CA. Aniket S. Talati joined the Professional Accountants in Business Advisory Group in January 2024. He is the president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) for the term 2023-24.

CA. Talati also chairs the ICAI research wing’s Accounting Research Foundation and Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) India as well as serving as a Board Director for ICAI’s Indian Institute of Insolvency Professionals. He is also a member of the Insolvency Law Committee and the Standing Committee of MCA for review of the implementation of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, 2016. During 2022, he was the Vice-Chairman of the ICAI Working Committee of the World Congress of Accountants in Mumbai in 2022.

At the regional and international level, CA. Talati is a board member of the South Asian Federation of Accountants, represents ICAI on the Integrated Reporting and and Connectivity Council as well as ASEAN Federation of Accountants’ and Pan African Federation of Accountants’ board meetings. He is also a technical advisor to the IFAC Board and IFAC’s Professional Accountants in Business Advisory Group.

Among his contributions to the accountancy profession, CA. Aniket S. Talati led ICAI’s digital transformation.

Dennis Whitney, CMA, CAE is senior Vice President of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA®), the certification division of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA®), the world's leading association for accountants and financial professionals in business. He is responsible for the CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) exam's development and administration, program budgeting, growth, and strategic planning. He has a cross- functional role overseeing research, education, and publications/thought leadership. Mr. Whitney is now the driving force behind the entire CMA program, where he is committed to the task of growing the certification to become the gold-standard, advanced professional certification for accountants and financial professionals in the business.

Register to attend virtually or in Brussels.

ACE Event Space
Avenue d’Auderghem 22
B-1040 Brussels

Assietou is a seasoned financial expert with a diverse international experience in global public and private organizations. She is strong advocate for strengthening public finance management in Africa and adds her voice to numerous projects initiated by regulators, financing institutions and professional accountancy organizations (PAOs) bodies, and peer organizations.

Assietou recently moved to Geneva to join Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) as CFO. Gavi plays a critical role in strengthening primary health care in more than 70 countries under a public-private partnership involving sovereign governments, private sector foundations, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, vaccine manufacturers, civil society, and NGOs. Prior to that, she led finance functions at several leading organizations such as, African Union in Ethiopia, Barclays Bank in the UAE, Credit Agricole in London, and the Central Bank of West Africa in Senegal. She started her career working as a senior auditor in Paris. Assietou is a qualified chartered accountant. 

In addition to French and English, she speaks Wolof. She is married and is the proud mother of 2 girls aged 27 and 23. Outside of work, her interests are socializing, reading, cooking, and occasionally mentoring.

Carlos Hernández Gálvez is a graduand from ITAM's Bachelor's Degree in Economics and a research assistant at ITAM's Centro de Vinculación e Investigación Contable.

Guillermo Smith Ramírez is president of the Costa Rica’s Certified Public Accountants Association Board of Directors, triennium 2020-2023, January. Guillermo has thirty-five-year experience in practicing public accounting as auditor, consultant, and advisor. In the trade association, four times he has been the Certified Public Accountants Association Presidency; he has served as Fiscal, and has held posts like President of the Permanent and Consultative Committee, and of the Honour Tribunal. He is also a university professor and lecturer.

Heather Smith sits at the intersection of accounting, education and content creation. She educates the accounting community to positively embrace Accounting Apps. Or as she refers to them, ‘her robots’. Heather shares her love for Accounting Apps, learnings and observations of the accounting industry through content creation. Heather hosts an accounting technology podcast called Cloud Stories, curates an Accounting Apps newsletter, is a columnist with Acuity magazine, and is the author of ten books including Xero for Dummies.

Heather has run a virtual micro-management accounting practice since the early 2000’s. Leveraging her accounting qualification as a global passport, she work with clients across the world, and travel extensively speaking at accounting conferences. She's obsessed with how effective automation and integration can unlock and produce timely clean quality data, to surface information for fast informed analysis and decision making. Heather is an Ambassador for Innovation for the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand CACatalyst initiative, helping to develop and deliver education programs for modernising SMPs. She's also a host of ACCA’s The Practice Room initiative dedicated to supporting SMPs as well as a member of the ACCA SME and Technology forum.