Last week’s MERIT Summit in Vienna gathered top-notch international speakers, executive education experts, and innovators from the fields of L&D and Talent Management. Thanks to MERIT’s active audience, we were glad to give out three special awards to the speakers whose presentations received the highest vote throughout the event.

Tim Ackermann, Global Head of Talent Acquisition & Experience at LIDL, deservedly won the first place for his session “The L&D Function Is Dead, Long Live L&D”. The award is kindly provided by IE Business School in the form of their International Masterclass on Learning and Development Leadership.

The second place was taken by Natasa Prodanovic, Group Talent Director at Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, for her insights into “Strategy-driven Talent Acceleration in Coca- Cola HBC”. The award – one-year access to the Act2Manage application for 20 leaders working at the same company – is provided by Act2Manage.

The award for the third most highly voted presentation went to Elisabetta Galli, Global Director of Knowledge, Development & Talent Management at Banco Santander. Her talk “Never Stop Learning - A Learning Challenge for Top Executives” captivated event participants and won Ms Galli access to the Design Thinking for Business Innovation programme by Aalto University Executive Education and ESADE Business School.

In addition, our sponsors from the Academy for Corporate Entrepreneurship (AfCE) presented a special sponsor award to Natasa Prodanovic. The Group Talent Director at Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company will benefit from a range of AfCE perks, including the “Intrapreneur DNA Test”, an intrapreneurship e-learning course, an intrapreneur kickbox programme, 40 corporate startup accelerator tutorials, and two levels of certification for her LinkedIn profile.

Congratulations to the winners!