The Speakers

Gabriel Coimbra

Executive Advisor | Entrepreneur & Investor | Driving Growth in Tech & AI - GoingNext

Gabriel Coimbra is an executive advisor, entrepreneur and investor, with over 25 years’ experience in digital transformation, artificial intelligence, growth strategy and innovation ecosystems. He was Executive Vice President at IDC, where he progressed from market analyst to national and regional leadership roles, having led the Southern Europe region.
He is currently a Partner at GoingNext, Portugal’s largest digital innovation ecosystem and the organisation behind the Portugal Digital Summit®; Co-Founder and Partner at GrowthOS, which focuses on AI-powered growth engines and go-to-market strategies; and Managing Director at Multisector, a consultancy specialising in financial and tax incentives for innovation, including European Funds, PT2030, PRR and SIFIDE. He is also a board member of several companies, private equity firms and venture capital firms, as well as co-director of the “Leading Business Transformation in an AI Era” programme at Porto Business School, and a visiting lecturer at various universities. His focus is on transforming ambition into accelerated and sustainable growth through the combination of leadership, data, artificial intelligence and innovation ecosystems.

Mike Bachman

Head of Research for AI & EmergingTech Strategy - Boomi

Michael Bachman explores how modern computation--structured around tools, memory, skills, and real-time data activation--can give agentic systems the context they need to be governable, trustworthy, and practical, today.

Jon Boxall

Global Head Solution Architecture & Integrations - Belron

Jon is an IT leader with 20+ years of experience in solution architecture, systems integration, and defining technology strategies for large-scale organizations. He currently leads the global Solution Architecture & Integration function at Belron®, where he drives innovation and operational efficiency through integration centres of excellence.

Throughout his career, Jon has worked with renowned, always focused on the smart reuse of technology assets and the leadership of high-performing teams.

Ricardo Gonçalves

Head of Center for Artificial Intelligence & Analytics - Fidelidade

Ricardo Gonçalves is the Director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Analytics at Fidelidade, Portugal's largest insurance group. Since the Centre's founding in 2017, Ricardo has been at the forefront of shaping the organisation's AI strategy, leading three specialised teams spanning Data Science & AI Engineering, Data Expertise, and AI Business Translation & Change Management.

With a career deeply rooted in applied AI and data science, Ricardo has driven high-impact initiatives across the insurance company's main business areas, translating complex technology into measurable business outcomes.
Ricardo is an AI Professor in postgraduate programmes at ISCTE University, where he teaches AI in Business Operations, and serves as Vice President of the Data Science Portuguese Association.
A regular speaker and thought leader, Ricardo bridges the worlds of business and technology — making him a uniquely positioned voice on the future of AI in enterprise.

Damian Evans

Staff Engineering Lead - ASOS

Damian Evans is a Staff Engineering Lead at ASOS, leading Integration teams in delivering scalable, high-performance integration solutions. With 30 years experience in tech, he specialises in enterprise cloud-native platforms on Microsoft Azure, microservices, and service-oriented architecture. With a strong focus on technical excellence and people-first leadership, builds and mentors high-performing teams while driving reliable delivery at enterprise scale.

Gil Perry

Integration Architect and GenAI Engineer - QuadCorps

Gil Perry is an integration architect and GenAI engineer, and co-founder of QuadCorps, specialising in large-scale modernisation. He helps organisations move from complex, under-documented integration estates to streamlined, cloud-native platforms.
With over a decade in enterprise integration, Gil has led delivery across sectors, working closely with engineering teams to solve real-world integration challenges.
His current focus is applying generative AI in a practical, engineering-led way, using agent-driven approaches to analyse legacy applications, generate modern designs, and accelerate delivery, while keeping experienced engineers firmly in the loop.

Hugo Peters

Principal Product Manager - Developer Experience (DX) & AI - TIBCO

Samuel Vandecasteele

AI & Integration Architect | Managing Partner - i8c & Spector

Samuel Vandecasteele is an Integration Architect and Managing Partner of i8c, where he helps organizations build enterprise integration and agentic architectures at scale.
As a hands-on leader and subject matter expert, he bridges the gap between business needs and enterprise technology, building on a technical background spanning multiple integration/iPaaS technologies, agentic platforms, and cloud ecosystems.

Rui Mendes

Head of IT Strategy & Architecture - UNIT4

Rui Mendes is Head of IT Strategy, Architecture, and AI Delivery at Unit4, a global SaaS ERP company serving professional services, public sector, non-profit, and higher education organisations worldwide.

With over 20 years of international experience leading IT departments and teams, he has driven IT strategy and execution, enterprise architecture, digital transformation, software delivery across Real Estate, PropTech, Healthcare, Insurance, Banking, and the Public Sector.

More recently, he has focused on AI delivery, helping Unit4 move beyond experimentation and embed intelligent automation into core business processes.

Carlos Pona

Principal Solution Engineer - MuleSoft

With over 15 years of experience architecting complex integrations and steering global delivery across diverse industries, Carlos is a seasoned leader in the digital transformation space. Having navigated the evolution of middleware firsthand, he now empowers organizations and system integrators to master the next frontier: MuleSoft. By bridging the gap between traditional integration and the new world of Agentic AI, Carlos helps businesses build the resilient, intelligent ecosystems required to lead in a fast-changing market.

Nelson Barreiros

Project Manager - Rangel Logistics Solutions

Nuno Vilar Moreira

CEO - Polarising

Experienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology industry. Strong combination of software and business development experience throughout Europe. Nuno has a degree in Software Engineering from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and has lived and worked in several European countries. He also enjoys water sports and traveling with his family and friends.