Since August 2018, Patrick Marous has been the CEO of thyssenkrupp Aerospace, a thyssenkrupp Materials Services company and partner for the world’s leading aerospace companies and their supply chains. In a career-to-date spanning more than 20 years, Mr Marous has gathered a wealth of professional experience of consulting, M&A, private equity, materials distribution and trading, strategy and business development, marketing, and procurement in both the B2B and B2C sectors. Mr Marous has developed particular expertise of supply chain management on both procurement and supply sides, the strategic use of digital tools, and change and transformation management. This expertise is being fully utilized in the on-going transformation of thyssenkrupp Aerospace. Mr Marous inherited the division when, after years of sustained growth, it was facing a turbulent future following the end of the A380 programme and the grounding of the Boeing 737MX, even before the Covid-19 pandemic inflicted further damage. Mr Marous is leading the division through a significant but vital restructuring, re-modelling it via a cloud-based digital transformation, developing a modern and data-driven business model that fits with the needs of the post-pandemic ramp up, and introducing transparency in all internal and external processes. Mr Marous started his career as a management trainee in the International Steel Trading business of thyssenkrupp in 1997. He later joined ConPAIR AG, a Corporate Finance and M&A advisory, in 2000 and served as a board member from 2003-2005. He then re-joined the materials distribution business of thyssenkrupp, where he was responsible for global strategy and corporate development projects. In 2007, he was seconded to the company’s Hong Kong office where he transformed the business by creating for the first time a unified buying strategy for all tk Materials businesses that were dealing with Asian suppliers. He was also behind the development of the company’s first procurement data warehouse, a move that added transparency into the entire spent in Asia and made it more efficient and effective. Along with this streamlined portfolio, and in another first, the Hong Kong office introduced strategic supplier relationship management that led to more efficiencies and a better bottom line. In 2015, Mr Marous returned to Germany as the new Head of Global Product Management. This was essentially a global procurement role and one where Mr Marous added to his knowledge of supply chain management. It was also a role where a successful transformation was the legacy of his leadership. By introducing new working methods and encouraging a start-up attitude, the teams led by Mr Marous were empowered to become much more customer-centric and to always think about ways of adding value to their customers, and therefore to the business, instead of just processing orders. As a result of streamlined and improved business processes, greater transparency, and the creation of new value streams, what had previously been a largely administrative cost center was transformed into a value center. As a leader who is driven by customer-centricity, Mr Marous seeks to inspire his colleagues to embrace change and to challenge the status-quo. This, he believes, is the best way to create value and to lead the company’s customers through the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that dominates the aerospace sector. Mr Marous is also a speaker and author, offering his insights and analysis on digital transformation, supply chain management, and change and transformation management. Mr Marous is a passionate believer in lifelong learning and is a proud alumnus of the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA Program. As a French national who was raised in Germany, Russia, and Iraq, he speaks fluent French, German, Russian, and English.

Lars Reger is executive vice president and chief technology officer of NXP Semiconductors. As CTO, Lars is responsible for managing new business activities and R&D in the focus markets of automotive, industry 4.0., internet of things (IoT), mobile, and connectivity & infrastructure. Before joining NXP as head of automotive strategy in 2008, Lars gained deep insight into the microelectronics industry with a focus on the automotive sector. He began his career with Siemens Semiconductors as a product engineer in 1997. His past roles at Infineon included head of the process and product engineering departments, project manager for mobile system chips and director of IP management. At Continental, Lars was responsible for business development and product management within the connectivity business unit. In December 2018, Lars was appointed CTO and has since then been responsible for the overall technology portfolio of NXP. Since April 2019, he has been a board member of the committee for digital economy, telecommunications and media in the German Industry Association. Lars is also on the board of directors of ITS World Congress and a member of the Forbes Technology Council. Lars earned a degree in physics from Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn and an MBA from London Business School.