Maryna Didkovska

Director of Quality Engineering – EPAM, Hungary

Maryna Didkovska is a Quality Engineering Director at EPAM Systems. As a Test Manager, Delivery Manager, and Software Automation Engineer, Maryna has managed teams to build scalable testing processes on projects with over 600 participants, develop testing ecosystems on enterprise level, find solutions to quality architectural challenges, and coached others be experts and leaders. She holds a PhD in the software reliability domain, and leverages her academic background with hands-on work experience in software automation testing and programming. She interacts with team members and clients all over the globe, to continuously improve software quality, and drive digital transformations. Maryna is a regular speaker at technical and management conferences such as STAREAST, SEETEST, etc, covering a variety of testing topics. Maryna is passionate about making quality improvements process transparent and trackable.

Aleksi Simell

Senior DevOps Consultant – Eficode, Finland

Aleksi is a test automation oriented Senior DevOps consultant at Eficode. He started working with Robot Framework and test automation in 2015 ,and has since worked actively in different Robot Framework related projects. He has helped and coached multiple organizations to adopt better test automation and CI/CD practices, and is constantly looking for opportunities to improve test automation use cases. He is also the creator of the DuckOps comics, which teaches DevOps practices from a computerless perspective.

Gitte Ottosen

Expert Test Consultant – Key2Quality, Denmark

Gitte Ottosen is a test manager and quality coach with a strong focus on a value-driven approach to software development. She has more than 28 years of experience in IT, primarily within test, test management, and process improvement, in both traditional and agile contexts. She is focusing on supporting a quality mindset across teams and organizations in Denmark. As a self-confessed test and agile evangelist who preaches the need for a strong quality and value-driven focus, Gitte is a strong advocate for a context-driven approach, a role requiring profound professional insight, passion, and persistence – qualities that she holds in abundance. Gitte is a dedicated trainer within the areas of agile and test, and is a regular speaker at international conferences. She is a trained Master coach, and also holds several certificates within testing as well as agile: ISTQB Expert Level Test Management – Full, Certified agile tester (CAT), TMap Test Engineer, TMAP Organizing Built-in Quality at Scale, Certified SCRUM Master, and SAFe Program Consultant.

Maria Whaibe

Co-founder – GRIS, Lebanon

Maria Whaibe is a computer and communication engineer who’s always eager to learn, grow, and help other people grow!

After graduating, she spent three years at one of the world’s leading financial software companies, where she acted as a Product Manager for an internally developed testing tool. This is where she discovered her passion for testing. She’s currently pursuing her MBA at Germany’s top business school, where she’s constantly growing her business, management, and leadership skills. Always eager to explore new avenues, she decided to take a bold step by establishing her own testing company, GRIS, in Lebanon. As the co-founder and driving force behind GRIS, she has successfully built a diverse portfolio of services, including outsourcing, training, and auditing & consultancy.

One thing that she has always been passionate about is providing training for people and really helping them grow – specifically by focusing on people and the integration of management and leadership skills with the testing world.

Gil Zilberfeld

CTO – TestinGil, Israel

Gil Zilberfeld has been in software since childhood, writing BASIC programs on his trusty Sinclair ZX81.

With more than 25 years of developing commercial software, he has vast experience in software methodology and practices. From automated testing to exploratory testing, design practices to team collaboration, scrum to kanban, traditional product management to lean startup – he’s done it all.

Gil speaks frequently in international conferences about testing, TDD, clean code, and agile practices. He is the author of ‘Everyday Unit Testing’ and ‘Everyday Spring Testing’. He also writes blogs and posts videos on these topics, and in his spare time he shoots zombies, for fun.

Anais van Asselt

Senior QA Engineer – Choco, Germany

Anaïs is a test automation engineer, coach, and enthusiast. Over 9 years, she gained a lot of perspective at a variety of organisations, and (test automation) tooling, both frontend and backend. In pursuit of sustainable test automation, she applies a context-driven approach, Bruce Lee Driven Development, and joins forces with developers. Last year she started her mission at Choco in Berlin to build a sustainable supply chain, and reduce food waste worldwide. Challenge accepted!

Andrew Brown

Consultant – Expleo, UK

Dr Andrew Brown is a principal consultant at Expleo. He leads an independent line of research into understanding why we humans make the mistakes that lead to software defects.

He has 25 years’ experience in the software industry. Previous roles include Head of QA at HMV, Head of QA at a financial software house and a test manager in Japan.

He holds a degree in Physics and Maths, an MBA from Warwick Business School and a doctorate from Imperial College.

Elmar Juergens

Founder – CQSE, Germany

Elmar works both as a researcher and a founder. Elmar wrote his PhD thesis on static code analysis and is still active as a researcher in software quality analysis. In 2009, he co-founded CQSE GmbH, and since then helps teams in using analysis tools more effectively. Elmar frequently talks at research conferences (e.g. ICSE, ICPC) and industry events (e.g. GTD, OOP, JAX). He was elected best speaker at Clean Code Days, Software Quality Days and Java Forum Stuttgart. Elmar was named Junior Fellow of the GI in 2015.