Speakers
Meet our Varicent Elevate 2021 speakers.
Our speakers are visionaries, innovators, and disruptors. Don't miss this opportunity to hear from today's boldest and brightest minds.
Georgie Barrat
Technology Journalist, Broadcaster and Presenter

Georgie Barrat
Technology Journalist, Broadcaster and Presenter
Georgie Barrat is a technology journalist, broadcaster and presenter.
At the beginning of 2017 she joined The Gadget Show’s new presenting line-up and has spent the past four years testing and reporting on the latest consumer technology. In 2019 Georgie also presented the BBC’s FIA formula E’s Championship coverage.
Alongside her work on the Gadget Show, Georgie has reported for ITV Tonight, Good Morning Britain, ITV Weekend and has appeared on The Jeremy Vine Show (formally The Wright Stuff). Most recently Georgie featured on ‘How to spend it well at Christmas’ alongside Phillip Schofield, selecting some of the best gadgets on offer for gift ideas in 2020. She also comments on breaking tech stories for Channel 5 News, Radio 5 live, talk radio & BBC Radio 2.
Away from reviewing the latest apps and devices Georgie is interested in how technology is disrupting the way we work and socialise. Her keynote exploring future tech trends has taken her all over the world, being invited to speak at events including Web Summit, Mobile World Congress and Smart City Expo. Her writing credits extend to a range of publications including The Mirror, Tech City News, The Guardian, Marie Claire & The Metro.
Georgie is passionate about women working in technology and devotes time to encouraging more girls to be involved in STEM subjects. She works alongside Girls in ICT, the IET and Childnet striving to make technology and the digital world as exciting, safe and inclusive as possible. She also spent 2020 developing her relationship with Service Now, an American-based software company, hosting numerous webinars and live broadcasts to a global audience.
Georgie has hosted two podcasts; “The Tech Disruption Series” that saw her interview various start-ups that are disrupting industries and “Sleep Life”, a podcast all about sleep, one of her favourite pastimes! Not one to shy away from a challenge she has a world record for the longest time anyone has been in VR (26.5 hours, if you are wondering) has run the London Marathon and bungee jumped whilst wearing a VR headset (terrifying, if you are wondering).
Georgie brings a genuine interest and warmth to everything that she does. Her journalistic background, yet playful presenting style means audiences are quick to like her.
Jonny Wilkinson
World Cup-Winning former English Rugby Player

Jonny Wilkinson
World Cup-Winning former English Rugby Player
World Cup-winning Jonny Wilkinson was, is, and probably always will be considered one of the greatest English rugby players of all time. His career has crossed three decades and four World Cups, he has accumulated phenomenal achievements, world points records, an impressive list of broken body parts, and a drop goal that will be remembered forever.
Jonny became England`s youngest international for 71 years when he made his debut at 18 years old in March 1998. He has since won 91 caps for his country and is the second most prolific points scorer in Test rugby. In the 2003 World Cup he scored the drop goal that won the tournament. He endured a succession of injuries that kept him out of international action for over three years but he returned to help England make it to the final of the 2007 World Cup. He has also won six caps for the British and Irish Lions.
Jonny Wilkinson was the 2003 BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Then, in April 2009 at Guildford Cathedral, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Surrey for services to the sports industry. And in November 2016, he was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame at the opening ceremony for the Hall's first physical location in Rugby, Warwickshire.
He was awarded the MBE in 2003, the OBE a year later and in the 2015 New Year Honours List he was awarded the CBE. Jonny played club rugby for Newcastle from 1997 until 2009. He joined the French club Toulon in 2009 until 2014, after which he retired from playing all rugby.
Since his retirement, Jonny Wilkinson has appeared as a studio pundit for Sky Sports and ITV Sport, working on coverage of the Champions Cup, Six Nations Championship, Rugby World Cup and England Internationals.
Andrew Small
Director of Global Commissions & Payroll Services, Pitney Bowes

Andrew Small
Director of Global Commissions & Payroll Services, Pitney Bowes
Andrew Small joined Pitney Bowes UK in 2014 as Director of European Payroll & UK Commissions and has led the transformation to global shared services. For Commissions, this included the pivotal decision in 2016 to transition from multiple on-premise Varicent systems to one, single global SaaS solution. Today, Pitney Bowes is using this single system to manage and report Commissions for 1,250 incentivized employees across 11 countries in Americas, EMEA and APAC.
Andrew cites his biggest career achievement as leading UNISYS through critical product development and accreditation of HOLMES2 by HM Government from 1999-2001. HOLMES2 is still the UK’s serious crime investigation & major incident system and was developed and implemented by UNISYS. HOLMES2 solved widespread and serious Y2K issues for the UK Police Service, and, for the first time ever, enabled the whole of the UK Police Service to link-up on major investigations. Following full accreditation in 2001, HOLMES2 was used in earnest by London’s Metropolitan Police Service in response to the 9/11 terrorist attack in the US.
Neil Whitney
Chief Operating Officer, Varicent

Neil Whitney
Chief Operating Officer, Varicent
Neil was a founding member of the original Varicent leadership team. He has led high-growth teams in sales, marketing, product, design, services, cloud, support, and operations. Neil's executive experience ranges from startup to large enterprise.
In his time at Ada Support Inc., Neil developed and launched new product integrations, intelligence, and analytics features leading to millions in new revenue. As well, when at IBM Neil determined the product vision and strategy, with an aim to delight customers in every interaction with the product. From motivating small innovative teams to guiding large, distributed teams, Neil can deliver sophisticated platforms for a variety of use cases.
Neil is passionate about analytics, customer success, and creating experiences users love. As COO, Neil oversees Varicent's product, service, and customer operations.
Marcus Hearne
Chief Marketing Officer, Varicent

Marcus Hearne
Chief Marketing Officer, Varicent
Marcus Hearne is the Chief Marketing Officer at Varicent. Prior to joining Varicent, Marcus was the Senior Vice President of Product & Solutions Management at SDL, and has previous experience advancing marketing and product objectives at Tata Consulting Services, IBM, and SPSS.
With over 20+ years of experience in global B2B marketing and product management, Marcus has often played a direct role in the delivery of multi-million dollar revenues—facilitating sustainable growth, and creating market leadership. He is an expert at developing offerings and marketing strategies to penetrate global markets across industries, having successfully developed and launched new products, and strengthened positions in highly competitive and dynamic domestic and international markets. Marcus has a Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) from the University of Melbourne.
Zach Burnett
Executive Vice President, Global Field Operations, Varicent

Zach Burnett
Executive Vice President, Global Field Operations, Varicent
Zach has deep experience in transforming sales organizations to align client needs with technology. He comes to Varicent from IBM where he was responsible for revenue and go to market strategy for the Sales Performance Management business. Zach’s additional experiences at Pfizer, Avaya and IBM have created a profound understanding of a diverse set of markets. Zach has a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin.
Nicole Kent
Executive Vice President, Product Strategy and Customer Success, Varicent

Nicole Kent
Executive Vice President, Product Strategy and Customer Success, Varicent
Nicole brings more than 20 years of experience as an accomplished organizational leader with significant operations, sales, merger and acquisition, and global human capital generalist expertise.
A former customer of Varicent while working at US-based healthcare company Optum, Nicole led a team of more than 20 compensation professionals in support of over 150,000 employees and 30,000 managers through compensation planning—including base salary, bonus, sales and quarterly variable incentives, and equity awards, with a strong focus on aligning rewards with performance.
Most recently Nicole served as SVP of Revenue and Operations at Datica, a digital health company focused on health IT’s most difficult challenges in interoperability and cloud compliance. Her extensive experience across all facets of sales performance management—as well as having been a long-time customer of Varicent—will give Nicole a unique edge in her role.
Matt Blanchard
General Manager, EMEA, Varicent

Matt Blanchard
General Manager, EMEA, Varicent
Matt is the General Manager for EMEA at Varicent. Matt has been in the Incentive Compensation Management industry for over a decade, having successfully held positions at Practique Associates, Merced Systems and NICE systems prior to joining IBM to lead the European Sales Performance Management practice. Matt is passionate about helping our customers at all stages of the journey, from business case creation and executive project sponsorship, through to point of seeing the true return on investment that can be gained from automating what is sometimes considered a cumbersome process.
Outside of and inside of work Matt loves to travel but when at home he is a huge Rugby fan and most importantly loves spending time with family and friends.
Sanj Sanampudi
Co-Founder & General Manager, Varicent Concert

Sanj Sanampudi
Co-Founder & General Manager, Varicent Concert
Sanj Sanampudi is the General Manager of Varicent Concert and former co-founder and CEO of Concert, an incentive compensation platform built on the science and psychology of performance.
Sanampudi has spoken about Sales Comp at the 2019 SaaStr Annual and the 2019, 2020, and 2021 WorldatWork Spotlight on Sales Comp. Sanampudi has also co-authored three annual “How to Create Better Comp Plans” guides with Modern Sales Pros. Prior to Concert, Sanampudi was a CFO with deep experience in designing and administering compensation plans. He holds an MBA from Columbia University.
Ian Torres
Vice President, Professional Services, EMEA, Varicent

Ian Torres
Vice President, Professional Services, EMEA, Varicent
Since first joining Varicent in 2007, Ian has demonstrated strong capability in delivering positive customer outcomes, while building and developing a top calibre European Services organization. During his 7 years at IBM Ian led the SPM Services practice for Europe and Middle East, as well as the Performance Management pillar of products in the UK, and most recently European-wide Services Sales for Watson Financial Services Solutions.
A graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Ian now resides in the UK with his wife and two kids
James Mulligan
Director, Go To Market and Enablement, Varicent

James Mulligan
Director, Go To Market and Enablement, Varicent
James Mulligan is the Director of Go to Market at Varicent and started his career with Varicent Software in 2006, as a Business Consultant. James’ versatility and experience have led him to hold many roles across his Varicent career including building out the Varicent Training organisation, being the first “boots on the ground” in Europe, and multiple sales roles from services to pre-sales and sales manager. After a brief stint away from Varicent to explore other opportunities, James returned in July of this year to lead our Go to Market function, to support in bringing all of the new and innovative technology that our teams have been producing to our clients.
Outside of work, James is still true to his Canadian roots and enjoys playing Ice Hockey. He has played all over Europe including Latvia, Estonia, Serbia, Netherlands, and many others. Conversely, he has adapted well to his new British home, playing football (the proper stuff) and cricket – although the latter has been heavily reduced due to him spending time with his new son, Charles.
Yves-Marie Crabbe
Senior Pre-Sales Lead EMEA, Varicent

Yves-Marie Crabbe
Senior Pre-Sales Lead EMEA, Varicent
Kishor Pillai
Technical Sales Architect, Varicent

Kishor Pillai
Technical Sales Architect, Varicent
Kishor Pillai joined Varicent 1.0 in 2012 as a Services Consultant. He has been part of the successful delivery of over 20 implementations globally, been a presenter at multiple Vision conferences and Customer Summits, and was responsible for numerous innovations in our service delivery approaches and offerings. In his current role as a Technical Sales Architect, Kishor acts as a Varicent technology evangelist by demonstrating latest & greatest Varicent features to clients and prospects.
Sasha Gatselyuk
Associate Business Consultant, Professional Services, EMEA, Varicent

Sasha Gatselyuk
Associate Business Consultant, Professional Services, EMEA, Varicent
Sasha has been working with Varicent ICM since 2015. In that time she has contributed to numerous clients' successes across Managed Services, Implementation Consulting, and Project Management roles. In the last 8 months, Sasha worked exclusively on Symon projects, starting with Symon World Championship, continuing with customer projects, and extending her experience by delivering learning sessions to the Varicent team.
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