Nextlane, the European automotive software leader

Hartmut Wagner started his role of Chief Executive Officer for Nextlane in November 2023.

Hartmut brought with him a tremendous level of experience and expertise in the global Software and Cloud industry for more than 25 years. He has been successfully leading international teams with up to more than 1’000 people in leading tech enterprise companies such as Jron Mountain, HP and Microfocus. Hartmut has also been showing strong performance operating in Private Equity owned portfolio companies such as Exact, Collenda and Serrala, where he served in CEO and General Management roles.

Hartmut gained a diploma in Business Administration at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University in Mannheim, Germany. His career brought him to many countries around the World with local engagements in the United States, The Netherlands, France and Germany.

Cem Yucelten brings a wealth of experience and strategic vision to Nextlane as Chief Revenue Officer, effective March 2025. With a career spanning over two decades, Cem has consistently driven growth and innovation across various industries.

Cem has held leadership roles across multiple countries, gaining extensive international experience in sales, strategy and entrepreneurship. Before joining Nextlane, he was Global Chief Sales Officer at DocPlanner. He also led Flocktory Turkey as CEO and held executive positions at Stilago.com and Atasay.
Cem holds a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) from Vlerick Business School, graduating with great distinction. He has also earned certifications in Advanced Project Management from Stanford University, Healthcare Innovation from Harvard Medical School and MIT, and is a certified Scrum Product Owner by the Scrum Alliance.

Cem’s extensive experience and commitment to excellence position him to significantly contribute to Nextlane’s mission of driving digital transformation in the automotive industry.

Bobby Brown joined Nextlane as Chief Customer Officer (CCO) in April 2025, bringing 25 years of experience in post-sales leadership, customer success, and global operations within Silicon Valley’s high-tech sector.

Bobby has a proven track record of designing and scaling high-performing customer experience organizations, ensuring seamless customer journeys and maximizing retention and product adoption. Prior to joining Nextlane, he served as Global Vice President of Customer Experience at Bird (formerly MessageBird), where he built a scalable framework supporting customers from self-serve to enterprise.

Before Bird, Bobby played a key role at Twilio, revamping its Global Customer Success Program during a phase of rapid expansion. Earlier in his career, he was a founding team member at Google News and an executive at GoGrid, where he drove significant revenue growth and helped pioneer early cloud computing (IaaS) technologies.

Although from the US, Bobby has been based in Amsterdam for the past five years, and his deep understanding of both Silicon Valley’s tech landscape and the European market enables him to bridge global best practices with localized customer needs, driving Nextlane’s growth and innovation.

Jonatan studied Computer Science at the Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He started his professional career working as technical support for Microsoft at a young age.

In 2002 he co-founded Nextlane, wherein his capacity as IT Manager was in charge of the design of CRMAuto, the most extensive CRM solution for the automotive sector in Europe. In 2019 he was appointed co-CEO of Nextlane Spain.

After three years, Jonatan became the Chief Technical Officer of Nextlane. He oversees product development and roadmap, R&D, and Information Systems.

Hélène joins Nextlane as Chief Product Officer with the objective of increasing the added value of the products, supporting customer growth and harmonising the product portfolio by redefining and aligning product operations with Nextlane strategy, managing the Nextlane product team and defining investment priorities.

Her professional career started as a dealer network trainer on new models at Volkswagen France. After working at companies such as JATO Dynamics and Solera, where she developed the brand’s product strategy for managing the claims platform, connecting repairers, adjusters and insurers, Hélène became VP Product Manager and acquired a solid experience in Product Management of SaaS solutions for the automotive, sales and after-sales industries.

Her experience of more than 20 years in the automotive sector gives her a deep understanding of the business and the challenges related to the digital transformation of customers.

Jean-François is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Nextlane, in charge of talent development, culture and leadership within the organization.

He brings over 20 years’ experience as a human resources manager in EMEA, Asia and the Americas, supporting the rapid growth and transformation of various companies in the electronics manufacturing, energy and software sectors.

Prior to joining Nextlane, he was VP HR at a global SaaS player, where he managed the creation of a Center of Excellence, recruiting and integrating over 600 software engineers to support the company’s exponential growth.

Ionut Jivan is the Chief Digital Officer at Nextlane, bringing over 20 years of expertise in the technical field. He started his career in a local Romanian company working to build software for the UK market, where he quickly found himself moving up into leadership roles. For the past 8 years, Ionut has worked for North American-based tech companies, creating highly efficient organizations with distributed global teams, while working on cloud-native high throughput systems.

Ionut joined Nextlane in March 2024 to help support the company’s continuous growth, where he always aims to have the customer at the forefront of everything he does. His extensive experience enables him to drive a robust digital transformation with a clear digital vision and strategy.

Being a developer at heart, Ionut thrives in solving problems and key challenges, allowing him to support empowered, autonomous, full-stack teams at Nextlane that can adapt to any project.