ABSL management & team
ABSL board of directors
Ota KulháneK
Chairman of the Board of the Directors, President
Ota has been working in the SSC / BPO industry from the year 2003. Since 2011 he has been leading the internal SSC for Accenture in Prague. From 2003 to 2011 he had been working in the BPO area lastly he was leading Finance & Accounting BPO for Accenture in the Czech Republic. His areas of expertise are: SSC / BPO market and management, finance and accounting, project management and operational excellence.
jonathan appleton
Managing Director, Member of the Board of Directors
Jonathan is the Managing Director of ABSL Czech Republic which represents the interests of Global Shared Service Centres and Outsourcing firms in the Czech Republic, one of Europes top outsourcing destinations. Jonathan has over 20 years experience in the CEE region and previously was a director at PwC Czech Republic where he supported Business Services clients in the Czech Republic and across CEE.
František Havel
Member of the Board of Directors
NGSC Prague Strategy & Operations manager at Novartis
František Havel, NGSC Prague Strategy & Operations manager in the global service center of Novartis in Prague. He has extensive experience from more than 19 years of operation in the sector of global business services. He dealt with both improving the efficiency of processes and increasing the quality of services provided in IT / telecommunications, finance and HR.
His goal on the ABSL Board of Directors is to raise awareness of the sector in the Czech Republic, promote the importance of key skills such as best-in-class business partnerships and reach out to qualified professionals and talented graduates.
Sergei holmeckis
Member of the Board of Directors
Managing Director at Deutsche Telekom Services Europe Czech Republic
Sergei Holmeskis, Managing Director at Deutsche Telekom Services Europe Czech Republic. He has been with Deutsche Telekom since 2011 in various international roles in the areas of Consulting, Roaming, HR Projects, Shared Services. Since 2016, he has been leading the Czech subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom Services Europe in Brno. Within his work for ABSL he focuses on promoting the knowledge and experience sharing among members and emphasizes the importance of innovation, digitalization, people, and industry development.
Iveta Chválová
Member of the Board of Directors
Managing Director of SAP Services
Iveta Chválová, Managing Director of SAP Services in Prague. In addition to her role as director, she also leads the international Global Mobility team with overall responsibility for all cross-border movements and relocations within SAP. She started working at SAP after graduating from university in 2005. As part of her work at ABSL, she wants to actively contribute to the growth of the business services sector. She believes that the potential is huge and is convinced that business services are an increasingly important part of the entire value chain of companies.
Adam Kiwalski
Member of the Board of Directors
GBS Head Delivery Management at Siemens
Adam is a shared services professional with +15 years proven track record in global environment. Adam managed various global scale process transformations, harmonization and digitalization projects. Developing best-in-class processes across domains he provided process expertise and consulting services to a number of corporations.
Specialties: service delivery, transformations, process digitalization, process compliance, shared services, project management, LeanSixSigma.
Helle Juhl McDermott
Member of the Board of Directors
VP Shared Services and Site-Leader Prague, Curium Pharma
Helle Juhl McDermott, VP Shared Services and Site-Leader Prague, Curium Pharma, which provides IT, HR, finance and customer service support to other entities of this global pharmaceutical company. She is originally from Denmark and has more than 20 years in Shared Services. Helle is a certified coach and NLP practitioner and is volunteering as a mentor for the Nordic Chamber of Commerce’s “Mentoring Exchange” and “Women helping women in business” for Torch. As part of her role at ABSL, she wants to focus on sharing the experience of smaller but very fast-growing centers, as well as promoting diversity.
Jan Nedělník
Member of the Board of Directors
General Manager of Comdata Czech and Comdata Hungary
Jan Nedělník, General Manager of Comdata Czech and Comdata Hungary. Jan has over 15 years of experience in the BPO industry and over 10 years at contact center Comdata. Comdata is a Diamond winner for implementing the COVID19 government help-line. The company responded immediately and flexibly to the government’s call and supported lines 112 and 1212, which collapsed under the huge number of inquiries. Withint ABSL he would like to raise the awareness of the sector in regions, to focus on CSR activities and to share the Comdata experience from this space to other ABSL members.
Roman Pavloušek
Member of the Board of Directors
Global FSC Manager at Atlas Copco Services
Roman is an experienced executive director with a broad experience in finance & accounting, IT, risk & compliance and operations. He is currently leading Global Finance SSC function for global manufacturing company Edwards Ltd, having responsibility for managing centralized finance processes (Procure-to-Pay, Order-to-Cash, Record-to-Report, Information Provision&Analysis) and leading over 130 staff in centres based in Czech Republic and South Korea.
Nicole Pierson
Member of the Board of Directors
Managing Director of Johnson & Johnson Global Services
Nicole Pierson, Managing Director of Johnson & Johnson Global Services, a company that was one of the founding members of ABSL. Nicole has diverse work experience in Business Services as well as Finance and Business leadership across Medical Devices, Pharmaceuticals, Consumer and Enterprise Supply Chain within Johnson & Johnson. On the ABSL Board of Directors, she wants to focus mainly on networking and best practices sharing across the sector and engaging and sponsoring diversity and talent development.
Jan Skoták
Member of the Board of Directors
Regional Center Head at Infosys
Jan is Infosys BPO Regional Center Head, responsible for Infosys BPO presence and operations in the Czech Republic. In addition, he drives client relationships and business growth for a portfolio of Fortune 500 companies across Europe, US, and Brazil. He is a member of Infosys Global Management Council. Jan has been with Infosys for 10+ years and has been the founding member of the team that has built Infosys BPO presence in the CEE region. He has managed the first Infosys BPO global operations from the CEE region and subsequently played several operational, sales, and strategic roles in Europe and US.
Jaromír Staroba
Member of the Board of Directors
director of the Prague Digital Hub business services center of the ABInBev
Jaromir is leading AB InBev Global Capability Center in Prague with team of over 650 professionals driving business services in area of logistics, HR, finance, customer and digital employee experience and procurement.
Jaromir is with AB InBev since 2006 and has vast experience in various domains such as logistics and supply chain management, HR, project management including system implementations across both BSC area and business operations.
absl team
helena tabakovová
SENIOR Operations manager
Michaela Peterková
Digital projects manager
Michaela is an experienced marketing and project manager passionate about new technologies and innovations. She gained sales and business development experience in PwC’s Academy selling professional qualifications. Later she spent one year in New Zealand coordinating repairs after major earthquakes. Returning back to the Czech Republic, she joined Impact Hub Prague, where she managed events and an accelleration programme for startups. In 2016, she joined ABSL to focus on marketing and communications, from which she moved on to drive digital projects of the association.
Yuliia Ovchynnikova
MArketing & Communications coordinator
Yuliia joined our team in 2022.
She was always passionate about marketing since the beginning of her university studies. She has got her bachelor’s degree in business administration the Czech university; finished it by the internship at AB InBev. Then, she started her master studies in Economics and Management, at the same time joining a marketing department of SAP. Yuliia had to leave the Czech Republic to use an opportunity given by EU to receive her second master’s degree in Digital Marketing at the French Business school. Just after finishing it she came back to Prague, joined FEG were she was a managing affiliate marketing system for almost 2 years. She wanted to bring more creativity to her work, so started studying social media marketing deeper, even was in charge of marketing at the Prague chain of restaurants.
Having a wide experience of working in international environment at our partnering organizations, she was excited to join an association uniting all of them.
ANNA ŠTIPTOVÁ
Education Programmes Manager
ADÉLA FEJFAROVÁ
EVENT & COMMUNITY COORDINATOR
Adela joined ABSL team in June 2020. She achieved bachelor’s degree from Economics Faculty and straight after studies she started working for Danaher Corporation. Within Danaher she gained 3 years of experience on multiple positions, beginning as Accounts Payable Coordinator in Financial Shared Service Center and following as Procurement Support Specialist. After leaving Danaher she started to gain more experience in marketing and media sector. Adela externally worked as PR editor in magazine Svet Prumyslu, oriented to industry, and as her hobby she acts as a copywriter.
In the beginning of 2020, Adela decided to follow her passion of creative work and joined our ABSL team.
Marta supports the activities of ABSL by communicating with the media on behalf of the association and by providing other PR services. She has a great understanding of the business services sector and topics such as HR or IT. In her previous roles she worked for local media agencies as well as in a PR team of Oracle. In 2008, she founded a PR agency PRCOM, which provides services to many local and international companies and helps them achieve their business goals.
join absl
We welcome new members who want to join the common voice of business services in the Czech Republic.