Agile2024 - Speakers
Get ready for an unforgettable Agile24 European Experience in 2024! Follow here to see our exceptional line up of speakers.
Prepare to be inspired and enlightened by visionary leaders from various fields who are shaping the future and driving positive change in the world of agility.
Mark your calendars and get ready to embark on a journey of discovery at our upcoming conference!
Keynote Speakers
Arie van Bennekum
Arie is a pragmatic who embeds his pragmatism in structure, discipline & common sense from his early days in the health care and the military forces up to where he is today. This eventually led to being one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto. Over the years Arie has become an expert on Agile transformations and Business Agility. Arie is working as a thought leader and transformation lead. As well he is helping organisations and their leadership teams to overcome issues in Agile environments and help them to achieve the needed business value. As such he is active across the globe as a public speaker at conferences, delivering masterclasses and leadership programs and leading international transformations with an international team. Next to this work in Agile and Agile transformations Arie lectured at the Rotterdam University (20 years), Amsterdam (7 years) and Utrecht (3years) on topics such as Agile, (Agile) project management, Business value and Agile transformations. Arie has become and expert on Agile transformations, Agile project management and Agile delivery. Arie is working for EarlyFriday as Agile thought leader and partner. His IP and more information is to be found via and on his LinkedIn page.
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/ariev3/
Emily Bache
Emily is a Technical Agile Coach with ProAgile. She has worked with software development for over 20 years in diverse organizations from start-up to large enterprise. Emily has written two books about teaching and learning agile technical practices, and authored Pluralsight courses about unit testing. Originally from the UK, she currently lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.
- Twitter:
- @emilybache
Michael Pace
Dr. Michael Pace, Ph.D., EdD.(c), is an accomplished project management professional, Director of Academic Practice at GPM Global, Director of Project Management at Texas A&M Marketing & Communication, and an Adjunct Faculty member. With over 20 years of experience, he has built and led high-performance teams across diverse industries, including higher education, healthcare, and telecommunications. Dr. Pace is recognized for his expertise in sustainable project management, leadership, and cultural intelligence, designing comprehensive training curricula and providing strategic consultation to organizations worldwide.
He holds a Ph.D. in Business Management, an MS in Forensic Science, a BS in Forensic Science, and is currently pursuing an Ed.D. at the University of Glasgow. His certifications include PMP, PfMP, and Scrum Master, among many others. Dr. Pace has published extensively on project management and is the primary creator of a patented method to simplify complex laboratory results for healthcare providers.
In his current role, he spearheads strategic initiatives, guides organizational change, and advocates for sustainability in business practices. Dr. Pace's mission is to educate others through effective teaching, consulting, and mentoring, aiming to prevent issues by instilling the right practices from the start. An avid traveler, he aims to lecture on every continent, including Antarctica.
Peter Coesmans
Peter has been involved in agile working and its predecessors since 1997. He has helped to forward professionals in agility (co-authoring Agile Portfolio Management), project/programme/portfolio management (co-authoring IPMA’s ICB4 standard), and facilitation (setting up the international CPF assessment for IAF international). Peter often gets the opportunity to speak at professional conferences worldwide, on a myriad of topics. He is always looking for sustainable improvements and believes true change is brought forward in small steps, through learning and experimenting, and by collaborating with people with a common goal.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/petercoesmans/
Speakers
Agne Kelminskiene
Agne, an agile coach with over 8 years of expertise, has successfully collaborated with product development organizations spanning diverse industries.
Her coaching philosophy revolves around authentic value delivery and achieving desired business outcomes.
With a combination of systemic training and hands-on coaching, Agne empowers companies to build autonomous, high-performing teams and deliver superior products.
Alexandra Stokes
Alex is the co-founder and CEO of ReBoot Co. a consulting company in Melbourne Australia. She has been a driver of several large Agile transformations in Australia and has led digital delivery teams, and brought agility and pace at all levels, from team to exec. She is a strong advocate for self-directed and self-organising teams, and a passionate ‘first principles’ Agilist, shunning frameworks and bloated approaches.
Since Agile's emergence in the 90’s she has honed and applied these methods and complementary techniques (Lean, Systems Thinking, Design Thinking) to every kind of industry and workplace you can imagine. Alex has even written a book about Empowered Agile Transformation - Beyond the Framework to help us all do this better.
Alex enjoys coaching, teaching, and helping other companies solve their problems of scale, delivery, and pace, and founded ReBoot Co. with a good friend Tony Fifoot in 2017. Their mission is to help organizations achieve sustainable and continuous improvement and transform every workplace so people love their work, and they have an excellent team of people to help with that.
Anthony Crain
I help businesses develop strategies to achieve their business goals, to overcome obstacles, and to outperform their competition.
I am passionate about improving company culture, business agility, product mindset, lean portfolio management, gamification, enterprise transformation, teaching, public speaking, hypothesis testing, and generating excitement to change. I am interested in think tanks, using my orthogonal thinking to generate creative solutions that are unique, compelling and profitable.
My goal is to increase product flow and team happiness by healing antipatterns in corporate culture. I create high performing executive, business, operations, and development teams and teach them powerful techniques to get high quality work done faster and with more fun!
I also have created a smartphone app called Pocket Coach. The app helps teams identify which techniques and experiments they should try next to accelerate their value streams and improve their products. It uses gamification to accelerate skill growth for the organization.
Bevan Williams
Bevan has been working in, and with, agile teams since 2009 and is currently an Enterprise Agile Coach at Old Mutual. He has worked as a Software Engineer, Scrum Master, Development Manager and Head of Mobile before shifting to full-time Agile Coaching in 2018. He is passionate about coaching, enabling and leading people to do their best work, focussing on personal, career and organizational growth.
- Twitter:
- @bevanwilliams
Cassandra Van Gelder
Cass Van Gelder hails from just about every part of the US – New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Nashville and onwards. She maintains certifications as a Senior Agile Coach/Trainer, ICP-ENT, ICP-ACC, CSM, CSPO, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, and other alphabetic combinations. She designed, organized, and continues to teach successful Learning Journeys, Leadership Master Classes, Mental Health Advocation Workshops, Gamification Workshops, etc.
With a background in theater, music, gaming, and Legos, she develops highly engaging programs and workshops focusing on ensuring students can easily digest the information and openly apply what they have learned – and always with a path towards onward growth.
Claudia Orozco-Gomez
Hi! I'm Claudia Orozco-Gomez and I help people work better together, on products and teams. We define what "better" means and then take it from there through a mix of pragmatism and experimentation.
Following a eureka moment, I understood what I wanted to contribute to the world of work and restarted my learning journey in search of "better ways" - for individuals, for teams and for work.
The rest of the story is under continuous construction.
After more than 15 years of practice, I've finally reached a place where I feel at ease with the Agility Coach label, and hope to pay it forward to this generous community we all belong to.
An Agile Uprising coalitioner, passionate practitioner and Agile ancillaries enthusiast... among many other things :)
Daniel Susser
Daniel is an independent agility coach based in the UK. Formerly holding Senior Delivery Manager and Agile Coach roles at startup DrDoctor, UK Ministry of Justice Digital, giffgaff, and Cancer Research UK. Daniel started life in the Natural Sciences, and through roles in Innovation at Cancer Research UK landed in the world of agile coaching in 2018. He’s fascinated by how we can use approaches based in the Behavioural Sciences to help us build brilliant teams. He runs his own consultancy Embodied Agility and writes about agility and Cognitive Sciences.
David Ross
Dave Ross is the Principal Agile Evangelist at Miro. He has two decades of experience working with software engineering teams, and has led agile transformation efforts across companies of many different sizes.
Combining his experience and education with many different agile frameworks, and understanding common pain points from customer conversations, Dave brings a point of view on how the best EPD and Agile teams can be more innovative, inclusive and support their agile ways of working by leveraging Miro.
Dr Caitlin Walker
Dr Caitlin Walker is an author, the developer of Clean for Teams and Systemic Modelling and an internationally sought after keynote, presenter and facilitator with experience in a wide range of business and academic events. She is a compelling speaker who specialises in audience participation and live interactions. A sample of speaking events are shared below.
Women in Agile November 2022: Keynote: Breaking and resetting boundaries in order to be at your best.
Agenda Shift - May 2021: Presentation: Clean Set-Up - setting outcome orientated intentions for an event or relationship
Agile Boston On-line 2020: Keynote: Gathering Scrum Requirements with Clean Language Interviewing
Agile Alliance Washington 2019: Audacious Salon Facilitator: Anti fragility, Collaboration and Agile
ICF on Tour Brussels Oct 2015: Keynote: Creating the conditions for organisations to coach themselves
Dr Guy Marshall
Dr Guy Marshall is an experienced technology consultant and Chartered Mathematician with 10+ peer-reviewed publications and a PhD in AI. He is the Fractional CTO and a Council Member at Manchester Statistical Society.
He applies his skills and 10+ year’s experience in Agile software development to data-driven transformation programmes, working with companies from SMEs to multinationals. Key clients include Tesco, Thales, Ocado and William Hill, with whom he has worked across three continents. He is a Simon Industrial Fellow at University of Manchester and fractional Chief Technology Officer for PorthouseDean Structural Engineers.
Guy also volunteers his time to Manchester Statistical Society, the RSA, and the Institute of Mathematics, and is a regular international speaker about AI, culture change, agile software development, and technical diagrams.
Elector Masarakufa
As an Agile enthusiast, I am deeply committed to fostering a sense of connectedness within the workplace. My extensive experience working with numerous teams and leaders, in roles ranging from Scrum Master to Facilitator, has enriched my ability to listen profoundly and nurtured my curiosity. This journey has taught me the value of delving deeper into understanding team dynamics and maintaining an open, inquisitive mindset, which I believe is essential for collaboration and growth.
Ellen Grove
Ellen Grove is a business agility coach and change agent who works with organizations of all sizes to help them put agile thinking into practice to make change happen. Her coaching practice is shaped by deep experience working with software development teams and organizational transformations, a passion for user-centered design, and a love of using playful techniques to get serious things done. Ellen coaches and trains teams and leaders in startups, multinational enterprises, and public sector organizations in Canada and internationally.
Gabriele Adomonyte
With over 6 years of diverse experience in product development organizations, Gabriele brings a unique perspective on leadership, team & change management.
Throughout her engagements, she remains highly inquisitive seeking to understand the challenges and opportunities faced by each organization.
Germaine Trista Hendrikz
Germaine has an IT and process efficiency background - having been part of and leading both Lean and Agile transformations, since 2015, in the financial services sector, Germaine was part of the early transformational journeys in the South African market.
Germaine’s transition from IT focused initiatives started her journey towards believing that to truly benefit a holistic customer focus, a partnership between IT and business coupled with a Lean and an Agile way of working is pivotal to a better way of working and serving customers in an ever changing, fast-paced digitalized world.
For past two years Germaine has been with Kaizania – a Business Excellence organization that focuses on delivering business results through excelling in new ways of working.
Her unique Lean knowledge and experience of being an employee, in an organization of more than 50 000 employees, that was transforming to a new way of working allows her to have relevant views and insights from employee experiences to the value of flow that can assist organizations in improving end-to-end value delivery.
Heidi Musser
About the Speaker Heidi is an accomplished Board member, Board advisor, and C-level executive who advises and leads businesses on digital transformation and enterprise agility. She currently serves on the Boards of Directors of CPrime, Inc. and the Community Financial Credit Union. She has successfully created and scaled resilient and sustainable organizational structures, business, and governance models that can withstand rapidly and dynamically changing market conditions and play an integral role in achieving competitive advantage in this next economic revolution. A life-long learner with insa8able curiosity, she’s achieved extraordinary results and transforma8onal outcomes in five different business models in complex, regulated environments. Heidi speaks and writes frequently on the topics of leadership, agile, and people. In addition to her TED Talk, she has authored several articles and edited numerous books, including writing the introduction to “Wild West to Agile: Adventures in Software Development Evolutions and Revolutions.” Most recently, she has contributed a chapter, ‘People Are the Core of Sustainable Innovation’ for the book, ‘Driving Sustainable Innovation: How to Do Well While Doing Good’, to be co-published between the Brightline Initiative of PMI and Thinkers50 in June. Heidi has been at the forefront of championing and mentoring women in leadership and technology throughout her career and speaks frequently on DEIB, LGBTQ in Tech, and women in STEM. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Michigan Council for Women in Technology. In 2014, she was nominated to STEMconnector’s® list of 100 Diverse Corporate Leaders in STEM. She fervently believes that people are more important than technology and that modern business demands modern ways of working.
James Foxx
James is an experienced Agile Coach working out of Amsterdam, NL. He has experience with building high performing agile teams within infrastructure and security domains rather than your traditional software development environment.
Jim Highsmith
Although retired from "gainful" employment, Jim's current "un- retirement" status can best be labeled "Industry Advisor" reflecting his recent work on several initiatives, including Reimagining Agile, Business Agility, and Agile-Adaptive Leadership in the C-suite.
Adventurer, Catalyst, Storyteller
Co-author of the Agile Manifesto with 60 years’ experience as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, software developer, and agile pioneer.
I’ve always been an adventurer, trying out a variety of adventure sports from mountaineering to century bike racing. These sports involve taking calculated risks whose consequences are learned by experience. Likewise with my 60-year career in software development and management—I made several risky, but not reckless, career pivots.
Relying on my engineering and management experience I’ve been a catalyst to bring people together— from diverse functional areas like IT, marketing, finance, and software development; and help bridge the gaps between teams and executives. Founding member of Agile Alliance. Co-founder and first president of the Agile Project Leadership Network. Advisor to Agile Leadership Journey. Executive Consultant at ThoughtWorks. Director of Cutter Consortium’s Agile Project Management practice.
Whether I’m relating mountain climbing to adapting to change, or presenting on agility to conference audiences, I rely on storytelling to provide emotional “hooks” so audiences can remember facts and figures. Author of six agile books, the latest Wild West to Agile (2023).
- Twitter:
- @jimhighsmith
Jo Masraff
Based in the Greater Edinburgh Area, Joanna Masraff is a renowned Agile and Sustainability Coach and Delivery Lead, distinguished for her passion for sustainability and diversity in tech and business. With her belief in the power of small changes to make a significant impact, Joanna has dedicated her career to helping individuals, teams, and companies not only deliver value but also improve continuously in a way that benefits the planet and enhances overall happiness.
Joanna's journey in the agile world is marked by her role in co-leading the Agilists4Sustainability meetup group, and the Agilists4Planet conference, which focuses on the positive impacts of Agile thinking and practices on environmental, societal, economic, and personal challenges. Through this platform, she empowers people to take their first steps towards meaningful change by sharing inspiring stories of others making a real impact.
As co-founder of Green PO, she envisions a world where sustainability practises are a part of BAU and every PO is a Green PO. Offering training to enable the inevitable transition to a sustainable version of itself.
Her professional repertoire includes significant experience as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, and trainer. Joanna's extensive skills encompass a broad range of technical IT and business areas, making her a creative and effective problem solver. She has a proven track record as an ambassador for change, consistently driving progress through recurrent analysis and process improvement.
Joanna Masraff's approach to coaching and training is infused with her superb energy and exceptional communication skills, making her a sought-after speaker and leader in the Agile community.
John Barratt
John is a passionate about helping individuals, teams, and organisations reach their full potential. With a military background and experience coaching in various industries, John has developed a unique coaching style that combines the principles of business agility with other coaching approaches.
John specialises in helping organisations simplify and become more resilient and has a proven track record of delivering these results. He uses various tools and methods, including outcome-based coaching and systemic modelling, to help clients identify their goals and achieve measurable results.
Some of John's recent successes include helping IAG Loyalty meet its ambitious targets during turbulent COVID times whilst reducing staff turnover, Creating an internal training and coaching capability for Maersk saving a year in external costs and helping Vodafone's Secure Net product pass 20 million paid subscribers.
In his free time, John is a voracious learner and enjoys attending meetups and conferences worldwide to discover new ideas and learn from others.
- Twitter:
- @coachjohnuk
Jon Kern
Co-author Agile Manifesto. Co-author Java Design.
Jon is fortunate to be at Adaptavist where he and some colleagues have been creating, experimenting, and refining new ways to help teams and organizations become more capable in facing the complex challenges that seem to be everywhere you turn. With Adaptavist’s backing, we are creating a community collaboration space at ReimaginingAgile.com that will unfold over the course of 2024. “We” being the RA Launch Group: Heidi Musser, Jim Highsmith, Jon Kern, Sanjiv Augustine.
Jon began his career as an aerospace engineer doing testing and R&D on jet engines in the early 80s. He soon discovered the power of software and worked on flight simulation models of the F-14, agile fighter maneuverability research with the X-31, numerous real-time flight control systems, and man-machine integration research through the early 90s.
He began to dive more deeply into software engineering, design, and architecture, publishing a lightweight software methodology in 1995, and co-founding a boutique software engineering company. Along the way, he was mentored by Peter Coad, and in 2000 they co-founded TogetherSoft – creators of a market-leading UML modeling tool (bought by Borland in 2003). Jon also created and led the group of mentors/consultants, in addition to being the Product Owner of the core product and of an innovative new application. Jon has consulted with dozens of companies over the years and has been involved with various start-ups. To this day, you will find Jon practicing what he preaches (domain modeling, BDD, TDD, CI/CD, blue-green deploy, etc.) on a production app for firefighters, schools, industry, etc., for pre-incident planning – saving lives and property.
In short, Jon is passionate about helping teams succeed in delivering value through software. He seeks better ways for teams to accomplish their goals from the perspectives of people (mindset and culture), process, and technology (tools). Jon likes to help teams build a developmental environment that enables effective practices, learning, solid architecture, agile development, quality-by-design (not accident), and laser-like focus on delivering value.
- Twitter:
- @jonkernpa
Jutta Eckstein
Jutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She has recently co-created an assessment for (agile) teams to gauge the environmental, social, and economic impact of their products and services. Besides that, she has published her experience in various books, having pair-written the most recent one with John Buck on Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova).
Jutta is a member of the Agile Alliance (having served the board from 2003-2007) and has recently founded the “Agile Sustainability Initiative” which aims at increasing the awareness of the Agile community’s possibilities to make a difference. She’s a member of the program committee of many different American, Asian, and European conferences, where she has presented her work. She holds an M.A. in Business Coaching & Change Management, a Dipl.Eng. (MSc.) in Product-Engineering, and is trained as a pollution control commissioner on ecological environmentalism.
Patrick Hoverstadt
Patrick has specialised in using systems approaches for working with very large complex organisations as a consultant since 1995 across sectors and 24 countries. His consulting work has mainly been on strategy, organisational design and change.
He worked with the Agile Business Consortium in developing agile approaches to strategy, governance and scaling agile using systems approaches.
Patrick is a regular keynote speaker at conferences, has contributed to eight books on systems, organisation and management, is the author of “Fractal Organisation” 2008, on the Viable System Model which is used on seven masters programmes around the world. He co-wrote “Patterns of Strategy” 2017 on a systemic approach to strategy and wrote “The Grammar of Systems” in 2022. He chairs SCiO, the international professional body for systems practitioners, has lectured at 10 universities and business schools and is a Visiting Research Fellow at Cranfield.
Phillip Strain
Philip holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Human-Computer Interaction) had has over 15 years product experience from Google, Apple and Spotify. Philip combines strong technical knowledge with user experience research skills to create experiences that are delightful for everyone.
Robin Hackshall
Robin looks to put the ‘fun’ into addressing and removing ‘dys-fun-ctions’ through the use of creative tools, techniques and analogies. He is now taking this a step further by delivering Scrum Master training with LEGO as a medium for learning, helping to create the building blocks of skills and knowledge in those that attend his courses.
Robin began his Agile journey as a Product Owner in 2011 with zero knowledge of Agile or Scrum. This role proved to be pivotal in his career, setting him off in a new direction. After experiencing a new approach to getting work ‘done’, he did not look back embracing a new way of working. Now he wants to help and guide you on your journey.
Robin is an experienced Agile Coach and Scrum Master. He has worked with a variety of organisations across multiple sectors helping them to visualise current processes and practices, identify areas for continuous improvement and deliver agile training, which has led to him delivering Scrum Master training with LEGO.
Robin is passionate about supporting individuals, teams and organisations on their Agile journey and is now supporting the growth of Scrum Masters through the Scrum Mastery Pathway. But that’s not the only Agile training that Robin offers, he also supports the development of Product Owners through the Product Mastery Pathway.
Sander Dur
Professional Scrum Trainer for Scrum.org, Lead Agile Consultant at Xebia, podcast host of Mastering Agility that hosts high-level guests like Mike Cohn, Lyssa Adkins, Jeff Gothelf, Maarten Dalmijn, and many more. Sander has been on stage at events like the Atos DREAM Conference, NL, the Agile Leadership Day, Switzerland, PizzAgility Atlanta, and ScanAgile23, Finland. A regular speaker and workshop moderator at different meetups as well.
Sanjeev Augustine
Sanjiv Augustine is the Founder and CEO of LitheSpeed, LLC and the Agile Leadership Academy. Sanjiv is an entrepreneur, industry-leading Agile and Lean expert, author, speaker, management consultant, and trainer. With over 30 years in the industry, Sanjiv has served as a trusted advisor to executives and management at leading firms, including Capital One, The Capital Group, CNBC, Comcast, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, General Dynamics, HCA Healthcare, Huntington Bank, The Motley Fool, National Geographic, Nationwide Insurance, Royal Bank of Canada, Samsung, and Walmart. Sanjiv is the host of the Agile Caravanserai podcast and the author of the books From PMO to VMO: Managing for Value Delivery, Managing Agile Projects, Scaling Agile: A Lean JumpStart, as well as several publications including, Transitioning to Agile Project Management, The Lean-Agile PMO: Using Lean Thinking to Accelerate Agile Project Delivery and Transformational Leadership for Business Agility.
- Twitter:
- saugustine
Scott Seivwright
Scott Seivwright is a distinguished figure in Agile methodologies and sustainable digital innovation. With over 30 years of experience in business transformation, primarily within the finance sector, Scott has emerged as a thought leader in blending Agile principles with environmental and social governance (ESG) considerations.
His expertise spans a broad spectrum, specializing in frameworks such as SAFe, Scrum, and Kanban. Scott has played pivotal roles in various capacities, including Interim CTO and Agile Product Coach, where he has demonstrated a profound ability to drive organizational value and efficiency. His approach is about implementing frameworks and instilling a robust Agile mindset at both organizational and individual levels, ensuring tangible, efficient results.
A passionate advocate for sustainability, Scott has extended his proficiency to include ESG assessments, targeting efficiency gains in reporting, supply chain assets, and the tech chain. These assessments are seamlessly integrated into Agile frameworks, exemplifying his commitment to holistic performance improvement.
At Green PO, Scott is a steward, promoting sustainable product and value coaching practices. His role at 3B | ESG as a Co-Founder and CEO further underscores his dedication to transforming ESG commitments into competitive advantages for clients, employing innovative methods and tools.
Scott brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and passion as a speaker. His informative and inspiring sessions drive home the importance of integrating sustainable practices into Agile methodologies. Attendees can expect to leave their talks with a deeper understanding of navigating the complexities of sustainable digital transformation and applying these practices effectively in their organisations.
Seb Rose
Consultant, coach, trainer, analyst, and developer for over 40 years.
Seb has been a consultant, coach, designer, analyst and developer for over 40 years. He has been involved in the full development lifecycle with experience that ranges from architecture to support, from BASIC to Ruby.
During his career, he has worked for companies large (e.g. IBM, Amazon) and small, and has extensive experience of failed projects. He's now an independent software consultant, helping apply the lessons he has learned to organisations worldwide.
Regular speaker at conferences and occasional contributor to software journals. Co-author of the BDD Books series "Discovery” and "Formulation" (Leanpub), lead author of “The Cucumber for Java Book” (Pragmatic Programmers), and contributing author to “97 Things Every Programmer Should Know” (O’Reilly).
Suzanne Lagerweij
Suzanne is an independent coach based in the Netherlands. With an interesting background in education, coaching, and running her own tech startup, Suzanne has a diverse view on the needs of people, teams and the whole organization. At her core, she’s driven from a sincere interest in people: always starting from the human to find connection and understanding as the basis of working together.
Tara Scott
Tara Scott is a product, UX and organizational behavior coach who has worked for over a decade with teams, leaders and organizations of all shapes and sizes. She is passionate about helping individuals collaboratively invest in a psychologically safe culture that allows them to thrive, innovate and pour their authentic selves into the products they create for others.
Tara believes in a “human first” approach to creating software, and has vast experience as a product development coach to help build pragmatic agility practices and help others understand the art of progress over process.
Vanessa Martens
I'm passionate about creating meaningful work environment where people and businesses thrive. I manage Business Agile, , an Agile coaching & training company. In the last 7 years I've been involved in launching Agile at scale in clients such as BMW, Vodacom, Absa and numerous other companies. I've trained over 800 people and consulted on Agile and change initiatives on a SAP implementation, an Online Banking Channel and numerous Retail Apps.
Vinnie Gill
Vinnie Gill lives a nomadic life, roaming the world as an agile adventurer. Vinnie puts people and culture first. She enjoys connecting with people and companies to find their purpose, and walking alongside them in their organisational growth journey. Her passion is coaching at the Enterprise level to help bring about wide-ranging agile organisational transformation.
Vinnie has vast industry and has deep business experience. She has previously held roles in Project Management, Contracts, HR, Strategy as well as experience working in and with start-up companies.
She is deeply involved in the Agile community and volunteers her time with the Business Agility Institute, in addition to being a member of the International Consortium for Agile.
Vinnie has a special interest in educating and education being the tool that empowers people; she is an IC Agile Authorised Instructor.