Aaran Fronda is a financial journalist and market reporter widely published across sector titles, having previously worked at Euromoney, Mergermarket and Dealreporter.

Amit manages growth operations at Avalara, overseeing sales, marketing, business development, customer experience, and professional services. Throughout his career, Amit has focused on supporting the small business category with tools and solutions to help that segment grow and thrive in the global economy.

Prior to Avalara, Amit was general manager and head of the small and medium business segment for North America at PayPal. He also served in senior leadership roles at Web.com and Dell, focusing on the needs of small businesses by developing partnerships and go-to-market strategies.

Ben Hunt-Davis is an experienced performance coach, facilitator and keynote speaker. He is also a best-selling author having co-written “Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?”, the story of how the men’s eight crew that he was in won the Olympic Gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.

Ben has spent the last 16 years specialising in leadership and team development. He has designed and run training courses and conferences for many organisations be it delivered in person or virtually. He is a performance expert, and has a very practical approach that is heavily focused on application so that participants can easily apply what they’ve heard and behave differently to achieve greater results.

Ben founded Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? Ltd in 2012 with Tom Barry. The business continues to grow quickly and delivers very strong results for their clients. He is still involved in the Olympic movement having been a member of the Team GB staff at the last 3 Summer Olympics. He has also chaired the Organising Committees of two international rowing events in the UK, leading up to 500 people to deliver the events.

Candice Bordeaux has a background in law and has acquired 16 years of experience in Tax Technology working on a pan-European basis in consulting and software firms. Through this experience, Candice has built a firm knowledge and understanding of the Tax Technology industry alongside a strong network of contacts in the UK and internationally. 

Candice is the Founder and Director of CBO Search (www.cbosearch.com) a recruitment firm specialised in Tax Technology. CBO’s clients include the Big4, specialised consulting firms, FTSE and European stock market listed firms as well as most of the Tax Automation software firms.

Chris Giles has been at the forefront of analysis on the global economy, the Brexit debate and the Eurozone debt crisis. 

As the Financial Times’ Economics Editor since 2004, and previously as their lead writer on UK economics, Chris has been uniquely privileged in his access to the major facts in economics and his influence on their worldwide perception.

During his career, he has been awarded; Royal Statistical Society’s prize for excellence in journalism in 2008 and 2012 Business Journalist of the Year in 2012 Senior Wincott Award for financial journalism in 2015, the most prestigious UK prize in economics journalism.

Colin joined Adyen from Burberry, where he'd helped the iconic fashion house create its industry-leading unified commerce experience. During his 30 years in retail, he’s developed a passion for technology and the role it plays in the evolution of customer experience. 

As Managing Director of Adyen UK, he’s a driving force behind the growth of the UK teams acting as leader, mentor, and ‘uncle Col’ to many. In his spare time, he can be found in Lancashire with his wife, three children, and his ever-growing collection of Nike Limited Edition trainers.

Ian is a consultant, advisor and publisher, driving transformation in ecommerce and multichannel retail. He is the co-founder of Internet Retailing, the trade publication for Europe's multichannel retail professionals, in partnership with SJP and Mark Pigou.

Ian acts as a board-level advisor to major retail and consumer businesses: House of Fraser, Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Camelot Group, Toast, Couturelab, De Bijenkorf and numerous other retailers. He has previously been Group Ecommerce Director for Littlewoods Shop Direct Group and Head of Online Operations for the BBC.

Luke Tugby is editor at Retail Week. Luke joined the title as a reporter in January 2015, primarily covering the grocery and property sectors. He was promoted to head of content in February 2017 and became deputy editor two years later. Luke has served as editor since January 2020.

Based in Seattle, Washington USA, Mary Cho is a true tax expert, with over 30 years of international tax and accountancy experience. Organisations the world over are assured that when they connect with Mary's team of a best in class solution.

Mattias has over 20 years’ experience of working with indirect taxes within large multinationals and has been Group Indirect Tax Director at Electrolux for five years. Headquartered in Sweden, Electrolux is a global leader in electrical appliances that has traded for over 100 years. Under its brands, including Electrolux, AEG and Frigidaire, it sells approximately 60 million household products in 120 markets every year. Electrolux has been using Avalara’s VAT Reporting for three years.

Sacha Wilson is Avalara’s Director Tax Technology Solutions EMEA, helping businesses of all size automate the complexities of global tax compliance. Prior to joining Avalara in 2014, he spent more than 20 years in e-commerce sales and management at blue-chips such as Amazon, Arcelor-Mittal, British Aerospace and several dotcom start-ups.

Thomas is a career Finance Director and Controller. Previously responsible for handling international finance operations and local reporting within large corporate businesses, Thomas now uses this experience in his role within Oracle NetSuite’s Finance Centre of Excellence.

In this role, Thomas uses his extensive financial experience background to provide counsel to customers, support product development and best practice, and advise on software implementation strategy. Thomas regularly engages with finance professionals to build their understanding in how they can advance their business, focusing primarily on the core pillars of technology, processes, and people.

As Product Manager in the area of Finance & Risk for the Tax domain, Vinod guides products from conception to launch by connecting the technical and business world of taxes. He works collaboratively with customers, partners, engineering, marketing, legal, and other teams on cutting edge technologies.

Vinod is responsible for both product planning and product development. This includes managing the product throughout the Product Lifecycle, gathering and prioritising product and customer requirements, defining the product vision, and working closely with engineering, to deliver winning products. He ensures that SAP S/4HANA meets the market, competition, and user requirements in depth, and guides to launch new products and features, and iterate quickly.

Kid Misso is the VP of Product Management for EMEA at Avalara. Kid is a systems analysis graduate with 30 years of IT experience in a broad range of disciplines from development and product management through systems implementation, sales support, and software sales management. Kid has worked for Xerox, American Express, Sabrix, and Thomson Reuters as well as multiple technology startup companies. In the last fifteen years, he has specialised in international indirect tax automation.

Alex is a Director specialising in International Indirect Tax (VAT/GST) and leading Grant Thornton’s Global Indirect Tax Advisory team in London and Indirect Tax Automation service offerings in the UK and EMEA.

Alex leads strategic alliances and channel partnerships with solution vendors such as Thomson Reuters, Vertex, Avalara, Sovos and NetSuite. He also is owner/editor of Grant Thornton’s VAT Club group on LinkedIn - our one-stop-shop global VAT/GST forum. Alex has led VAT Implementation impact assessments and required project and change management.

Alex has over 15 years’ experience in UK/EU VAT and international indirect tax consultancy - including a secondment to Chicago, USA where he advised multinationals on the international VAT/GST implications of their footprint and supply chain.

Andy has worked at the heart of the online retail industry since 2010 – researching and producing reports on trends and developments affecting the sector. During that time, Andy has developed strong knowledge in multiple areas of online retail, with particular expertise in Black Friday. Andy is also a frequent conference speaker and media commentator.

Annamaria has been a Financial Accounting Expert and Authoriszed Accountant since 2015. She has always had a passion for taxation with an international twist. During the past six years, Annamaria has worked at Framery Acoustics, where she has been involved in building Framery Acoustics global finance from a start-up, to a global group, with ten subsidiaries around the globe.

Hamish McRae is one of Europe's foremost speakers on global future trends in economics, technology, business and society.

He is Associate Editor of The Independent Newspaper in London and Principal Economic Commentator for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, and a columnist for the Mail on Sunday and the London Evening Standard. He is the author of the acclaimed work, The World in 2020: Power, Culture and Prosperity.  

As a speaker, Hamish provides lucid insights into the forces such as technology, demography, globalisation, natural resources, and government policies shape the economy and influence business strategy. He examines likely future scenarios for business, government and society.

Hamish's other books include Capital City - London as a Financial Centre, co-authored with Frances Cairncross, and Wake-up Japan, co-authored with Tadashi Nakamae. and What Works: Success in Stressful Times, which was long-listed for the Business Book of the Year at the FT/Goldman Sachs Awards in New York in 2010.

Amongst his awards is the David Watt Prize for outstanding political journalism in 2005, the Business and Finance Journalist of the Year in the 2006 British Press Awards, and Communicator of the Year at the 2007 Business Journalist Awards.  

As an economic journalist, Hamish McRae was editor of Euromoney and financial editor of The Guardian before moving to The Independent. He was previously an Adjunct Professor at Trinity College, Dublin, and a Governor of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research.

Joe is the EMEA VAT director, based in Medtronic’s European Operations Center in Heerlen, Netherlands.  Some of the major initiatives Joe has worked on include both insourcing and outsourcing VAT compliance, mergers and divestures (including Medtronic’s $6 billion sale of it’s Patient Care business), global VAT risk assessments, VAT working capital programs and in the context of this presentation setting up and restricting VAT departments.