2026

Katherine Haigh

Xtract360, UK

Born and bred in northern England, I’ve been a tester for 10 years, starting out manually in the very niche world of XBRL (an XML-based business reporting language) and, more recently, developing my automation skills. I love coaching and mentoring other testers as part of a team, as well as learning and making new connections in the testing community.

Having experienced poor mental health, and knowing how many of us are affected by it, I’m really keen to promote open discussions and share good practices in this area. I also love gardening, making music and playing with my cat, Odo.

Keyhan Farhaninia

SOCO Norge AS, Norway

Keyhan Farhaninia has over 20 years of experience from the IT industry in different roles as a developer, test engineer, test manager and test advisor. He co-founded SOCO, a norwegian consultancy focused exclusively on software testing in 2012.

Stephan Haugsrud

Norsk Tipping AS, Norway

Stephan Haugsrud has a background in software testing with  technical roles in both the private and public sector. Eventually he moved from Oslo to Hamar to work for Norsk Tipping. He initially continued to work in the field of software testing, but made a transition to systems architecture for a couple of years.

Samer Naqvi

Principal Solutions Architect – 2i, United Kingdom

Samer Naqvi, a Test Architect with over 18 years of experience, specializes in enhancing QA practices and equipping teams with advanced methodologies. She champions elevating testing as a value driver through best practices and industry standards. A passionate advocate for women in tech, Samar inspires young women to excel in the field through speaking engagements at colleges, organizations, and conferences.

Archana Kattilakath Chandrasekharan

Booking Holdings, India

Archana is a test engineer who thrives on making testing smarter, faster, and a lot more fun. She’s switched between developer and tester roles, which gives her a unique perspective on how to bridge the gap between shipping features and ensuring quality. In her current RegTech team, she has built scalable API test frameworks, experimented with ephemeral environments, and is actively reworking the process flow for building machine-learning systems focusing on how quality, validation, and accountability must evolve when models, data, and experimentation become first-class citizens in product development.

She enjoys sharing real-world lessons, both wins and facepalms. Outside of work, she’s always learning something new, from diving into AI to diving under the sea.

Lloyd Roden

Lloyd Roden Consultancy Ltd, United Kingdom

With more than forty years in the software industry, I have worked as a Developer, Test Analyst and Test Manager for a

variety of different organisations. I am a director of Lloyd Roden Consultancy which specialises in training and consultancy in software testing.

My passion is to enthuse, excite and inspire people in the area of software testing. I believe that any work that I do must be relevant, practical and must make a difference to both the individual and the company they work for.

Anastasia Simou

Accenture, Germany

Anastasia holds a diploma in Mathematics and works as a Senior Quality Engineer at Accenture, where she leads the Test Data Management practice. She specializes in designing strategies that combine effective testing with data safety and compliance, helping organizations deliver secure and high-quality software.

Paul Gerrard

Gerrard Consulting, United Kingdom

Paul Gerrard is a consultant, teacher, author, webmaster, programmer, tester, conference speaker, vlogger and publisher. He has conducted consulting assignments in all aspects of software testing and quality assurance, specialising in test assurance.

He has presented keynote talks and tutorials at testing conferences across Europe, the USA, Australia, South Africa and occasionally won awards for them.

He was the Programme Chair for the 2014 EuroSTAR conference in Dublin and for several other conferences in recent years.

Bryan Jones

2i, United Kingdom

I have been in testing for over 36 years, working in most of the industry sectors and having done every job in testing from machine code reviews to being the Director of Quality Engineering.

I am now a Quality Architect for 2i, a quality and testing consultancy. I present at conferences, IT community events, am on the committee of BCS Edinburgh, the Scottish Testing Group, and host the Quality Blether podcast.

I am a career testing professional obsessed with Quality, insatiably curious and a learning addict.