Top 50 customer experience leaders to follow in 2026

CX Network is proud to unveil our 2026 guide to the top customer experience (CX) leaders you need to follow this year.

From trailblazing practitioners and bold thinkers to seasoned consultants and rising regional voices, this year's list shines a spotlight on individuals from around the globe who are redefining what fantastic CX looks like in an era of artificial intelligence (AI) disruption, fragmented data and rising customer expectations. These are the leaders shaping the conversation, building the frameworks and doing the real work of connecting customer insight to business outcomes.

To curate this year's list, the CX Network editorial team considered a range of factors, including social media influence, industry experience, areas of expertise, recent achievements, and thought leadership. We also opened a nomination form for individuals to nominate either themselves, a member of their team, or someone they find inspiring. As ever, our selection reflects the diverse range of voices, roles, regions and industries that make up today's global CX community - from Malta to Ghana, Brazil to the Netherlands, and everywhere in between.

Arranged in alphabetical order by surname, each profile explains why the individual stands out. Scroll through to discover who's making waves, or click a name in the table below to jump straight to their profile.

PORTIA (DZIGBORDI) AYIVOR

Airport Women's Hospital | Ghana

Portia Ayivor is a healthcare CX leader at Airport Women's Hospital in Ghana whose work adds a vital and underrepresented dimension to the global CX conversation: what does great experience look like in a context where emotional stakes could not be higher, resources are constrained, and the human connection between caregiver and patient is everything? Her answer is both elegant and instructive.

She told CX Network: "One of the biggest challenges facing CX leaders today is balancing automation with authentic human interaction. My approach is to start with genuine human connection, lead with emotional intelligence, and then use technology and systems to enhance efficiency, build trust and strengthen customer loyalty."

Find out what Portia Ayivor is talking about on LinkedIn.

JEOFREY BEAN

Keynote speaker and CX strategist | USA

Jeofrey Bean is a keynote speaker, author and CX strategist with over two decades of experience helping organizations understand and act on what their customers actually want - often before customers can articulate it themselves. He is known for his application of behavioral economics to CX decision-making, and for a clear-eyed refusal to let AI excitement replace clear thinking about what customers actually need right now.

He told CX Network: "The best CX today shows consumer and business customers that you anticipated what kind of experience they wanted and delivered it – even if they could not tell you what they wanted or imagine it themselves."

On AI distraction, he adds: "The biggest CX challenge is not being so intoxicated by the potential of AI that your current CX – digital and analog – suffers. Using CX intelligence to fine-tune interactions now and identify how AI could help when AI is ready for your specific CX is key. Be sure to apply behavioral economics for CX decisions that benefit the customer and the company."

Find out what Jeofrey Bean is talking about on LinkedIn.

JEANNE BLISS

Customer Bliss | USA

Often referred to as the Godmother of CX, Jeanne Bliss is one of the most important figures in the history of the CX profession. She pioneered the role of the chief customer officer, holding the first-ever CCO position at Lands' End, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker, Allstate and Mazda – before the title was widely recognised or understood. Since founding CustomerBliss in 2002, she has coached more than 20,000 leaders globally using her five-competency framework for customer-driven growth, helping organizations achieve loyalty rates that most would consider extraordinary.

She is co-founder of the CX Professionals Association (CXPA) and the bestselling author of four books, including Chief Customer Officer, Chief Customer Officer 2.0 and Would You Do That to Your Mother? a question that remains one of the most useful diagnostics in the field.

With 29,000 LinkedIn followers, her voice reaches every corner of the profession she helped build.

Find out what Jeanne Bliss is talking about on LinkedIn.

NIENKE BLOEM

Nienke Bloem Services | Netherlands

Nienke Bloem is a globally recognized CX strategist, keynote speaker, and founder. She is also the host of the CX Leadership Talks podcast, where she interviews CX leaders from around the world on leadership, innovation and the future of CX. 

Through her speaking engagements and content creation, she has become one of the most influential independent voices in the global CX community – particularly as organizations rethink customer relationships in the age of AI and rapid digital transformation.

Find out what Nienke Bloem is talking about on LinkedIn.

KERRY BODINE

Kerry Bodine & Co. | USA

Kerry Bodine is the CEO of Kerry Bodine & Co. and one of the most respected independent CX consultants in the world. With a master's degree in human-computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University and seven years with the CX practice at Forrester Research – where she authored the influential Big Idea report The CX Ecosystem – she brings both intellectual rigour and practical expertise to every engagement.

Since 2014, she has worked with executives across industries to co-create products, services and experiences that genuinely matter to customers. She is co-author of the landmark book Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, and her thinking has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes and USA Today.

Her foundational belief – that happy customers lead to happy shareholders – sounds simple, but her frameworks for making it happen are anything but.

Find out what Kerry Bodine is talking about on LinkedIn.

MARION BOBERG

Orange | Belgium

Marion Boberg is a CX leader at Orange, the global telecommunications group, based in Belgium. Working within one of Europe's most competitive and technically complex sectors, she navigates the challenge of delivering consistent, meaningful experiences at scale and across millions of customer touchpoints,  in an industry where expectations are perpetually rising.

Her experience in telecoms, a sector that has historically struggled to translate customer insight into genuinely improved service, makes her perspective particularly valuable for practitioners navigating large-scale organisational change.

With more than 4,000 LinkedIn followers, she is a growing voice in the European CX community.

Find out what Marion Boberg is talking about on LinkedIn.

TOM BOYLE

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHSFT | UK

Tom Boyle is a senior NHS digital communications and CX leader, currently serving as head of telecoms at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – one of the UK's largest NHS Trusts. Working at the intersection of healthcare, CX and technology, he champions a compassionate, experience-led approach to digital transformation, using automation, AI and digital channels to reduce friction while carefully protecting human interaction where it matters most. He is also a recognized voice across the global communications and CX industry, advising on the future of patient experience, telephony and critical communications – bringing a sector perspective that the broader CX world rarely hears but urgently needs.

He told CX Network: "The best organizations will remove friction through digital, automation and AI – but protect human interaction for moments that are complex, emotive or uncertain. In healthcare, compassion increasingly becomes a design choice." 

Find out what Tom Boyle is talking about on LinkedIn.

NATALIE CALVERT

Huddle CX | UK

Natalie Calvert is the founder of HuddleCX and one of the UK's most respected CX and employee experience executive coaches, with a career spanning global operations leadership, consultancy and, most recently, authorship. Her book - an Amazon bestseller - is built around what she calls the Caring Recession: her argument that organisations have spent years chasing efficiency metrics while quietly losing sight of the people, both customers and employees, who determine whether any of it is sustainable. It is a diagnosis that has clearly resonated. She is a regular contributor to CX Network, where her ongoing series on the CX crisis examines the structural leadership failures that sit beneath most CX underperformance - including her recent piece on the hidden cost of companies operating without a chief customer officer.

She is also a keynote speaker, board advisor and a vocal advocate for the role of the frontline manager as the make-or-break variable in any CX or EX transformation.

She told CX Network: "Every customer leader can describe great CX. The hard truth is that only a few have closed the gap between CX ambition and the organisation that actually delivers it - for customers and the people who serve them - under pressure, at cost, and now as AI rewrites the work. In 2026, closing it is the whole game." On the challenge facing leaders: "When everyone owns the customer, no one does - and right now AI and efficiency mandates are filling that vacuum. I help CX leaders build the proven leadership operating system beneath great CX: the cadence, disciplines and working practices that separate average from high-performing customer teams in a human-AI world."

Find out what Natalie Calvert is talking about on LinkedIn and read her articles on CX Network. 

LUIS CARRILLO

Prodege | USA

Luis Carrillo is a CX operations and AI strategy leader with over 20 years of experience transforming underperforming contact centers into growth engines. His career spans RYZE Superfoods, IPSY and Credit.org, and he has consistently delivered results that speak for themselves: cutting operational costs by 35 percent while improving CSAT by 25 percent, scaling support operations from 50 to 500 seats, and reducing resolution times by 35 percent through intelligent automation.

He is now a strategic advisor at VOX Wins, bringing expertise in AI-powered workforce optimization and revenue-generating CX to companies ready to make the leap. His approach is rooted in a single conviction: he does not just optimise metrics, he reinvents how companies engage with customers.

"Closing the gap between what AI promises and what it actually delivers. I focus on reducing unnecessary demand at the source, building deflection that solves real problems rather than just avoids agents, and making sure AI-to-human handoffs feel seamless, not like a penalty," he told CX Network.

Find out what Luis Carrillo is talking about on LinkedIn.

CLAIRE CUNNINGHAM

The Customer Connexion | Australia

Claire Cunningham has worked across the US and Australia, helping leading brands turn data into action. Known for combining analytical rigour with a human touch – and, as she would be the first to admit, a touch of humour – she is also the founder of The Customer Connexion and a CX Network Advisory Board member and contributor. 

She told CX Network: "A great CX is one built on trust with the brand – where customers feel valued and employees feel empowered to continuously improve and remove barriers to purchasing."

On the hardest part of her work, she adds: "I'm finding the biggest challenge is getting leaders to understand what customer trust really means – and not just using it as a buzz phrase. I start by getting people to think about what trust in brands means in their own lives as customers, then getting them to apply that thinking to their own organizations."

Find out what Claire Cunningham is talking about on LinkedIn.

NERMIEN EMAD

TP Infinity | Saudi Arabia

Nermien Emad is an AI and CX transformation leader at TP Infinity  – a Teleperformance company – where she heads product development at the CX Innovation Centre in Riyadh. Her career has tracked the frontier of AI's application to CX: from engineering manager and technical product lead at IST Networks, where she established and led the CX Innovation Centre team, to her current role shaping how agentic AI is beginning to restructure the very architecture of CX leadership.

She has written for Women in CX on the shift from reactive, human-led CX models toward proactive AI systems that can operate independently at scale, and on the governance and accountability questions that shift creates.

Find out what Nermien Emad is talking about on LinkedIn.

HEATHER GARBODEN

American Airlines | USA

SVP and chief customer officer at American Airlines - one of the world's largest carriers, serving more than 200 million customers a year across 350+ destinations - Heather Garboden is the first person to hold the role, appointed in February 2025 to lead a newly created customer experience organisation built specifically to study and improve the entire customer journey, from booking and bags to inflight experience and post-trip feedback. Her background is unusually well-rounded for a CX executive: she began her career in revenue management and pricing at America West Airlines in 2003 before spending two decades rising through financial leadership roles at American - VP of financial planning and analysis, corporate development, fleet planning, and most recently SVP of American Eagle and Cargo, where she oversaw the airline's entire regional operation including three wholly-owned carriers. That grounding in operations and finance gives her a commercial clarity that is rare in CX leadership and gives the new CX function real teeth.

She launched a CX advisory board in June 2025, adding external hospitality and insights expertise to sharpen the airline's customer strategy, and published a direct open letter to customers in January 2026 - a visible, personal signal of a genuine commitment to accountability. She was named a Woman Worth Watching by Profiles in Diversity Journal and previously served on the board of directors of Phoenix Suns Charities.

Find out what Heather Garboden is talking about on LinkedIn.

IAN GOLDING

AmplifyXM | UK

Ian Golding is one of the most respected figures in global CX. A Certified CX Professional (CCXP) and certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, he has been consulting independently since 2012 and has worked with organizations in more than 35 countries. He was the first person in the world to be authorized by the CXPA to teach the CCXP accreditation; he also served on the inaugural board of directors of the association and has published more than 500 articles on CX.

He is the author of Customer What: The Honest and Practical Guide to CX  – a title as practical and unsentimental as his approach – and continues his work through AmplifyXM, bringing measurement and accountability to CX programmes that too often rely on instinct alone. His consistent message – that CX must be operationalized rather than merely aspired to, remains as necessary as ever.

Find out what Ian Golding is talking about on LinkedIn.

STEPHANIE GORDON

Wayfair | UK

Stephanie Gordon is a global operations and CX leader at Wayfair, the e-commerce giant, based in London. She leads global CX and operations strategy for the US$12bn e-commerce business, overseeing the policies, journey design, tooling and KPIs that shape how more than 3,000 frontline agents operate across in-house and outsourced teams worldwide.

She also drove a 4.5 percent increase in repeat rate by using Voice of the Customer insight to identify and resolve churn drivers across the customer journey.

Find out what Stephanie Gordon is talking about on LinkedIn.

JESSICA HAM

National Grid | UK

Jessica Ham is a CX professional whose work focuses on building CX programmes that create genuine loyalty rather than manufactured satisfaction.

Follow her for honest, practical perspectives on what it takes to make CX work inside real organizations – with real constraints, real stakeholders and real customers who don't always behave as the journey map assumes.

"Historically, the messaging has been around no customer service is the best customer service, focusing on customers not having to interact but I think the world has moved on. Customers expect companies to pre-empt and beat their needs. For true loyalty and customer advocacy, customers have to build an experience with the brand that they will talk about and that comes through proactive interaction," Ham told CX Network.

Find out what Jessica Ham is talking about on LinkedIn.

MICHAEL HOFFMAN

Client X Client | USA

Michael R. Hoffman is the author of three books on CX – Customer Worthy, Total Customer Engineering and Before They Ask – and one of the sharpest strategic minds in CX today. With more than 25,000 LinkedIn followers, he has spent decades making the case that CX is an engineering discipline, not a feelings exercise, and that the organizations pulling ahead are those treating every customer interaction as a measurable, manageable asset.

His vision for 2026 is characteristically uncompromising. He told CX Network: "Truly great CX is largely invisible. The companies pulling ahead aren't running better surveys – they're sensing customer intent before the customer articulates it. We've entered the Customer Sensor Economy: every touchpoint emits signal, and the winners instrument those signals and act before the customer has to ask."

He sees three markers separating leaders from laggards: "Anticipatory action over reactive recovery; customer models machine-readable enough to survive AI-to-AI negotiations; and a Contact-Level P&L on every interaction."

On the industry's deepest blind spot: "CX has been treated as a feeling instead of an engineering discipline – and CEOs, COOs and CFOs have finally noticed. Most leaders can show satisfaction scores and journey maps. They can't draw a clean line from a customer contact to a line item on the P&L."

Find out what Michael Hoffman is talking about on LinkedIn and find out more about his books – and outlook for CX – in this CX Network article. 

SCOTT LEE HOLLOWAY

APS Bank | Malta

Scott Lee Holloway is head of CX at APS Bank – one of Malta's oldest banks – and a figure whose impact on the CX profession extends well beyond the island. He is Malta's first Certified CX Professional (CCXP) and, as of January 2025, a member of the CXPA Global Board of Directors, selected from a competitive international field for his knowledge, passion and commitment to the profession.

He is also a published contributor to the bestselling CX 5 anthology, a judge at the European CX Awards, and a speaker at major international events.

He told CX Network: "A truly great CX in 2026 is one that consistently delivers on an organization's brand promise. It should be accessible, reliable and designed around real human needs. Customers do not expect perfection, but they do expect organizations to listen, care and make things easy when it matters most."

Find out what Scott Lee Holloway is talking about on LinkedIn.

LYNN HUNSAKER

ClearAction Continuum | USA

Lynn Hunsaker is a Certified CX professional and chief customer officer at ClearAction Continuum, which she founded in 2005. With a career that began in voice of the customer and quality roles at Applied Materials and Sonoco – and later included teaching 24 graduate and undergraduate courses at UC Berkeley, UCSC and San Jose State – she has one of the most academically grounded perspectives in the CX field.

She served on the CXPA board of directors and is one of five CustomerThink Hall of Fame authors. Her specialisms are distinctive: B2B CX, engaging the C-suite and non-customer-facing teams, breaking down execution silos, and building leading-indicator metrics that actually connect experience to financial performance. CX leaders in more than 50 countries access her Masterminds, Money Value Dashboards and CX Value Multipliers Forum.

Find out what Lynn Hunsaker is talking about on LinkedIn.

AYMEN ISMAIL

smart Europe GmbH | Germany

Aymen Ismail is not your typical CX leader. A self-described provocative disruptor with over two decades of experience, he is customer services director and executive board member at smart Europe GmbH in Stuttgart, where he is redefining what customer engagement looks like in the automotive sector.

Half Dutch, half Egyptian, his career has spanned the Mercedes-Benz Customer Assistance Center in the Netherlands – where he led global innovation initiatives – to his current role shaping smart's entire customer relationship strategy. 

He told CX Network: "Great CX in 2026 is not about technology – it's about what happens when the technology disappears. The brands that will own the next decade are the ones building relationships so strong that no algorithm, no chatbot and no competitor can replace them. We are moving from an era of customer management to an era of customer belonging." 

Find out what Aymen Ismail is talking about on LinkedIn.

SNEHA IYER

Observe.AI | USA

Sneha Iyer leads CX and insights work at Observe.AI, a company at the forefront of AI-powered contact center intelligence. Her approach reflects the rigour of an engineer and the empathy of a practitioner: she is interested in what the data actually supports, not what it merely suggests, and she has consistently argued that organizations need robust data foundations before deploying the AI tools that depend on them.

She told CX Network: "Great CX in 2026 is seamless and insight-rich – built on enough data to make decisions that are statistically significant, not just directional. The best programmes have moved from anecdote and gut to real evidence, and that's the bar." 

Find out what Sneha Iyer is talking about on LinkedIn.

TUSHAR JOSHI

Schneider Electric | India

Tushar Joshi leads CX at Schneider Electric in India – one of the world's largest energy management and automation companies – where the scale and complexity of CX challenges are genuinely global in scope. With a clear, principled approach to the balance between AI capability and human oversight, he is one of the most grounded voices in enterprise CX transformation, and a reminder that some of the most sophisticated CX thinking is happening far from the traditional Western hubs.

 "The biggest challenge is scaling AI without eroding trust or adding complexity. My approach is to anchor every initiative in real customer pain, combine strong governance with human-in-the-loop design, and measure success through tangible customer and business outcomes," said Joshi.

Find out what Tushar Joshi is talking about on LinkedIn.

MD KABIR

Sutton Tools | Australia

MD Kabir is group CX manager at Sutton Tools in Australia, whose work addresses the defining challenge of our moment: how to scale AI and digital transformation without losing the human connection that customers value most. With experience across the Asia-Pacific region, he brings a thoughtful, customer-first perspective to conversations about automation, personalisation and service design – and a willingness to name the specific failure modes organizations fall into when they move too fast. 

"Customers no longer measure experiences against direct competitors; they benchmark every interaction against the best experience they've ever had." On the human cost of poor AI execution," he told CX Network.

Find out what MD Kabir is talking about on LinkedIn.

DAWN KRISTY

Dawn Kristy Advisory | USA

Dawn Kristy is the founder of Dawn Kristy Advisory, where she works with organizations on CX strategy, leadership development and the human dimensions of business transformation. With more than 7,000 LinkedIn followers and a career built across multiple industries, she is known for bringing clarity and conviction to conversations that can easily become abstract. Her advisory work focuses on helping leaders build the internal capabilities needed to make CX genuinely sustainable – not just as a programme, but as an embedded way of working.

Find out what Dawn Kristy is talking about on LinkedIn.

ORIANA MEDLICOTT

Admiral Group | UK

Oriana Medlicott leads CX at Admiral Group – one of the UK's most recognized insurance brands and a company with a long-established reputation for putting customers at the heart of its culture. Working within a sector where trust is everything and complexity is high, she brings both strategic vision and operational discipline to the challenge of delivering experiences that feel genuinely personal, even at scale.

Admiral's culture-led approach to CX is the kind that other organizations spend years trying to replicate, and Medlicott is a key part of sustaining and evolving it.

Find out what Oriana Medlicott is talking about on LinkedIn.

ANDRE LUIS MISSANO 

Claro Brasil | Brazil

Andre Luis Missano is a CX executive with over 25 years of experience in the corporate market, currently at Claro Brasil, where he leads digital transformation and CX platform initiatives. A specialist in data integration, analytics and customer journey orchestration, he leads strategic work leveraging platforms such as Qualtrics and Salesforce to generate actionable insights and enable real-time decision-making.

Recognized for connecting technology, processes and organisational culture to drive measurable business impact, he is also a university professor of more than 15 years – contributing directly to the next generation of CX professionals in Brazil.

"The biggest challenge for CX leaders today is orchestrating fragmented data into actionable decisions - and my approach is to connect technology, analytics and organizational culture to drive continuous and measurable impact," he told CX Network.

Find out what Andre Luis Missano is talking about on LinkedIn.

SRI NARASIMHAN

CVS Health | USA

Sri Narasimhan leads CX and insights at CVS Health, one of the largest healthcare companies in the United States, where the stakes of getting CX right are not merely commercial but deeply personal. With nearly 4,000 LinkedIn followers, he brings distinctive clarity to conversations about proactive service design and the democratization of customer insight – making the voice of the customer available across the organization in real time, rather than siloed within a single team.

He told CX Network: "Great CX is getting it right the first time, before you go live. It's being proactive – anticipating needs and fixing issues before customers have to ask. The best companies start with the customer and build from there – they don't build products and force customers to adapt." 

Find out what Sri Narasimhan is talking about on LinkedIn and register to hear him talk about agentic AI twins on day one of All Access: AI + Data 2026. 

DANIEL NEWMAN

The Futurum Group | USA

Daniel Newman is the founder and CEO of The Futurum Group and one of the most widely followed technology analysts in the world, with more than 38,000 LinkedIn followers. A prolific author, podcast host and keynote speaker, his work sits at the intersection of enterprise technology and business strategy – and increasingly, that means CX.

Newman is a sharp translator of complex technology trends into practical business implications, and his reach across the C-suite makes him one of the most influential voices shaping how senior leaders think about AI, data and the future of customer engagement.

Find out what Daniel Newman is talking about on LinkedIn.

ALMA ANGELA OLELA

Jubilee Insurance | Africa

Alma Angela Olela brings a distinctive and necessary voice to the global CX conversation. Her work sits at the intersection of culture, empathy and operational excellence, and she is known for championing CX as a force for genuine improvement in people's lives – not just commercial performance.

Follow her for perspectives that challenge assumptions about what great experience looks like across different markets and cultural contexts, and for thinking that consistently connects the human stakes of CX to the systems designed to deliver it.

"The future belongs to organisations that operationalise empathy, not just efficiency," says Olela.

Find out what Alma Angela Olela is talking about on LinkedIn.

SABINA ONWUKA

London Borough of Barking and Dagenham | UK

Sabina Onwuka is a UK-based CX leadership educator and consultant who has identified one of the most consequential mismatches in contemporary organizations – and is actively doing something about it.

In 2025, she launched a masterclass series specifically designed to close the gap between the technology executives are deploying and the leadership capability needed to use it well.

She told CX Network: "C-suite is giving managers 2026 technology but asking them to use 2019/2020 metrics, which is creating a critical bottleneck in leadership readiness. This year I launched my masterclass series to tackle this by upskilling leaders to become true Orchestrators – who can effectively coach human-machine synergy while maintaining strict ethical and empathetic guardrails." 

Find out what Sabina Onwuka is talking about on LinkedIn.

MONTSERRAT PADIERNA

Walmart | Canada

Customer intelligence and experience lead at Walmart Canada - one of the country's largest retailers, serving 1.5 million customers every day across more than 400 stores - Montserrat Padierna is a retail and consumer executive with over 20 years of experience building customer-centric organisations across some of the world's largest brands.

Her Walmart journey has taken her across the Americas, from voice of the customer chapter lead and customer knowledge and experience CoE lead at Walmart Mexico, to senior director of membership and loyalty at Sam's Club Mexico, before moving into her current role in Canada.

Before Walmart, she led digital transformation at Dell Technologies. She is a member of the CX Network Advisory Board, a lecturer in communications, and a mentor to Latin women through the Good Latinas for Good programme. Check out one of her articles for CX Network here.

Find out what Montserrat Padierna is talking about on LinkedIn.

VINAY PARMAR

Keynote speaker | UK

Vinay Parmar is one of the UK's most sought-after CX keynote speakers, with over 30 years of hands-on experience working with some of the world's biggest brands, including National Express, Audi UK, Cisco and O2. He served as Chief CX Officer at National Express, where he drove record improvements in customer satisfaction, growth and profitability, before moving into full-time speaking and advisory work, including at CX Network.

His sessions are renowned for their storytelling, energy and practical impact – audiences leave not just inspired but with ideas they can act on immediately. He occupies a rare space in the CX world: the bridge between vision and real transformation.

"In a world full of noise around AI and automation, the real discipline is keeping the voice of the customer connected to the decisions that matter. Not as a soft input. As a commercial one," he told CX Network.

Find out what Vinay Parmar is talking about on LinkedIn.

YESHA PATEL

IBM | USA

Yesha Patel brings a commerce-native perspective to CX that makes her an important voice for brands navigating the intersection of CX and digital commerce transformation. Her focus on connected, AI-enabled journeys operating seamlessly across every channel is precisely the challenge most enterprise organizations are wrestling with right now.

She told CX Network: "In 2026, great CX will be defined by intelligent, connected commerce journeys where AI enables real-time personalization, proactive engagement and frictionless interactions across every channel. The biggest challenge for CX leaders is modernising fragmented customer and commerce ecosystems while balancing innovation, trust, operational efficiency and human-centred experiences at scale."

Find out what Yesha Patel is talking about on LinkedIn.

SAM PHILLIPS-LORD

HSBC | UK

Sam Phillips-Lord is a CX leader with over a decade of experience building CX systems that drive action and outcomes through, as he describes it himself, "logic, a little wit and organizational alignment." His focus is relentlessly commercial: delivering value that goes beyond scorecards and into the revenue, retention and cost metrics that boards actually care about.

He told CX Network: "Customers can engage with a business in the way that suits them, with minimal friction, clear communication and outcomes that genuinely solve their needs. The best experiences don't feel like 'CX' – they just feel easy." 

Find out what Sam Phillips-Lord is talking about on LinkedIn.

AURELIA POLLET

CarParts.com | USA

Aurelia Pollet is VP of CX at CarParts.com, based in the US, whose work focuses on translating customer insight into strategic business decisions. With over 5,500 LinkedIn followers, she brings a practitioner's rigor to conversations about experience design, data and organizational culture. Her voice consistently bridges the gap between theory and execution – and in a field prone to buzzword fatigue, that practicality stands out.

"CX leaders are set up to speak empathy in a room that only listens to economics. Let's stop writing reports nobody acts on and start making the cost of  customer's pain impossible to ignore," Pollet told CX Network.

Find out what Aurelia Pollet is talking about on LinkedIn and discover more about her work in this CX Network case study. 

QUBUL

stc | Saudi Arabia

Qubul leads CX at stc, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the Middle East and a significant player in the region's digital transformation agenda. With more than 4,000 LinkedIn followers and a clear strategic perspective, they are one of the most articulate B2B CX voices in the Gulf region – and their thinking on building genuine competitive advantage through experience is well worth following.

They told CX Network: "For B2B companies, successful CX requires anticipating complexity before the customer has to articulate it. It requires organizations to move beyond measuring satisfaction and start designing for outcomes that matter to the customer's own business. When CX is built on that level of understanding, it stops being a function and becomes a competitive advantage."

Find out what Qubul A. is talking about on LinkedIn.

SEAN REID

Supermetrics | Ireland

Sean Reid is head of CX at Supermetrics – the data integration platform used by more than 750,000 marketers and analysts globally – and one of the most thoughtful customer-facing leaders in the European SaaS ecosystem.

With a career that has taken him through HubSpot and Personio, two of the most customer-focused technology companies in Europe, he has built both the operational instincts and the leadership depth to navigate CX at genuine scale.

With 14,000 LinkedIn followers, he has built a community that values his thinking on AI, customer value and the evolving relationship between customer success and CX. He is also one of the organisers of the Dublin Customer Success community – bringing the profession together in one of Europe's most vibrant tech hubs.

"Thanks to AI, we now have no excuse not to tailor the CX for everyone – to their business, their needs and their expectations. Old frameworks that meant we had to bucket customers together in certain ways can be left behind, and now we can create an experience unique to every customer," he told CX Network.

Find out what Sean Reid is talking about on LinkedIn.

ALEJANDRO RODRIGUEZ SALVATIERRA

Fuerte Group Hotels | Spain

Alejandro Rodriguez Salvatierra is corporate director of CX and quality at Fuerte Group Hotels, where he leads the company's CX strategy, guest listening ecosystem and quality standards across its hotel brands. With a background spanning CX, marketing and digital transformation, he focuses on connecting customer insight with operational and commercial decision-making to drive both differentiation and business performance in hospitality.

He told CX Network: "I try to approach CX less as a 'service layer' and more as a way of helping the business make better decisions through customer insight and listening."

Find out what Alejandro Rodriguez Salvatierra is talking about on LinkedIn.

RICARDO SALTZ GULKO

Eglobalis Information | Germany

Ricardo Saltz Gulko is managing director of Eglobalis Information and one of the most prolific CX thinkers in Europe, with over 31,000 LinkedIn followers and a global client base spanning enterprise technology, professional services and manufacturing. His focus in 2026 is the gap between AI ambition and AI readiness – and the governance frameworks organizations need to bridge it responsibly.

"The real work is connecting leadership, service, data, governance and accountability so CX becomes part of how the business actually runs – and grows profitably," he told CX Network.

Find out what Ricardo Saltz Gulko is talking about on LinkedIn.

CARLOS SANCHEZ SANZ

Kia Spain | Spain

With 25,000 LinkedIn followers and a reputation as one of Spain's most prominent CX voices, Carlos Sanchez Sanz brings a behavioral economics lens to CX that sets him apart from most practitioners. His work challenges organizations to move beyond emotional engagement metrics and focus on the measurable link between experience and actual behavior change - a distinction that matters enormously in an era where every CX investment must demonstrate clear commercial return.

He told CX Network: "Excellent CX in 2026 truly understands how people make decisions and is designed accordingly. The challenge is no longer just to create emotional connections, but to measure and demonstrate that the experience actually changes behaviors and drives business results."

Find out what Carlos Sanchez Sanz is talking about on LinkedIn.

MELDA SOFUOGLU

Vodafone | UK

Melda Sofuoglu holds a doctorate and brings an academically rigorous perspective to her CX leadership role at Vodafone in the UK. Working within one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, she navigates the challenge of delivering consistent, meaningful experiences at scale – across millions of customer touchpoints, in a sector where expectations are constantly rising and competitive dynamics are relentless.

Her combination of research-based thinking and operational experience makes her a distinctive voice in the UK CX community.

Find out what Melda Sofuoglu is talking about on LinkedIn.

MARK STAGI

pclub.io | USA

Mark Stagi is a driven customer success executive with a track record of building and scaling high-performing teams at growth-stage technology companies. Having held senior roles at Avoma, Catalyst Software, AppZen and Base CRM, and now serving as VP of customer success and services at pclub.io, he brings a builder's mentality to every organization he joins.

Self-described as "creative, builder, customer obsessed," his LinkedIn content is practical, candid and consistently focused on the human dimensions of customer success leadership. With nearly 18,000 followers, he says what others in the field are thinking but rarely put into words.

Find out what Mark Stagi is talking about on LinkedIn.

LOLITTA SUFFIAN

BSN | Malaysia

Lolitta Suffian is senior vice president of CX at Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) in Malaysia and a CX Network Advisory Board member. Prior to BSN she served as chief experience officer at Telekom Malaysia, where she spent four years reshaping one of the country's largest telcos around the customer.

Before that, she held CX leadership roles at Grab in Singapore and BigPay, giving her a rare depth of experience across telecoms, fintech and challenger banking. She holds a COPC certification, sits on the CX Malaysia Global Advisory Panel, and was a winner of the WeQual APAC Award 2024.

Her move to BSN was driven by purpose as much as ambition – she joined, in her own words, to help make financial inclusion a lived experience rather than a policy line, reaching the Malaysians that banking has historically left behind. In April 2026, BSN won best frontline empowerment and knowledge ops at the Digital CX Awards, with Lolitta accepting the award on the bank's behalf.

She told CX Network: "Great CX in 2026 is not about being digital first. It's about being human first, with technology smart enough to remove friction before customers even feel it."

Find out what Lolitta Suffian is talking about on LinkedIn.

TIM THIJSSE

Online Plastics Group | Netherlands

Tim Thijsse is a Lead CXO Consultant based in the Netherlands who has built a distinctive reputation for turning CX and experimentation into shared organizational operating systems, rather than isolated team activities.

Appearing in CX Network's 2025 list, he has spent the year since deepening his work on what it genuinely takes to make CX a company-wide capability – and his thinking has sharpened accordingly.

He told CX Network: "The strongest companies connect marketing, product, service, operations and AI around the same customer understanding - so feedback does not disappear into silos but directly shapes priorities, journeys and actions." 

Find out what Tim Thijsse is talking about on LinkedIn.

ILENIA VIDILI

Keynote speaker

Ilenia Vidili is one of Europe's most distinctive CX voices – an Italian-born consultant, keynote speaker and author whose work challenges organizations to move beyond customer-centricity as a concept and build it as a genuine operating reality.

She is the author of Journey to Centricity: A Customer-Centric Framework for the Experience Economy, a book that has established her as a leading thinker on what it actually takes to put the customer at the heart of a business.

Based between Italy and the wider European market, she speaks and consults globally, bringing a perspective shaped by both rigorous research and lived experience across multiple industries and cultures. She is a regular contributor to international CX events and media, and her LinkedIn following of over 10,000 reflects a community drawn to her blend of intellectual depth and practical clarity. 

Find out what Ilenia Vidili is talking about on LinkedIn.

DENNIS WAKABAYASHI

The Global Voice of CX | USA

Dennis Wakabayashi has earned his title as the global voice of CX through more than three decades of work spanning enterprise consulting, media, education and advocacy. With a reach of over 300,000 CX professionals across his platforms and 25,000 LinkedIn followers, he is one of the most connected individuals in the field.

He has advised Fortune 500 brands including FedEx, AT&T, McDonald's and Wells Fargo, taught digital marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, curated the CX Hall of Fame, and chairs international CX events including CEM Africa and CX NXT UAE. His YouTube series CX Update and podcast CX in the Wild bring global perspectives to a global audience, making him an indispensable connector in a profession that thrives on shared learning.

Find out what Dennis Wakabayashi is talking about on LinkedIn.

JEANNIE WALTERS

Experience Investigators | USA

Jeannie Walters is one of the most recognised names in CX globally - an award-winning CX expert, international keynote speaker, TEDx speaker and author of Experience Is Everything. As founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, she has spent over 20 years pioneering the shift from reactive customer service to proactive CX, developing her CX Investigation (CXI) framework to align CX goals with tangible business outcomes.

She is a Certified CX Professional and charter member of the CXPA, a Certified Speaking Professional, a LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have been taken by more than 500,000 learners, and host of the popular Experience Action podcast. Her latest book, Experience Is Everything, was recently named a USA Today bestseller, further cementing her influence on the profession. Clients including JPMorgan Chase, SAP, Comcast and Orangetheory Fitness rely on her for strategies that are both rigorous and genuinely human. Her TEDx talk on Meaningful Micromoments has been named one of the top five TED talks on customer retention.

"I see leaders struggling to balance the pressure for short-term results with the need to build long-term customer trust. My focus is helping organizations lead with CX strategy directly impacting measurable business outcomes,  while creating consistency across teams and experiences at the same time," Walters told CX Network.

Find out what Jeannie Walters is talking about on LinkedIn.

OLIVER WEST

VML | UAE

Oliver West is the regional head of CX at VML, who brings a grounded, no-nonsense perspective to CX strategy and delivery.

His work focuses on closing the gap between what organizations say they want to deliver for customers and what they are actually set up to deliver – the gap that defeats most well-intentioned CX programmes before they get off the ground.

"One of the biggest gaps in CX right now is the disconnectedness of journeys, businesses pouring effort into certain touchpoints while overlooking some of the basics, particularly on digital platforms where UX decisions can make or break the moments that matter most. My approach is simple: look at the entire journey and focus on getting the basics right in those moments. The impact is often disproportionate to the effort," he told CX Network. 

Find out what Oliver West is talking about on LinkedIn.

TRISH WETHMAN

Pontem Tech Partners | USA

Trish Wethman is chief experience officer at Pontem Tech Partners – the market-leading vendor-neutral CX technology advisory and sourcing partner – where she leads the firm's Experience Management Practice.

With two decades of practitioner expertise, including her most recent role as Chief Customer Officer at Best Egg, she brings a rare combination of strategic depth and implementation know-how to the challenge of helping organizations select and deploy the right technology for their CX goals. In 2023, she led her former company to a number two ranking in the JD Power Consumer Lending study. 

Find out what Trish Wethman is talking about on LinkedIn.

LOUISE WILLIAMS

Lloyds Banking Group | UK

Louise Williams is the customer lifecycle management lead at Lloyds Bank and a certified CX professional whose work spans strategy, design and measurement across the UK CX landscape. 

Prior to joining Lloyds, Williams held senior CX leadership roles at Sainsbury's Group, where she led customer journey management and end-to-end CX for Argos, as well as at TUI Group, where she drove global CX design and customer-centric culture programs across international markets.

"As CX leaders, we no longer just manage touchpoints; we have the power to design invisible transitions where a customer can walk from a digital interface into a brick-and-mortar space without their experience missing a beat," says Williams.
 

Find out what Louise Williams is talking about on LinkedIn.

KATARZYNA WOJNAR

Customer strategy governance | Poland

Katarzyna Wojnar specializes in customer strategy governance and the integration of CX into organizational decision-making at scale. With experience spanning multiple sectors, she brings a structured, systems-thinking approach to a field that often settles for surface-level improvements.

"Organizations have more data on customers, technology and initiatives than ever before, yet they still lack consistency across different departments and decision-making processes. The key is to ensure that both the principles for interpreting data and its quality are well-organized and understandable to everyone in the organization," she told CX Network.

Her approach is deliberate and long-term: "I treat CX as a transformation system, integrating customer insights with strategy, business priorities and organizational management so that the experience translates into measurable impact on the business." 

Find out what Katarzyna Wojnar is talking about on LinkedIn.