Heena Refai
Cloud Solution Architect AI | Microsoft | AI, Agents & Analytics Speaker
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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My work sits at the intersection of AI, data, cloud architecture, and real-world adoption.
As a Cloud Solution Architect for AI at Microsoft, I help organizations move from AI ambition to production-ready solutions: secure, governed, measurable, and useful for the people who rely on them.
I work with customers on Building enterprise-ready AI platforms and Agentic AI usecases leveraging Microsoft AI technology , Databricks, AI gateway alongwith security , evaluations and responsible AI adoption.
My focus is not only on what AI can do, but on how organizations can operationalize it: from architecture and evaluation to security, governance, user experience, and business impact.
As a speaker, I enjoy making fast-moving AI topics practical and approachable.
My sessions are demo-driven and grounded in real implementation patterns, covering topics such as enterprise-ready AI agents, governed agentic workflows, AI-powered analytics, multimodal insights, and the path from AI prototype to production.
I have spoken globally at both external and Microsoft internal events, including Microsoft AI Tour Utrecht, MongoDB Developer Day Amsterdam, Microsoft TechConnect Seattle, TechFest Netherlands, and EMEA AI Day(Global Online event).
These sessions have covered themes such as building trusted agents in regulated enterprises, applying governance and security to agentic workflows and helping organizations understand what it takes to bring AI safely into production.
My goal is for every audience .. whether developers, architects, data professionals, platform teams, or business leaders ; to leave with clarity, confidence, and practical ideas they can apply immediately.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Building Enterprise-ready AI Agents with Microsoft Foundry
AI agents are moving quickly from experimentation to enterprise adoption, but building something that works in a demo is very different from building something that is secure, governed, and ready for production.
In this session, I walk through how to design enterprise-ready AI agents using Microsoft Foundry. We will explore the core architecture patterns behind agentic solutions, including orchestration, tool use, grounding, evaluation, monitoring, and responsible AI controls.
The session focuses on practical implementation decisions: how to move from prototype to production, how to think about user personas, how to apply governance and security from the start, and how to build agents that are useful, trustworthy, and operationally manageable.
Attendees will leave with a practical mental model alongwith a github repository to get started building AI agents in enterprise environments and a clear understanding of what it takes to make agentic solutions production-ready.
Session : Microsoft AI Tour , Utrecht . April 8th 2026
Level: Intermediate
Format: Breakout
Duration: 45 minutes
Building Trusted Service Agents in Regulated Financial services Enterprises
As organizations adopt AI agents, trust becomes one of the most important design requirements. This is especially true in regulated environments, where security, governance, auditability, and data protection cannot be added as an afterthought.
This session explores how to build trusted service agents using Microsoft Foundry and security controls such as Microsoft Defender for AI. We will look at how to embed governance into agentic workflows, enforce model and agent-level guardrails, apply policy-first controls such as PII redaction, and include continuous evaluation and monitoring across the workflow.
The session demonstrates how developer teams, SecOps teams, and AI platform teams can work together to design AI agents that are not only powerful, but also secure, compliant, and ready for enterprise use.
Session : Microsoft Tech Connect , Seattle. Feb 08'26
Level: Intermediate / Advanced
Format: Breakout
Duration: 45 minutes
AI: The Path from Prototype to Production
Many AI initiatives start with an exciting prototype, but only a few make it into production successfully. The gap is rarely just technical. It involves architecture, evaluation, governance, security, stakeholder alignment, and a clear understanding of business value.
In this session, I share a practical path for moving AI solutions from idea to production. We will cover the key decisions teams need to make around use case selection, data readiness, grounding, model choice, evaluation, monitoring, operational ownership, and responsible AI.
Attendees will learn how to identify common blockers early, avoid proof-of-concept traps, and structure AI initiatives in a way that creates real and measurable impact.
Session : Tech Fest , Microsoft Netherlands. April 18 2026
Level: Beginner / Intermediate
Format: Breakout
Duration: 45 minutes
Building AI Agents with Microsoft Foundry and MongoDB
Learn how Microsoft Foundry and MongoDB can work together to build intelligent applications and AI agents grounded in enterprise data, with practical patterns for retrieval, architecture, security, and production readiness.
Session : Mongo DB Developer Day , Amsterdam. June 25th'26
Level: Intermediate
Format: Breakout
Duration: 45 minutes
Heena Refai
Cloud Solution Architect AI | Microsoft | AI, Agents & Analytics Speaker
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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