LGBT Business Forum 2013: Leadership Through Networks

Mr. Alan John Knight

Alan is the IBM ISC Managing Director and Slovakia Value Services Location Leader, based in Bratislava. In this role he provides the infrastructure leadership to the various service centres across the location, covering topics such as climate, space management, IT support, education and business continuity. He is also the sponsor for the Diversity Council, which promotes the range of initiatives available in IBM, such as LGBT, People with Disabilities, Cultural Awareness, Health, Parents Club and Women's Group.

He joined IBM in the UK in 1995 and has worked in various roles in Accounting, Systems, Operations and Fulfilment within the Global Financing business, including assignments in Sydney, New York and Budapest, prior to moving to Slovakia in the current role from November 2012.

Alan studied mathematics at Oxford University and represented the second team in tennis, alongside a range of other college sports.

Mr. Norman Thatcher Scharpf

Norman Thatcher Scharpf is Deputy Chief of Mission of the American Embassy in Bratislava, Slovakia, since July 2012. Prior to that, he was Deputy Director of the Office of Global Systems in the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, where he led a 15-person team responsible for the implementation of U.S. policy in the multilateral technical and specialized agencies of the United Nations, working through U.S. missions to the UN in Geneva, Vienna, Montreal, and Nairobi.

Mr. Scharpf has extensive working and linguistic experience in the new and emerging democracies and market economies of Central and Southeastern Europe. His assignments in the region include Belgrade (2006-2009), Tallinn (2003-2006), Zagreb (1999-2002), and Warsaw (1996-1998). His first assignment after joining the Foreign Service in March 1993 was at American Consulate General, Sao Paulo, Brazil (1993-1995). During 2009-2010, he earned a Master’s of Science degree in National Security Resource Strategy from the National Defense University. He has received two Superior Honor Awards, three Meritorious Honor Awards, and several group honor awards from the Department of State.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Mr. Scharpf served as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy. His assignments included shipboard tours on the guided-missile destroyer USS Robison (DDG-12) and the aircraft carrier USS Ranger (CV-61) and staff assignments in Panama and Washington, DC. He is the recipient of the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, and the Navy Achievement Medal.

Mr. Scharpf was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and graduated from St. Albans School in Washington, DC. His foreign languages are Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Polish, and Estonian. He is married to the former Donna Marie LaPorte of New Orleans, Louisiana. They have a daughter and two sons.

Mr. Christian Martin Fotsch

Born in Zuerich (Switzerland) May 22, 1955

Education:

• College degree in Switzerland, classical studies orientation (Latin)
• Legal studies at the universities of Zurich and Fribourg, Switzerland. Lic.iur. (1982)
• Further studies in international relations, management and IT, organized by the ICRC, HEI (Geneva, today Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies) and the Swiss Confederation

Experience:

• 1983 - Collaborator of the Zurich law firm Schellenberg & Wittmer
• 1984–1988 - Delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross
• 1988–1989 - Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Stage in Bern and Mexico
• 1990–1992 - Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Political Division II.
• 1993 - Personal collaborator of the President of Switzerland, Federal Councillor A. Ogi
• 1994–1998 - Assignment at the Embassy of Switzerland in Tokyo
• 1999 - Return to Berne/Switzerland as deputy chief of the United Nations Office
• 2000 - Second assignment as personal collaborator and diplomatic advisor of the President of Switzerland, A. Ogi
• 2001–2004 - Minister-Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Switzerland in Bangkok
• 2004–2008 - Deputy Head, diplomatic inspectorate, Bern
• 2009 - Head of monitoring and intervention unite, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland

First lieutenant in the Swiss Army until 2000

Languages: German, English, French, Spanish (Basics)

Since 2007 in registered partnership with Mr. Paisan Pantubnate, Thai citizen

Scott Bristol Ed.D.

Scott Bristol Ed.D. is known internationally for authoring the Life Journey Map® an online values measurement tool and an educational methodology for influencing meaningful change at the individual, group, and cultural level. His work as an educator at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) focuses on the intersection of values, emotions, and "languaging" as they influence interpersonal effectiveness within small self-organizing groups. His corporate and educational work also focuses on teaching facilitators how to use these concepts to mobilize the potential of human diversity.

Scott Bristol is an educator who in the past 35 years has worked in many different organizations and cultures. During his career a common theme in his work as a teacher, leader, counselor, consultant, and author has been influencing meaningful change at the

individual, group, and organizational level. In 2004 he joined a team of colleagues at Stanford GSB as a Lecturer in “Interpersonal Dynamics". From 2006-2009 he was Coordinator of the GSB Group Facilitation Program.

Mgr. Romana Schlesinger

Romana Schlesinger was born in Trencin, Slovakia and graduated MA from journalism in Bratislava, where she now lives. She was a project manager of The First Lesbian Association Museion, through the project of public celebration of IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia), and with HerStory, which uncovered the lives of non-heterosexual women from other minorities (Roma, handicapped, activist, bisexual, religious, 45plus).

Romana has been at the beginning of creation of the Rainbow PRIDE team in 2009 and accompanied by other 9 people organized the first ever Slovak PRIDE. Since 2009 she is also the spokesperson and PR representative of the organization.

Romana is the co-founder of the LGBT community center ‘Q-centrum’ in Bratislava, which offers free of charge counseling services to the LGBT community. She’s been active in lobbying for the Committee for LGBT peoples rights under the Council for Human Rights of Slovak republic, which was established in 2012.

Romana is co-organizing the 2013 Rainbow PRIDE in Bratislava, as part of a collaborative effort of several LGBT focused organizations.

Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson is the founder of Out Now, and has for two decades been recognized as one of the world's foremost authorities on marketing to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) customers.

Out Now Global has been relied upon by many of the world's leading brands including Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, Citibank, Hilton Hotels, IBM, Toyota, TUI, German National Tourist Office, Lufthansa, Merck; and delivers a comprehensive range of tailored solutions focused on research, strategy, communications and training.

With consulting activities across more than 20 countries -- including the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Australia -- Out Now fulfills a unique global agency vision as being the leading local LGBT marketing specialists, worldwide.

The 'Out Now Global LGBT2020 Study' sees the agency continuing to break new ground, with the world's most comprehensive research analysis ever of LGBT people's lives - delivering insight about people living in 25 countries, right across the world.

For more information, visit:

Out Now Consulting
Out Now Business Class
LGBT2020
Out Now Travel

YouTube - Gay Marketing powered by Out Now
Facebook - Gay Market News

Miroslav Šnapko

Miroslav Snapko was born in Bratislava, Slovakia. He is with Dell for 10 years now, has been working at diverse roles in Dell Services organization.

His career started in a Civil Engineering company as independent contributor. In 2001 he joined the Slovak Border Guard Army for 1 year.. After the mandatory army service, he started at Dell as frontline Technical Support agent. His career continues with different senior support & analyst roles and finally moved to the services project management office to manage multiple projects influencing the whole Europe, Middle East & Africa region.

He participated on multiple volunteering events inside or outside of the company to help & support the local community. He became active in LGBT more than 1 year ago and together with 4 enthusiastic colleagues prepared the ground to launch the LGBT ERG called Pride at Dell Bratislava. Miro became the official leader of Dell Pride ERG and successfully launched in early June 2013.

Mr. Marijn Pijnenburg

Marijn Pijnenburg is IBM's Business Development Executive for Diversity and LGBT for Europe, Middle East and Africa. In this role he provides strategic advisement to IBM customers in traditional and growth markets on how to leverage human capital, diversity, inclusion, LGBT and collaboration as critical business drivers to foster innovation and generate business opportunities in the global market place.

Marijn joined IBM in 1996 and has worked in various roles in Supply Chain, Customer Relationship Management, Strategy & Change and Business Transformation. Marijn is an active member of the EAGLE LGBT network group at IBM. He is the initiator of many LGBT Business Forums around EMEA and is board member of WorkPlace Pride a non-profit organization focused on ensuring safe and inclusive workplaces for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

Marijn studied Business Administration at the University of Nyenrode, Technical University Eindhoven and the Henley University of Reading and is currently based in Amsterdam.

Christopher Medalis, PhD

Dr. Christopher Medalis was appointed in July 2012 as the Regional Director (REAC) for Europe for the EducationUSA network. He oversees this State Department-supported initiative which offers accurate, comprehensive, and current information about educational institutions in the United States; guidance to qualified individuals on how to access study opportunities; and serves as a policy liaison on higher education between U.S. and European governments and non-governmental organizations.

Previously Dr. Medalis served as the Director of Global Scholarship Programs at the Institute of International Education (IIE) in New York, where he led programs in youth leadership, experiential learning, and workforce development, including global initiatives on behalf of companies, foundations, and universities. He has held positions related to ESL/EFL, teacher training, and Fulbright Program administration, and was Director of IIE's Europe Office in Budapest from 1998-2007. In this position, he led IIE's work in 35 European countries, including scholarship programs, higher education support programs, and short-term visitor programs.

He holds an MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia University in the fields of History and Comparative and International Education, and his academic research focuses on cultural diplomacy. He has studied in Austria and Germany and worked in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. He speaks Czech, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian, in addition to English.

Gili Gershonok

Gili was born in Ukraine and grew up in Israel. She also spent time living in New York, Austria and Czech Republic. Her studies in Psychology at the Open University of Israel lead up to a people focus in her career already in the early years. She considers herself a self made professional with a strong focus on leadership and people management. At age 23 she managed a team of 30 people in the field of International Services.

In 2010 she joined IBM in Bratislava, a company well known for its emphasis of diversity empowerment. With her taking on a leading role in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Diversity Network Group, the network grew from 5 to 50 members in one year of activity. In 2012, Gili co-organized the first LGBT Business Forum in Slovakia, titled ‘From Global to Local’ which took place during Bratislava PRIDE Week events. These activities soon lead to a broader engagement: In September 2012, Gili kicked off a professional LGBT networking community, which had grown quickly and meets regularly in Bratislava.

In early 2013, she co-founded Diversity PRO as the home organization for ongoing and future project in LGBT and Diversity space.

Veronika Blum

Veronika grew up in Germany and Italy from partly Russian ancestors. A multicultural environment was thus key to her upbringing. This tendency was affirmed through her studies of Eastern European languages, society and law at the Freie Universitaet Berlin and Humboldt Universitaet Berlin.

Settling for several years in Hungary to work for IBM, Veronika became involved with the LGBT community ‘EAGLE at IBM’, later taking on a leadership role. Through this, she became acquainted with the possibility of working on the LGBT issues that are characteristic to the Central European societies, while keeping a focus on professional life.

The occupation with LGBT diversity projects in CEE had led Veronika to co-founding Diversity PRO in 2012, with a focus on enabling an inclusive workplace environment through communication & educational contents.

Michal Hrebčík

Michal was born and is living in Slovakia. He studied IT on Comenius university in Bratislava with specialization on Artificial inteligence and Mathematical methods. After finishing studies he started to work for international IT companies like IBM, Dell and since 2008 he works for Lenovo. Michal worked in various positions within EMEA Operations department and today he is leading Channel operations team.

Through his Lenovo Bratislava project Michal is supporting diversity related events like Leadership Business forum and Bratislava pride. He also wants to start LGBT group in Lenovo to officialy support LGBT community in the company.

Rami Jacob

Rami is an IBM Finance Manager, currently leading the IBM System x EMEA pricing organisation.

In his role he is responsible for his brand's pricing strategy in Europe, the middle east and Africa, as well for leading and enabling his team.

Rami started in an entry level job at IBM in 2008 after doing several student jobs around Europe.

In 2009 he initiated the idea of an LGBT community in IBM Bratislava, then co-founded EAGLE @ IBM (Employee Alliance for Gay & Lesbian Empowerment) Bratislava chapter, that currently accounts for over 50 people. He took over his first management position in 2011. He is currently a pioneer in EAGLE, focusing on exposing and educating the management community on the LGBT topic.

Rami was born in Beirut. He lived and studied in several countries across Europe.

He is well travelled and fluent in English, French and Arabic and speaks good Slovak.

Rami is gay and currently lives with his 5 years partner in Vienna and works at IBM in Bratislava.

Sarah Novak Hennessy

Sarah was born in Berkshire in the United Kingdom. She spent time living and working in New Zealand, Latin America and most recently India.

Sarah joined IBM as a Manager in January this year after relocating to Slovakia. She is an experienced People Manager and focuses a great deal of her time coaching and mentoring other IBMer's. Before IBM Sarah managed large events for KMPG's Global HQ including Royal and Governmental visits.

Sarah is new to the LGBT Forum and has already joined the reverse Mentoring program within the company. She considers herself a straight Ally and is excited to support the Diversity Pro Events.