Leela Putten

IT Specialist Consultant – Qualiblaze, South Africa

Leela Putten is an IT specialist consultant currently working in the non-functional testing and automation enablement delivery space, with a passion for empowering people, chasing her goals, and making a difference. Born in Mauritius, she pursued an Msc in Forensic Informatics in Scotland, and later moved to South Africa for work opportunities and lots of travel adventures. She started working in the security and performance testing field and gained exposure across multiple financial and telecommunication institutions for the past 12 years. Her current focus is technical practice roles across digital transformation projects, enabling ways of working amongst others.

Pia Wiedermayer

Lead QA Consultant – Zuehlke, Switzerland

I am a passionate quality personality. Quality and first-class service were already a special interest for me in my original professional field, the top hotel industry. My studies in business administration and e-business management got me excited about the countless opportunities in IT. That’s why I started as a consultant in test automation in 2013. Via test management and team leadership, my path led me to Zühlke at the beginning of 2019, where I have been a QA specialist ever since, advising our customers as well as supporting them in daily business. I place particular value on a holistic approach, in which quality is understood and lived as a principle – and not as an annoying evil at the end of the process.

Declan O’Riordan

Head of IA, Cabinet Office, United Kingdom

Declan O’Riordan is currently acting Head of Information Assurance (IA) for Government Digital Services, a part of the UK Cabinet Office. In 2014, he won the EuroSTAR prize for best conference paper and his debut talk was voted the ‘do over’ session. In 2015 Declan won the best conference paper prize at STAREAST, and was on the EuroSTAR programme committee. In 2016 he was a joint EuroSTAR best paper prize winner (with Zeger van Hese), and implemented the UK’s first real-time Interactive Application Security Testing solution. In 2017 he was co-chair of the first UKSTAR, and a contributor to the EuroSTAR ‘Little Book of Testing Wisdom’.

Michaël Pilaeten

Learning & Development Manager – CTG, Belgium

Breaking the system, helping to rebuild it, and providing advice and guidance on how to avoid problems. That’s me in a nutshell. With 17 years of experience in test consultancy in a variety of environments, I have seen the best (and worst) in software development. In my current role as Learning & Development Manager, I’m responsible for guiding our consultants, partners, and customers on their personal and professional path towards excellence. I’m chair of the ISTQB Agile workgroup and international keynote speaker (United Kingdom, France, Spain, Peru, Russia, Latvia, Denmark, Armenia, Romania, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, …)

Gitte Ottosen

Expert Test Consultant – Key2Quality, Denmark

Gitte Ottosen is a test manager and agile/quality coach with a strong focus on a value driven approach to software development. She has more than twenty years of experience in IT, primarily within test, along with test management and process improvement, in both traditional and agile contexts.

The last fifteen years she has primarily worked within an agile context, focusing on supporting a quality mindset across teams and organizations, and improving the processes for some of the largest international companies 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 Gitte holds in abundance. Gitte is a dedicated trainer within the areas of agile and test, and is a regular speaker at international conferences.

She 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, & is a SAFe Program Consultant.

Dawid Pacia

JQA Manager – Docplanner, Poland

1/3 QA, 1/3 Python, 1/3 Lead. Tech freak following all the newest technologies (and implementing them on his own). Fan of the Agile approach to project management and products. After hours, active speaker and traveler. But most importantly the lover of ☕ and 🐱🐈.

Martin Pihl

Head of QA – Memmo, Sweden

Martin is one of those guys you meet and just think, “man, it’s fun talking to this guy, you know?” He comes from the south of Sweden (Malmoe) where he currently lives with his beautiful wife and 2 lovely sons in a smallish row-house. Which apparently, takes time and effort to maintain. Who’da thunk, right? Fun fact: if you forget he is from Malmoe, he will remind you. More than once. Martin studied System Engineering at Lunds University, after which he started a traineeship in test. He never looked back. In short, a good guy. You’d like him.