We’re excited to share some highlights from the IT Academy Week 2025 in beautiful Pontresina!

On Monday, September 22nd, Christoph Baeck from Würth Group opened the Academy with his inspiring presentation “Mission Impossible? at Würth.” We were then joined by Enrico Senger from cifeno AG, who provided fascinating insights into real-world AI use cases.

In the afternoon, Thomas Kaufmann from Schindler Group shared his expertise on IT security both in general and at Schindler, followed by an engaging IT Security Panel with Thomas Kaufmann, Christoph Baeck, V. Andrein, A. Raghavendra that sparked valuable discussion among participants.

Traditionally on Tuesday, we dedicated the whole day to Prof. Dr. Dimitris Karagiannis from the University of Vienna, together with his team Wilfrid Utz Alexander Völz from OMiLAB NPO. They ran a full-day design thinking workshop, where participants developed their own digital business models — always a hands-on and creative highlight of the week.

On Wednesday, September 24th, Markus Gisler from Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts delivered an inspiring session on finance for IT managers, followed by Juergen Peukert and Alperen Can from the Negotiation Advisory Group Board, who gave participants the chance to negotiate with each other through different scenarios.
Later in the afternoon, we welcomed Stefan Schmautz from AdEx Partners, who joined virtually to share his insights on AI topics, and Igor Balashov from Microsoft, who presented the latest developments in AI. The day concluded with Jochen Decker, CIO of SBB CFF FFS, offering a personal perspective on the work and life of a CIO.

In the evening, one of the week’s highlights took place: the CIO Roundtable. Markus Bierl (CIO, Franke), Jochen Decker (CIO, SBB), Khushnud Irani (ex-CIO, Holcim), and Lucas F. Kuttler Kuttler (ex-CIO, Lonza & Schindler) engaged in an open conversation, responding to the questions of our 17 participants in a calm and inspiring atmosphere. The roundtable was moderated by Céline Deillon from SBB and Manuel Riesch from Würth.

We’re now looking forward to our last two days — Thursday and Friday — and will keep you posted with more highlights to come!