Francesco Casalegno is an engineer and project manager with years of experience in the IT field, with a particular focus on machine learning and data science projects.

He holds a MS degree in Applied Mathematics from the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and he has completed successful projects for several research, transnational and industrial applications.

In the Swiss Chapter of PMI, Francesco hopes to find other people willing to share their experiences and knowledge on project management. Francesco speaks fluently Italian, French, and English, and he is looking forward to discuss with colleagues in any of these languages.

In his free time, Francesco enjoys hikes, good reads, and spending time with friends and family.

You can learn more about Francesco by visiting his LinkedIn profile

Katarzyna is a project manager with 13 years of experience in banking and insurance industries with a strong management consulting background.

She works as a senior business project manager at Credit Suisse and is responsible for making a new legal entity operational and ensuring continuity of critical services in case of a resolution. In her previous role within the bank, she delivered change initiatives in finance department. Prior to that, she worked as a management consultant at PwC and KPMG.

Katarzyna holds a master’s degree in international financial management. Apart from PMP obtained in April 2020, she is a certified Prince2 Practitioner and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. Her motivation to join the Swiss chapter is to meet interesting people and exchange on the recent trends in project management.

On a personal note, Katarzyna originally comes from Poland and has been living in Zurich for over 8 years. In her free time, she likes to organize business networking and charity events. She is an avid world traveller, enjoys hiking, biking, skiing and other outdoor sports.

You can learn more about Katarzyna by visiting her LinkedIn profile

Passionate about innovation, new analytical technics and the human interaction with technology, Ali is an entrepreneur with more than nine years of experience in data strategy and consulting. He has built solutions for various financial and healthcare institutions in a broad range of topics. In particular, he has managed several projects and teams of different sizes, containing up to 50 people, in sensitive data analytical and reporting projects between transnational institutions, such as a leading Swiss bank and the US Department of Justice. As founder of SamurAI, he continue to assist private companies and public institutions in their challenges by developing and deploying innovative solutions, using data analytics and artificial intelligence. Large experience in knowledge transfer of quantitative subjects for very diverse audiences. He is supervising all the knowledge transfer activities at SamurAI, including the deployment of 5 training courses of 40 hours each.

His previous experiences in finance have allowed him to be exposed to a wide range of topics. He conducted large data analysis on sensitive information for Swiss Private Banks by using my programming skills and supported a large international bank to achieve their stress test exercise by combining my financial modelling knowledge and my regulatory expertise. His projects were based on cross department teamwork and he developed strong interpersonal skills by dealing with various internal and stakeholders as well as leading a team of 4 junior consultant.

In addition to his professional experiences, Ali obtained a M.Sc. in Financial Engineering from the HEC Lausanne and is a certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM). He also obtained in 2019 the Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Data Science & Management, which is delivered by EPFL and HEC Lausanne. He is fluent in English, French and Arabic. Moreover, he have worked in various international environments, gaining relevant interpersonal skills and sensibilities in multicultural diversity.

You can learn more about Ali by visiting his LinkedIn profile

Since the beginning of her professional career Sandra is connected to the banking sector, working on analytics and reporting projects for Compliance and HR divisions. Currently, she works as a Senior Project Business Manager for Digital Transformation and Products Lab at Credit Suisse.

Sandra started her educational adventure with project management from post graduate studies in that field. Next, she gained a PRINCE2 certificate and her goal for this year is preparation for the PMP certificate.

On top of her professional experience with project management, Sandra had a chance to run a project for NGO organization (Business Run for approx. 3k people), what was not only great practice and challenge, but also unforgettable fun and experience.

Sandra decided to join Swiss Chapter as she believes that connection with people with various PM experiences, participation in the events and finding new activities inside the community is an even better way of learning than books (and she is a HUGE fan of books!)

Other than books, Sandra absolutely enjoys hiking and due to the current lockdown situation she discovered a new (home- based) passion – knitting

You can learn more about Sandra by visiting her LinkedIn profile