Directions EMEA 2023

During a 22-year career with Microsoft, Cecilia earned a reputation for clarity of purpose and an unwavering focus on results. Ambitious goals, methodical planning, and effective execution are the hallmarks of her management philosophy. Cecilia’s leadership style emphasizes integrity, empathy, inclusiveness and accountability. Cecilia spent 16 years with Microsoft Business Applications, culminating in a four-year stint as Global Ecosystem Lead. As a key member of the unit’s leadership team, she was responsible for growth of the core business through the development and health of the partner ecosystem. Among the functions she oversaw were ecosystem capacity planning, capability development and performance growth strategies, as well as field operations at global scale.

Emily He is a Silicon Valley technology executive with experiences leading go-to-market functions in both private and public companies, including Microsoft, Oracle, Saba Software (now Cornerstone OnDemand), and DoubleDutch (now Cvent), and Siebel Systems (now Oracle). She has over 20 years of experience in technology companies that span Customer Experience (CX), Human Capital Management (HCM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Supply Chain. She has product development, marketing, and sales expertise, having served customers across the financial services, retail, healthcare, pharmaceutical, public sector, and media and entertainment industries. Currently, Emily is the CVP of Business Apps at Microsoft, responsible for developing global GTM strategy and catalyzing business growth for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. Prior to joining Microsoft, Emily served as the SVP of Marketing, responsible for global GTM strategy, brand awareness, and demand generation for Oracle Cloud Human Capital Management. She has served as the Chief Marketing Officers in two high-growth SaaS businesses, leading all aspects of global marketing strategy and execution and working closely with the CEO and the Board of Directors. Emily is known as a thought leader on topics such as digital transformation, customer experience, future of work, and inclusive leadership, and passionate about using technology innovations to solving real-world problems and transforming industries. You can find her perspective in a variety of business and technology publications and media outlets, including BBC, CNBC, The Economist, Fortune, The Financial Times, Forbes, Fast Company, New York Times, and Harvard Business Review. She is a champion of advancing women and minorities in the workplace, frequently speaking at conferences or participating in employee resources groups and non-profit organizations. Emily holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and attended colleges in both China and the U.S. She has native fluency in both English and Mandarin Chinese, having lived and worked in both Asia and the U.S. and had extensive experiences supporting businesses and customers around the globe.

Mike Morton is responsible for SMB (Small and Medium Business) products in the Microsoft Business Applications division. This includes leading Business Central, Microsoft’s flagship solution for the SMB segment. Mike been at Microsoft for 26 years, moving from Seattle to Denmark two years ago to be closer to the BC engineering team. Amongst the highlights of Mike's time at Microsoft include being a co-founder of SharePoint, the development of Office Offline, and incubating the Fluid Framework.

Eric “waldo” Wauters Eric is one of the founding partners of iFacto Business Solutions and Dynex bv. With his 18 years of technical expertise, he is an everyday inspiration to its development teams.  As development manager he continually acts upon the technical readiness of iFacto and Dynex.     Apart from that, Eric is also very active in BC community, where he tries to solve technical issues and shares his knowledge with other Dynamics enthusiasts. Surely, a lot amongst you will have read some of Eric’s posts, which he invariably signs with “waldo”. Lots of people have been using and even contributing to tools he shares for free on github. His proven track record entitled him to be awarded since 2007 as MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional).

Benefiting from 25 years of experience in implementing, customising and supporting Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and its predecessor Navision and now the rest of the Microsoft Biz Apps stack, I'm passionate about how technology can drive business growth through consistent and efficient processes whilst giving new levels of insight through reporting and AI. Between my day job of leading one of the UK's biggest SME focused Dynamics partners I have the privilege of being Chairmen of Directions, a association of more than 1200 Dynamics partners worldwide and a Microsoft MVP for Business applications.

Blazej Kotelko is one of the PMs in the Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen, Denmark but he had worked previously for Microsoft in London, UK and in Poland. With experience in the SMB space, UX design, low-code platforms and partner management he is currently responsible for the success and roadmap of Dynamics 365 Business Central integration with Power Platform.

coming..

Vjekoslav Babić, or just Vjeko as he is known in the community, is a Business Central architect, developer, trainer, author and blogger. With more than two decades of experience in IT, he worked with vast range of technologies, but his passion has always been anything that lingers on the outer edges of BC. Deep down, Vjeko is an incurable hacker who took a long time to realize that he really loves writing code, plain and simple. He immensely enjoys breaking things apart to see how they work. As a frequent speaker at conferences, in his demos, and on his blog, he is always pushing the boundaries of what's possible, connecting the world of Business Central with just about anything that can be plugged into it through some obscure loophole or undocumented interface. Since spring 2010, Vjeko has been awarded the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for Microsoft Dynamics NAV. You can meet him at his blog "Vjeko.com - ideas in the cloud".

Program Manager for the Dynamics 365 Business Central Control Plane team at Microsoft.

Tobias Fenster started as a developer in the 1990s. Holding different positions including Head of Technical Consulting, Head of Development and CTO for multiple Microsoft partners during his career, he is now a Managing Partner at 4PS Germany. He is also a Microsoft Regional Director, holds dual Microsoft MVP awards for Business Applications and Azure and is a Docker Captain. He is blogging on tobiasfenster.io, where he writes about Business Applications, Docker and Windows Containers, but also tooling like Azure DevOps, Visual Studio Code and infrastructure automation. His other focus is Azure, mainly around container environments and SQL.