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995 professionals from 36 countries. One day in Ludwigsburg. And one piece of advice heard from almost every corner of the stage: say what you want, raise your hand, and help the person next to you do the same.
On 6 October, the Women Automotive Network came together at Forum am Schlosspark in Ludwigsburg for the Women Automotive Summit Europe 2026. Attendees joined from Germany, the UK, France, Poland, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, the US, South Africa, Mexico, India and beyond.
995
attendees
36
countries
504
in the room
491
online
Across keynotes, panels, masterclasses and workshops, leaders from BMW Group, Ford, Daimler Truck, Renault Group, Stellantis, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, Castrol, CATL, Dow and many more shared what leading through this moment really takes.
Christian Wilz of Daimler Truck put the day's theme in numbers during the morning panel. A woman reads a job description and wonders whether having 80% of the skills is enough to apply. A man with 20% decides it is, and goes for it. Annick Jourdenais of LKQ SYNETIQ answered with what leaders can do about it:
“It's our responsibility as women to actually go and tap on the shoulder of women that we think could actually do their role, even if they only have 20%.”
And in the closing panel, Barbara Frenkel gave the room its instruction for Monday morning: when a high-profile project is announced and you must be part of it, raise your hand.
That thread ran through every keynote, panel and question from the floor. The Summit showed what an industry in deep transformation looks like when its people choose courage, visibility and each other.
Win a free ticket to a 2027 Summit. Join any 2027 waitlist and you're automatically entered into the draw. Join a waitlist ↓Five takeaways from the day
Setting the stage
After welcoming remarks from Stephanie May and an ice-breaker with Chair Keren Pickard, Certified Courage Coach and Trainer, the first conversation turned to leadership at a moment Barbara Burghardt called the biggest transformation of her generation. Drawing on 25 years in leadership roles at BMW Group — and sending a greeting to the BMW women's leadership network watching online from Munich — she shared three principles she has carried through every role:
“Get your team and your stakeholders on board, because you will never be able to do it alone.”
Barbara Burghardt · SVP Human Resources Senior Executives, BMW Group
On AI, she was practical. Leaders need to experiment with it personally, understand what it changes for their teams, and then ask what it means for the whole organisation, including how people and AI agents will work side by side. BMW Group has just revisited its leadership principles around that shift, with a clear message: relearn and recode — the way you work, collaborate, communicate and share information, with the freedom to make mistakes and learn.
Asked what she hopes this generation of leaders will be remembered for, she answered in four words: we made it happen. And asked for the one thing she wanted the audience to take away, she needed only three: “Leadership matters most.”
From the main stage
Monica framed leading with intent as head, heart and hands: the head sets the direction, the heart connects you to your team, and the hands turn intention into action.
Julia Grab, Chief Strategist and Planner for European Passenger Vehicles at Ford, joined the industry at the end of the 2008 financial crisis, when just-in-time production ran on two hours of inventory because everything was predictable. Today, she said, the only certainty is that you do not know — so she goes back to first principles and makes her teams comfortable doing the same. She graduated in a class of 200 engineers with five women, and she knows how she wants her career to be measured:
“Not only what I was able to accomplish myself, but who I was able to bring with me.”
Julia Grab · Chief Strategist and Planner, European Passenger Vehicles, Ford Motor Company
Christian Wilz, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Trucks Germany at Daimler Truck, asks every candidate for a leadership role one question: why should anyone be led by you? Very few take the answer beyond their own strengths. For Christian, you are only a leader when people choose to follow you. He hires for his own blind spots and urged the room to look harder at introverted leaders — the ones who ask questions and leave energy in the room for others.
Annick Jourdenais, Managing Director of LKQ SYNETIQ, told a career story that moved from Canada to Italy, France, Qatar and Dubai before bringing her back into automotive. Each move meant learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
“I've been told historically to stop being so emotional and I try to do that, but then it stopped my career. Then I realised that my passion is what makes me and what makes me successful.”
Annick Jourdenais · Managing Director, LKQ SYNETIQ
Joachim Niederberger, Head of IoT Automotive Sales at Vodafone IoT Germany, opens every weekly team meeting with one person sharing their worst experience with AI and another their best. AI is a tool, he said; the strategy stays with you. “You will not be replaced by AI. You will be enabled by AI.”
Christian closed with an image worth carrying into every working day: each morning you can decide whether to be a bee or a fly. Start with the opportunities, then look at the risks. Monica sent everyone off with three words: be the bee.
Returning to the Summit stage for a second year, Sophie D'Herbomez summed up the morning in phrases the room had already heard — action over waiting, progress over perfection, community over isolation — then showed what those ideas look like when an entire operating model is built around them.
AlixPartners' Disruption Index, now in its seventh year, surveyed 3,200 executives across 11 countries and 10 industries. For the second year running, automotive was voted the most disrupted industry. In Europe, the light-vehicle market is expected to grow by around 1% a year to 2030, while Chinese OEMs grow by 8% within it.
20 vs 40
months to develop a new model: Chinese OEMs vs traditional
76%
of BYD models launched or refreshed in the past three years
8% vs 1%
annual growth to 2030: Chinese OEMs in Europe vs the market
They achieve it through flatter organisations, early supplier involvement, a high share of carry-over components, more simulation and fewer physical tests. Decisions are ranked by how critical and how reversible they are, and only the strategic, critical and irreversible ones go to the top. Sophie's starting points for any team: accept good enough where safety and regulation are not at stake, make reuse the default, invest in digital tools and data, and move from consensus to ownership.
Ruchi ran this session as a live debate: statements from industry reports and headlines went up on screen, and the panel had to agree, disagree or argue their way to a view.
Would the Middle East crisis supercharge EV momentum? Dr Rebecca Yates saw no change in the end state — electrification remains the long-term direction — but noted hybrids becoming the fastest-selling technology, even in China. Erasmo Viola called it a short-term nudge, with policy, grid capacity and battery development still to be solved. Shwetha Surender brought the numbers: in the EU, hybrids including plug-ins now account for 45% of sales, against 22% for electric vehicles.
The most honest moment came on whether consumers understand the difference between mild, full and plug-in hybrids:
“I don't blame the consumer, honestly. As an industry, we haven't done a great job of clarifying this.”
Shwetha Surender · VP Head of Automotive, MarketsandMarkets
With around 90% of aftermarket revenues still coming from combustion vehicles and EVs at roughly 2.3% of the EU vehicle park, workshops have runway — and the panel agreed that runway is the time to upskill. The final statement took the room to the racetrack: Formula 1 cars, Rebecca explained, are the most powerful hybrids in the world, drawing up to 50% of their power from the electric motor this season, and Castrol's first oil-based battery coolants were developed for F1 before reaching road cars.
Melanie opened with the reality every supplier knows: new competitors, tariffs, transport issues and volatile demand, all hitting a value chain so connected that one interruption can stop everything. Her panel showed what truly holds it together: people, trust and partnerships built long before a crisis arrives.
Julie Meyssonnier told the story of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Toyota had spent years preparing 3,000 vehicles for athletes and officials. One month before the Games, a hailstorm hit. Before anyone discussed contracts or money, Toyota's logistics partner brought every resource it had to the compound and repaired every single car.
“When we talk about risk resilience, we talk about risk management, we talk about planning process. But in my experience, honestly, it comes from something else. It comes from people and collaboration.”
Julie Meyssonnier · Head of Supply Chain Projects and Network, Toyota Motor Europe
Saba Azizi, Overseas Service Network and Development Manager for EMEA at CATL, supported the battery service for the Olympic bus fleet in the same city — positioning technicians and diagnostic tools close to the venues and working back-to-back shifts from early morning to midnight. Her lesson: resilience exists before the crisis. Since joining CATL six years ago, she has grown its service network in her region from two locations to 155.
Esther Quintanilla Lujan, Global Mobility Marketing Director at Dow, spoke about the circularity targets coming with Europe's end-of-life vehicle regulation, and why materials suppliers need a seat at the design table early: “It's very good to be invited to a party, but it's very important to be invited to dance.”
Julie closed with how Toyota puts this into practice: open-ended contracts built on shared ambitions renewed every year, and a factory concept called any member, any process, where work areas are redesigned so anyone, whatever their age, size, strength or gender, can do the job.
Scenes from the day
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Spaces for growth
The learning started before the main stage opened, with three morning masterclasses: AI readiness with Alissa Rabe of Google, a mindfulness soundbath with Melis Ünver of yinwards, and Lead with Vision with Mia Papo, Founder and Leadership Trainer.
After lunch, in-person attendees chose one of seven workshops for smaller, more focused conversations:
Online attendees joined Donna Bell of The Executive Table for a workshop on leading without over-explaining when the room looks to you.
The power of collective insight
Ian described an industry that once designed, built and sold its cars largely alone, and now depends on software partners, energy providers and digital ecosystems at every step.
Hélène Lanssens, Senior VP Global Partnerships at Nextlane, compared a closed ecosystem to an orchestra of great musicians playing in separate rooms: talent everywhere, and no concert. Dealers work across an average of ten applications for after-sales alone, she said, and anyone building technology should sit with the people who will use it. On AI, she was direct: without the right data, you go very fast to the wrong answer.
Nina Röck, VP Software Drive and Comfort at Renault Group, shared how Renault now brings a new vehicle to series in a standard 100 weeks — in some cases 76. Seven weeks from the start of production of Renault Group's first software-defined vehicle, she named an unusual contributor to that success: HR, which changed performance evaluation so that how you collaborate counts as much as what you deliver.
“If you work in silos, you will not make it. It's as simple as that.”
Nina Röck · VP Software Drive and Comfort, Renault Group
Melanie Lane, CEO of POD, spent 25 years at Shell before moving into a scale-up. It took 100 years to build the last energy ecosystem, she pointed out — the industry is trying to build the next one in ten. “It is the blend of enterprise thinking with the passion and purpose of startups where the magic really happens.”
Danielly Cortes, Global Vice President Cooperations and Business Development, Commercial Vehicles BU at Stellantis, brought the view of fleet operators, for whom uptime is everything. The customer never sees the line between what a company does itself and what its partners do, she said — they only see the value created for them.
The closing panel
Kristin Harder (Changan Europe), Barbara Frenkel, Katherine Zachary (Nissan), Laura Rathai (Hyundai Motor Europe) and Joachim Langenwalter. Moderated by Daveena Saranna, B2B YouTube Channel Manager, Autotrader.
The closing panel handed the agenda to the audience, alternating between questions from the room and the community online: building sustainable teams through career rotations, knowing which change to commit to fully, switching off after a hard day, and whether women still have to work harder.
Laura Rathai, VP Marketing at Hyundai Motor Europe, picked up the morning's theme of tapping women on the shoulder — sometimes, she said, you need to do it five or six times. Her advice to anyone starting out: move across markets, functions and companies, because a career can grow horizontally as well as vertically.
Barbara Frenkel, who spent 24 years at Porsche, most recently as Board Member for Procurement, was honest on working harder: women often do, because the standard is still set in a male-dominated industry. Her answer is to stop taking on the groundwork nobody sees, take on the high-profile work, and challenge the standard itself.
“We want to be measured by our results and not by the amount of hours we're putting in.”
Barbara Frenkel · Former Board Member Porsche AG, Procurement; Supervisory Board Member
Katherine Zachary, Vice President International Communications at Nissan, shared how she got her move to Europe: the business assumed she would never relocate — until she said she wanted the job.
“If you put it on your career development plan and it goes on a piece of paper or into a system, that doesn't mean people know it.”
Katherine Zachary · Vice President International Communications, Nissan
Kristin Harder, Marketing Director Europe at Changan Europe, brought a mindset from her years working between China and Europe: in China, every opportunity is always on the table, and a no does not have to be a no. Joachim Langenwalter — Board Member, Executive Advisor and Investor in automotive and AI, whose career runs from aerospace through NVIDIA to leading engineering at Stellantis — spoke about placing women in key technical roles as lighthouses who attract more talent.
The last question from online asked each panellist for the moment they realised: I can do that, and I will. Katherine was handed the US communications launch of the first-generation Nissan Leaf as a junior, because nobody else wanted it. Kristin admitted that, even after 20 years working with China, it took leading her first workshop on China that very afternoon to stop playing down her own expertise. And Barbara took the room back to her early days at Porsche, when a colleague complained about her to her boss and she considered walking away.
“I decided that I want to win, and I won.”
— Barbara Frenkel
It was the right note to close on. Every story on that stage turned on a moment when someone chose to speak up or step forward.
The Women Automotive Summit Europe 2026 has ended. The conversations it started now carry on across a community of 50,000+ professionals.
From Barbara Burghardt's three words in the opening keynote to Barbara Frenkel's decision to win in the closing panel, the message was consistent. Lead with intent. Ask the question. Tap someone on the shoulder, and raise your own hand when the moment comes. In an industry being rebuilt at speed, those choices are where progress starts.
Ready to raise your hand? Applications are open for the 2027 Women Automotive Network Mentorship Program — one-to-one with a senior leader who has walked the path you are on.
Apply now →Because we are, and always will be, #BetterTogether
Europe 2026 happened because of the people who chose to be part of it. To every speaker who shared their story with honesty and generosity. To the sponsors and corporate partners whose belief in this community made the day possible. To every attendee who filled the room in Ludwigsburg with questions and energy. And to the 491 people who joined online and made the conversation bigger than any one room.
Europe showed us what 995 people from 36 countries can build in one day. We cannot wait to see what you do with it next.
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