International Conference on Contract Simplification

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Links

• Biography

Links

• Biography

Martin Eppler is a full professor of media and communication management at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), where he is also the managing director of the =mcm institute for media and communication management and the head of the International Study MBA Program (ISP). He conducts research on knowledge management, knowledge visualization, knowledge creation (creativity) and knowledge communication. He has been a guest professor at various universities in Asia, South America, and Europe. He has been an advisor to organizations such as the United Nations, Philips, UBS, the Swiss Military, Ernst & Young, Swiss Re, GfK, and others. Martin Eppler studied communications, business administration and social sciences at Boston University, the Paris Graduate School of Management, and at the Universities of Geneva and St.Gallen. He has published more than 150 academic papers (in journals such as Organization Studies, LRP, Harvard Business Manager, Information Society, IEEE, Information Visualization, and others) and fourteen books, mostly on knowledge communication, management, and visualization.

After completing legal studies at the University of Turku, Finland, and Cambridge University, England, Helena Haapio served as in-house Legal Counsel in Europe and the United States. Based in Helsinki, Finland, she consults worldwide.

A pioneer of the proactive approach, where contracts and law are seen as enablers rather than obstacles, she has for many years promoted the use of simplification and visualization in commercial contracts. Since her doctoral dissertation on Next Generation Contracts her multi-disciplinary research focuses on ways to transform contracts from legal instruments to valuable business tools.

For more information, see Visual Law: What Lawyers Need to Learn from Information Designers.

She is a Fellow and a member of the Advisory Council of the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management, IACCM and the founder and co-leader of the ProActive ThinkTank.

She also acts as arbitrator in cross-border contract disputes.

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Sally is Chief Operating Officer for the IACCM, leading and supporting the IACCM global team in the pursuit of both the recognition of and excellence in Commercial and Contract Management.

Sally is an experienced and accomplished commercial and contracts management professional, holding senior commercial positions at a range of corporate and multi-national organisations.

After gaining an Honours degree in Law, Sally spent her time in house in the corporate sector, where she worked globally in the Telecoms and IT industries, before establishing her own legal and commercial consultancy in 2007.

Sally is passionate about enabling business efficiency and growth through contracting and commercial excellence; she understands the need for robust business operations to drive these efficiencies, together with the requirement for effective communication and collaboration at all times.

Whether in contract development, negotiation, training or general communications, Sally has built a reputation for service excellence and responsiveness. Her focus is on the creation of positive and successful business relationships, constantly striving to ensure that businesses realise their true potential and value.

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Click here to access the profile.

Rupert Nebauer is a German lawyer, based in Munich.

After his studies in Munich and Lausanne, he worked for two years in the claims department of a travel insurance company. In 1990, he joined Swiss Re Group, where he was part of the facultative liability underwriting team in various roles, for more than 20 years.

Since 2012, he is member of Swiss Re's Global Contracts team, with the responsibility for P&C Reinsurance wordings in the region "Europe 2", which includes Germany, Austria, Nordic Countries, Baltic States and Central- and Eastern Europe.

Rupert has been interested in contract simplification topics, since he had joined an International Conference on Multisensory Law in 2012. In addition, he has been involved in various tool development projects, recently also in the text mining analytics context.

Memberships:
ARIAS Germany
AIDA Europe

Stefania Passera (MA) is a doctoral researcher (MIND Research Group, Aalto University School of Science, Helsinki, Finland) and a freelance information designer.

Stefania Passera is currently focusing on the emerging topic of contract visualization, an approach that aims at making contracts clearer and more user-friendly with the help of better typography, layout design and information visualization. Her goal is not to beautify contracts, but to help the readers to make sense of complex information, build a transparent and trustworthy communication style with their partners, and ensure business success.

Stefania Passera has been working with private and public organizations in Finland on the development of user-centered visual contract documents, combining research and practice. She is the initiator of Legal Design Jam, an international series of workshops where designers and lawyers collaborate in redesigning existing legal documents in a user-centric manner. Additionally, she teaches strategic innovation through design thinking ad experimentation, in an international master course provided by Aalto University and ESADE Business School Barcelona.

On December 1, 2008, Knut Pohlen was nominated Group Treasurer within Swiss Re.

Knut Pohlen, originally from Germany, graduated in Mathematics and Economics at the Technical University Berlin in 1993 and in 1998 he obtained  his Ph.D. in Economics.

Before joining Swiss Re he served at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt and London in various functions, such as Head of London Model Trading in Global Markets Finance, UK Treasurer, Global Head of Liquidity Management, Global Head of Funding and Deputy Group Treasurer.

Robert is a practicing commercial attorney and serves as a non-executive director on the boards of several companies. He provides legal advice, resolve disputes, facilitates strategic discussions and drafts contracts. Systems Thinking informs his approach to strategic and legal questions, healthy relationships to reaching purposeful agreements, and plain English and visualization to drafting contracts.

Living in a developing country, and one of the world’s most unequal societies, it is his dream and duty to do something that can make a meaningful positive difference to the vulnerable situation of so many in South Africa and elsewhere.

From this the idea of using comics as contracts was born, which he is developing, researching and advocating as a way to improve contractual relationships where at least one of the parties are not contractually literate.

He was born on 13 April 1970, studied business and law at the University of Stellenbosch and partly at the University of Leiden. More recently he completed an MBA specializing in Executive Management at the University of Cape Town.

Together with his wife, two teenage daughters and 2-year-old son, he lives in Cape Town, where he tries to balance his work and family life with some cycling and surfing.

Nick Szabo is a computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer known for his pioneering research in smart contracts and blockchains.

In her current role as Director, Carol is responsible for the development and global deployment of standardized offering contract terms for IBM’s Products, Services and Solutions. She is also involved with the integration of newly acquired offerings into the IBM portfolio. Carol is responsible for the management and leadership of a worldwide team of Managers and Subject Matter Experts.

Carol has lead numerous IBM employee teams through an expansive list of diverse job assignments which include contract development, negotiations and integration, supply chain, project management, education, quality assurance, Defense Industry and procurement integrity compliance and Client experience.

Personally she is involved with her community in support of health, human services, and youth sports associations.

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After a number of years as a litigation lawyer in London, Rory Unsworth joined Swiss Reinsurance Company in Zurich as Senior Contracts Expert in 2003. He spent 8 years managing a team of Contracts experts giving advice for all types of reinsurance contracts.  He has supported many of Swiss Re's large transactions and own-risk hedges in the last decade. 

In 2014 he became Head Contracts Centre, supporting front-line teams in the delivery of advice, including managing and monitoring consistency, and producing tools to support the process. His principal professional interest is preventive law and transaction management at all stages of a business, from origination to commutation. 

He is also interested in the use of technology to support legal processes, as well as in the use of clear contracts as a tool to optimise trust and transparency in commercial relationships.

Ursus Wehrli is a left-handed, broad-thinking, professional typographer. His first book Tidying up Art is a visionary manifesto that took well-known artworks and put them back together in his more rational, more organized, and cleaner form of modern art.

In his newest book The Art of Clean Up Wehrli extended his discerning eye into the physical world to tidy up common daily situations. It’s a way to teach us how to look differently at our everyday world. The way he makes the ordinary jumble of life manageable puts a smile on our face. His books have sold a million copies worldwide.

Besides bringing order to environments and artwork, Wehrli has delighted audiences for over a quarter of a century with his comedy-duo Ursus & Nadeschkin, touring in Zurich, Berlin, Melbourne, and New York. The Duo has received numerous awards in Switzerland and Germany, but also in the United States, where they won the New York Comedy Award.

Ursus Wehrli lives as a comedian, live performer, and visual artist in Zurich. www.ursuswehrli.com

Rob Waller is a UK-based information designer with wide experience of practice, research, writing and teaching. He has a special interest in legal information design, and has completed projects on the reduction of fine print in consumer product information, the design of legislation and the simplification of commercial contracts. His clients have included many well known names such as Vodafone, AXA, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Unilever, T-Mobile, BT, British Gas as well as many UK government agencies.

Rob’s career has included academic roles at the Open University and at the University of Reading, where he originally trained as a designer (BA 1974, PhD 1988) and where he was Professor of Information Design 2007-2011. At Reading, he launched a new research group, the Simplification Centre funded by corporate sponsors and UK government departments who wished to communicate more effectively with citizens. In 2011, the Centre became a non-profit advocacy group, and Rob combines its leadership with consulting in information and service design. He is honorary Adjunct Professor of Visual Communication at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and President Elect of the International Institute for Information Design.