Welcome 2026 Ambassadors

Bringing the total to 146 Current ISSIP Ambassadors to Peer Organizations, Innovation Centers, Initiatives, Journals, and Conferences

International Society of Service Innovation Professionals welcomes twenty-eight (28) new Ambassadors on the semi-annual Progress Call with ISSIP Board of Directors January 28, 2026. ISSIP’s ‘Ambassador Program,’ established in 2014, provides a channel for ISSIP members involved in other organizations or peer entities to liaise and share information back to the ISSIP community of practice, including frequent posts on ISSIP’s LinkedIn Group discussions. In 2022 the membership association advancing service innovation of benefit to people, business and society named a lead for this important program, Christine Ouyang of IBM, who facilitates semi-annual planning session ambassadors to explore topics for ISSIP events, publications, and research and development focus areas.

Ambassadors are empowered to leverage ISSIP programs and platform to explore topics of interest to their organizations in panel discussions or series of explorations. These Ambassador hosted events are virtual forums for discussion on topics important to an ISSIP Ambassador, who invites panelists and moderators, supported by ISSIP leadership and platform. All are recorded and available on ISSIP’s YouTube channel often along with ISSIP’s Slideshare presentations and documents. 2025 examples include the three event ‘Roundtable on Systems of Service Series’ led by ISSIP Ambassadors David Ing and Gary Metcalf, and the Content Evolution ‘ISSIP Treasure Hunt’ which was an online brainstorming event lead by Kevin Clark.

Historically, ISSIP Ambassadors have been a primary source for encouraging organizations to make annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Award nominations as well as encouraging authors to write ISSIP Business Expert Press books on topics of interest to the community.

We’re very much looking to an engaging 2026 of knowledge-sharing with these highly-accomplished global service innovation professionals.

First Row

Vittorio_Solina (LI) (DC) International Conference on Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing (ISM)
Lisa_Wood (LI) (DC) Cognitive World Think Tank (CWTT)
Andrew_Spanyi (LI) (DC) Cognitive World Think Tank (CWTT)
Souren_Paul (LI) (DC) Association of Information Systems (AIS)
Janet McColl-Kennedy (LI) (DC) Service Innovation Alliance (SIA)

Second Row

Willem van Ketwich (LI) (DC) Commonwealth (CSIRO)
Md Abul Kalam Siddike (LI) (DC) Kanazawa University (KU)
Ruoyi Zhou (LI) (DC) Quantum World Congress (QWC)
Ahmad_Naous (LI) (DC) Green Mentorship (Green)
Claudinei_Monteiro (LI) (DC) Enquera (Enqura)

Third Row

JuanPablo_Napoli (LI) (DC) Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA)
Mark_Hiddleson (LI) (DC) Warehouse Education & Research Council (WERC)
Hemant_Soni (LI) (DC) Soft Computing Research Society (SCRS)
Michael_Sotire (LI) (DC) SectorForce (SectorForce)
Ankit_Gupta (LI) (DC) The Cyber Institute (Cyber)

Fourth Row

Julie_Cook (LI) (DC) EPIC – Ethnography (EPIC)
Dinesh_Besiahgari (LI) (DC) ServCollab (ServCollab)
PK_Agarwal (LI) (DC) UC Santa Cruz – Silicon Valley (UCSC-SV)
Alex Kass (LI) (DC) Accenture Labs (AccentureLabs)
Vanita_Wells (LI) (DC) Santa Clara University – Miller Center for Global Impact (SCU_MCGI)

Fifth Row

Annie_Hardy (LI) (DC) Global Impact Initiative (GII)
Sunil_Kripilani (LI) (DC) ()
Gerhard_Gudegan (LI) (DC) FIR at RWTH Aachen (FIR)
Jeffrey Borek (LI) (DC) Linux Foundation (LF)
Bill Higgins (LI) (DC) Linux Foundation (LF)

Sixth Row

Savitha Srinivasan (LI) (DC) Women Health Care Executive – Bay Area (WHCE-BA)
Jatindiner Singh (LI) (DC) AI Frontier Network (AIFN)
Andrea Biancini (LI) (DC) 28 Digital (28Digital)