Katherine Haigh

Customer Success Manager – CoreFiling, United Kingdom

I fell in to software testing when I was at university – my brother worked for a software company in Oxford, where I was studying, and he told me they were offering summer internships. I didn’t want to be a developer, but there were also positions in ‘Quality Assurance’. I didn’t really know what that would involve but the skillset seemed like a good match for me so I thought I’d give it a go.

I’ve now been with that same company for eight years, and I’ve never looked back! Although I’m now Customer Success Manager, responsible for both QA and Customer Support, I’m not above a bit of bug hunting or end-to-end testing. I’m lucky to have influence across the entire quality and testing process, from an issue being raised to reading the happy response from a satisfied customer whose needs have been met. I’m currently working through the Interaction Design Foundation’s Usability Expert set of courses and trying to adapt the things I learn to the very specific technologies my teams and our users work with. I’m also a member of the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) International Best Practices Board, which allows me to influence the quality of guidance written for users of XBRL technology and, in turn, the quality of XBRL data around the world. In my spare time I like to bake, blog about mental health, and play with my cat, Odo (named after the shape-shifter in Star Trek).

Paul Bruce

Head of Incubation Engineering – Tricentis, USA

Paul Bruce is a DevOps advisor, helping to transform enterprise software teams and delivery practices. He organizes DevOpsDays Boston, the Boston DevOps community, and chairs o11yfest and DevSecOps Days Boston. His technical research wheelhouse includes cloud management, high availability service architecture, API design and experience, and continuous testing at scale. He writes, listens, and teaches about software delivery patterns in enterprises and key industries and F250s around the world. You can learn more at: https://paulsbruce.io.

Abigail Cauchi

Domain Architect – Kindred Group, Malta

I joined Kindred in 2018 as a software tester and in 2020 I progressed into a domain architect role in the area of testing. I have focussed on getting a rigorous understanding of what Kindred needs and helped with tailoring our test automation solution to our tech stack. During my time in Kindred I have, together with my team, evolved and developed the test automation strategy that we use in the organisation today.

I have been fascinated by software quality for the last 15 years. I come from an academic background where I spent the best part of my academic life working on improving safety critical software. I have a PhD in Computer Science and I have published over 20 scientific papers in the area of software quality. I take pride in applying the scientific techniques that I used during my academic days to add value to Kindred. 

Dawn Haynes

CEO – PerfTestPlus, USA

Dawn Haynes is the Principal Trainer and Quality Coach at PerfTestPlus, a US-based consultancy. As a highly regarded trainer of software testers, Dawn blends her 35 years of IT experience with a real-world view to provide testers of all levels with tools and techniques to help them generate new approaches to common and complex software testing problems.

Highlighted as a woman of influence in Software Test and Performance magazine in January 2010, Dawn was honored to share her philosophy of testing with 12 other top international women in the field. Dawn continues to share her passion for inspiring people and teams to continuously improve product quality and testing practices by delivering training, consulting, coaching, and speaking at conferences worldwide.

Dawn holds a BSBA in MIS with a minor in programming, and endeavors to keep pace with changes to the industry through memberships, participation in peer conferences, and continuing education/professional development. Member: IEEE, ACM, ASQ, AST. Former Secretary and Director of the Association for Software Testing Founding member-International Institute of Software Testing. ISTQB CTFL, CTFL-AT, CTAL Full, ASTQB CMT

Mette Bruhn-Pedersen

Agile Transformation Leader & Coach – Safe Journey, Denmark

Mette works as an agile transformation leader and coach at Safe Journey. Since 2014 Mette has helped managers, QA & Test leads, technical and business teams on their journey from building agile teams to agile organisations and business agility. Earlier, Mette worked as a tester, test manager, and test leader. She is the co-author of the eBook “Testing and Quality in the Scaled Agile Framework for Lean Enterprises” published by EuroSTAR Huddle.

In her spare time Mette promotes quality assurance and software testing in Denmark and world-wide through her engagement in Danish Software Testing Board (DSTB) and ISTQB.

Sérgio Freire

Head of Product Evangelism – Xray, Portugal

Sérgio is a solution architect and testing advocate, working closely with many teams worldwide from distinct yet highly demanding sectors (Automotive, Health, and Telco among others) to help them achieve great, high-quality, testable products. By understanding how organizations work, their needs, context and background, processes and quality can be improved, while development and testing can “merge” towards a common goal: provide the best product that stakeholders need.