CX Stars, the awards that honour contributions made to the dynamic CX industry by outstanding professionals and influencers, has returned for 2021! We are thrilled to announce the panelists who will be choosing our winners from the Top 100 CX Professionals and Top 50 Influencers who have been nominated his year!
The panelists will be assisting in the validation of the voting and prioritisation of the list of finalists where votes are equal.
And here they are:
Adi Tobias
In her career spanning over 14 years, three continents, and multiple industries, Adi has demonstrated her drive and commitment towards customer-centred change. With her rich experience in top-tier Financial Services, Market Research, and now Technology firms, Adi has used her background in marketing strategy to champion insights-driven communication, leveraging her broad skill set in customer experience and service design. Adi is currently the Head of Customer Experience at Uber, where she and her team are committed to delivering superior experiences through transformative CX strategy, culture, and best practice.
Alina Dimbean
Obsessed with driving customer-centricity across the organisation in the pursuit of delivering brilliant experiences to customers and gain their advocacy, Alina is always striving for improvement. She helps by improving end-to-end journeys, finding innovative ways to delight customers and driving cultural change towards putting the customer at the heart of every action.
Ankesh Agarwal
An empathetic results-oriented manager with proven growth results and high team morale, Ankesh is adept at forging strong client relationships through immaculate servicing. Ankesh is passionate about seeking simplification and empathy as well as curating delightful experiences. He has helped clients reach their goals through setting up the right customer journeys, CX organisation setup, real time experience platforms. He has empowered employees through training and documentation, created CX champions and ensures the right governances to measure success. Ankesh endeavours to build dream teams, diverse amongst themselves and rock solid when they come together. He has curated guided mentorship schema tailored to suit individual needs and owned by the individual team members all the while supporting them to achieve, strive for more and flourish in their roles.
Anna Noakes Shulze
Anna Noakes Schulze is Senior Partner for Customer Experience at Ecodynamics, a platform economy and digital business consultancy. Formerly, she was the founder of SunflowerUX, a digital customer experience advisory, and previously held senior roles in user experience with digital agencies in London. Anna is a keynote speaker, a TEDx speaker and coach, and a mentor for customer experience at Startplatz, a startup incubator with offices in Cologne and Dusseldorf. She is a certified Customer Experience Specialist (CXS), a member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) and actively engaged with the CX community as an international awards judge. For over twenty years, Anna has been dedicated to building better digital experiences. She retains a single-minded focus on helping businesses realise the potential of digital platforms to connect and create value through great customer experiences.
Bruno Guimarães
Bruno is a self-professed troublemaker, problem solver and is always looking for solutions to improve customer experience. He has a diversified professional background, experience as an entrepreneur, client solutions, marketing, advertising, design and sales. CX Specialist certified by CX University, Bruno began his career in a call centre where his passion for client service and customer experience was borne. Bruno has been a judge for the following awards: North American Customer Centricity Awards 2020, International Awards iCXA 2020, CX Award Brazil Zendesk 2020, Customer Centricity World Series 202. He is the co author of the book Customer Experience 2.
Clive Hilton
Central to Clive’s career success is an ability to harness teams to deliver operational excellence, scale and support the board to achieve business goals, in particular, a strategic exit or international growth. This has always required a deep focus on driving client value across geographies and satisfying customer demand. In a year of lockdown, Clive was delighted to be Chair of a global, diverse panel of judges at the International Customer Experience Awards 2020. Clive is the Vice President of Delivery at Contino, which means he is immersed in the world of Digital Transformation; helping customers envision and execute a holistic, value-driven, end-to-end digital transformation.
Eytan Hattem
Customer experience has always been at the heart of Eytan’s career and his passions; from his proven track record in international CEM projects through to his work as a business consultant supporting clients in their digital transformation journey.
As a CCXP certified professional, Eytan consults global businesses across multiple sectors to help them understand and transform their customer journeys through best practices and innovative technologies.
A true evangelist and thought leader, Eytan speaks and writes regularly within CX industry media with authority and passion plus mentors fellow CX professionals to spread the power of customer experience!
Faran Niaz
Faran has 25 years of hands-on experience in creating, fixing, establishing and transforming Customer Experience setups for large global banks across various continents. As well as winning multiple CX awards and creating a unique record of taking one of the Banks from 23rd position to first position in CX in UAE in just four year, Faran has helped maintain this ranking for seven consecutive years.
Gabe Smith
Gabe prides himself on driving the Customer Experience discipline forward through creation and curation of relevant content that fellow CXers can use to advance CX within their organisations.
Gokhan Kara
Gokhan has been in CX since 2011 and has been working as the Customer Experience Advisor at Pisano since February 2020. He was a jury member and chair of judges in prestigious customer experience awards such as the International CX Awards, UK CX Awards and European Customer Centricity Awards. Gokhan was the winner of the 2019 CX Impact Awards and selected as 2019’s Top 25 CX Leader of The Year. He is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and the first and the only CCXP in Turkey, one of 1000 in the world. He is a CX author and writes his thoughts and experiences about Customer Experience for Harvard Business Review Turkey, CXM, CX Network and his personal website.
Ijeoma Okeke
Ijeoma is a strategic thinker and advanced contact centre operations and Customer Experience expert with over 15 years of experience working with global brands in the telecommunications space. She has delivered excellent results on contact centre set up and operations projects, while providing leadership and direction to large teams with a goal of innovating and implementing a smarter approach to customer experience and consistently meeting and exceeding the ever-evolving needs of customers.
Imad Hazeem
Imad is a highly accomplished professional with 17 successful years working within banking, consulting, events management, training, insurance, medical, food and beverage, not-for-profits, retail, pharmaceuticals, financial and professional services, technology, distribution, hospitality and telecom in the region. He leverages different service sectors and customer service experience to improve companies’ employee’s customer service skills, while implementing innovative and interactive training and coaching more than 5000 persons to delight their customers.
Imad is an Ambassador and Judge at the Gulf Customer Experience Awards and International Customer Experience Awards and the first one in Palestine who is certified as ACXS, Accredited Customer Experience Specialist from Rockstar CX.
Mandisa Makubalo
Mandisa is a versatile and highly professional business executive, entrepreneur and founder of Unlimited Experiences SA, the first 100% black-owned customer experience management consultancy in South Africa. Her passion is to assist organisations that are looking to integrate their products and services to the township economy and work with township-based businesses to strengthen local economies. Mandisa has over 15 years of working experience in customer environments for local and international brands across the following industries: petro-chemical, telecommunications, retail, financial services and consulting. She is a dynamic leader who is passionate about solving business challenges through design especially in the area of Customer Experience Management. Mandisa was a Judge for the 2020 International Customer Experience Awards and is a sought after CX speaker currently featured in a series of Global Conversations with CX Brussels.
Maria Kallergi
One of eight CCXP Professionals in Greece (up to 2019), Maria is very experienced in Employee Experience and Customer Experience strategic planning, business planning, people coaching and development as well as project management. She is a professional with more than 20 years of experience in the services market, shipping and retail. Maria is an experienced trainer and facilitator who is specialised in CX, CS, communication management and soft skills development.
Olga Budieri
As a Customer Experience professional with a profound understanding of the customer ecosystem in the supply chain and logistics industry, Olga has worked on Greenfield as well as legacy Customer Experience projects leveraging current and new tools into the next generation of customer service and experience. Coming from an IE and MBA background with Customer Experience on her mind, Olga believes the future is already here; from smart stores to AR guided Employee Experience within organisations.
Olga Guseva
Olga is an international Customer Experience strategy expert and customer-centric culture transformation specialist. She is an internationally published author, blogger, keynote speaker and consultant and one of the few CXPA-recognised trainers in the world. Olga is a CCXP and CXPA member as well as a member of the Executive Experience Consultants, an international group of C-level executive consultants and holds an MBA and a Ph. D.
Raphael Hergge
Raphael’s professional career has always been shaped by his passion for deep customer understanding and creating a best-in-class service culture which is centred around customer success and creating more value for customers. He is a senior customer service professional with more than 15 years of international management experience working with communication service providers in telecommunications, SaaS and enterprise ecosystems across Asia Pacific. Raphael is a certified Customer Experience Professional (CXPA), certified Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt (Nokia) and skilled change management practitioner. He is also currently an active member of the judging panel at South East Europe CX Awards, International CX Awards and the Gulf CX Awards, global virtual events.