About the Speakers

José Tolovi Jr. is Global Chief Executive Officer and member of the Executive Board of Great Place to Work® Institute Inc. as well as member of the Institute boards in Brazil, México, Central America & Caribbean, Canada, Spain and France.

Prior to joining Great Place to Work® Institute, Mr. Tolovi was an Associate Director of Arthur D. Little, Founder and Director of S.A.D., a Brazilian Management Consulting firm, and Director of SPCI - São Paulo Computer Institute. He was Founder and first President of SPE - Brazilian Society for Corporate Planning and Editor of its magazine - Planejamento e Gestão. He also served as Vice-President of SUCESU, the Brazilian Society for Information Systems in two tenures.

Mr. Tolovi is a former professor at the Escola de Administração de São Paulo - FGV, and presently at Business School São Paulo. He has been a guest speaker at several conferences and seminars, and consistently publishes in management and general purpose magazines and newspapers in Brazil and abroad.

Francisco Román Riechmann, who is 55 years old, joined Vodafone as COO in July 2002, was appointed CEO of Vodafone Spain in February 2003 and Chairman and CEO in January 2008. Previously he was CEO of Microsoft Ibérica, which he joined as Managing Director in 1998. His move to Vodafone marked a return to the company, because he was one of the founding members of Airtel in 1995, where he was Technical Manager until he left the company in 1998.

Francisco Román, who holds a B.Sc in Telecommunications Engineering, began his professional career in Sainco, and then in 1983 moved to the Spanish subsidiary of the IT multinational Hewlett Packard, where he was appointed Sales Manager. At the start of 1992 he was appointed Director for Spain of Pacific Telesis, which was later renamed AirTouch International, one of the founding companies of Airtel Móvil S.A.

Vodafone Spain has been recognized as one of the Best Workplaces in Spain in 2009 and 2010.

Henry Engelhardt is the Chief Executive of the Admiral Group plc., one of the most successful of all the direct response car insurance firms in the UK.

In mid-1991 Mr. Engelhardt was recruited to create and run what has become Admiral Group.  Admiral launched (on time and under budget) on January 2, 1993 and now has over 2,000,000 policyholders and 3,500 employees.  There are 13 brands under the Admiral Group umbrella in six countries: Admiral, Bell, Confused.com, Diamond, elephant.co.uk and Gladiator Commercial in the UK, Balumba.es and Rastreator in Spain, AdmiralDirekt.de in Germany, ConTe and Chiarezza in Italy, Elephant Auto Insurance in the USA and LeLynx.fr in France.  Turnover in 2009 was more than £1 billion.  Profits in 2009 were £216m.  This represented a return on capital of more than 50%.   

On September 23, 2004 Admiral listed its shares on the London Stock Exchange.  The value of the company on that day was £711m.  Since then Admiral's shares have traded for as much as £12.  Today the value of the company is around £3 billion and Admiral is one of the firms that make up the FTSE 100. 

Admiral has also won many awards, including Business of the Year at the 2004 National Business Awards and Employer of the Year at the same ceremony in 2005, Welsh Company of the Year in 1999, 2005 and 2009.  It has been named one of the top 100 Companies to Work For in the UK by the Sunday Times all 10 years this list has been compiled and one of the Best Places To Work For in the UK and Europe in the last six years.  

Immediately prior to starting Admiral, Mr. Engelhardt was the Marketing & Sales Manager for Churchill Insurance.

An American, Mr. Engelhardt has worked in the US, UK and France in direct response financial services.  He holds an MBA from Insead, Fountainebleau, France as well as a BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mi. USA.  Mr. Engelhardt is married with four children and lives in Cardiff, Wales.

As Global Training Coordinator for the Great Place to Work® Institute, Yulia is responsible for the development and project management of a training program series for clients and affiliates in over 40 countries. Prior to this role, Yulia has served as a thought partner and chief researcher for the co-founder of the company, Robert Levering and as a "Fortune List" and "Small and Medium Companies" list company evaluator. During her 5 years with the Institute, Yulia has extensively analyzed management strategies of Best Companies and helped shape a new approach to analyzing employee-employer relations, focusing not only on organizational policies and programs but also on the relationship between the company's culture and positive workplace interactions.

Prior to joining the Institute, Yulia also had firsthand experience with a best company while working in Recruiting for Morrison & Foerster, LLP. Yulia holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and French Language from Swarthmore College, PA, USA.

As Product Director on the Global Management Team of Great Place to Work® Institute, Erika Richardson promotes the delivery of the highest quality products and services to clients by building the capabilities of affiliates in over 40 countries. In her role, Erika manages, designs, and delivers a global training program, collaborates on the development of new products and services, and oversees new product rollout. During her 8 years of tenure, she has served in a variety of roles, including as Director of Consulting Operations, where she was responsible for managing and developing people and building effective systems and processes. Erika has worked directly with clients in the design, implementation, and analysis of organizational assessments and managed the development of an action planning tool for managers. Through these experiences, Erika has developed a deep understanding and insight into the practices and cultures of great workplaces.

Prior to joining the Institute, Erika held positions in economic affairs for the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco and as chief instructor and trainer for a large language company in Japan. Erika has a bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

Andreas König has been senior vice president and general manager EMEA of Network Appliance since October 2007. This position demonstrates the tremendous achievements and leadership qualities of a manager who started to establish NetApp's business in Central Europe back in 1996 and started a successful career in a company that is a world leading storage vendor today. In December 1997 he headed NetApp's Central European region as regional manager, was appointed director Central Europe in November 1998 and vice president EMEA Central five years later. With his promotion to vice president sales EMEA in August 2004, König became responsible for NetApp's sales activities in EMEA, including Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Andreas König, an Austrian native, studied mechanical engineering at ETH Zurich and started into business as a technical consultant at MacNeal-Schwendler in Munich. After two years he joined Silicon Graphics (SGI) where he established the company's sales activities in Austria. As head of SGI's indirect sales in Germany he was also responsible for the partner marketing.

Gary Keegan is the director of high performance management in the Irish Institute of Sport. Previous to Gary's current role, he spent 5 years as high performance director with the IABA's (Irish Amateur Boxing Association) High Performance Boxing Programme. There Gary devised a world class talent management programme which was under pinned by a process driven business model. Over a 5 year period Gary's programme achieved major European, World and Olympic success with no fewer than 29 medals achieved at these levels across the age spectrum.

The Institute of Sport is a government agency set up in 2006 to manage and coordinate high performance sport in Ireland. In total the agency manages over 300 full time talented athletes across a wider variety of Olympic and Paralympic Sports. Its mission is to create an environment of support which ensures that talented Irish athletes achieve sustained levels of excellence in elite sport. This involves a variety of supports including elite coaching, nutrition, injury management, sports psychology, and physical training.

Economic Degree from the Sao Paulo University.

Was Vice President of HR for ABB - Asea Brown Boveri in Brazil.

In 1998 he joined Telesp - telecommunication company in Sao Paulo, Brazil in the Telefónica Group - as Vice President of HR.

He is currently Director of HR for Telefónica Internacional and responsible for HR in Telefónica Latinoamérica.

Uwe Rotermund is the founder, management director and main shareholder of noventum. He personally works in the consulting business as management consultant especially in the area of Future Management. Being Future Circle Member he has developed the Balanced Innovation Method based on the four pillars „Employees/Trust Culture", „Client Relationships", „Innovative Products/Services" and „Strategic Alliances".

noventum consulting has achieved a place among the Best Workplaces in Europe for the past two years and made a 4^th position in 2009.

Bob Lee is the founder and CEO of the Great Place to Work^® Institute Ireland. Bob works with leaders and managers in a wide variety of industries to assess their workplace culture and support them as they seek to transform their organisations into great workplaces. He brings a creative, dynamic approach to his work, and has extensive experience in all aspects of assessment, analysis, and delivery of results. Bob writes and lectures extensively. In addition to his regular contributions to Conferences and Seminars throughout Europe, Bob is a regular keynote speaker and presenter at professional association conferences.

She worked at Wang for 14 years and held several managerial functions before she left Wang to become Regional Director at Adia Personeelsdiensten for two years. She was asked for a directorsfunction for  ICT Company ELC that after 4 years was bought by the listed company Ordina N.V. and Hetty became Managing Director of the ORMIT group, a 100% daughter of Ordina. As Managing Director Hetty is responsible for the ORMIT Group which consists of offices in the Netherlands and Belgium. She is also the Chairman of the Advisory Board of ORMIT. Under Hetty's leaership ORMIT developed to one of the leading specialists in Management Development. Not only became ORMIT a very successful company but also a Great Place to Work^® in the 2007, 2008 and 2009 editions.

Michael Burchell is Vice President for Global Business Development and a senior consultant with The Great Place to Work® Institute, Inc.  In this capacity, Michael is responsible for developing global business alliances, supporting affiliate business development, and coordinating the Institute's global strategy development.  He also continues to consult with clients, and counts among his clients. Michael consults widely on issues of diversity and organizational change, and has been a featured presenter at several professional conferences. Michael received his doctorate from the University of Massachusetts.