Azlan Raj is the Chief Marketing Officer for Merkle and dentsu's EMEA Customer Experience Management service line. His role spans all dentsu capabilities across commerce, data and technology platforms, analytics, media, customer experience, content, and B2B. He is responsible for continually evolving Merkle and dentsu's leading digital and data capabilities across the region to drive customer experience transformation for clients, helping them find the balance in blending brand and data through their customer experience. Previously the EMEA leader for Merkle's customer experience capability, he built the company's regional capability to over 1 200 people in just three years to help global brands transform their organisations to deliver more personal and data-fuelled customer experiences.

With over 20 years of experience in the digital industry, prior to joining Merkle, Azlan worked for leading brands, agencies and consultancies, including Barclaycard, Publicis Sapient, and Accenture. Through his career, Azlan has been part of award-winning teams and led a diverse set of capabilities from marketing strategy through to analytics, website design and development, and marketing activation. He is a recognised thought leader writing for mainstream publications and presenting at leading industry events including Forbes, Campaign, The Drum, PerformanceIN, Adobe Summit and Econsultancy, and is a member of the renowned Forbes Communications Council, Performance Marketing World Advisory Board and Data & Marketing Association (DMA) customer engagement committee. Azlan was also recognised in PerformanceIN's top 50 list for marketers.

Azlan is also passionate about the industry's efforts in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) space. He is actively involved in supporting Merkle's DEI pillars, and is especially committed to ensuring that inclusivity and social responsibility are embedded into today's communications.

Richard Lees is Chief Strategy Officer for Merkle and dentsu's EMEA Customer Experience Management service line. His remit sits at the intersection of customer experience strategy, measuring what matters, omnichannel architecture and organisation transformation, to enable businesses to capitalise on the total customer experience. He plays a key thought leadership role that underpins the strategic and competitive positioning of the Merkle business across EMEA, and works collaboratively across both Merkle and dentsu to deliver this. Prior to this role, Richard was the CEO and co-founder of DBG, a marketing and technology consultancy that was acquired by Merkle in 2016.

Richard has spent more than 30 years applying data to solve a multitude of business challenges. In this time, he has been a founding partner of, grown, and sold two successful businesses, both of which focused on using data, technology and insights to optimise cross-channel customer communications. Working both on the client side and in his own businesses, Richard has had profound hands-on experience across myriad technology, data, analytics, decisioning, experience, strategy, and communications disciplines. He has been a regular speaker at numerous global industry events, a regular contributor to mainstream publications and was recognised in DataIQ's top 100 list for the most influential data and analytics practitioners.

Richard plays an active role in the execution of Merkle's DEI initiatives, leading the Lived Experience pillar, which is tasked with improving the daily experiences of our ethnic minority colleagues' lives. He is passionate about the power of diverse collaboration and the compound value of the shared know-how and experience of all our people.