Maricel Cabahug

Chief Design Officer at SAP

As SAP’s Chief Design Officer, Maricel Cabahug leads the SAP Design team and is responsible for SAP’s overall design strategy and product design. She oversees the delivery of cloud-based and on-premise tools to help SAP, customers and partners design and develop user-centered applications for the web or mobile devices. She built a multi-disciplinary global team that continuously creates innovative products that customers love, delivers award-winning designs and helps customers build their own centers of excellence. Prior to SAP, Maricel was the CIO of Yaskawa Electric. She also worked in various industries in Asia, the US and Germany in business, technology and design in expert and leadership roles.

Born in a 3rd world Asian country, since many years an American citizen, and having divided her time in the last five years between the US and Germany, Maricel has a deep appreciation and understanding of diverse cultures, and how to leverage this to achieve extraordinary results. She combines 25 years of experience in enterprise software and high-tech manufacturing with her multi-disciplinary experience in business, technology and design to bring value to the company, transforming global teams to create committed startup culture delivering innovations in small, medium businesses or within a complex multi-billion global corporation. Her expertise lies in creating and executing winning strategies, inspiring and leading change, growing her employees to become great leaders.

Named Digital Leader of the Year for Silicon Valley for 2018, Maricel is very passionate about bringing the benefits of technology to everyone. She is a member of the SAP AI Ethics Steering Committee and represents SAP in the Harvard Council on the Responsible Use of AI. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ateneo De Manila University. She has an MBA from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management (Illinois, USA), where she graduated with honors. She completed the program for high performers at the Harvard Business School.