KEYNOTE Speakers' Bios

Alex Benay

Partner, Digital and Government Solutions KPMG Canada, Canada

As a Partner in Digital and Infrastructure, Government and Healthcare (IGH), Alex brings a wealth of experience in helping public sector organizations unite the impact of the digital economy with their organization’s need for change. Alex brings a deep knowledge of the evolving digital needs of Canadians from his time spent in the public sector, previously serving as the Chief Information Officer of Canada and the Deputy Minister at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. An author of two books and a board member of multiple organizations focused on the arts and sciences, Alex’s multifaceted background can help navigate the challenges and opportunities facing Canada’s public sector.

Michael Rosemann

Director, Centre for Future Enterprise, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Dr Rosemann is recognized as a global thought leader in the field of Business Process Management (BPM). His areas of expertise include revenue resilience, innovation (eco)systems, and trust management. Dr Rosemann is a well known author and keynote speaker on BPM and has initiated one of the very first Masters program in BPM. He is author/editor of seven books, more than 300 refereed papers, and is editorial board member of ten international journals and co-inventor of US patents. As former Head of QUT’s Information Systems School, Dr Rosemann established the Woolworths Chair in Retail Innovation, the Brisbane Airport Chair in Airport Innovation and the PwC Chair in Digital Economy. His research in the field of BPM has attracted numerous Industry partners including Accenture, Australia Post, Infosys, PwC, Rio Tinto, SAP, Suncorp and Woolworths.

Tom Yeatts

CTO/Chief Strategist, State & Local Government, ServiceNow, USA

Tom Yeatts is the ServiceNow Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for State & Local Government.  He is passionate about the role of technology to help streamline government and educational service delivery, and enjoys helping organizations deliver practical solutions that increase productivity and provide for a delightful customer experience.  Prior to ServiceNow, Tom was Deputy CIO and CIO for Howard County, Maryland, where he led initiatives to automate workflows, digitize processes, and elevate the level of citizen experience in his county.

Claire Agutter

Director, Scopism and ITSM Zone,  Scopism and ITSM Zone, United Kingdom

Claire Agutter is a service management trainer, consultant and author. She is the director at ITSM Zone, providing accredited eLearning in ITIL, DevOps, BRM and more, and also at Scopism, publisher of the SIAM Foundation and Professional BoKs. In 2018, 19 and 20 she was recognised by Computer Weekly as one of the 50 most influential women in tech, and in 2017, 18 and 19 she was recognised as an HDI Top 25 Thought Leader. Claire is the host of the popular ITSM Crowd YouTube channel, and Chief Architect for VeriSM. Claire is the author of the popular ITIL Foundation Study Guides: ITIL 4 Essentials and ITIL Foundation Essentials, used by students around the world to prepare for their ITIL 4 Foundation exams and to support them as ITSM practitioners.

Roger Burlton

President, Process Renewal Group, Canada

Roger is the author of the pioneering book ‘Business Process Management: Profiting from Process’ and the ‘Business Process Manifesto’, now available in 14 languages. His Business Architecture column in BPTrends.com is available to over twenty thousand readers. Recently he developed the Business Agility Manifesto in collaboration with John Zachman and Ron Ross. Roger developed and delivered the first Business Process and Business Process Architecture management education in the world in 1991, certified today by universities in North America, Europe, Australia and South America. He is is recognized as a pragmatic world leader in transforming companies from traditional hierarchical organizations to process managed ones based on a value delivery model supported by Business Architecture practices. He has led numerous initiatives to implement new business models, governance frameworks and process management capabilities for global corporations and government agencies. He continues to chair the most prominent business process conferences around the world which he has done on over fifty occasions.

Nicole conboy

Executive Consultant and Trainer, Nicole Conboy and Associates, Canada

As an IT leader and best practice author of “Service Rescue!  An Implementation and Improvement Guide for Incident Management”, Nicole Conboy is recognized for leveraging her passion in service and relationship management to transform IT organizations.  Her unique approach to managing organizational change and transformation leads to quick success, adoption of solutions that enable business results and has resulted in numerous global awards.

MILES FAULKNER

CEO, Blended Perspectives, Canada

Miles is a highly experienced and seasoned IT Services and Project Manager, Agile Scrum Master, PMI, and ITIL certified. He is highly conversant with Atlassian products, especially Jira and Confluence. Miles has a wide experience in both infrastructure and development environments and is responsible for a range of large scale clients and initiatives to radically improve the performance and capability of IT and Business teams. He provides value-added services in best practices for Jira configuration to support software development, ITIL processes as well as project & program management.

Jayne Groll

Co-founder and CEO, DevOps Institute (DOI), USA

Jayne Groll is co-founder and CEO of the DevOps Institute (DOI).  A former IT Operations Director, Jayne's expertise spans multiple domains including DevOps, Agile, ITIL, SRE and Leadership.

Jayne is a recognized and respected IT thought leader and influencer and is very active in the global DevOps, ITSM and Agile communities.  She is a frequent presenter at local, national and virtual events and author of the Agile Service Management Guide.

Roman Jouravlev

ITSM Portfolio Development Manager, AXELOS, United Kingdom

Roman Jouravlev is a ITSM Portfolio Development Manager, responsible for ITIL continual development. He joined AXELOS in 2016 after working for more than 15 years in ITSM, mostly in Russia, as a trainer, consultant, quality manager and service desk manager.
Roman has authored and translated several books and many articles on IT management. An ITIL v2 Service Manager and ITIL Expert, he has delivered nearly every ITIL certification training available since 2002.
At AXELOS, he has been involved in development of all ITIL 4 publications as an architect, author, and reviewer.

Sarah Lyons

General Manager, Privacy Analytics, Canada

Sarah Lyons is the General Manager of Privacy Analytics, an IQVIA company, where she helps companies deliver insight-rich health data while protecting patient privacy.

Before joining Privacy Analytics as COO in 2017, Sarah was a Partner and National Privacy Leader at MNP LLP. Sarah joined MNP through its merger with A Hundred Answers Inc., a Canadian professional services firm where she was COO and delivered advisory, digital and technology solutions and services.

Sarah has led the development and implementation of innovative risk assessment methodologies for governments, large financial institutions, and Fortune 500 companies. She previously led the establishment of new consulting markets and methodologies for Ernst & Young’s growing Government and Public Sector practice, where she also managed large-scale global projects. She has provided privacy advisory services globally across jurisdictions, including in the health sector and for privacy regulators.

YASH parikh

Service Management Consultant, TOPdesk, Canada

Yash brings a unique perspective to service management, with a background in Aerospace Engineering he has learnt to think outside the box (or plane) to solve complex problems. He brought those skills to TOPdesk as a Service Management Consultant where he regularly helps customers conquer process and product related challenges.  As an ITIL certified consultant, Yash understands the value of service excellence and how it can help accelerate businesses to new heights.

Lisa schwartz

Co-Founder of  ITSM Academcy | CitrusCollab | DevOps Institute, USA

As the Co-Founder, CEO and Owner of ITSM Academy, Lisa Schwartz leads the development, education, and implementation of IT Service Management (ITSM), ITIL, DevOps, and Agile Service Management at the enterprise level.  Lisa's enthusiasm for ITSM excellence has helped ITSM Academy grow and expand its capabilities to continue to exceed its client's expectations.

Lisa is also the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of CitrusCollab. She has led the introduction of a formal training and certification scheme around the Science of Experience and Experience Level Agreements (XLAs).  With their clients, CitrusCollab has co-created solutions to improve employee and customer experiences. As the Co-Founder and Board Member of the DevOps Institute (DOI), Lisa helped the start-up codify training and certification standards of DevOps globally.
Lisa is very active in the ITSM, Agile, DevOps, and the now emerging XLA communities.  An avid football fan, her personal motto is "There is no traffic jam on the extra mile." (Rodger Staubach, American Football Quarterback), although during the pandemic, its changed ... "If there is wind, row." (Latin Proverb).

rod Ward

Senior ITSM Consultant, Marval North America, Canada

Paul Wilkinson

Business Development Director, GamingWorks, Netherlands

Paul has been actively involved in ITSM for more than 40 years in a variety of roles from operations, to development to IT management. He was also actively involved in the development of ITIL Practitioner which introduced the Guiding principles to align ITIL to a more Agile way of working. Paul is Business Development Director of GamingWorks, the company that developed the internationally renowned ‘Apollo 13 – an ITSM case experience’ ITSM simulation game, the ‘Phoenix Project’ DevOps simulation and most recently the MarsLander simulation which can be used to support ITIL®4 training and culture change. He was also co-author and developer of the ‘ABC of ICT’ (The Attitude, Behavior and Culture of ICT) publications, having conducted ABC workshops and simulation workshops with delegates representing more than 5000 organizations world-wide.

Steven Woodward

CEO, Cloud Perspectives, Canada

Steven Woodward is an international leader in educating, planning, estimating, measuring, governing, integrating, architecting, securing and executing innovative value-focused solutions.

Since 2009, Steven Woodward has been leading and contributing to many of the ICT standards, transformation, cloud computing and government communities.
Steven has authored several published chapters in software metrics best-practices books and regularly contributes articles and acts as an editor/reviewer of other publications, including IEEE. In 2018 Steven was leading cloud federation security definitions in conjunction with NIST and IEEE, data jurisdiction considerations with ISO/IEC and Edge Computing security elements with ISO/IEC.

Steven is also contributing to updating Canadian Privacy Regulation, defining Ethics & AI practices and clarifying the GDPR impact on Canada.  Steven is known for his interactive style and unique logical perspectives that encourages value-focused transformative change.

Paul Vos

Senior Business Transition Consultant, Independent Consultant, Canada

Paul is an expert Organizational Change and Service Management specialist with over 20 years experience in digital transformation projects. He has a proven track record of successfully planning and implementing the latest Digital transformation platforms including ServiceNow defining and implementing Roadmaps that include Organizational Change, Communications, Training and Process dimensions as needed to achieve program goals. Paul thrives in complex, multi-vendor; silo-ed transformations with high adoption risk and where leadership and practitioner / customer interest are often poorly aligned. Certified ITIL Expert trainer, Prosci Organisational Change Management, LEAN, NLP, and the ServiceNow platform.