Speakers
Rebecca Lieb
Rebecca Lieb is a strategic advisor, research analyst, keynote speaker, author, and columnist. Her areas of specialization are digital marketing and media, with a concentration in content strategy, content marketing and converged media. She works with many of the world's leading brands on digital marketing innovation. Clients range from start-up to non-profits to Fortune 100 brands and regulated industries, including Facebook, Home Depot, Nestlé, Anthem, Adobe, Honeywell, DuPont, Fidelity, Gannett, IBM, Save the Children, Pinterest, Cisco, ad and PR agencies, and The Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Earlier, she was Altimeter Group's digital advertising and media analyst, where she published what remains the largest extant body of research on content marketing, content strategy, and content's role in paid, owned and earned media. Prior to that, she was vice president at Econsultancy, where she launched the company's U.S. operations and grew the business to profitability in one year. Rebecca was VP and editor-in-chief of The ClickZ Network for over seven years, and for part of that time also ran the redoubtable SearchEngineWatch.com. She's a frequent public speaker on topics related to digital marketing, advertising, and media. Full bio
Wolfgang Tichy
Wolfgang Tichy is Partner at Schönherr and member of the newTech team and the Real Estate Practice Group. He specializes in IT-law where he concentrates on the drafting and negotiating of software contracts and outsourcing projects, support contracts, hosting contracts and all aspects of e-commerce. Wolfgang is heavily engaged in economical and technical apects of IT and new technologies and his insights in these areas are by far extending the legal apects of these areas. In addition to this Wolfgang advises on distribution law and distribution and franchise contracts, not only but also in IT matters. Further Wolfgang engages in real estate and construction law. Wolfgang is also responsible for litigation in all of these areas. He is board member of the Vienna Federation of Young Industrie (which is part of the Austrian Federation of Industry / Industriellenvereinigung), member of the legislative committee of the Austrian Federation of Industry) and member of International Technology Law Association. He frequently authors articels in newspapers and lectures on the areas covered by his expertice.
Simon Tuddenham
Simon is the UK based lead for the Walmart GeC (Global eCommerce) Product Management team, responsible for many of the technology changes to the George.com platform. Simon has over 7 years working within the Asda and George business, focused upon developing the eCommerce product, feature, function, and customer experience. Working between the Asda/George business stakeholders, Walmart global teams, and eCommera, Simon’s team are the conduit for change to the overall George platform, ensuring product development and stakeholder relationships are optimised.
Stephen Langford
Stephen leads George.com, Asda's clothing and general merchandise digital proposition. Since joining Asda in 2011, Stephen has overseen the transformation of George.com into a leading UK digital value lifestyle retailer that is now at the core of Asda' £4bn non-food multi-channel business. Stephen's career in digital began at Tesco.com over 10 years ago and was part of the team that launched Tesco Direct before moving to Marks and Spencer to support their ambitions to become a leading digital and multi-channel retailer. All of which have provided a solid foundation to face the increasingly complex challenges that large retailers are facing in today's digital age.
Ilian Georgiev
Ilian Georgiev is Executive Director and member of the Management Board of Bulgarian-American Credit Bank. Before joining the leading team of BACB, Ilian Georgiev was Head of Large Corporate Banking and Deputy Head of Corporate Banking at Eurobank EFG Bulgaria AD. From September 2003 to November 2005 he lead the Large Corporate Banking Department at Postbank. During the period April 1998 - August 2003, Ilian Georgiev worked for Economic and Investment Bank AD, where he was appointed Head of Corporate Loans in 2001. Mr. Georgiev has a Master's degree in Economics from the University of National and World Economy, Subject: Accounting and Control.
Jewell Sparks
Wilhelmina Jewell Strong-Sparks (Jewell Sparks) is The Global Head of Innovation Scouting and Inclusion for Metro AG- Business Innovation. She is a biologist turned business leader with over 20 years of experience as a scientific innovator, sales, organizational effectiveness and business development work professional. Jewell Sparks has an MBA in strategic planning, global markets and corporate communications. She is a global innovation strategist, focused on streamlining processes as it relates to CSE (Corporate Startup Engagement) Processes. After working for corporate entities for the majority of her career, Jewell has spent the past 10 years mentoring and advising startups, while bridging the gap between corporate, finance and startup eco-systems. She relocated to Germany in 2013 after spending the past 15 years in San Francisco/Silicon Valley.
Eva Vucheva
Eva Vucheva is a digital entrepreneur, currently Co-Founder and CEO of Contento.tech, a crowdsourcing content platform for e-commerce.
Eva and her team have paved the way for e-commerce in Bulgarian, by bringing Fashion Days on the market in 2011. Until recently she was a Co-CEO of Fashion Days Group, a Naspers company and CEE’s leading fashion online store.
Matt Smith
Matt Smith is co-founder and strategy director at The Viral Factory. Founded in 2001, TVF was the first viral marketing agency, and has remained on the cutting edge of sharable, earned media digital comms for 14 years, working for clients as varied as Samsung, Diesel, Allianz, Hyundai and Skype.
Marek Kempka
Shopper Technology Director, Europe, Nielsen
Shopper Technology Geek, Futurist, Speaker. In market research since 1997. Prior to Nielsen, he worked at Unilever and Casino Group. Member of The Polish Society of Market and Opinion Researchers from 2006. Graduated Marketing and Management from Warsaw School of Economics.
Lenia Karallus
Lenia works very closely with the clients, helping them to define their eCommerce strategy and identify performance improvements within their current eCommerce set-up.
Lenia has a strong background in strategy and analytics, working for a wide range of retailers including Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Belstaff and Anya Hindmarch. Prior to joining eCommera, she worked as a strategy consultant at Javelin Group, a retail-focused consultancy based in London. She has extensive international experience, including in China, Germany, Turkey and India, and speaks German fluently.
Spas Slivkov
Spas Slivkov is the CEO of OLX & Shedd for Bulgaria. The company is part of Naspers - one of the worldwide leaders in online classifieds. Spas has been with Naspers for more than 6 years and has helped create the habit in Bulgarian users to trade their used goods online. His new passion is Shedd - a mobile app-only vertical for Fashion that was launched on the Bulgarian market in January 2016. Spas will speak about the trends & technology that are reshaping e-commerce as we speak, and the fast shift towards mobile products in particular. Prior to Naspers, Spas worked for Leo Burnett Sofia & the American University in Bulgaria. He remains passionate about communication, marketing & advertising.
Diana Angelova
E-Commerce Manager, Decathlon Bulgaria
Currently Diana Angelova is an e-commerce manager in Decathlon Bulgaria. In this function she is responsible to develop and implement the global retail strategy for synergy between the physical and the online stores. In her past career path, Diana was on the driver’s seat on a few international digital platforms, part of giants like Naspers and Rocket Internet.
Peter Iliev
CEO
Peter Iliev is Chief Technology Officer at CloudCart - one of the fastest growing companies for the creation of online stores, where he has devoted his experience in the eCommerce business for the last eleven years. He has extensive experience in the creation and development of online businesses, especially in the field of eCommerce. Peter will talk about the first steps in setting up a scalable online business.
Evgeniya Markova
Evgeniya Markovais a web-savvy marketing expert with more than 10 years of experience in multi-channel marketing. Curently holding the position Head of Brand Marketing at Fashion Days Group, she is responsible for the company’s brand marketing strategy for all markets, bridging fashion and style with the data-driven specifics of e-commerce.
Prior to joining Fashion Days, Evgeniya developed her proficiency in marketing communications in several advertising agencies, working for clients such as Cisco, Danone, Billa, Beck’s, Stella Artois, Peugeot, etc. Schooled in Germany and the UK, her academic record features BA in Integrated Social Sciences and MA in Marketing Communications.
Ivan Alexandrov
Ivan Alexandrov has behind his back 8 years experience in marketing and managing businesses. In 2015 he creates the online supermarket ebag.bg in partnership with Fantastico. eBag is the first online supermarket in Bulgaria which has diversity of over 10,000 products and still more to come. All the products are with the same regular prices as the physical supermarkets. For almost a year the project has become the biggest platform for online grocery shopping. Ivan is also Co-Founder of What if - digital creative agency, result driven and passionate about innovations in the fast growing digital world. The key benefits are the outstanding designs and detail-oriented campaigns which are realized in every project. Part of the agency' clients are Vinprom Peshtera, Vereya, Ficosota, Bella and other great brands operating at Bulgarian field and abroad.
Aleks Bozhinov
Aleks a multilingual business management graduate with global working experience. With 2 successful business ventures behind his back Aleks decided to gain additional experience at Google. He now spends part of his days wondering how to combine his two loves, sports and tech. The rest of his time he spends trying to design killer business ideas. Now, he has become a marketing wizard who scales businesses for breakfast.
Nikolay Bonev
AdWords specialist working with clients on Bulgarian market. The main role of Nikolay is to educate and advise AdWords customers in Bulgaria to optimize their profiles and work with advertising agencies in the country under the program Google Partners. Before Google he has worked in product advertising agency participating in the planning of product campaigns for all brands of concern Diageo. He has a master's degree in marketing and advertising from Dublin City University and University of Illinois.
Hristo Radichev
He is the Country Manager for Bulgaria of direct & digital marketing agency Mediapost Hit Mail, part of the French group La Poste. They provide better results and full measurability - both online and offline. He works with companies who want to pay less and get more out of their digital or cross-channel campaigns in 27 counries worldwide. His great team is heavily involved in emailing, all kinds of digital campaigns (promotional websites, content management, Google AdWords, Facebook etc.), fulfillment, promotions and other marketing projects.
He also knows well the European FMCG market. Previously he was responsible for all Internet eDM campaigns, banner campaigns, web site management, internet promotions etc. of Reader's Digest in Bulgaria and other Balkan countries (Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia). He has developed some of the most successful eDM formats of Reader's Digest worldwide.
Vanya Manova
Ms. Manova joined MasterCard in 2008 as an Account Manager. Over the past few years, she has driven the business in Bulgaria. She helped to position MasterCard as a strategic partner for key customers, non-traditional partners and local government institutions and regulatory bodies. Ms. Manova led the launch and growth of contactless in Bulgaria & Macedonia making MasterCard the ultimate leader in contactless within these markets.
Ms. Manova works in the banking industry for more than 20 years. She started in 1995 as system administrator in Bulgarian Russian Investment Bank (nowadays CIBank). Prior to joining MasterCard, she was Head of the Bank Cards Department in DZI Bank (later merged with Postbank). She graduated at Sofia Mathematical High School and holds a Master’s degree in Computer Technologies at the Technical University of Sofia. Vanya has three kids.
Gergana Atanasova
Gergana leads ASDA/George Programme within eCommera and is responsible for the delivery of large multi-channel ecommerce projects. She has more than 10 years’ experience in ecommerce and telecom industries. Gergana played key role in adopting agile scrum methodology and transforming the way eCommera teams engage, operate and deliver projects driving increased customer satisfaction and collaboration. Her blend of skills in account management, business/technology knowledge and program/delivery management enable her to advise, lead and drive any initiative through to success.
Alina Sabeva works in Econt since 2004. She has mastered in-depth experience in the company and knows in detail the work of each department of the company. Until this year she managed the department responsible for processes optimization in Econt’s system. From 2016 Sabeva heads the Trade Department of the company.