2026 Speakers
This year’s speaker line-up continues our tradition of bring a wide variety of inspiring speakers.
Here’s a look at some of the leaders, innovators, and visionaries we'll hear from, with more big names to be announced soon.
Aaron D’Souza
Aaron D'Souza is a Senior Data Scientist at Bank of Ireland with over 10 years of experience in software development, data science, machine learning, and AI. He led the creation of the Bank's GenAI Digital Assistant, which contributed to the development of The Lighthouse AI research and innovation function. A multiple-time Analytics & AI Awards finalist, Aaron has also presented projects at the Analytics & AI Showcase over the past two years and is passionate about delivering practical AI solutions that create business value.
Alina Budnyuk
Alina is a Data Scientist and a Mathematician, focused on helping organisations find their agentic advantage. She combines AI, analytics and creative problem-solving to tackle complex business challenges, working collaboratively across teams and disciplines to turn ideas into practical, trusted solutions.
Ash Hunt
Ash Hunt is the former FTSE 250 Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Sanne Group, Global CISO for Apex Group and CISO for the European Depository Bank (EDB). He has designed & executed multi-million dollar enterprise programmes across security, technology and business transformation in highly-regulated, acquisitive and high-growth environments. Ash has worked extensively across UK Government, FTSE, Fortune 500 and CNI organisations, in addition to authoring the UK’s first actuarial framework for technology risk.
Brendan Buckingham
Brendan’s expertise lies in helping organisations to leverage the power of Generative AI, AI and Data to transform their business and stay ahead of the competition. Brendan combines his extensive experience across business and industry with technical skills to help CDO’s, Data Architects and AI engineers to collaborate with their business colleagues to develop strategies that address some of the most critical business challenges. Brendan’s input is always based on the latest industry trends, best practices, a deep understanding of the Ethics and regulatory requirements that enable customers to harness the full potential of AI at scale.
Cian Clarke
Cian Clarke is Head of AI at Nearform, with 15 years’ experience building and scaling software across startups and large enterprises.
His work focuses on applying Generative AI, Natural Language Processing, and cloud-native architecture to real business and operational problems.
Cian has led the design and deployment of trusted AI systems in highly regulated environments including banking, payments, gaming, and government. He works closely with client leadership teams to move beyond experimentation and into production—combining data, AI, and modern cloud platforms to deliver intelligent, scalable applications.
Prior to Nearform, Cian was a co-founder of ServisBOT, a conversational AI company, and an early member of the FeedHenry team, acquired by Red Hat in 2014. He is an open-source advocate and has authored and contributed to multiple projects.
Outside of work, Cian is an avid sailor and coffee aficionado.
Donal Óg McCarthy
Donal Óg McCarthy is a Managing Director at Accenture and a recognised leader in cybersecurity, resilience, and digital transformation. With more than 25 years of international experience, he helps organisations navigate the convergence of AI, security, data, and business transformation, enabling innovation while managing risk. His experience spans Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, working with organisations across financial services, telecommunications, public sector, insurance, utilities, and critical national infrastructure.
Based between Dublin and London, Donal Óg leads the Cybersecurity business for Accenture in Ireland and heads Accenture's Global Cloud and Application Security practice. In these roles, he advises boards, executive teams, and government organisations on cyber resilience, secure digital transformation, Zero Trust, modern engineering and the secure deployment of AI technologies.
A frequent speaker at international industry events, Donal Óg is passionate about helping organisations harness the power of emerging technologies to drive growth, resilience, and innovation, while building the secure digital core required for long-term success.
Eoin O’Sullivan
Eoin O'Sullivan is Director of Data Engineering, AI and Analytics at Carne Group, leading the firm's data, analytics, and AI capabilities. He is the creator of CAMDA, Carne's award-winning data and AI platform, and is focused on using data and AI to drive business value, innovation, and operational excellence. Eoin is also a regular speaker at industry events and a guest lecturer at University College Cork.
Fiona Simpson
Fiona Simpson has spent over 25 years guiding customers through digital transformation, helping organisations turn bold ambitions into measurable outcomes. As General Manager for Cross Industries UK&I at Amazon Web Services, she leads a team focused on partnering with customers to accelerate innovation through cloud, AI and machine learning. Since joining AWS, Fiona has been instrumental in opening new markets and building high-performing teams across the UK and Ireland. She is a passionate advocate for women in technology and developing the next generation of diverse leaders in the industry.
Ian Fallon
Ian Fallon is the CEO of BUMBLEance, Ireland’s Children’s Ambulance Service, a charity dedicated to supporting children with life limiting condition and their families through safe, comfortable and child-centred transport.
Having spent more than five years with BUMBLEance before becoming CEO, Ian has been closely involved in the development and growth of the organisation and brings a strong understanding of both the operational realities of delivering a national service and the challenges of leading a modern Irish charity.
As CEO, Ian is focused on ensuring BUMBLEance continues to deliver an exceptional service for children and families across Ireland, while strengthening the organisation’s sustainability, governance and long-term impact.
Joanne Wright
Joanne Wright is Senior Vice President, Transformation and Operations.
Joanne Wright drives IBM's enterprise transformation as the company's "Client Zero" – delivering $4.5 billion in savings while simultaneously proving how AI and hybrid cloud unleash productivity, innovation, and growth at global scale. She delivers measurable business outcomes by transforming IBM's own operations first, then demonstrating these proven strategies to clients worldwide.
Leading IBM's operations, procurement, CIO, Chief Data and Analytics Office, and Global Real Estate organizations, Joanne has transformed how the company works. With her "Client Zero" vision, Joanne has revolutionized IBM through three core principles: eliminating operational complexity, simplifying end-to-end workflows, and automating manual tasks while embedding AI everywhere. Her teams saved an estimated 22 million hours since 2023 by deploying watsonx AI and automation tools, and under her leadership, IBM has redesigned its operating model, reimagined quote-to-cash processes, and deployed AI to create transparent, intelligent, and predictive supply chains that set the standard for enterprise transformation.
Jordan Morrow
Movement-starter, TEDx speaker and award-winning author Jordan Morrow is internationally recognized as a pioneer in data literacy and one of dataIQ™’s 100 Most Influential People in Data. Jordan is the owner of Bodhi Data and currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Data and AI Transformation at AgileOne. He has also served as the Chair of the Advisory Board for The Data Literacy Project and speaks at leading companies, events and universities among which are the United Nations, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard, Nike, Big Data London, Coca-Cola, the PBS annual meeting, Bacardi, and Columbia University.
Kerry Kirkham
Kerry is a Senior Sales Engineer at InterSystems, working with key accounts across the healthcare, telecommunications, and government sectors in Ireland and the UK. He develops and manages strong technical relationships while collaborating closely with internal product teams to deliver compelling solutions for current and prospective customers.
Since joining InterSystems in 2000, Kerry has built extensive experience across regions and healthcare markets in the USA, UK, and Ireland. His expertise encompasses InterSystems IRIS and InterSystems IRIS for Health, spanning cloud-based solutions, technology and solution sales, enterprise application integration, data warehousing, business intelligence, and software development.
Larry Mullen
Larry Mullen is a healthcare analytics and AI executive with more than two decades of experience leading data-driven transformation. As SVP of Analytics at Optum Ireland, he oversees a global team of over 750 analytics, data science and AI professionals delivering solutions that improve healthcare quality, affordability and operational performance. He is passionate about turning emerging technologies into real business value, scaling talent, and building AI-enabled organisations that create measurable impact for customers, healthcare providers, and patients
Liz Griffin
Liz Griffin leads the global commercial team for Piano Analytics across North America and Europe. She oversees Sales Directors and Engineers focused on translating privacy-first behavioral analytics into measurable outcomes, while also building new vertical strategy for Piano. She's passionate about helping data-driven organizations build the trusted data foundation they need to adopt AI with confidence. Liz is based in Philadelphia and is a dedicated nonprofit development board member.
Malcolm Hawker
Malcolm Hawker is the Chief Data Officer at Profisee and a former Gartner analyst who has advised some of the largest companies in the world on their data and analytics strategies. He is the author of The Data Hero Playbook (Wiley) and hosts the CDO Matters podcast and newsletter, where he writes on master data management, data governance, and AI enablement for data leaders. Before moving into data, he spent over a decade in product management, building and leading customer-centric product organizations. He lives in a small beach town in Florida, where he is an avid landscape photographer.
Marian Faryna
Marian Faryna is a Big Data Competence Lead at Sigma Software and a founding member of DAMA Ukraine Kyiv, non-profit, vendor-independent organization promoting data management best practices in Ukraine. With a background in software architecture, Marian specializes in data architecture, data management, and modern data platform engineering. His professional interests focus on designing scalable data architectures, advancing big data and AI capabilities, and applying modern engineering practices to address complex data challenges.
Mark Little
Mark Little is a journalist-turned-tech entrepreneur and author whose career has taken him from war zones to Silicon Valley, and ultimately to the faultlines of technology and democracy. At a moment when superhuman technology is radically reshaping our lives, work and society, few people are better placed to explain how leaders and innovators can thrive in an age of radical uncertainty. Mark’s background in broadcast media makes him an expert communicator on various topics, including online trust, AI and democracy, and the impact of technology on leadership and innovation Following twenty years at Irish State Broadcaster RTÉ, Mark Little created his first digital startup. Storyful was the world’s first social media newswire, combining the discipline of a traditional news agency with authenticated user-generated content, and in 2013 was acquired by News Corp.
Subsequently Mark accepted a senior management role at Twitter, where he was, firstly, VP of Media Partnerships for Europe, and then Managing Director. After leaving Twitter, Mark co-founded Kinzen with Aine Kerr, a former Facebook executive. Their aim was simple: using technology to strengthen democracy and protect public conversations. In 2022, Kinzen was bought by Spotify. Kinzen used a human-in-the-loop approach to artificial intelligence. Its human analysts created machine-readable data sets and optimised AI models to detect harmful and violent content in multiple languages and markets. The results scaled human editorial judgement in a way that pure automation cannot replicate. Mark gained critical insights into the potential of human-centred AI to protect the delicate balance of speech and safety.
Mark was a foreign correspondent and TV anchor for almost 20 years, taking him from the corridors of power in Washington to the frontlines of war in Iraq. In 2001, Mark Little won the Irish TV Journalist of the Year Award for his dispatches from Afghanistan. A quarter of a century on, this skilled communicator and business leader is publishing his fourth book in October 2026. This will be a unique eye-witness account of the unravelling of democracy in the Age of Attention, and an inspiring preview of a new Age of Intention. Mark sets out the case for hope and human agency in the age of superhuman technology, and charts the rise of a digital civil rights movement that will ultimately transform human leadership and citizenship.
Martin Minnock
Martin Minnock is Head of Data Solutions at Expleo and a technology leader with extensive experience delivering complex data, analytics, and AI programmes. Throughout their career, they have led large-scale digital transformation initiatives, helping organisations modernise technology platforms, unlock value from data and deliver measurable business outcomes. Martin brings expertise across data strategy, product ownership, cloud transformation, and engineering leadership.
Megan Burns
Megan is a Senior Solutions Engineer in the Financial Services Customer Advisory team at SAS. She works with banks and financial institutions to apply data, analytics and AI to business challenges, deliver measurable business value, and navigate an evolving regulatory landscape.
Her focus is on helping organisations break down silos between traditionally separate disciplines, giving them greater visibility into how data, models and AI assets are used, governed and connected, and the impact they have on business outcomes. Her work spans AI governance, model risk management and model lifecycle management, helping organisations understand these assets, their dependencies, and the role they play in business decision-making.
Michael Muldowney
Michael Muldowney is a Senior Sales Engineer at Cyera with over 20 years in cybersecurity, including roles at McAfee and Check Point. Throughout his career, he has led numerous projects helping organizations strengthen their defences against emerging threats and data loss. Please join him as he presents Cyera’s AI security offering.
Mihai Criveti
Mihai Criveti is a Distinguished Engineer and CTO for watsonx Orchestrate at IBM, focused on the governance and operation of AI agents at enterprise scale and the Agent Control Plane mission. He is also the founder ofContextForge, an open-source gateway and registry for MCP, A2A and APIs. His work spans agent governance, AgentOps, identity, policy, observability, security, lifecycle management, FinOps and interoperability across models, frameworks and clouds.
Paul Bradley
Paul Bradley is a leading authority on football performance and innovation, recognised globally for advancing the integration of science, research, and applied practice in elite football. As a Consultant and Professor in Football Science, Paul advises elite teams, world and national governing bodies, and technology companies on developing evidence-based performance strategies and innovation frameworks. His work bridges the gap between research and practice, ensuring that scientific insight translates directly into competitive advantage on the pitch. Paul has delivered pioneering research on the contextualisation of match and training data and has been instrumental in designing research and innovation systems within professional football environments. He led the Official Physical Analysis for the FIFA World Cups in Qatar 2022, France 2019, and Australia/New Zealand 2023, contributing world-leading insights into the match demands of international football. With over 20 years of experience, Paul has authored three influential books Football Decoded (2020), The Premier League Way (2022), The Pinnacle Effect (2026) and published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and chapters (>11,000 citations, H-index 45+).In addition to his consultancy, he also currently serves as Professor at Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln and continues to drive global collaboration in football science, research, and innovation shaping the next generation of evidence-led performance strategy in the game.
Paul Byrne
Paul Byrne is the CEO of the AI Office of Ireland. He joined the AI Office of Ireland from the Medical Council of Ireland, where he served as Executive Director of Education, Innovation and Artificial Intelligence. He previously served as Executive Director of Regulatory Operations and Support Services. He is the President of the Council on Licensure, Enforcement and Regulation (CLEAR), the international alliance of professional and occupational regulators. He is also a member of the World Health Organization’s Expert Working Group on Regulatory Considerations of AI for Health. His previous regulatory experience includes senior leadership roles at the Medical Council of Ireland and CORU, the regulator for health and social care professionals, and held a number of regulatory and policy roles at the Commission for Regulation of Utilities.
He holds a Professional Diploma in Artificial Intelligence from University College Dublin and is the author of the CLEAR Principles for Ethical and Effective AI in Professional Regulation, which support the responsible, transparent and accountable use of AI in regulatory practice.
Paul Gilbride
Paul Gilbride is a Data & AI Director at Sogeti Ireland, working with organisations across Ireland and Europe on how they turn AI ambition into enterprise reality. His focus is not simply on the technology, but on the difficult questions that emerge when AI moves from experimentation into production — governance, accountability, risk, operating models, value and organisational change. Working across industries and with senior technology and business leaders, Paul brings a pragmatic perspective on the gap between what AI can technically do and what organisations are actually prepared to let it do.
Rebecca Keenan
Rebecca Keenan is a Solutions Director at Expleo and founder of its AI Centre of Excellence. She helps organisations across Ireland's public and commercial sectors move AI from pilot to production, focusing on the operating model, governance and adoption work that decides whether it scales. She was named AI Leader of the Year at the Business Post Leadership Excellence Awards.
Rebecca Pluthero
Rebecca Pluthero is Senior Legal Counsel for Artificial Intelligence at InterSystems, where she advises on global AI legal risk, governance, and regulatory compliance across the organisation.
Her role focuses on how AI-related legal, regulatory, and ethical expectations intersect with product lifecycles, commercialisation, vendor and customer commitments in real-world deployments. Rebecca works cross-functionally with technical, product, and business teams, and acts as a global subject-matter expert on AI legal risk and governance.
Rebecca holds an English LLB (hons) degree in Law, an Inns of Court Law School Scholarship awarded when completing her Barrister postgraduate training and holds the IAPP AI Governance Professional Certification. She has spent 15 years as an in-house legal advisor and consultant traversing various sectors including Big Four Financial Services, Entertainment Brand Licensing, Industrial IoT, HealthTech and UK Central Government IT Transformation Programs.
Rory Gallagher
Rory Gallagher is Director of Quality Solutions at Expleo and an experienced technology leader specialising in quality engineering, ERP delivery, and governance. Working closely with executive stakeholders, he helps organisations address complex business and technology challenges, delivering high-quality outcomes that support innovation, growth, and long-term business success.
Seanie Dunne
Seanie Dunne is Associate Director – Data Engineering, AI & Analytics at Carne Group, where he helps lead the development of CAMDA, Carne's award-winning data and AI platform. His expertise spans data engineering, analytics, automation, and AI, helping deliver scalable solutions that drive innovation, operational excellence, and better decision-making across the business.
Shannon O'Hare
Shannon has extensive experience in data analytics within the retail sector, currently working as a Senior Data Analyst at Sweaty Betty, where she turns customer and transactional data into insights that shape commercial strategy. She spent 5 years at Lululemon as a Data Scientist in Product, specialising in demand forecasting to support inventory planning and supply chain decisions. Having worked across both technical data science and commercial analytics functions in retail, Shannon is skilled at bridging that gap - communicating complex data clearly to non-technical stakeholders and helping teams make faster, better-informed decisions.
Siobhan Noble
Siobhan Noble is Group Chief Data and AI Officer at Carne Group, leading the firm's data, AI, analytics, product, and change delivery capabilities. A recognised industry leader in artificial intelligence, she serves on the inaugural Board of the AI Office of Ireland, supporting the responsible adoption and governance of AI across Ireland while helping organisations harness AI to drive innovation, value, and transformation.
Stanislav Samko
Stanislav Samko is an IT engineering leader with over a decade of experience building and scaling data organizations in fast-growing environments. As a Head of Data Engineering Center of Excellence, he leads a 50+ specialist team that delivers data platforms to multiple clients and partners with executive stakeholders to turn business strategy into technical roadmaps that scale. His focus is helping companies unlock the value trapped in their data.
Tara Maguire
Tara Maguire is a Data and Behavioural Scientist at Bank of Ireland, specialising in the application of artificial intelligence, behavioural science, and customer experience. Holding Master's degrees in Data Analytics and Software Design with Artificial Intelligence, she develops human-centred AI solutions that combine machine learning and behavioural insights to solve complex business challenges. Her expertise spans predictive analytics, conversational AI, and responsible AI, with a passion for delivering practical, trustworthy solutions that create meaningful value for customers and organisations.
Valentina D'Efilippo
Valentina D’Efilippo is an award-winning designer, creative director, and author renowned for her ability to inspire, move, and connect people through data-driven experiences. Her work includes the critically acclaimed The Infographic History of the World and the innovative Britannica’s Encyclopedia Infographica, a children’s encyclopedia filled with facts and infographics about the universe, wildlife, and human anatomy. Her creativity and insight have led to collaborations with diverse organisations — from startups to global brands — across fields and formats including theatre performances, exhibitions, books, and digital platforms. Beyond her projects, Valentina is passionate about education and knowledge sharing. She coaches corporate teams including the Financial Times, Google, and Spotify, and teaches at institutions such as Columbia Business School and Central Saint Martins. Since 2013 she has also been running popular Masterclasses on visual storytelling. Her work has been internationally exhibited and is part of the permanent collection at the Weltmuseum in Vienna. In recognition of her influence and innovation, she was named one of Campaign’s 30 Future Creative Female Leaders in 2018.
Vlad Siniavin
Vlad is a Sr. Technical Account Manager at AWS with over 15 years of experience in building innovative solutions, products and services. He is driven by delivering measurable outcomes for his customers – whether that’s reducing operational risk, optimising costs, or accelerating cloud adoption. He believes the best technical guidance starts with deeply understanding what matters most to the customer and acting in their best interest.
