Global Executive

Dario’s experience in the mobile industry goes back to 1999; first as a consultant for Ovum advocating for to the nascent Mobile VAS, then launching the first Mobile Internet in Europe with the T-Mobile group. More recently expanding the concept of innovative partnerships between telcos and digital players in Asia and the Middle East, for Ooredoo (Qatar, Indonesia, Myanmar) and Axiata (Indonesia) and as Director of Products for MTS, the leading Russian Telecom. Over the year he has also taken non executives director roles in IoT and Digital Marketing companies.  In February 2019 Dario took over the role of CEO at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum, after a long collaboration with the organisation.

Dario’s focus is in creating new business opportunities in the fast changing digital world,  and he enjoys the cultural challenges of working in different countries.

After graduating with BA Hons in Film, Susan started her career at the trade body & membership organization The Producers Alliance for Cinema & TV [PACT], in London. She was introduced to working with public bodies and lobbying government on behalf of the strategic aims of the membership, which she enjoyed. Her ‘can do optimism’ and determination to work in the USA led her to Chicago, where she worked on two feature films collaborating and assisting effective communication between US crews and UK talent.

She moved to New York to work at The British Consulate General for the Trade & Investment arm; initially assisting in inward investment opportunities, and then as Vice Consul (Commercial Publicity); helping British exporters to market in the US. Her natural problem-solving & strategic-thinking abilities drove an innovative, efficient and effective solution being rolled out and she seized an opportunity to head up The British Film Office in Los Angeles for the UK government, which later became the UK Film Council US. In addition to running the operation, Susan’s role was to act as ambassador for UK Film; which involved delivering events and marketing strategies, identifying commercial opportunities, and building strategic relationships with the US industry.

She moved back to London to care for her mother and then worked for content and advertising agencies, digital transformation start-ups, and online training hubs – building relationships and opportunities with enterprises and brands.

20 years ago, James built up the customer training division for one of the founding companies of MEF (Comverse Technology), 10 years ago he was managing carrier relationships with Mblox (an early pioneer in introducing A2P SMS to businesses around the globe, founded by MEF Chairman Andrew Bud) and now we are pleased to welcome him as part of our MEF family as Director of Programmes.

Even after 30 years active in all corners of the Telecommunications industry, James has not lost his passion and drive for promoting Telecommunications as a fantastic, positive means for development and change globally. He lives and breathes Business Messaging, Omnichannel, Customer Journey Orchestration, Mobile Subscriber Intelligence and Monetisation.

In recent years, James has travelled the world speaking on Customer Engagement and worked with both novice and seasoned entrepreneurs on scaling from an idea to a successful business, Business Messaging being a particular area of focus.

Where MEF is concerned, James has now come full circle – so many of his former customers are already members of our organisation!

Ewa joined MEF in 2013 as Member Services Manager. Prior to MEF, Ewa worked at GSMA, where she managed membership of operator members from all over the world.

She is experienced in databases and business to business membership management and development.

Ewa has been involved in various internal projects and regional and global events including Mobile World Congress. Before joining the mobile industry she worked at Bartercard, the world’s biggest business to business trade exchange.

Sam Joined MEF in 2012 as Communications Manager for MEF globally. Sam is a digital marketing specialist who has previously worked for the premium rate phone regulator in the UK.

Sam manages the day to day global communications and social networks for MEF and built and maintains content on the website.

He can usually be found at events reporting for MEFTV, and created and edits the MEF Minute – the award winning mobile industry oriented blog.

Carol joined MEF in September 2016 as the Member & Marketing Coordinator of the LatAm Chapter. Carol graduated in Advertising & Marketing from Anhembi Morumbi University. Prior to MEF, Carol worked as Marketing Strategist in retail companies and as Digital Business Developer in a Portuguese digital agency based in Brazil.

As part of MEF’s digital marketing team, Carol supports MEF’s programmes and events roadmap, with an emphasis on Future of Messaging Programme. She is also responsible for member engagement in Latin America.

Mike has worked for fixed/mobile operators for over 35 years in a number of product management & development roles covering voice, data and messaging services. In recent years he has focused on the development of policy, operation and policing of compliance regimes for payment services used in mobile billing applications. He has worked closely with MNO’s, regulators, aggregators and merchants to optimise payment flows and has been a member of the cross-network Payforit Management Group for over a decade – pressing for greater clarity in merchant service promotions.

After many years working at BT/O2, Mike left in 2017 and set up as a consultant, taking on an assignment with EE – where he worked to improve the due-diligence in carrier-billed merchant services and drove a reduction in consumer complaints.

Mike joined MEF in November 2018 as Project Director. Initially he is focused on driving fraud prevention initiatives within industry – specifically on the SMS anti-phishing project.

Iain is a MEF Advisor and has, since 2012, worked extensively with mobile network operators across Europe and the Russian Federation to drive adoption and uptake of the GSMA’s Mobile Connect identity, RCS and Smart Cities initiatives.

Prior to this, he ran third-party Messaging at Telefonica O2 UK from 2002 until 2010, working with Aggregators and Brands (Lloyds, ITV, C4, et al), driving the uptake of premium and bulk services and managing the issues of self regulation (PayForIT, a UK joint-MNO initiative), and subscriber protection.

Andrew is a highly experienced TMT (telecoms, media and technology) consulting, research and strategy professional. During his 25 year career, he has provided strategic advice and insight to a broad range of communications service providers, vendors, regulators and financial institutions. He has held leadership roles in leading advisory firms including Analysys Mason, Ovum, KPMG, IDC and worked as an in-company strategist for BT.

He has worked across a wide range of TMT markets with broad experience in consumer and enterprise and a strong focus on the mobile sector. More recently, he has focused in the areas of IoT and Smart Cities. He has helped organisations with strategy development and implementation, competitive positioning, product development, forecasting, business planning, go-to-market solutions, regulatory issues, transaction support and due diligence.

Joanne joined MEF as COO in 2013 to oversee its global programming and PL, and left the role at the end of 2020. She was appointed to the global board in November 2018. She leads the MEF team to deliver a roadmap of industry programmes and member services including events, knowledge sharing platforms as well as MEF’s award winning blog. She is responsible for the development of its industry partnerships and oversees MEF’s Future of Messaging Programme which through cross-stakeholder collaboration tackles fraud and promotes the enterprise messaging channel.

Joanne has worked in the mobile industry since 2000 helping to establish the nascent mobile games ecosystem with market pioneer I-play (Digital Bridges) and later more broadly looking at mobile entertainment services with Player X / Zed Worldwide. She has worked across the mobile ecosystem partnering with MNOs, solution providers and content owners.

Daniele is a Technology entrepreneur that is “all-in” to high-growth blockchain ventures, that leverage upon highly scalable disruptive business models and great customer experience.

With almost 20 years of experience in various roles In Technology, Finance and Telecommunication, Daniele brings deep technology and market understanding and end-to-end expertise of company’s start-up, growth and maturity across complex ecosystems and brand new technologies like blockchain, AI.

Daniele’s focus is to build brand new markets, discuss with worldwide policy-makers and institutional clients, address retail product offering and to drive company’s success for accelerated growth on a global scale on brand new digital capital markets.

Gianluca is a pioneer in Mobile Tech with 25 years of international experience in European companies as a Manager, Entrepreneur and Investor.

Today, he is a passionate advocate for start-ups, often in liaison with angel networks (London Business Angels and Italian Angels for Growth) and he’s serving as a Board member in public and private companies in UK, The Netherlands and Italy.

He’s also Senior Advisor for a few other tech companies, including the company he founded in 2007, Neomobile SpA, now named DigitalGo and owned by Softlab Group

As CEO of Neomobile, he grew the business organically and via M&A between 2007 and 2015, to make it  a global mobile monetization platform for content and one of most successful Italian tech companies.

Previously he held a variety of management roles in corporations such as KPMG, TIM and Telecom Italia.

Serafino Abate is an expert in economic regulation and competition policy for digital markets with more than 15 years’ experience. Recently Serafino was Senior Director, Competition Economics, at the GSMA, where he worked on regulatory and competition policies relating to the mobile sector, developing the GSMA’s position on key regulatory and competition policy issues, such as mobile market structure and consolidation, platform competition, net neutrality, and advocating on key regulatory change with policy makers in Europe and Latin America. Before joining the GSMA, Serafino worked in different public policy roles in Brussels, first covering economic and regulatory affairs for ETNO, the association of European telecom’s network operators, and then as Director of the Centre for Regulation in Europe in Brussels, an economic policy think tank.

Before that, Serafino was a senior Competition Policy Manager at Ofcom, the UK telecom, post and media regulator. Here, he was responsible for market reviews in telecoms, broadcasting and radio, and contributed to international cooperation projects on different policy issues.

He started his career working for Ovum, an independent research and advisory firm based in London, where he lead various consulting and research projects advising leading telecom and media operators around the world.