S P E A K E R S

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Charles Senabulya
Vice President and Country Manager, SAS UK & Ireland

In 2017 Charles became the Vice President and Country Manager for SAS UKI, where he is responsible for the region’s revenue delivery and operations. Charles’ focus is to continue to find new ways to engage and delight customers while growing SAS’ voice in, and share of, the UKI Analytics market.

Charles has been with SAS since 2010, joining as a Sales Manager for Banking and Insurance and was promoted to Sales Director, Financial Services in March 2012 and then to overall Sales Director for SAS UKI in 2016. Prior to SAS, Charles spent 10 years at IBM in various roles across Europe and Africa where his last role was as Director IBM Software Group, Sub-Saharan Africa, where he led the transformation of the business to become a growth market region.

Before joining IBM, Charles worked in various roles at Compuware and Parametric Technology. He has over 13 years of Executive Management within the Financial Services Industry, where he has worked with some of the leading Financial Institutes to deliver critical business transformation and innovation through technology.

Dave Ferguson
SAS Ireland

Dave is a business and IT professional, with over 20 years’ experience of working with, advising and helping his customers achieve their goals through the use of data and analytics. Dave is passionate the ability of technology, analytics and the correct use of data to support the transformation of organisations and ultimately society as a whole.

Barry Lowry,
Chief Information Officer, Irish Government

Barry Lowry has been the Chief Information Officer for the Irish Government since April 2016 with the primary task of taking forward the Public Service ICT and eGovernment Strategies. These set out ambitions for developing the use of shared services, digital services and data to better serve the people of Ireland and ensure that Ireland is well-placed to benefit from European initiatives such as the Digital Single Market.

Barry was previously the Director for IT Shared Services and Strategy and Head of the IT Profession within the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

Barry is a Fellow of the Irish and British Computer Societies and is a former winner of the BCS Northern Ireland IT Professional of the Year. He was awarded an O.B.E. for services to the Northern Ireland Government and the Northern Ireland Computer Industry in 2017.

Geoff Wilson,
Head of Marketing and Communications, Irish Football Association

Geoff runs his own marketing and communications consultancy business, with a focus primarily on sport. Previously Head of Marketing and Communications (Irish FA) he was responsible for public relations, public affairs, commercial programmes, brand development, communication to fans and CRM. Geoff works with the likes of FIFA, UEFA, FIBA and other global sports organisations in a wide range of areas from strategic planning, marketing and communications, digital, fans engagement, public affairs and knowledge sharing/exchange programmes. In addition, Geoff consults with a number of sports tech companies in the CRM, eSports, wearable and fans engagement space. Geoff is a part-time lecturer in marketing at Queen’s University Belfast and is Chair of Netball Northern Ireland.

John Spooner,
Head of Analytics and prominent expert in Machine Learning and AI, SAS UK & Ireland.

John has over 18 years experience with regard to applying analytical techniques across a number of different industry areas. His main responsibility lies in leading the SAS UK analytics practice, a team that enables organisations to apply data and text mining techniques, as well as forecasting and optimisation routines, to increase profits and reduce costs through fact-based decision making.

Computers, numbers, statistics and logical problem solving have always been his main passions so it is of no surprise that he has spent the majority of his career working for a company that specialises in solving business problems using advanced analytics. His degree is in Applied Statistics with his dissertation focusing on “The use of analytics to devise a profitable betting strategy for football matches”. He managed to simulate over 10% return.

After spending time with Transco educating customer’s on how to use the computer system that transports gas around the country, he joined SAS in 1998. He has held a number of technical and more recently managerial roles at SAS helping customers on a day to day basis whether it be on sales opportunities, in training courses and workshops, consultancy engagements or troubleshooting on technical support. At all times in his career, he has thrived on contact with customers and how they can gain true benefit of using SAS’ superior analytical technology.

CUSTOMER SPEAKERS