, present, and (discounted) future value.

Dong Jin Son: Helping Brands Grow, Innovate, and Transform

Based in Seoul, Korea, Krema Worldwide has created various award-winning ideas to help brands grow, innovate, and transform. With its wide range of strategic and creative talent, Krema derives optimal strategies and crafts globally competitive campaigns.

Having worked with global behemoths like LG Electronics, Samsung Mobiles, Lotte, and Disney Korea, the founder, and CEO, of Krema Worldwide, Son Dong Jin, brings more than two decades of experience with him. Majored in foreign literature, Son joined Korea’s number one advertising agency Cheil Worldwide, where he was assigned to the department of global marketing business. Soon, Son went on numerous business trips across the world and accumulated local marketing insights, and realized that advertising is not just a creative video that appears on the viewer’s screen but it is a solution that solves various concerns of the marketers. At this point of time, Son understood that his role was limited only to large organizations, so he voluntarily left Cheil Worldwide and moved to a three-person startup. Meanwhile, he completed his MBA from a University in Finland and received his doctorate in digital content, which helped him understand clients’ concerns in their broad business activities. Later in May 2009, he founded his own company Krema Worldwide, focusing on providing specialized services for overseas marketing and clients who can utilize the organization’s capabilities while conducting global marketing.

Path Breaking Services

Since its foundation, Krema Worldwide has successfully established itself and proliferated in sales and size in a yearly manner. As a result, Krema received 17 awards in the last five years in various leading international festivals like Cannes, New York, and One Show. The organization was also ranked among the top 10 across multiple ad journals, including Ad Age and Campaign. “This is proof that our company has been recognized worldwide for creativity, which is the core of advertising. Since January 2019, we have also expanded the area of ad agencies to an e-commerce business that encompasses all participants in the marketing ecosystem.”– says Son. He explains the primary goal of his business is to provide A to Z solutions starting from overseas marketing to sales agents for various small and medium-sized companies that have competitive products but lack an international presence. Krema also has a roadmap to build a very competitive e-commerce platform by connecting clients, individual sellers, digital media owners, and financial & trade businesses.

Working as the backbone of the company, Krema’s planning professionals make the most timely, trendy, and accurate marketing results by learning fast trends. They are the strategists, communicators, and do-it-all creatives who deliver flawless project execution from concept to creation. Additionally, the firm uses current technologies like AI, data, and metaverse to internalize all the internal and external resources in the shortest time possible; depending on that; immediate service can be operated. With its agility and mobility, Krema’s business model is much ahead of other professional agencies.

The Asian Business Environment

Son feels growth in Asia will be much more noticeable in the future, especially in Indonesia, which has witnessed a rapid recovery of the advertising market since late 2020. The proportion of digital advertising costs in countries like India and Indonesia stands around the 20% range. However, with the rapid growth rate of 10%, they will soon become the pillars of the global advertising market. As a result, the traditional North American and Western European markets will start decreasing in the future.

He explains that Asian consumers are highly interested in social networks. They know the process of learning information quickly and communicate actively, even in non-face-to-face situations. Additionally, their huge interest in the latest technologies meant they were the first to embrace Metaverse and NFT to grow their businesses. So, marketers need to study diligently and move quickly because of these unique characteristics of Asian consumers. Ad-agency’s flagship products have also changed along with those trends. Even a decade ago, an advertising agency’s primary job was to plan and produce commercial advertisements for a market mainly focused on TVC and print. Now cut to 2022, most of the organization’s products are YouTube-based video advertising or a website for consumer awareness of corporate brands and content to communicate with consumers over various communities. At present, organizations are paying much more attention to AI, metaverse, and OTT platforms.

Future Roadmap

As the founder of his company, Son’s short-term goal is to successfully pivot from the world of digital content to the new area of media. He says, “Global advertising trend is shifting to non-face-to-face, virtual reality after endemic, enabling agencies to propose the most practical and efficient ad packages the clients need. To this end, the company’s professional staff are working hard on R&D every day and night and, at the same time, continue to challenge through constant internal collaboration. In the mid-long term, it is to properly demonstrate the synergy caused by M&A. It is to successfully combine marketing assets based on IPs of ads, movies, and dramas to develop service products for clients that have never existed before.”

Led by Son, Krema recently ran M&A with Asia’s one of the best new media content production companies Dexter Studio. He feels the synergy of M&A is of utmost importance in realizing Krema’s dreams. It’s also much easier to raise investment funds than it used to be. “I strongly believe skilled tech resources combined with our planning resources would greatly increase the chances of achieving business objectives. We’re not going to stop here, but we’re going to expand our reach further as a group specializing in global digital media and content.”– he says.

Few Thoughts

As an industry, advertising is well known for its cutthroat competition. Recently multiple cases of business failure have emerged due to the pandemic. Son says, “But in the meantime, someone is making money out of this red ocean, leading the market, generating demand. I try to keep Dexter Krema (changed company name after M&A last year) listed in that mainstream. Only diligent research and development, maintaining a young and fast organization, and constantly finding newness and collaborating with outside powers make this possible.” This year, Dexter Krema plans to lead the industry by introducing the latest marketing by combining various partners and technologies related to the 4th industrial revolution. “In addition, we will share the fruits of the fast-growing company with all our stakeholders, helping to create a successful future for each employee, not the fundamental goal of sales as mentioned earlier.”– he added.

Marc Starfield: Helping Global Organisations to Deliver Complex and Transformational Initiatives

Meet Marc Starfield, the Group Head of HR Systems and Programs, Vodafone Group, a multinational technology communications company responsible for digitally connecting over 34 million mobile, fixed line, TV customers and organizations of all shapes and sizes. Globally, Vodafone ranks among the top five internet providers. It is also one of the largest operators of submarine data cables.

Vodafone is the largest mobile and fixed network operator in Europe with the largest 5G network. The telecommunication company is also the world’s largest IoT connectivity provider, connecting over a hundred million devices annually.

Marc is an Information Technology, HR Transformation, and Global Program Leader, who has successfully led the strategy and transformation at several leading global organizations, including AstraZeneca, BP, and Barclays. Currently, as the Group Head of HR Systems and Programs of Vodafone, Marc has led the delivery of digital HR transformation for 100,000 employees in more than 26 markets.

The Steadfast Leader

An excellent opportunity to lead a multiyear digital HR transformation program, including innovative applications and a world-first solution to enable consumer-grade AI-powered cloud service for 100,000 employees in over 26 countries, led Marc to join Vodafone in 2018.

Armed with his objective of Employee Experience Excellence, Marc has the privilege of leading a global team implementing a new, simple, and integrated digital experience for the brand’s employees. This program covers the implementation of SuccessFactors functionality, process automation, AI capabilities, and introducing TOBi, Vodafone’s employee chatbot, also the single access point for all its employees to search, find, transact and resolve queries.

The Greatest Achievement

Marc feels his most significant professional achievement is implementing a future-proof, leading HR cloud architecture and technology stack, which is the foundation for a world first integrated AI solution for resourcing, skills, learning experience platform and a new HR organizational construct. However, he also realised that this was not about the technology’s sake; it was about supporting new ways of distributed working and enabling skills for the future, which directly contributes to Vodafone’s corporate vision to become a new generation connectivity digital service provider.

“Skills are the currency of the future, and AI in HR can enable unbiased and democratized opportunities for all, which will be the required response as individual values replace the collective’s for the future’s workforce.”

Marc deems his most significant personal achievement being accepted and completing an MSc at the University of Oxford, which foundations where built on three pillars; his Mom, who as a single parent to three children created the love and space for them to achieve their dreams, a munificent business man who provided a bursary for his first degree, as they could simply not afford or even get a loan to attend university and finally the unwavering faith and encouragement from his wife.

Presently Marc and his team are working to deliver an outstanding and engaging employee experience, which is based on the following foundational rudiments:

Standardise and Simplify: Entirely entrenched in a single, simplified global platform that fully integrates all HR functions, processes, and data, including API services.
Productivity Savings: Provided an engagement platform to drive large simplification and productivity savings via consumer-grade employee experiences.
Innovative Product Roadmap: Targeted innovation in critical areas of the HR processes, specifically Skills Mobility and Talent Marketplace.
AI for HR: Implemented and embedded AI for HR Automation, Digital Assistants, and Machine Learning.
Analytical Capabilities: To deliver multilateral insights and predictive analytics that syndicates multiple sources of data and ensure data driven decision making.
Agility: Establish an agile, demand, governance, and ethics model.

The tagline Marc uses for his team is “Align, Innovate and Value Create”, which is a simple summation of the digital strategy and approach employed by Marc.

Picture of the Future

Marc definitely connects with the Vodafone “Together we can” belief that is aptly summarized by this Vodafone quote, “At Vodafone, we are known for our technology, but the truth is, it is humanity that drives our business forward. With the global pandemic raising so many questions for tech brands, it has highlighted the leading role that we need to play.”

Marc personally connects too and is inspired to continue the transformation to build and implement the ‘Human Spirit of Technology, as an inclusive and growth environment where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.’

A central part of Vodafone’s strategy is to move from a Telco to Technology Communications Company. Along with technology, people and culture are key enablers in achieving this. Marc believes there are two decisive foundational elements to achieve this.

Attract and retain the best digital skills: Where the culture and HR journeys represent an environment where digital natives feel like they belong.
Grow Skills: The culture of continuous exponential learning and transparency with employees helps them feel empowered.

Prof. Martin Curley: Driving Breakthrough Improvements in Health Service Efficiency, Effectiveness and Experience

Meet Prof. Martin Curley, the Director of Digital Transformation and Open Innovation at the Health Service Executive (HSE), helping to enable digital transformation in Ireland’s Health Service. Under his leadership, the HSE Digital Transformation group works to build health system-wide digital capability, capacity, and competence.

An electronic engineer by profession, Martin’s career started with Philips Lab in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Later he worked on IoT systems in factories of General Electronics and Intel, well before the term Internet of Things was coined. At that point of time, he specifically focussed on developing and deploying Digital Manufacturing Solutions and realized these could be particularly applicable for the Health Care industry, where variability plays a major role.

He has also lectured and spoken at various global universities and conferences and been in boardrooms across the planet.

Before starting HSE, Martin also served as the Senior Vice President and Group Head for Global Digital Practice at Mastercard.

The Inception Story

Martin started his journey at HSE Digital Transformation to transform Ireland’s healthcare using Digital Technology. Using the Design Practices documented in his book on Open Innovation 2.0, he understood one could use digitization to drive a fundamental change in healthcare, which was at least a decade behind other industries.

Martin states, “I noted and observed that the combination of exponential digital technologies, the information-intensive nature of healthcare – healthcare is an information business and the use of an exponential innovation methodology that I developed (OI2) would and is creating supranormal or 10X returns repeatedly and predictably.”

He explains that it translates into much better outcomes, with lower costs, better experience, and improved life qualities. Starting to become known as the ‘Curleys law,’ the methodology’s application produces breakthrough 10X solutions and outcomes. For example, a digital heart care at home solution has resulted in a 10X reduction of hospitalizations and 10X improvement in monitoring, all of which can be achieved at a rate of 2.5X less than the cost of the current solution. Remote respiratory monitoring solutions can keep respiratory patients out of hospital at a cost which is 30X cheaper than admitting a patient to an acute hospital.

Path Breaking Services

Within Ireland, Martin envisioned a unique new Digital Healthcare system, which can be described as a health and wellness system. He and his colleagues in the Irish Digital Health Leadership Steering Group and ecosystem envisioned a new approach designed to keep people fit and well and detect any chronic disease very early. This kind of health system is unique from and in contrast to the existing healthcare system/paradigm, which works like an illness system, where chronic diseases account for up to 90% of all costs and 70% of all deaths.

HSE Digital Transformation has also created a ‘health elevator,’ which integrated various products and services from eleven companies to deliver a completely new proactive health and wellness service for the Irish citizens. The health elevator focuses on moving healthcare closer to home, where patients are empowered to improve their self-care and live healthier. It also aims to transition from a reactive care pathway to a proactive approach with ongoing management and preventative health screening by utilizing remote monitoring and real-time information.

“You have to take the opportunity of a lifetime in the lifetime of the opportunity. Dream, Dare, Do!”

Additionally, the ‘Oceans Eleven’ arrangement helps Irish citizens with a rapid 15-minute health assessment, a personal electronic health record, a computer algorithm-assisted medical report, a fitness device like Fitbit, a wellness app, and a holistic digital health therapeutic. Patients can avail all of these at around the cost of a PCR test, which in return provides the much-needed information, therapeutics, and nudges to create a fit and healthy population. The Ocean Eleven arrangement includes HSE Digital Transformation, Careplus Pharmacies, Google, Fitbit, AWS, PatientsKnowBest, Full Health Medical, Eurofins, Roche, Trimedika and Checkpoint.

Keeping the Team Motivated

As the leader of HSE, Martin tries to keep his team motivated by providing them with a compelling vision that entirely aligns with an individual’s values and business skills. He tries to empower and encourage as much as possible rather than commanding and controlling.

However, for Martin, it’s not only about motivating the team, but it’s also about motivating the ecosystem, and he is delighted that the ecosystem HSE Digital Transformation has built has beautifully aligned around the vision and strategy of ‘Stay Left, Shift Left- 10X’.

“Many senior leaders and organizations from across the ecosystem such as Dr John Sheehan, John Shaw, Prof Richard Costello, Prof. Anthony Staines and Dr Donal Bailey have self-selected into the ecosystem, and we mutually motivate each other as we strive for 10X interventions which compound and mutually reinforce each other.“- he stated. Together they founded the Irish Digital Health Leadership Steering group (IDHLSG) to accelerate the Digital Health transition in Ireland.

Picture of the Future

As an organization, HSE Digital Transformation and the IDHLSG would like to create an entirely new Digital Health and Wellness system that would help extend the lives of every Irish citizen and create a model and a platform that could be adopted and improved by other countries worldwide. Martin and his colleagues aspire to make Ireland a European Health leader by 2025 and one of the top 10 global health systems by 2030.

The organisation believes that data plays a major role in fighting modern-day diseases, and it will set the challenge to add 2.5 years of life for every citizen over the next five years. “Like Moore’s Law, Curley’s Law will ultimately come up against the laws of biology and physics, but adding an extra ten years of quality life to every global citizen over the next two decades would be an amazing accomplishment we could all be proud of.‘- states Martin.

“We plan to achieve this by deploying a digital health platform centered around the patient/citizen, which proves seamless access across the care continuum to citizens, carers, clinicians, and academics alike. Overlayed on this will be a complete and ever-growing portfolio of IoT devices, digital therapeutics, and AI solutions that provide insights, nudges, tools, and diagnoses to help keep people healthy and detect/intervene with early signs of chronic diseases.”

This solution will fully focus on all the factors of health, which include lifestyle, genetics, mental health, environment, and healthcare systems. Eventually, Ireland will have a closed-loop digital health system operating at a national, population, health facility, and individual level to optimize health and wellness strategically and in real-time to create a true health learning system.

Neil Pretty: Creating High Performing, Resilient Cultures

Meet Neil Pretty, the Co-founder, and CEO of Aristotle Performance, which works to empower organizations to develop high-performing, resilient cultures to succeed in an increasingly unpredictable environment. As an organizational development firm, Neil and his team at Aristotle Performance focuses on scalable solutions directly impacting leaders and teams. By focusing on a foundation of psychological safety and building team effectiveness from that foundation, Aristotle’s performance is helping teams work together while creating a better sense of belonging for employees.

Aristotle Performance is Neil’s seventh business venture. “With minimal formal training, it was necessary to seek out mentors, read books, and learn through trial and error. You could say the same for my journey as a leader: My first formal leadership position was in Army Cadets at 13 years old. I was posted to my first platoon at 15 and have maintained leadership positions ever since,”- he explains. “This, along with often working in parallel contracting or having varied part-time roles in numerous industries, culminated in my early 30s realizing that I had led over 300 teams.”

As Neil entered the coaching profession and evolved his practice to focus on career and leadership development, his practice slowly evolved to focus on high performers, often labeled as toxic leaders. Eventually, his work evolved into team and organizational development as Neil was asked to take on more complex and wide-scale challenges with his clients.

Founded on 15th April 2020, Aristotle Performance has worked with several leaders, teams, and certified professionals through its partnership with the Fearless Organization. Till date, the organization has directly impacted over 2500 teams, and an innumerable number of teams have been impacted by those the firm has certified. Alongside its certified practitioners, the firm has also worked with several teams and organizations spread across six of the seven continents.

Present Business Environment

Neil believes most leaders and organizations face a challenge from what is commonly referred to as the VUCA world- volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Initially a military term, VUCA describes urban combat situations; it becomes relevant to survival from a business’s perspective is often what is at stake.

On the other hand, the current state of the world offers excellent opportunities. Those organizations that realize connecting with their people and creating team environments that are beneficial to the lives of their people will accelerate their business and separate them from their competitors.

Tackling the Gender Pay Gap

Neil believes the issue of the gender pay gap is a complex ongoing issue. He says, “Pay equity should be our goal, while also asking – “Equity for what?” There are numerous groups that are paid less. A specific group should not get paid more or less because they are an identifying member of any specific group.”

So, Aristotle Performance structures pay by looking at the bigger picture, assessing results, and creating equal opportunities to achieve those results. It is imperative to consider the unconscious bias, which is key to devising strategies to tackle those biases. Instead of having the same answer for everyone, the primary goal should be to create awareness regarding inappropriate gaps and work to fill those gaps. However, the organization’s response is quite simple, it has a rate based on a specific job role, and it pays as per the associated value of that role.

Diversity of thought, education, experience, mindset, process, and background is critical for every organization. If an organization want its employees to share their perspective, then it needs to help them by providing the proper environment, paying them adequately, and offering a sense of direction, connection, and meaning.

Keeping the Team Motivated

Neil keeps his team motivated in several ways. Firstly by connecting their effort and Aristotle Performance’s common mission. Secondly is by creating a team environment that offers the best personal and professional growth. And third, by working to share and nurture gratitude.

Everyone at Aristotle Performance knows the fact that Neil will support them in every aspect of their lives, as they feel willing to share with him. He says, “The greatest gift I’ve had as a leader is to see the potential someone else has before they see it in themselves- and working alongside them to help them achieve what they previously thought was impossible. As a result, I do not even question if they are motivated.”

Aristotle Performance is a culture-obsessed organization regarding re-learning and continuous education. It successfully incorporated and learned more than any other team or organization that Neil has ever been a part of.

“The result is a fast pace without being “fast-paced”: we have a lot of fun, we innovate, we accomplish a lot, and very importantly, we can look at each other and know that it is together that those outcomes were achieved.”- explains Neil.

Preparing for the Future

Having laid the foundation through its work at several global organizations, Aristotle Performance will soon start working with even more Fortune 500 companies to tackle the uncertainties our world is going through. In the future, Aristotle Performance’s goal is to become a global leader in developing psychological safety and learning by using a scalable, systemic, and repeatable process.

Neil says, “If we are successful, we will be changing the nature of work for an untold amount of employees and their families. We feel that our mission is to help people and organizations win together – and the world is abundant enough that we believe it is possible.”

Hiren Kotak: Unleashing the Power of Hyper-automation

Meet Hiren Kotak, the CEO of Hyper-Botz, helping clients adopt intelligent business process automation, so their employees don’t have to work on repetitive manual tasks, which their digital assistants can do.

After completing his Computer Science and Electronics Engineering, Hiren started his career as an IT programmer. Within a few years, he was promoted to Technical Lead and Manager. He eventually found his true calling in his managerial responsibilities and completed his MBA, and started working on developing business strategies using statistics and data analytics. In this role, Hiren successfully managed a team of developers, architects, operations analysts, project managers, process engineers, and product managers, which helped him deliver business value worth millions of dollars through revenue growth, cost efficiency, and customer service improvements.

Nearly half a decade ago, Hiren decided to explore Robotic Process Automation (RPA), to help a commercial bank grow efficiently. RPA enables faster, low-cost, high-return, non-invasive, low-code no-code automation and offered his organization the much-needed ability to quickly automate tasks that were resistant to automation via the traditional technology for several reasons.

As an RPA Evangelist, Hiren decided to help others achieve their automation dreams and manage the technology effectively to realize their desired results. For that, initially, he joined some well-known global technology service providers. With his MBA training, strategic mindset, and business background, he contributed significantly to the overall business performance of these companies and their clients.

After building significant experience as an automation consultant in the professional services industry, he finally decided to create his own company to help companies of every shape and size reap all the benefits of RPA.

“Having worked on two sides of customer and vendor relationships, I witnessed some opportunities that prevent clients from fully utilizing the vendor capabilities and some challenges that prevent vendors from being effective partners for their clients. At Hyper-Botz, we fully align our goals to our clients’ goals to maximize our contribution to their success.” – states Hiren.

Increasing Productivity

Hyper-Botz’s primary mission is to boost global productivity using Intelligent Business Process Automation. Even after making such huge progress with digital technologies and computers, there’s still a lot of non-value-adding manual work in several sectors. Many of those administrative, tedious, repetitive, and transactional work is usually performed in business operations and horizontal services organizations like Finance and Accounting, HR, Procurement, IT, and Customer Service, which results in a loss of human intellect, productivity, and creativity. So, Hyper-Botz’s vision is to empower all humans to work like humans, not robots.

Using AI and RPA, Hyper-Botz enables its clients to attain greater speed, efficiency, and growth irrespective of their business domain.

“This type of automation, irrespective of your business processes and systems, can help you empower your employees, strengthen your customer relationships, and open new ways to innovate and expand your business.“- Says Hiren.

Hyper-Botz’s experienced practitioners partner with clients to maximize their automation potential and ROI. It helps its clients develop their automation strategy and roadmap, establish governance and operating model, identify automation opportunities, and develop, test, implement, and maintain bots. Under Hiren’s leadership, Hyper-Botz also provides Automation-as-a-Service to minimize upfront investment from its clients and eliminate their ongoing maintenance and support headaches.

Present Business Environment

“The current business environment is very interesting. During the Covid-19 shutdown, the US government pumped billions of dollars into the economy to keep it going. Once the vaccines became available, we became more comfortable living our normal lives,” Hiren explained, “as a result, business and consumer demand spiked. However, production and supply chains have not kept up with the resulting demand and inflation, leading to the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates again to contain the inflation. In the last couple of years, we have seen major swings up and down, and now most economists agree on one thing – economic uncertainty in the near term!”

For digital transformation and automation businesses, the situation is much more interesting. Thanks to the pandemic-induced shutdown, businesses worldwide realized the value and importance of automation and went for it, creating massive demands. However, with rising interest rates, inflation, and economic uncertainty, businesses are playing cautious with new investments and sometimes slowing some of their IT initiatives. Hyper-Botz has worked with several organizations to mitigate this issue in various ways. Thankfully as Business Process Automation requires very less upfront investment and provides huge ROI within the same quarter, Hyper-Botz hasn’t witnessed a major impact in this sector. Additionally, with its managed service offerings, Hyper-Botz eliminates any upfront capital expenditure and makes it easier for its customers to adopt intelligent automation throughout their companies.

Keeping the Team Motivated

Hiren believes in hiring talented people with good work ethics and can-do attitudes and then letting them do their jobs. His team members have the full autonomy to perform their jobs and deliver the output they are chosen to deliver.

Hiren encourages his team to take charge of their professional development and support them financially. He has also started a quarterly reward program to recognize their exceptional achievement, value delivery, and teamwork.

Tackling the Gender Pay Gap

Hiren believes there are two types of gender pay gaps; the first gap comes from women taking low-income jobs in low-income industries, government entities, and the service sector. While this could be a matter of choice as many women opt for stability, flexibility, or convenient hours for better work-life balance. These, in most cases, are personal choices without any external or negative pressure.

On the other hand, the second type of gap comes from women not being promoted or paid equally even after doing the same job as their male peers, which is a widespread problem that also affects people of color and needs immediate attention fixing. However, Hiren and his colleagues at Hyper-Botz encourage ‘women in technology’ during and after recruitment. With its diverse employees, Hyper-Botz has a strong culture of equality, transparency, and inclusiveness. It values the unique ideas, perspectives, and qualities women employees bring to the table.

Picture of the Future

At Hyper-Botz, Hiren and his team continue training their employees on the latest technological innovations and practical applications. He believes the world now needs its smartest people focused on solving problems like climate change, food and water issues, infrastructure and transportation hurdles, and growing health & safety concerns.

In the long run, Hiren would like his company to contribute to solving these global challenges.

He says, “We could simply use AI to maximize crop output, find efficient ways to generate, distribute, and store power, or explore optimal ways to utilize water and other natural resources. AI could help us be better prepared for containing the next pandemic or help us eliminate many fatal diseases. I think of this as – we all rent or lease a place in this world for a few years during our lifetime and it is our duty to leave it nice and clean, fully stocked, for the next set of tenants. My future goal is to help raise awareness and drive some of the restoration efforts in any way I can.“

Ángela Álvarez: Revolutionizing the Current Generation of Financial Infrastructure

Meet Ángela Álvarez, the founder and Executive Chairman of Action Monkey, a Permissioned Defi Platform. She is also the Founder and Executive Chairman of Aglaia Capital, a new-generation of corporate finance boutique covering traditional business, and digital assets, and advising on token-generating events. The firm also provides expansion and growth solutions for companies, investors, and governments in the Philippines.

Over the years, Ángela has developed her professional career chairing executive international positions and boards in several global entities, banks, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and investment banking, mainly in financial, real estate, hotels, restructuring, and alternative financing sectors including, fintech blockchain, crypto, and DeFi.

A veteran of the industry, Ángela worked at BBVA in several positions, including Head of Investment Banking and member of the Risk Committee of the Iberian Special Assets Situations unit, Member of the Executive Committee of BBVA Consumer Finance and the Digital Bank Uno-e Bank, and Head of Corporate Development for the acquisitions of Consumer Finance, Insurance and Financial Institutions in Europe, Asia, USA, and Brazil. Before that, she headed the Corporate Finance and M&A European Financial Institutions Group team in Spain at KPMG. Ángela has also worked at PWC Corporate Finance, Bankinter, Citibank, and All Trading AVB.

A speaker at several Economic Forums, Ángela is passionate about decentralized technologies and cooperation business models, and she is active in the international M&A, Fintech, and Blockchain space.

As the leader of Aglaia Capital, Ángela’s vision to develop a new financial infrastructure to provide liquidity to the Private Capital Markets focused on Alternative Investments and Financing with blockchain has led her to create and develop another venture, Aglaia Capital DeFi Platform, well known better for its brand Action Monkey, a Permissioned DeFi Platform,

The New Generation of Financial Infrastructure

Action Money is a present-generation financial infrastructure with blockchain that provides liquidity, scalability, and efficiency to the Private Capital markets. It offers native crypto services and investment banking covering the entire life cycle of crypto assets.

Primarily focused on security tokens, Action Monkey represents a crucial step toward digitizing and modernization of financial markets by creating a much more liquid, resilient, open, and accessible financial system.

Action Money is a DeFi platform presently deployed on the Ethereum Blockchain focused on Security Tokens. It also covers all the necessary functionalities of a crypto asset, from issuance to sale. Its functionalities include tokenization or distribution, compliance, custody, exchange of fiat currency- crypto, purchase, and sale of the tokens listed on the platform and connected to an automatic liquidity protocol.

Additionally, Action Monkey’s clients have the needed access to other related services before and after the issuance. These services include advising on all aspects of the Token generating event through affiliated companies and independent experts.

The Present Business Environment

Ángela says, “We are living in a moment where we are immersed in a shift of a new financial infrastructure that will transform the financial industry and the rest later.”

She feels that the financial industry will be transformed over the next few years, and few players will disappear from the market. An entirely new financial infrastructure backed by the blockchain and central digital currencies will eventually transform some of the financial institutions into something new.

Ángela believes the new incumbents will be much more prepared for this new environment than the traditional financial institutions, ensuring a shift of useability towards the new financial infrastructure.

The Private Capital Market is expected to be the most disrupted market, as it is the most fragmented and biggest traded market. It also needs an evolution that can happen massively in the short term. This will eventually allow the inclusion and democratization of the private capital markets, efficiency, automatization, and transparency. Additionally, the remarkable combination of metaverse and crypto infrastructure will develop more efficient systems to transact massively, evolving the e-commerce models as we conceive them presently.

Bringing in New Values

Ángela feels diversity is of utmost importance for any company that will make a difference in the short term. The gender pay gap should not exist in any modern company aspiring to survive in the short term.

She states, “For me, it doesn’t make any difference what is the gender of any person in a whatever position they may have in a company. What makes the difference are the traits, skills, knowledge, values, as well as have character enough to be resilient.”

Action Monkey’s culture is based on consensus, balance, and a fair way of doing business. Angela’s vision is to change the current financial infrastructure and include some values from the world of crypto to the world of traditional finance. She believes in decentralization, disintermediation, openness, fairness, and flexibility in business which are also within the essence of Action Monkey and what she would like to add to this new infrastructure.

Picture of the Future

As a permissioned DeFi platform, Action Monkey is already a pioneer, unique of its kind, a new generation of financial infrastructure transforming Private Capital Markets globally. With its unique approach, Action Monkey covers the entire lifecycle of crypto assets. Conceived from an investment banking and crypto perspective, the DeFi platform was born as an effective way to solve some of the critical issues found in the industry.

The platform also converts the Private Capital Market into a much more scalable, efficient, transparent, and liquid with a new financial infrastructure for funds, alternative investments, and alternative financing industries.

For the future, Angela and her team at Action Monkey, also with the support of Aglaia Capital deal flow, are planning to feed Action Monkey with current or new Alternative Investment Funds, Real Estate, Hotels, and Crypto Funds to escalate the market’s needs.

Ken Gosnell: Creating Great Leaders

Experiences shape great leadership. Many leaders often think they are not good enough or don’t know what to do. In reality, most of those leaders have the needed answers, but they require a place that can inspire their best thinking to achieve the best results in business and life.

Every business leader needs a place to get an unbiased and different perspective to generate new ideas and thoughts about their business during their leadership journey. They need a safe place to share their doubts, fears, and concerns. Additionally, they also require an Executive Team of Mentors who can help them learn the best business practices.

So enters Ken Gosnell, the founder of CEO Experience, a full-service private consulting company helping CEOs through various types of retreats to learn business principles to help them grow their business with Kingdom Impact. The organization offers peer retreats, private retreats, team retreats, and strategy retreats, all featuring the monthly Executive Retreat Guide, which serves as a business magazine and executive journal.

As a founder of the organization, Ken always wanted to highlight the value of each person’s personal experience and then benefit from the idea of learning from others’ experiences so that one doesn’t have to suffer years of disappointments and setbacks to understand what took years for them to learn.

He believes CEO Experience equals Well Done, which are the two most essential words in the world of business and have the potential to transform any leader’s performance and life.

Ken states, “It is not good enough for a leader to only succeed in business. True success is being significant in business and life.”

Starting the Journey

Initially, Ken tried to do life and leadership alone. However, he felt lonely at the top and wasted too much time repeating the same mistakes, and then he learned a better way. It was learning from his own and others’ experiences as well. He realized that a wise business person would never underestimate the lessons they can learn from various businesses and business experiences, even if those have no value at all. Ken believes that business success and innovation often come from others who have never done it before or can see the business in a new and fresh way.

Ken authored a book entitled “Well Done- 12 Biblical Business Principles for Leaders to Grow Their Business with Kingdom Impact” in 2021. In that book, he explained the best ideas he learned in businesses from the Bible and other business owners and CEOs. It highlights over 200 companies and business leaders who have led some of the largest organizations in America over the last 150 years.

Under Ken’s leadership, CEO Experience seeks to build the CXP CEO Executive Retreat Guide and each CEO retreat to discuss what is currently happening in the marketplace through a lens of timeless truths proven to work in every generation and location. The organization promises never to repeat an executive guide but instead provide new content that is current and relevant for the marketplace each month. Additionally, the CEO Retreats (https://ceoretreatday.com) use several innovative methods, including biblical case studies, CEO interviews, assessments, tools, and best ideas from the past.

Ken states, “We understand that the market is constantly changing and their new challenges to face every day, but we believe that leaders who succeed today are the ones that prepared yesterday.”

Women Leaders are Changing the World

Ken believes that women CEOs are slowly becoming the norm, which is good for businesses. As an organization, CEO Experience often reminds CEOs that God established the first woman CEO when he created Eve and gave her a landscaping business. However, it has taken the rest of the world thousands of years to catch up.

“Women leaders are different from men leaders. They are far ahead of their men counterparts in many areas, and there are areas where they are still behind.”- Says Ken.

CEO Experience’s retreats are Collective and Individualistic; its CXP Executive Retreat Guide is one part personal and business journal and one part business magazine. The guide is full of Experience Questions, Win Activities, Writing Blocks, and CEO Tools to help business owners capture their best thoughts and the best ideas of others. The organization believes every leader is essential and valuable and must work to improve themselves. Leaders who work to improve their leadership style become better leaders and produce better results.

Motivating CEOs

Ken believes energy is the most significant asset for any business leader. CEO Experience has designed its CEO Retreats and CEO Executive Retreat Guide to be inspiring and informative. Several leaders often feel they are not suited or don’t know what to do. However, the organization understands that every CEO has the answers, but they often need a place that could inspire their best thinking to achieve a breakthrough in business and life. The CXP CEO Retreat helps leaders to make the decisions they need to make and provide them with the needed courage to make the critical decisions to move their life and business forward.

“Self-awareness always precedes self-improvement.”

Business is always complicated, and many leaders often reach a stage where they feel like giving up. This is where CEO Experience help leaders build momentum by highlighting wins and creating a monthly winning wall to press into what is working. While too many organizations work to fix leaders’ problems, very few look to maximize their win and success rate.

Additionally, CEO Experience uses a leaders’ dashboard to help them determine their energy levels and enhance focus. The leaders’ dashboard also allows leaders to review the most critical areas of leadership to understand where to focus their energy and time.

Preparing for the Future

With the promise to provide the best leadership experience to its partners, CEO Experience works to develop the culture at the retreat to be inspirational and informative. Both the CEO Retreats and the CEO Executive Retreat Guide are authored to encourage and inspire CEOs and business leaders.

Ken says, “Our mission is to help dynamic CEOs practice continual growth for Kingdom Impact to hear the words Well Done. We want to work with Christian and faith-driven CEOs and coaches in every major city in America and worldwide.”

Every year, CEO Experience offers training for coaches to launch CEO Retreats in their respective cities. It has also prepared a Christian coaching training retreat, starting in January 2023, in Orlando, Florida.

Rohit Gaur: Driving Productivity Across Digital Product Teams

Founded in 1989, Infragistics is a world leader in providing tools to accelerate application design and development. Several blue chip companies, including Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Exxon, Ikea, Bank of America, and Intuit, depend on Infragistics tools to build their applications.

Based in Gurgaon, India, Rohit Gaur has spearheaded Infragistics operations in India for the past decade. As the company’s Managing Director, he leads sales and operations for all Infragistics software and services in India. An industry veteran, Rohit has over two decades of experience in sales, building relationships with clients and partners at several large multinational companies, small and medium-sized businesses, and Indian government organizations. Being a leader of the organization, Rohit helps Infragistics maintain its position as a world leader in UI development tools and multi-platform enterprise software products and services. With his help, Infragistics has more than 250 employees, with offices spread across the U.S., Australia, Japan, Uruguay, Bulgaria, India, and the U.K.

“I am proud to lead Infragistics’ growth in India and provide leading-edge enterprise software that solves problems for those working in the fast-paced field of technology. I enjoy building trusted client relationships, forming true partnerships with our customers, helping them tackle new challenges, and meeting their customers’ needs in innovative ways,” he stated.

Rohit started his first job as a Channel Manager at Symantec Corp in 2001. He continued in the IT space further and moved into Serena Software as an Enterprise Account Manager. Later he joined Microsoft as Alliances Manager – North India. In June 2011, he started serving Symantec as the National Sales Manager – Enterprise (PSU) before joining Infragistics in May 2013.

Groundbreaking Products

As an organization, Infragistics stays ahead of its competition by encouraging internal innovation in product development and enhancement. One of its latest product offerings is Reveal, an embedded analytics platform allowing clients to integrate analytical capabilities into existing applications to bring real-time data insights to decision-makers. Reveal brings the power of data to all users and enables much quicker data-driven decisions inside the application without switching the context. Embedding Reveal into an application saves time, increases productivity, and helps with a better analytics experience.

Recently the organization has also built a new digital workplace tool named Slingshot. Clients can use this platform to get the work done in the digital realm and be productive irrespective of their location. The best part about Slingshot is that it streamlines a company’s workplace tech stacks by providing remote, in-person, and hybrid teams a single place to collaborate, set goals, make data-driven decisions, share content and communicate within the context they are working on. This revolutionary tool keeps people connected even when they are far apart and transforms the digital workplace with a software platform that can connect all departments, including R&D, marketing, sales, customer support, manufacturing, HR & IT.

The firm’s other popular enterprise software products include Indigo.Design, a design-to-code system; App Builder, low code/no-code software; and Infragistics Ultimate, a leading UI/UX toolkit.

Embracing Innovation

Rohit says, “Companies like Infragistics, which are clear market leaders, have one common factor — they all embrace innovation. Not only can internal innovation represent significant cost savings, but it can also successfully originate new concepts and enhance employee engagement. Because we create teams that support innovation and welcome creativity, everyone can be involved in generating ideas, improving those ideas, and prototyping the best ideas.”

With the launch of the Infragistics Innovation Lab, Rohit and his colleagues successfully cemented the firm’s commitment to its internal inventors and entrepreneurs. For several years, the organization informally developed game-changing enterprise software products in-house. Presently, Infragistics has a $50 million fund and a formal process for constant innovation, which it needs to continually stay ahead of the technology curve. The firm’s Innovation Lab encourages its employees to contribute with a regular stream of insights that could help shape any upcoming innovation. It also empowers internal inventors to experiment with innovations beyond its core UI/UX products without the need to generate immediate revenue.

Tackling the Pandemic

When the pandemic started impacting organizations and their employees, everything quickly moved online, and employees struggled to tackle the new normal and be productive without being able to collaborate in person. However, Infragistics’ global company already had a lot of people working remotely, and the organization had the needed infrastructure in place to completely shift its workforce online, resulting in high productivity levels.

During the pandemic, many organizations started working to redefine their workplaces to be much more productive for in-person, remote, and hybrid teams. As a company, Infragistics recognized that these businesses were in dire need of a better digital workplace with a single platform allowing their teams to collaborate on data analytics, projects, content, and chat. So, it ramped up its effort to develop the revolutionary Slingshot platform to support firms that were not fully prepared for the pandemic and released this platform to meet the needs of remote, hybrid, and in-person employees.

Picture of the Future

Infragistics is leading the enterprise software market with cutting-edge innovations in low-code software, business intelligence embedded analytics, and transformational team-performance software. Its development strategy goes beyond the UI/UX tools to include product development tools, embedded analytics, and digital workplace software.

Infragistics’ founder and CEO Dean Guida guides the firm in maintaining its focus on innovation, improvement, and success in the enterprise software tools market. Over the past three decades, Infragistics has demonstrated a passion for excellence and takes pride in the quality of everything it does. In the future, it will continue to develop solutions for its clients that are rooted in a deep and thorough understanding of their needs.