Locations:

  • Munich
  • Dubai
  • Hong Kong
  • New York 

 

Our Team

 

Ilijana Vavan - CEO & Founder


With over 20 years of experience in the ICT industry and information security sector with award winning achievements, Ilijana has established a reputation as a thought leader in the field of Business Development, Sales, Marketing, Services, Strategies and Execution. She gained her experience working for international companies like Business Objects (now SAP), Oracle, Microsoft, Kaspersky Labs and Juniper Networks.

Ilijana most recently served as Enterprise Sales Director at Juniper Networks and was responsible for strategic and operational leadership of Juniper Enterprise Sales organization in 26 countries of South and Eastern Europe, including Russia, Turkey and Israel. Prior to joining Juniper, she was the Executive Vice President Western Europe at Kaspersky Lab where she led the largest geographic division of Kaspersky (400 people), during the time of radical change and played a key role in a swift transformation of the organization and its culture, while maintaining revenue and market share growth despite difficult market conditions. During her tenure in this role Ilijana was able to implement several strategic initiatives for Kaspersky Lab in Europe that resulted in double digits growth.

During her 11 years service at Microsoft, Ilijana worked in the Netherlands and Germany, covering diverse systems engineering, sales, services and management roles including global accounts. Since 2005 to 2009 she led the Microsoft Solution Sales Enterprise Team of Eastern Europe, directly and indirectly managing an organization of 150 people. Her leadership responsibility extended from defining and executing local strategies for enterprise sales solutions teams that help customers of different cultures and geographies meet their business needs using advanced technologies to implementing all Microsoft strategic sales and marketing initiatives.  

Ilijana holds a Master Degree in Computer Science of University of Twente, the Netherlands. She fluently speaks four languages and lives with her family in Munich, Germany. 

 

 

Tarek Kuzbari - Managing Partner Middle East and Africa

 

Tarek is a senior business development executive and entrepreneur with a success track record in increasing revenues and sales, penetrating new markets, and capturing market share. With more than 12 years of experience across a variety of sectors including IT, Retail, advertising and online business, Tarek brings an exceptionally strong operational perspective focusing on growth and operational efficiency. Tarek was the Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab for the Middle East & Turkey, where he was responsible for building and expanding the brand from scratch to become a leading player in the security market for both consumer and corporate segment. During his tenure at Kaspersky lab, Tarek successfully developed and executed channel and online strategy that grew online sales over thirty folds within 3 years. He also developed a new business model that enabled offline retailers to benefit from online opportunities and led to major retailers joining the online channel. 

Before joining Kaspersky Lab, Tarek worked for Next Technology Center, a System Integrator and has also worked within the advertising and media industry.

Tarek graduated with Computer Engineering from University of Jordan and he holds an Executive MBA degree from London Business School specializing in corporate turnaround, change management, private equity and venture capital, and financing the entrepreneurial business. 

In 2012 Tarek has been recognized by Gulf businesses as top “30 under 30”, in 2011 the Arabian Computer News (ACN) has recognized him among “The top 25 most powerful executives in the Middle East”, in 2010, Tarek was ranked by Network Middle East as the third “Top executive in the security industry in Middle East”.

 

 

Bernie Bengler - Managing Partner APAC

 

Bernie was born and raised in Germany. He started his IT career in IT departments of a lens manufacturer and a tour operator in the early 1990s in Germany and also spent a year working in the US. In 1999 he left the end-user side and joined Articon-Integralis, Europe’s largest IT security integrator, as a technical engineer. At Integralis he made up his way up to head of Global Service Development with a strong focus on Hosted Email and Web Security as well as Managed Security Services. In 2007 Bernie left Integralis to build up IBM’s Managed Security Services Business in Central Europe.

He joined Kaspersky Lab in 2008 as head of Kaspersky Hosted Services first in Europe and then globally.  Bernie moved to Australia in 2009 taking on the responsibility for Kaspersky Lab’s corporate product marketing in APAC. He was named Director Cloud Services & SaaS in 2010 and introduced Kaspersky’s Hosted Security Services in the Asia Pacific region.  In September 2011 Bernie moved to the Kaspersky Lab APAC Headquarter in Hong Kong.

In 2013 Bernie founded PEAK-IT-PERFORMANCE, his own IT Consulting & Coaching firm. Bernie has a degree in International Management from the University of Applied Sciences, Munich and currently he is also working on his Doctor of Business Administration at the City University Hong Kong with a focus on the impact of Cloud Computing on a company’s organization.


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