Leading the
future of AI-first CX

Meet our Leadership Team

Chief AI Officer & GM, NiCE Cognigy

Philipp Heltewig is the Chief AI Officer at NiCE and General Manager of NiCE Cognigy, a global leader in agentic AI for customer experience. 

A German-Australian entrepreneur, Philipp holds degrees from universities in Germany, Australia and the US. Previously, Philipp held key positions at SAP and Sitecore, where he established Sitecore’s operations in Australia and New Zealand and led Sitecore’s global sales teams. 

In 2016, he co-founded Cognigy, alongside Sascha Poggemann and Benjamin Mayr, steering its evolution into a recognized market leader for enterprise Conversational AI solutions. Under his leadership, Cognigy served thousands of customers worldwide and was repeatedly named a leader by Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and ISG. The company launched Agentic AI solutions now acclaimed as the most powerful for customer experience on the market.  

  
Cognigy was acquired by NiCE Ltd. in September 2025 and now operates as NiCE Cognigy. Philipp now serves as Chief AI Officer and GM of NiCE Cognigy, where he leads the strategic direction of the company’s AI innovation and platform evolution as part of NiCE, a global CX leader. 

COO, NiCE Cognigy
Sascha is an expert and leading voice in the Human + AI movement, focusing on seamless human-machine interaction in enterprise applications. After achieving his MSc Information Technology, prior to co-founding Cognigy he held senior positions including Head of Technical Development at iExergy. During this time, he headed up new products, services and business models, leading international teams in areas including technology scouting, business development, team management and project development, along with IoT and cloud technology development. 

Owing to his technical expertise and experience as a founder, Sascha is much sought after as a speaker on emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship. He is also an Executive Board member of Bitkom, Germany’s digital association, representing more than 2,000 companies of the digital economy and with membership spanning more than 1,000 SMEs, over 500 start-ups and virtually all global players.

VP Engineering, NiCE Cognigy

Benjamin has extensive expertise in designing and building highly scalable software systems that run on Kubernetes. His knowledge of containerized software systems is one of the driving factors behind the success of NiCE Cognigy and its products. He holds a BSc in Software Engineering and was an early adopter of containerized software solutions before this became an industry standard.

Prior to joining Sascha and Philipp in founding Cognigy, Benjamin worked as a Software Consultant and developed individual software solutions for a range of different industries, including medical, automotive, gaming, and social media. Over the past few years, he has not only introduced all the relevant software development processes for an Engineering department of more than 50 people but has also ensured that NiCE Cognigy continuously delivers innovation to their customers.

From a professional perspective Philip is a digital native with more than twenty years of professional experience in the digital industry at Bertelsmann Multimedia, comdirect and AOL. After that Philip switched to the strategy consulting side with focus on digital transformation and M&A. With this experience he took his first CFO position for a gaming start-up that he successfully sold to a strategic investor.

For the last ten years he lead Content Fleet to an exit to STRÖER as a CFO and grew the company based on a buy and built strategy as a CEO. Philip holds a degree in Economics and Game Theory and developed a profound skillset to scale companies efficiently. 

With over two decades’ experience in the contact center and unified communications space, Hardy’s past leadership roles include serving as CEO and CFO as well as holding senior positions in business development, partnerships, strategy and corporate development at industry-leading companies including AVAYA, Intradiem and AVST. In his current role, Hardy works closely with Cognigy’s co-founders and its senior management team to develop the company’s strategic priorities, secure and activate partnerships, and implement the optimal business processes to achieve Cognigy’s strategic and financial objectives.

Residing in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife Diana, Hardy’s many personal activities include cooking, cycling and spending time with his five children.

An innovative HR leader, Alexandra has strong experience of delivering impactful HR management across a diverse range of industries, including 10+ years in Tech. Her particular expertise lies in the implementation of successful change management and performance management tools, designed to support and develop organizations from start up to scale up to meet the demands of hyper-growth companies.

Passionate about diversity, inclusion, effective training, development and recruitment processes, Alexandra’s focus is on driving performance and retaining talent in the global economy. In addition to her in-depth practical experience, she holds a Master of Management in Human Resource Management and Marketing, and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences.

Vice President of AI Transformation, NiCE Cognigy

Thijs is Vice President of AI Transformation at NiCE Cognigy, where he leads a global team dedicated to helping enterprises realize the full potential of AI in customer experience. His multidisciplinary organization of UX designers, value engineers, and agentic AI specialists partners with customers to design, deliver, and scale high-impact AI solutions.

As one of NiCE Cognigy’s earliest employees, Thijs played a key role in building the company’s global Professional Services and Presales teams. Today, he works closely with Product and Product Marketing on innovation, supports Sales and Customer Success in strategic engagements, and drives value creation with NiCE Cognigy’s technology partners across the ecosystem. 
 
With a background in Enterprise Integration Architecture and Management Consulting, Thijs brings a rare blend of technical depth and strategic insight to deliver measurable business outcomes.

With a career spanning 30 years, Alan has held a variety of sales, marketing and leadership roles, both in start-up and large enterprise software companies. Before joining Cognigy, he led global market development at LivePerson where, during his six-year tenure, revenues doubled from $223m to $470m. As Cognigy’s VP Marketing, Alan’s focus is on leading and inspiring his high-performance global team to deliver programmes across branding, product marketing, demand generation, events and social media.

Alan is also responsible for leading market expansion in high growth regions such as the USA and UK, and building a global community of NiCE Cognigy advocates, including customers, industry experts, partners and prospects. In his spare time, he is a volunteer puppy trainer for the Hearing Dogs for Deaf People charity and was a coach and referee at his local junior rugby club for 11 years. Alan maintains that training dogs is easier than children!