pre-event evening meetup - march 9
- 5.30-7.30 PM
Courtesy of Pennywurth and KonnectHouse
MAIN EVENT - MARCH 10
- 8:15 AM
Registration and Coffee
Welcome coffee
Meet fellow attendees and kick off the day with introductions
- 9:00 AM
Welcome to the Event from the Conference Host
Constantine Limberakis, Founder & President, Liberis Consulting
MAIN STAGE
- 9:10 AM
Procurement At The Inflection Point
- The new procurement operating model – outcome-driven
- Agentic impact – from co-pilots to agentic workflows
- ROI expectations
- Essential infrastructure and transformation
- Data, governance and trust – prerequisites for AI
- The real state of AI In procurement (what’s working)
Chris Sawchuk, Principal and Global Procurement Advisory Practice Leader, The Hackett Group
Including:
Joseph Martinez, CPO, DTCC
MAIN STAGE
- 9:40 AM
The New Procurement Model and the Role of Intelligent Agents
- How we will collaborate – the interaction of intelligent agents with each other and with humans
- AI readiness vs. AI stagnation
- Ethical considerations and trust-building in AI-human partnerships
- How departments can develop and be ready for this change
- Identifying the risks and challenges
- What the future of procurement will look like – the integration of AI agents as true partners in decision-making
Michael Shields, VP of Procurement, Tropic
Zeus Andre Sequeira, Managing Director – Procurement, CBRE
Allan Potter, AVP, IS&T / Indirect Sourcing, Jefferson Health
Moderator: Ana Paula Zamorano, Founder and CEO, ReSource Partners
- 10:15 AM
Coffee and Networking
Live Demos from:
MAIN STAGE
- 11:30 AM
You Can’t Automate Chaos: Making AI Work In The Real World
Procurement leaders know a fundamental truth: technology only scales what already exists. If you automate a fragmented process, you simply get faster chaos. In an era of exploding vendor sprawl and complex cross-functional requirements, the challenge isn’t just ‘adding AI’ – it’s architecting a system that can actually handle the nuance of global spend.
In this session, we move beyond the buzzwords of ‘bolted-on’ chatbots to explore the tangible shift towards context-aware AI. Attendees will walk away with a clear framework for moving from AI pilots to impact-driven procurement transformation.
Key takeaways include:
- How to evaluate your current and future tech stack to ensure AI is embedded, not bolted-on.
- Practical strategies to build a ‘front door’ for procurement that stakeholders actually want to use, ensuring 100% process adoption.
- How to use orchestration to align Legal, Risk, IT, and Finance into a single automated workflow, removing the administrative burden from your team.
- How to move from reactive reporting to proactive insights that protect EBITDA and identify risk before it hits the balance sheet.
Arie Barendrecht, US GM, Omnea
MAIN STAGE
- 11:50 AM
Fire-Side Chat: From Vendor Insight to Deal Leverage: Applying AI in IT Sourcing
AI is changing how procurement teams prepare for high-stakes sourcing decisions. In this interview, we discuss how AI-driven analysis combined with institutional knowledge can surface risks, opportunities, and leverage points earlier in the sourcing cycle.
Jeff Muscarella, Chief Innovation Officer, NPI
Host: David Johnson, Founder, ProcureOptima.ai
MAIN STAGE
- 12:10 PM
Fire-Side Chat: Roadmap for Change – Boosting AI Literacy
AI transformation in procurement isn’t just a technology shift — it’s a people and culture journey.
This session will offer insights on how to design and lead a change management roadmap that ensures the right skills, roles, and mindsets are in place to succeed in an AI-enabled future.
- How to build AI literacy across procurement teams
- Upskilling the team to collaborate with agents
- Creating a learning culture that supports continuous adaptation and change
Anders Lange, Chief Procurement Officer at DXC Technology
Host: Cassye Cook Provost, Principal, RossGrigsby Consultancy, former CPO, Paylocity
MAIN STAGE
- 12:30 PM
Lunch & Networking
Live Demos from 12.50
- 1:30 PM
Customer Use Case with Lio
Vincent Nusmeier, Head of Partnerships, Lio
- 1:50 PM
Build vs Buy
Moderator: Eve Reiter, Procurement and AI Enablement Leader
Jake Heenehan, Co-Founder, Cyrus AI
Aubrey Zimmerman, Sr Manager, Procurement, Ramp
- 2:20 PM
AI Agent Build: Live on Stage
Watch the build of a working AI agent from scratch in real-time. Showing the tools to tackle a real procurement use case, highlighting the technical decisions and trade-offs that come. No slides, no theory — just building live and showing you what it takes to go from idea to working agent.
Meteb Alfayez, Procurement Director, Cribl
- 3:10 PM
Coffee and Networking
Live Demos from 3.15
- 4:00 PM
The Journey to Purposeful AI – Ideal State vs. What You Can Do Right Now
- How to get your organization ready to move forward with AI
- How to set a strategy and build bridges to transition your 2025 to your 2030 plan
- Questions you should be asking. What’s the goal? What do I want Agentic to do for me? Are we ready?
- What you need to kick-start agentic – cognitive architecture, software engineers? Building an actionable roadmap
- Change management execution
- Pilot vs. enterprise integration
- AI to scale
Subs Tripathy, Procurement Head – Corporate Services, Pfizer
Victor Scarante, Head of Procurement COE and IT Procurement, The Hershey Company
Danielle McQuiston, Managing Director, Enterprise Transformation Officer, Zip
Host: Mathew Schulz, Founder, Pennywurth
- 4:35 PM
Drinks & Solution Roundtables
Choose your discussion:
- Supplier Intelligence – Per Melker, Executive Advisor, NPI
- Intelligent Intake – Arie Barendrecht, GM US and Leon Gibson – VP Strategic Projects, Omnea
- Contract Rights Enforcement – Divyabh Mishra, Founder, AllCaps
- Driving real ROI with agentic AI: How to measure impact & prove value post-pilot – Danielle McQuiston, Managing Director, Enterprise Transformation Officer, Zip
- How should procurement be organized when execution is no longer human-led? Vincent Nusmeier, Lio
- Negotiation – Michael Shields, VP of Procurement, Tropic
- Sell-side only – How to work with Procurement – insider best practices – Mat Schulz
- 5:20 PM