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Meet The Xena Women In Tech Awards Panel 2024
Get ready for a tech celebration like no other! Xena’s Women in Tech Awards this year will be on March 1st at Magazin in der Heeresbaeckerei.
With 800+ nominations, coming to a shortlist of 40 finalists across 8 categories is no easy task –now imagine how difficult the winner selection process will be!
Wondering how winners will be chosen? A panel of tech experts, coupled with community votes, will decide. You can still cast your vote!
Curious about our experts and their track records? Allow us to introduce our esteemed panel and j oin us in counting down to a night dedicated to honouring Europe’s tech trailblazers.
Maria von Watzdorf
VP of Product, Platform – SoundCloud
Maria is a leader and technology enthusiast currently serving as the VP of Product, Platform at SoundCloud since 2023. Maria’s leadership and expertise continue to make a significant impact in the tech industry, building on her previous role as the Senior Director of Business Planning at HERE Technologies, where she orchestrated the development framework and product strategy for the HERE platform, benefiting a 250 developers and product managers, both internal and external.
Yoav Flam
Chief Technology Officer – Bumble
Yoav is the current CTO at Bumble where he oversees the technological vision for all of Bumble Inc., including Badoo, Bumble and Fruitz. Before joining Bumble Inc., Yoav served as Senior VP of Global Engineering for HelloFresh, where he scaled up the engineering organisation and laid out the technology roadmap. Prior to his role at HelloFresh, Yoav spent over 25 years building technology and teams in various software development and engineering leadership positions. He’s worked in several companies and diverse industries, including: N26, Here Technologies, StarHome, Telemap, and Comverse.
Manjuri Sinha
Global Director Talent Success & DEI – OLX
20 years plus International experience in HR with expertise in Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, DEI and HR Business Partnering across industries.In her current role, she globally heads the Talent Success domain for the whole OLX Group. This domain spans from Talent Branding to Talent Acquisition to Talent Development & Engagement and DEI.
Prior to joining OLX, she held Senior / Exec Talent Leadership positions at Zalando GmBH, Accenture and MphasiS (Formerly HP Company ). As a renowned thought leader, she has been a Keynote speaker, panelist and speaker at conferences such as Unleash World Paris, Linkedin Talent Connect Summit New York, HR Core Lab Barcelona, SOSU Amsterdam, HR Vision Amsterdam, Tec Rec, Berlin, Data & Analytics Summit Stockholm and many others. She has been published in leading magazines like Business of Fashion, New York, HR Tech Outlook, and co-authored a book called The Builders Guide to the Tech Galaxy. She has been recently recognized as Talent100 leader.
Anna Ott
VP People – HV Capital
Anna has worked in Human Resources and Executive Search with roles varying from Consultant to Managing Director and lately independent HR consultant. She is enthusiastic about all things HR Tech, and has worked with various start-ups and investors in that field.
Since moving to Berlin in 2010, she has worked with start-ups in their initiation phase, first at i-potentials, where she was involved in Team Europe’s company building, and later at Deutsche Telekom’s hub:raum. In her current role at HV, she aims to help founders build talent-centric organisations. Anna sees people management as a clockwork-like system with Talent Acquisition, Performance Management, Leadership and Culture as the cogwheels. Working with early teams is when Anna most feels like an architect of talent.
Sarvesh Regmi
Director of Product Management – GetYourGuide
Sarvesh is a seasoned product management professional and is currently the Director of Product Management at GetYourGuide, leading the core consumer experience. Before moving to Berlin, Sarvesh was at Airbnb in San Francisco, driving growth in various consumer and supplier teams. Sarvesh also worked at Amazon and led the launch of the Prime Music subscription service. Sarvesh has an MBA from Stanford University and an Engineering degree from University of California, Irvine.
Pauline Paquet
Head of Startup Success – XAnge
Pauline has been a part of the European tech ecosystem for over a decade. She began her journey as an entrepreneur, followed by a consulting stint at Wavestone, and later managed Startup Support at Paris&Co, France’s leading incubator. There, she coordinated support services available to over 1000 startups across 14 sector-specific incubators. Since 2019, Pauline has led the Startup Success Platform at the European VC XAnge, a team of 4 people (and growing) dedicated to supporting portfolio entrepreneurs with their growth challenges.
Pauline has a unique view of the entrepreneurial journey and in depth knowledge about every stage of the startup growth curve from pre-seed to Series B and beyond. Her position has helped her build unique and lasting relationships with founders across Europe and has enabled XAnge to accelerate the growth of their portfolio companies.
Vanessa Wachtmeister
Senior Product Manager – Expedia
Vanessa is a proud Mexican-American and seasoned Senior Product Manager with 7+ years in the tech industry across the UK, China, and Germany. Today, she works for Expedia Group and specializes in platform technology and improving the developer experience with an emphasis on scaling new technologies. Outside of work, she is a serial entrepreneur and loves developing educational digital products that support marginalized communities when it comes to career development and personal finance.
Andreea Lungulescu
Principal Talent Acquisition Partner – Wayfair & Founder of the TA Crunch Berlin.
Andreea is the founder of TA Crunch Berlin and is as the Principal Talent Acquisition Partner at Wayfair, driving global expansion and spearheading the establishment of Tech European & Indian bases. Andreea previously worked at Zalando for 5 years are their Senior Talent Acquisition Manager (Tech), where she enhanced talent acquisition across six business domains. There she collaborated with SVPs, she revamped interview processes, introduced new procedures, and played a key role in domain branding, diversity hiring, and recruitment strategy development.
