Boardwave Live 2026: Europe's tech leaders, in one room

Bernard joined Balderton as a Partner in 2008. He was named Managing Partner in 2016.

Bernard Liautaud founded Business Objects in 1990 and was CEO for 15 years then Chairman until January 2008.  With 6,700 employees, 45,000 customers and $1.5 billion of revenue in 2007, Business Objects was the world leader in Business Intelligence and one of the 15 largest software companies in the world.  Business Objects was the first European software IPO on Nasdaq in 1994.  In January 2008, Business Objects was acquired by SAP for $6.8 billion, making it the third largest software acquisition at the time. Bernard was a member of the Supervisory Board of SAP from 2008 to 2022.  He also served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University from 2013 to 2018.  Bernard is now a member of the Stanford Global Advisory Council to the President.

In 2009, he co-founded Dashlane, a leading software company providing digital identity solutions for consumers and small businesses.

He has received a number of distinctions including, “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur” in 2007 in France, Time Magazine Europe’s Digital Top 25 and BusinessWeek Stars of Europe of 2002, Top 10 CEOs in North America by Chief Executive Magazine in 2001.

Bernard holds a Diplôme d’Ingénieur, Ecole Centrale de Paris, and Master of Science, Engineering Management, Stanford University.

Elona is a seasoned executive and a Non-Executive Board Director of Boardwave.

Most recently, she was the CEO of IRIS Software Group for over five years, following three years as CFO and COO. IRIS is one of the largest privately held global software businesses valued at $5bn.

During Elona’s tenure, IRIS tripled in size, transitioned to a cloud first platform business, expanded globally to the US, acquired over 30 business and had two successful PE exits, for £1.3bn in 2018 and $4bn in 2023. IRIS is recognised as a Great Place to work in UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, Rumania and India as well as Best Workplace for Women, in Tech and for Wellness, with 49 % of its employees as women. IRIS was named Tech Business of the Year 2022 and Elona was named Tech CEO of the Year 2023 at UK Tech Awards.

Elona is passionate about education, tech and diversity. Born in communist Albania, Elona won a scholarship at the age of sixteen to attend an international college in Wales alongside students from over 100 different countries.

This life changing experience has driven her to focus on making a high social impact and providing opportunities to those from under- privileged and under-represented backgrounds. Elona is a Trustee of the Hg foundation, helping under-represented groups to access high quality jobs in tech through education and employment programmes across the Europe and US.

Elona is also a Non- Executive Director on Aareon, Europe’s market leader is SaaS property management systems. Her prior experience includes several senior leadership roles in PE- backed businesses, Big 4 and as well as NED roles. She graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Accounting and Economics and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales. Awards include CEO of the Year at UK Tech Awards 2023; Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting in the US 2022; Top 50 Women in Accounting 2021 and Business Woman of the Year at UK Tech Awards 2020.

Charlie joined The London Stock Exchange in 2018 to lead the Equity Primary Markets business before becoming Deputy CEO and joining the Board of the London Stock Exchange in 2023. During this time, he has been responsible for the Equity, Fixed Income, Funds and ETF Primary Markets businesses, our Trading and Hosting and Connectivity services and deputising for the CEO across the other aspects of running the Exchange.

By background, Charlie is a capital markets specialist and previously worked within J.P. Morgan Cazenove’s Equity Capital Markets team in London and Sydney, responsible for originating and executing equity transactions. He has assisted in raising over £45bn of equity capital across five continents on behalf of clients.

He is actively involved in driving forward the reform agenda of the UK Capital Markets and is a member of several regulatory and industry bodies.

Dr. Jan Goetz is the CEO and Co-founder of IQM Quantum Computers, which he spun out of Aalto University and VTT in 2018. He has raised over $600M and is leading IQM's planned listing on a major U.S. exchange and a leading Nordic exchange — which would make IQM the first European quantum company to go public.

Jan holds a doctorate in superconducting quantum circuits from TU Munich and is a docent at Aalto University. He serves on the European Quantum Industry Consortium and as an EIC Ambassador and is a Global Innovator at the World Economic Forum.

Ben is the Founder & CEO of Cera, Europe’s largest HealthTech. Cera harnesses AI to move care from hospital to home, transforming patients’ lives. Delivering almost 3 million patient home visits monthly, Cera cuts patient hospitalisations by half and has saved the NHS over £1 billion. Cera is also pioneering the use of robots in care, and scaling care innovation globally through its world-first AI Lab for care.

Formerly NHS Innovation Advisor, Ben was educated at Oxford, Cambridge & Harvard. Ben holds an MBE, and has been named Entrepreneur of the Year by EY, The Great British Entrepreneur Awards & The British Business Awards.

Dan Murray is Co-Founder of Heights, a science-leading consumer health company. He also runs Foundrs, a curated UK entrepreneurial community, and writes The Science of Success — a newsletter and content ecosystem reaching 400,000+ followers across LinkedIn, Instagram, and X. Previously, he co-founded and hosted Secret Leaders, one of the UK's leading business podcasts with ~10 million downloads. A prolific angel investor with 100+ investments, Dan is passionate about helping people reach their potential through evidence-based approaches to health, performance, and personal growth.

Danyal Akarca is co-founder of Callosum, the first company backed by the UK Sovereign AI fund. Callosum is a research & technology company focused on the co-optimisation and orchestration of AI across any combination of chip architectures (including NVIDIA, AMD, TPUs, Cerebras, Trainium and beyond). By working across the full stack from silicon to software, Callosum delivers orders-of-magnitude improvements in token cost efficiency, performance, and latency in heterogeneous AI while paving the road for new compute paradigms. Danyal holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was previously a Schmidt Fellow in Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London. His research at the intersection of machine intelligence, neuroscience and compute has been published in several Nature journals and funded by both Schmidt Sciences and Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).

Chris Wigley is Chief Operating Officer at PhysicsX, where he oversees global growth as the company scales its AI-native engineering platform across advanced industries.

Chris brings deep experience at the intersection of frontier technology, data, and large-scale systems. He is the former CEO of Genomics England, bringing cutting-edge genomics research into routine clinical care for healthcare diagnostics and biotech research. During the pandemic, Chris was the national lead for the COVID data platform at NHSX and oversaw a major research program into the genomic drivers of COVID severity.

Previously, Chris served as Chief Operating Officer at QuantumBlack, an advanced analytics and AI business, and as a Partner at McKinsey & Company. Earlier in his career, Chris worked for the UK Foreign Office in counter terrorism analytics in Afghanistan and Pakistan post 9/11. He lives in London with his wife Tara, three teenagers, and Molly the dog.

Iwona is one of the leaders and driving forces behind EU-INC, a campaign to create a pan-European company that allows startups to incorporate once and scale across the continent. She spearheaded the creation of the original proposal and now works directly with the European Commission and Parliament to turn it into law.

Previously, she spent nearly a decade at Entrepreneur First as its first legal hire, building the operational infrastructure that supported the firm's global expansion. She currently serves as COO at Project Europe and advises emerging fund managers on operations and strategy.

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Javier de la Torre is Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of CARTO. One of the pioneers of Location Intelligence, Javier founded the company with a vision to democratize data analysis and visualization. Under his leadership, CARTO has grown from a groundbreaking idea into one of the fastest-growing geospatial companies in the world.

CEO and co-founder of BioOrbit, a company building a pharmaceuticals factory in microgravity to revolutionise cancer treatment. BioOrbit aims to bring a paradigm shift to the administration route of cancer treatments. Much like diabetics self-inject with solutions of crystalline insulin, through crystallising antibodies in microgravity, subcutaneous derivatives of anticancer treatments can be formulated, enabling cancer sufferers to self-inject at home. She is a strong believer that science in a microgravity environment can be used to accelerate healthcare and drug development on Earth, and has won some notable awards, including the ‘Innovator Award 2024’ at Everywoman in Tech Awards and Codex World top 50 Innovators ‘Top Female Innovator’. Katie completed her PhD in nanomedicine at the University of Cambridge in 2022, has worked at NASA, AstraZeneca and spent several years as an RAF volunteer reservist. Her vision is to see BioOrbit as the go-to manufacturing line and research facility in microgravity.

Simon Walsh has served as Chief Executive Officer of OneAdvanced since April 2023. He brings extensive experience in leading and scaling global technology organisations, with a strong track record in digital transformation and enterprise software.

At OneAdvanced, Simon is focused on delivering the company’s mission to power the world of work, driving innovation through the digitalisation of workflows to enhance productivity and deliver measurable value for customers. His leadership approach emphasises building high-performing, empowered teams and creating professional environments that enable sustained impact and organisational growth.

Prior to joining OneAdvanced, Simon was CEO of NTT Americas and previously held senior executive roles, including CEO and COO, at Atos, Virtustream, and Dell Technologies’ Global Cloud business. He is leading OneAdvanced with a clear vision to be a trusted partner to customers through the delivery of software and services that positively transform their organisations.

Marieke is a seasoned technology executive, blockchain and AI expert with over a decade of leadership experience in scaling products, leading teams, and driving innovation in fintech and blockchain. As the former CEO of NEAR Foundation, she successfully scaled the blockchain ecosystem from 50,000 to 14 million monthly active users, managing a significant treasury and fostering one of the most vibrant Web3 communities globally.

Marieke was instrumental in driving the adoption of stablecoins during her tenure at Circle, where she played a pivotal role in the growth of USDC, one of the world’s leading digital dollar currencies. As CEO of Mettle, Marieke spearheaded the development of a groundbreaking digital bank within NatWest Group, combining the agility of a neo-bank with the resilience of a major financial institution.

Currently, Marieke advises organizations such as UNICEF's Giga initiative and IHC on blockchain strategies to drive connectivity and transparency. She is also an active angel investor and advisor, focusing on early-stage startups in AI, climate tech, and blockchain.

Marieke serves as a Non-Executive Director at IG Group, a FTSE 250 company, and brings a global perspective to advancing fintech innovation. She is also an NED of MINA Foundation, the world's lightest blockchain. With a passion for harnessing blockchain to solve real-world problems, she is dedicated to building resilient, scalable, and inclusive ecosystems that unlock the full potential of decentralized technologies.

Kriti Sharma is the CEO of IFS Nexus Black. Kriti was named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for advancements in AI and is a Google Anita Borg Scholar. She was awarded the UK Prime Minister’s Points of Light award for creating ‘AI for Good’, an initiative pioneering AI techniques to tackle a range of social challenges. Her TED talk on responsible AI has widely influenced awareness and advocacy for responsible AI. She was appointed a United Nations Young Leader in 2018. 

She is a non-exec board member of Rightmove PLC, a FTSE 100 constituent.

She was most recently the Chief Product Officer, LegalTech, at Thomson Reuters where she led major AI transformations. Financial Times described her as a champion of GenAI Innovation in 2023. She was formerly the VP of Artificial Intelligence at FTSE 100 software company Sage Group and led a major AI transformation for GfK.

Emergency medical doctor and self-taught software developer, delusional enough to think I can build a platform that can fix the NHS.

Still practising A&E Doctor

Previously CTO of e-Surgery - B2C - Consumer Healthcare. Working in php, react.js, typescript, deluge, SQL.

Now CEO of Evaro - B2B2C - 10m+ patients across NHS and private sector. 

Evaro turns everyday brands into digital health companies. Now your sex toy companies can offer prescription treatment for menopause, testosterone for low libido and Viagra, your cosmetics brands can offer treatment for acne, eczema and psoriasis, and your travel agency can help you get prescription treatment for jet lag and malaria. We run the technology, we issue the prescriptions and handle the fulfilment from our 12,000 sq. ft pharmacy.

Andrew is Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Foundation Partners. He began his career in consulting before launching the people & talent startup advisory at La Fosse. He then co-founded Eka Ventures, raising $100m to back pre-seed to Series A companies, before joining Napo as Director of People & Operations. He is currently Chief People Officer at Fyxer AI, and sits as Visiting Partner and Adviser at Antler.

Sam’s career began as a teenager running raves. He enlisted Banksy and Shepard Fairey as designers for what became the Bafta-winning creative agency Don’t Panic.

Sam then founded the world renowned social enterprise Livity, where he won Agency of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Business of the Year, EY Entrepreneur of the year, the Queen's Award, and a commendations from multiple UK Prime Ministers.

His best-selling book, Be More Pirate, has become a global movement advocating ‘professional rule breaking and Good Trouble’ as a new approach to positive disruption.

With Netflix and University College London, Sam created Uncertainty Experts, the world’s first interactive documentary, which was scientifically proven to transform our ability to handle change.  In 2025, Uncertainty Experts was acquired by learning and communications agency MediaZoo, with Sam continuing to lead its development in partnership with the company.

Sam has also created Hard As Nails, a cutting-edge campaign and ‘empathy engine’ that utilises behavioural science to measurably increase healthy masculinity, challenge harmful stereotypes, and redefine leadership. 

Today Sam speaks globally on leadership, navigating change and uncertainty, rewriting rules and professional rule breaking. 

His latest book, ‘The Uncertainty Toolkit: How to Worry Less and Do More,’ was published by Pan Macmillan in January 2026, culminating what is now the world's largest study into the human impact of uncertainty.

Sasha is a seasoned presenter and interviewer with a background in television news. She’s anchored for Sky and produced / reported for CNN, Bloomberg and CNBC. She works across industries at the intersection of business, finance and technology.

2025/6 events include co-hosting at London Tech Week, chairing Tech Show London, emceeing at Money 20/20 Middle East and hosting the Innovate Finance Global Summit. Other events include Leap, SXSW London and the Future Investment Initiative Institute.

Recent interviews include AI expert Mo Gawdat, Strava CEO Mike Martin, GCHQ Head Anne Keast-Butler and many in the world of business / tech.  Sasha began her career in banking. ​She studied Social & Political Sciences at Cambridge University.

Jo Hopkins is an Elite Performance Coach, founder of Jo Hopkins Consulting, and creator of the Performance Cogs System™—an evidence-based framework that helps leaders, founders and teams perform sustainably under pressure. A former international athlete and coach, Jo was Lead Performance Mentor to the Team GB Performance Services Team, supporting Olympic programmes across Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. She has worked 1:1 with Olympic gold medallists, world champions, senior leaders and more than 300 founders, helping them achieve sustained high performance. Today, Jo is Lead Performance Coach for WellFounded, where she has helped shape a pioneering integrated founder support programme. Combining performance science with practical experience from elite sport and business, Jo equips audiences with simple, evidence-based strategies to perform at their best when it matters most.

Maggie is Managing Partner and Co-Founder of InThisTogether.vc, an investment network investing in European technology companies and brings 20+ years leading large-scale corporate business units ($4B+ ARR) and VC/PE-backed scale-ups ($2–500M ARR). She's held senior executive roles at SAP, Capgemini, Fujitsu and scale-ups like Normative, specialising in monetising emerging technology. Maggie is an experienced Board member across FTSE and private markets. She is currently a Non-Executive Director at Sympower and Sitecore and advises multiple companies.

Karim Jalbout is the Managing Director of Konstellation Advisory. The boutique firm helps organisations scale via leadership assessments, executive search, coaching and AI transformation. 

 He partners with private equity and venture-backed Founders and CEOs from many investor portfolios, including Cinven, Eurazeo, Apax, Ethos Capital, Soho Square, and Creandum. Karim previously served as Chief People Officer at Lilium, an electric mobility (eVTOL) company. 

He also spent 11 years at Egon Zehnder as a Partner and Lead for the private equity technology practice. His career began in marketing and commercial roles at Diageo and Sony Ericsson.

As a moderator, Karim has interviewed some of the world’s most influential leaders, including Michelle Obama and Amal Clooney, as well as founders and CEOs from Signal, Hugging Face, Uber, Twitter and AMD. 

Additionally, he is a board member of LIFE (a Lebanese non-profit) and is an active angel investor with a portfolio of 20+ early-stage companies.

Katie Prescott is one of the UK’s best-known business journalists. A familiar voice to millions of listeners after a decade reporting for the BBC, Katie was the Senior Lead Business Presenter for Radio 4’s Today Programme and a Business Correspondent across BBC News on TV, radio and online.

She’s now the Technology Business Editor for The Times and a weekly columnist for the newspaper’s award-winning business section. Across the fast-changing landscape of tech, media and telecoms, Katie brings all the key stories to readers, listeners and viewers across Times platforms.

She has travelled extensively for her work, from Tanzania and Rwanda to China and America as well as working as a journalist in the BBC’s New York Bureau.

Franck Cohen is the former President of SAP Digital Core & Industry Solutions. In this role, Franck was leading a team of 15,700 engineers. Where he has invested massively in ML and AI as the main catalyst of the SAP digital transformation Prior to that, Franck Cohen was the global chief customer officer at SAP. Franck joined SAP in 2009 as Senior Vice President, and COO for EMEA. In 2011, he was appointed President of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Franck began his career in 1987 when he created an ERP company in France. Ten years later, he joined Intentia, a Swedish ERP company after they acquired his company, where he held several roles including General Manager of EMEA and EVP of Sales Worldwide. In 2006, when Intentia merged with Lawson Software. He subsequently relocated to the United States to lead the North American and the EMEA organisation. Franck studied Mathematics and Electronic Engineering. He is an advisor for Highradius and C3.AI and he is the chairman of CYE , a cyber security company in Israel. He is also the chairman of GoCardless, a payment platform in the UK and the chairman of Nomadia in France.

Matthew is Chief Investment Officer and Chair of Hg’s Investment Committee, playing a central role in the firm’s investment activities and strategy, with a particular focus on driving Hg’s approach to AI, as a key pillar of future growth as this technology continues to transform the software and services industries.

Matthew joined Hg in 2010 to lead the creation of the Mercury Fund, before serving as Managing Partner from 2017 to 2025. During this time, he helped guide Hg’s evolution into a transatlantic platform and one of the world’s largest technology investors. Prior to Hg, Matthew was a Partner at Apax Partners.

Anton is a Partner and Co-Head of European Technology. He has been with Rothschild & Co since 2004 and has a broad technology remit with a particular focus on software companies. Anton has extensive experience across all types of transactions including: acquisitions, disposals, public and private M&A, IPOs, and fund raising mandates. Anton advises companies at all stages of their growth profile from early stage high growth businesses to large listed companies.