Speakers

Maher Hanafi is the SVP of Engineering at Betterworks, where he leads the architectural strategy and technical execution for the company’s enterprise-grade AI and HR technology platforms. With more than two decades of experience leading high-scale engineering organizations, Maher is a veteran leader at the intersection of cloud-native infrastructure and production-ready intelligence. Maher’s technical leadership is defined by a rigorous focus on the operational realities of AI within the enterprise. He has spearheaded critical initiatives in optimizing self-hosted AI environments, prioritizing data governance and privacy in highly regulated environments. His work centers on solving the "triple constraint" of modern AI systems: driving maximum throughput and sub-millisecond latency while maintaining a sustainable cost-to-performance ratio at scale. A prolific strategist, Maher has pioneered several modern AI initiatives, such as the AI Decision Framework, the AI Flywheel Framework, and the AI Nexus, a strategic vision for centralizing and scaling intelligence as a core business utility. Beyond his executive role, Maher remains deeply involved in the academic and professional community as a mentor for the Strategic AI Program at the University of San Francisco and a frequent speaker at premier industry events.