Speakers

Dawn Brushammar

Dawn Brushammar Consulting – Knowledge Management Consultant

KMWorld Europe – Programme Chair

(Formerly at McKinsey & Company – Knowledge Content Manager)

Based outside of Malmö, Sweden, Dawn is currently an independent KM consultant and advisor, and a frequent contributor at industry events where she often speaks about tacit knowledge exchange, structured data, and the role of modern librarians.

Dawn Brushammar has spent her 25+ year career connecting people to relevant knowledge and information. Her experience across industries and geographies includes leading an internal Knowledge Management team at McKinsey and Company, building databases for the Oprah Winfrey Show, running research services for a division of American Express, and managing academic librarianship at several universities and an environmental and sustainability research institute. Having earned a BA, MS, and MLIS, she is a data and taxonomy nerd and forever a librarian at heart.

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Gary Ault

Novo Nordisk – Senior Director of Enterprise Data Strategy & Analytics Enablement

(Formerly at Accenture – Manager CRM Global Services Line)

Based in New Jersey, USA, Gary Ault is the Senior Director of Enterprise Data Strategy & Analytics Enablement at Novo Nordisk, with over 20 years of experience in data and analytics across multiple industries. A recognized leader in the field, he is responsible for shaping the U.S. enterprise data strategy, overseeing data governance, and building data capabilities to drive organizational success.

His role also includes leading analytics enablement initiatives, such as managing the Tableau environment, providing analytics training, and organizing community events to foster a strong data culture.

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Paco Nathan

Senzing – DevRel Leader for the Entity Resolved Knowledge Graph Practice

(Formerly at Databricks – Director of Community Evangelism)

Paco Nathan leads Developer Relations (DevRel) for the Entity Resolved Knowledge Graph practice area at Senzing.com and is a computer scientist with over 40 years of tech industry experience and core expertise in data science, natural language, graph technologies, and cloud computing. He’s the author of numerous books, videos, and tutorials about these topics. He also hosts the monthly “Graph Power Hour!” webinar.

Paco advises Kurve.ai, EmergentMethods.ai, and is lead committer for the ‘pytextrank’ and ‘kglab’ open source projects. He was formerly: Director of Learning Group at O’Reilly Media; and Director of Community Evangelism at Databricks.

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Barry Byrne

Novartis – Global Head of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Summit Dublin – Founder

(Formerly at Irish Defence Forces – Chief Information and Knowledge Management Officer)

Barry Byrne is Global Head of Knowledge Management for Novartis, where he leads their KM Centre of Excellence (CoE), providing strategic guidance, partnering, and Global Process Ownership for KM. This team leads the global approach to get the right knowledge, to the right people, at the right time, for the right decision. Part of this role involves optimizing AI performance with good KM and a human in the loop.

Formerly a senior military officer with 22 years’ leadership experience, Barry joined Novartis in 2020 from the Irish Defence Forces where he led their award-winning Knowledge Management programme and served as Ireland’s representative to the NATO KM expert committee for six years. He lectured on KM and Information Systems in Trinity College Dublin for three years and also founded Knowledge Summit Dublin, a community-led gathering of thought leaders and practitioners from around the world to exchange knowledge on AI and KM for two days. Barry holds masters degrees in both Management of Information Systems, and Leadership and Management.

During his time in the Defence Forces, Barry completed four United Nations peacekeeping missions in Liberia, Lebanon, Sierra Leone and the Congo. He is married to Suzie, and they live in Dublin with their two young boys. In his spare time, he is a keen sailor and loves to travel.

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Ben Clinch

Ortecha – Partner

EDM Council – Regional Lead Trainer EMEA/India

(Formerly at HSBC – Global Head of Business Data Architecture)

Ben Clinch is a sought after public speaker and thought leader in data and AI. He is a voracious learner, reads avidly books, research papers and meeting with specialists in numerous fields with the sole aim of learning, applying and sharing the knowledge to help others succeed.

Ben is a partner at Ortecha and has a passion for helping organisations thrive with their data, built upon practitioner experience having held numerous senior roles in architecture and business in some of the world’s largest financial and telecommunication institutions over his 25 year career.

As an active member of the data community, Ben leads the AI Special Interest Group and DCAM Architecture Working Group at the Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Council. He is the Regional Lead trainer for EMEA at the EDM Council with a special focus on their industry best practice frameworks DCAM (Data Management Capability Assessment Model) and CDMC (Cloud Data Management Capabilities).

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Yaiza Peraza Zurita

Novo Nordisk – Director of Data Capabilities

(Formerly at Maersk – Lead Enterprise Architect)

Yaiza Peraza Zurita is the Director of Data Capabilities at Novo Nordisk, bringing over 15 years of experience in data management across multiple industries.

With a background in applied science, she specializes in aligning business data needs with organizational strategy. Her responsibilities include leading use case management, business process description and optimization, and enterprise analysis to support data-driven decision-making.

Originally from Spain, Zurita recently relocated to New Jersey to further her career in a global, innovative environment.

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Lulit Tesfaye

Enterprise Knowledge – Partner and Vice-President, Knowledge & Data Services

Lulit Tesfaye is a Partner and the Vice President for Knowledge & Data Services, and
Engineering at Enterprise Knowledge, the largest global consultancy dedicated
to Knowledge and Data Management.

Lulit brings over 15 years of experience leading global information and data management initiatives, specializing in technologies and integrations. Lulit is most recently focused on employing advanced Enterprise AI, knowledge graphs, and Semantic Layer capabilities for optimizing enterprise data and information assets.

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Alistair C.

His Majesty’s Government (HMG) – Senior Technical Developer

Alistair C. is a Data Engineer with nearly a decade of experience specializing in big data and entity resolution. Over that time, he has designed and implemented scalable data solutions that tackle complex challenges across the law enforcement problem space.

He has deep expertise in linking disparate data sources and building high-performance data pipelines.

Piers G.

His Majesty’s Government (HMG) – Product Owner

Piers G. has a background in intelligence analysis in various parts of HMG and for the past five years has been working as a product owner on solutions that join structured and unstructured data for investigators and analysts.

He is excited about the additional power a Semantic Layer will add for users trying to extract insight from data.

Sara Nash

Enterprise Knowledge – Principal Consultant, Semantic Engineering

Sara Nash is a Principal Consultant of Semantic Engineering at Enterprise Knowledge. She specializes in Semantic Layer and Enterprise AI initiatives, leading throughout strategy, design, and implementation.

Sara has led taxonomy/ontology design, knowledge graph implementation, recommendation engine solutions, and advanced analytics platforms across financial services, pharmaceuticals, ESG consulting, workforce enablement, and more. She is an experienced facilitator with a proven track record of leading impactful trainings and workshops across diverse organizations, fostering actionable design and upskilling for business executives, data engineers, and architects alike.

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