Meet the Voices of Motion

Milan brings over 20 years of expertise in payments, banking, and leadership. Educated in economics in Budapest and Prague, he started his career in strategic consulting, at Deloitte and McKinsey. At Mastercard, he quickly rose through the ranks, driving innovation, mergers, and new organizational setups across Europe, the Middle East, Africa as member of the Mastercard regional leadership team and his last role was as global EVP for card acceptance. Since leaving Mastercard, Milan has become an angel investor and advisory board member in several fintech ventures, while also active in the non-for-profit sector. He was recently awarded by Forbes as “The philanthropist of the Year 2024”

With 20 years of experience in the banking and payments industry, Claudia Cruceru is currently Head of Visa Direct for Central and Eastern Europe.

In her role, she is managing and growing Visa’s money movement product and solutions, including Visa Direct Card, Account and Wallet, Visa Cross Border Solutions and B2B Connect with the purpose of expanding Visa’s footprint into new areas like transaction banking, cash management and remittance infrastructure across 8 markets from the CEE region.

Before joining Visa, Claudia was part of a leading European Banking Group and worked in various geographies in Austria, Italy and Germany. In the last 5 years prior to Visa, Claudia had various management roles in product development and business strategy in consumer finance, retail products and payments in Romania.

Thilo Freund is an expert in enterprise technology and retail solutions with 25+ years of experience. He has worked with FT100 and high-growth customers around the world. Thilo has held regional and global leadership positions for the past 15 years. Before Trigo, he served as GM EMEA for Aptos Retail and Senior Vice President Sales at GK Software. Thilo holds a Master’s degree in business & economics and environmental sustainability from Leuphana University of Lüneburg.

Berislav Marszalek (pronounced “Marshalleck”), born on May 6, 1987, in Zagreb, has always been deeply passionate about technology. This led him to pursue and graduate in Electronic Engineering from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER), Zagreb. Besides technology, Berislav is equally passionate about music, especially playing the piano. These two passions converged in 2011 when, during his student years, he founded Entrio.

Today, Entrio is the leading self-service event ticketing and registration platform in South-East Europe region. Annually, Entrio serves over 4,500 events across the region, including a diverse array of concerts, conferences, festivals, theatre shows, exhibitions, and more. Entrio is headquartered in Zagreb, Croatia, with local branch offices in Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

As of 2024, Entrio is powered by a team of 40 passionate event and technology professionals. United by a mission to revolutionize event management, the team leverages cutting-edge technology combined with unparalleled support to reach it’s goal: empower event organizers to sell more tickets, save time, and elevate the quality of event experiences for fans and attendees alike.

As the CTO at payabl., Thekla Paschali spearheads payabl.’s technological vision and infrastructure. With an impressive educational background, she holds an MBA from CIIM and a Master’s Degree in Internet Technologies and Enterprise Computing. As CTO, Thekla continues to propel payabl. into the future, focusing on innovation, strategic partnerships, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance. Her leadership ensures that payabl. remains at the forefront of technological excellence.

Senior Vice President Crypto and Fintech Enablement Mastercard

Since April 2022 Christian Rau holds the position of Senior Vice President Crypto and
Fintech Enablement for Mastercard.

In close cooperation with global account and product teams and our
customers and partners he works on designing and deploying innovative digital
payment propositions.

Heading the Central European Product Team between 2015 and 2019 he was
responsible for the introduction of Debit Mastercard.

Subsequently he led the Mastercard Vienna office as General Manager for the
Austrian Market.

Christian joined Mastercard in 2012 after having held positions in the
telecommunication and banking sector.

Bartosz Ciolkowski is Division President for Southeast Europe, which includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Israel, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia. Ciolkowski is responsible for implementing strategy in the region, developing electronic payments, and working with business and government partners. 

Ciolkowski joined Mastercard in 2005. He previously held the role of General Manager for Poland, where he significantly contributed to the dynamic development of the electronic payments sector through the introduction of innovative solutions and products, as well as the expansion of the acceptance network. He played a pivotal role in establishing Cashless Poland Foundation and in Mastercard’s investment in the Polish Payment Standard (PSP), the owner of BLIK.

He also managed Mastercard business in the Czech and Slovak markets.

Ciolkowski is currently a member of the supervisory board of the Polish Payment Standard and a member of the supervisory board of the Cashless Poland Foundation.

Bartosz is technology and innovations enthusiast, with a mission to coach startups, helping them to scale. He recently joined the Board of Endeavour in Poland. He also actively supports diversity and inclusion, being a co-founding member of Champions of Change Club and supporting member of the Polish chapter of 30% Club.

Bartek is a happy father of daughter Helena. He is passionate about cycling on a road bike and MTB, and a pet lover. He is a graduate from the Faculty of Economics of Poznan University of Economics and Business, with specialization in the field of economic policy and strategy.

Proven executive and fintech expert, with more than 20 years of experience in the field, currently acting as a board member and CRO with one of the leading regional pay tech companies, with wide experience in payment and fintech industry. In his previous positions Goran led an international banking tech company, international payment innovation initiatives, co-founded an independent ATM company, led multiple blockchain based fintech projects and pioneered in open banking.   Goran is now leading new initiatives in the field of embedded finance and innovative payment forms, focusing on the next generation of payment.

Maurice has spent the last 15 years, taking care of the transformation of customer-facing banks channels for the Italian and International market. He’s been leading the digital transformation process, initially in all the subsidiary banks ecosystem of Intesa Sanpaolo and currently in BPER Banca as Head of Digital Business, defining and implementing the strategic path of the transition from a “traditional” bank environment to an up-to-date, modern environment able not only to cope with technological and innovation changes, but also to exploit those changes for creating a competitive advantage.

A passionate transformation and innovation addict, he is present at industry conferences, sharing his point of view and experience on the digital transformation journeys, evolving banking industry, digital strategy and customer experience.

Pavel Kaminsky – PCI QSA, 3DS, QPA, CISSP, CISA, CEH, is the guy Fintech founders call when they need to implement secure payment environments and cost-efficient PCI DSS. He is a mentor at the VISA Innovation Program, Level39, Startupbootcamp and others, an Advisory Board & Awards Judge at MPE Berlin, and a regular lecturer at various Fintech and IT security conferences. Pavel is also the founder & CEO of 7Security GmbH – a QSA company authorized to provide PCI DSS certification to merchants and payment service providers worldwide. He works with startups daily, helping them find flexible solutions tailored to their ambitions for growth.  Pavel is a brainiac at smart scope reduction scenarios, making projects cost-efficient and effortless with the use of serverless cloud components (AWS, GCP, Azure, CF, and others) that optimize the PCI implementation and maintenance. In turn, this allows startups to stay focused on their main product and grow faster without worrying about PCI.

CEO with a broad experience in establishing new business and M&A in different countries including CEE, SE, Africa and Latin America. He is managing international structure with over 3900 people operating in 23 countries.

Piotr Jeleński is CEO of ASEE Group since July 2007, responsible for overall strategy as well as daily development of all ASEE Business Units and respective country operations. He is focused on organic growth supported by selective acquisitions.

Before his position at ASEE, he worked as CFO of Softbank and following Softbank’s merger into Asseco Poland, CFO of Asseco Poland and Board Member. His responsibilities included organizing financing, restructuring, managing M&A activities, introduction of new procedures and business processes. Major milestones included management and support in merger processes with three major Polish IT vendors (Softbank, Prokom and ABG).

Prior to that, since September 1996 till July 2001 Piotr Jeleński worked as Deputy Director for CA IB Financial Advisers and was responsible in the investment bank for project origination and execution in the area of mergers and acquisitions.

Piotr Jeleński is a graduate of Warsaw University, where he obtained a Master of Economics degree with a specialization in Organization and Management. He is also a graduate of Aston Business School in Birmingham, UK with Master of Business degree.