Advisory board

Teresa Hitchings 

Eastern Europe and Rest of the World Executive in Operations, ABB.

Teresa has been working in ABB since July 2018 as a result of a divestiture between GE and ABB, prior to that Teresa worked all her career for General Electric, Aviation ranging from Engine Overhaul, Electronics, Composites and Landing Gear. Teresa has held a number of roles from operations to customer facing roles.  Her career includes Quality, Production control, Compliance and legal, Materials and Procurement, Customer Program Manager, Factory Plant Manager and General Manager responsibible for running a number of manufacturing facilities, her current role.

Teresa has a BA honors in Management and Business and also holds a Mechanical Engineer degree.  She loves to hike with her Vizsla dog and is the proud mum of 2 teenage children.  Travelling is her passion. Teresa is from Wales, currently living as an expatriate in Budapest, Hungary.

László Károlyi

Chief Executive Officer, Legrand Zrt.

Born in Arad, László Károlyi became a successful business leader thanks to his innovative management methods. Since 2004 he has been CEO of Legrand Hungary. Under his leadership, the company has achieved spectacular economic growth and won numerous professional awards.

He has more than 20 years of management experience and has successfully dealt with extreme business environments such as the global economic crisis that started in 2008 or the Covid pandemic of recent years.

His first book, Business Seasons, was published in 2012 and provides practical guidance on crisis management. The book was published in English in 2014 under the title Business Chameleon. The third, revised edition of the book hit bookshops in 2017 under the title Business Chameleon – A practical guide to success for managers. His latest book Crenchmarking – Creative benchmarking. The fastest way to business success was published in 2019 by Kossuth Publishing. He mentors regularly and he also responds to external requests, gives lectures at universities and professional forums. Groups of American MBA students in internship trip or Corvinus University and the University of Szeged are inviting him to give lectures on business topics.

In 2020, he was elected President of the Hungarian-French Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

His most significant awards in recent years include: Honorary Citizen of the City of Szentes (2020), Award for the Economy of Csongrád County (2018), Leadership for Change Award (2017), Among the 101 Most Influential Business Decision Makers in Mo (2017), Ambassador of Excellence (2016), Hungarian Product Grand Prize and Innovation Special Award (2015).

Taira-Julia Lammi
Country Managing Director, ABB Hungary
She has been working with ABB since 1997, having held a number of roles in quality and operations development, supply chain and project management as well as management positions.
Working as Quality Manager, she gained a great insight to all major departments of a business unit at ABB, so she had a chance to know the products and processes, customers and suppliers.
Then, becoming a Project Manager and supervisor, running a team of people in R&D was an important technical experience for her as engineer to get a real hands-on experience of ABB products.
She took on her previous role as Center Head of the Internal Consulting Group for ABB in Finland and the Czech Republic in 2009 for seven years. Primary responsibilities in this role included leading people through various changes, keeping up the competences and bring in new ones and making sure people are motivated in their work and deliver results.
Taira-Julia Lammi comes from Finland. She holds a Master Sciences in Industrial Engineering from Tampere University of Technology in Finland. She completed a leadership training at Levon Institute and a Senior Leadership Development Program at IMD Lausanne in 2014.
She speaks Finnish, English, Spanish, Swedish and German.
In her spare time, she likes skiing, attending concerts, theater plays, playing golf, attending gym classes and travelling. She is married, and has two children.

Peter Szalay
Chief Operating Officer, IBM Hungary

Peter has been working for IBM since 1994. He started his career as a Financial Analyst, then became the Deputy CFO at IBM Hungary. In 1996 at HTCC Consulting he fulfilled the Controller and chief Accountant position, and in 1999 he became the CFO of IBM Hungary. Before becoming the COO, he has been leading the EMEA Accounting Tower. Business and industry insight consultative advisor.

Education: JPTE Pécs, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA; The London School of Economics and Political Science.

LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-szalay-b1645664/

Laurent Roux

Laurent Roux was Advisory Board member for WBA from 2018 to August 2020. Laurent Roux joined the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), http://eit.europa.eu, (2.3Bln EUR as part of Horizon 2020 for the 2014-2020 period) as Entrepreneurship Officer in September 2013, and became Impact Officer – Entrepreneurship and Business Creation in Nov 2017.

He is mainly responsible for the EIT Knowledge Innovation Communities (KICs) Entrepreneurship and Business Creation activities for innovative European start-ups and scale-ups across EU-28 (50M EUR/year in acceleration and support services), including synergies with other EU and National Business Creation programs.

His work also includes the EIT Monitoring of the EIT KICs activities, through Key Performance Indicators, Scoreboards, including Horizon 2020 indicators, and on site in-depth broader strategic Evaluations and Reviews focusing on Results, Impact and Financial Sustainability.

Laurent Roux leads the EIT Women Leadership and Entrepreneurship activities at European level, https://eit.europa.eu/women-entrepreneurship.

Laurent Roux represents EIT on the board of the EIT Alumni association (7000+ members), http://eitalumni.eu, and leads the EIT Alumni community development across Europe. Laurent Roux is a member of the organizing team of EIT annual Innovation festival INNOVEIT, https://eit.europa.eu/innoveit, and leads the organization of the annual EIT Awards and Innovation Tour.

Laurent Roux holds an INSEAD MBA, and a MScEE from INSA Lyon, France.