Natascha Badmann is a legend of endurance racing, with a stunning six wins at the Ironman World Championships to her name.

As Principal, Richa leads innovative projects that blur the boundaries of traditional disciplines to solve business problems for clients across the Asia-Pacific region. Her focus is on how business strategy can be reimagined and delivered through the design of human experiences. Richa is fascinated with the underlying forces that shape human behavior. She connects the dots between customer, business, brand, and culture to understand people and companies and imagine new ways to create value.

Valentin Stalf is co-founder and CEO of N26. In 2013 he founded N26 with his longtime friend Maximilian Tayenthal. Back then already, both shared a vision of building a bank that the world loves to use. Valentin has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management and a master’s degree in accounting and finance from the University of St. Gallen. He is currently a member of the advisory board at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Frank Thelen is a European serial founder, tech investor and TV personality. As the Founder & CEO of Venture capitalist Freigeist Capital, he focuses on seed investments like Lilium Aviation, Wunderlist, myTaxi, kaufDA and Little Lunch.

Co-Founder and Co-CEO Responsible for EMEA & APAC, global operations, finance, HR and the overall direction for Celonis

Daniel S. Aegerter is Chairman and Founder of ARMADA Investment. He established his family office at the age of 31, after the successful merger of his B2B software company TRADEX Technologies to Ariba for $5.6 billion dollars in March of 2000. It was one of the largest software acquisitions at the time. In 2012 Ariba was acquired by German software maker SAP.

Daniel Gutenberg launched his career with the foundation of the Gutenberg Communication Systems AG in 1991, in which he was the sole shareholder and Managing Director. He sold the company in 2000 to the Telindus Group NV in Belgium. Since 2002, he accompanied several start-up companies as an investor and business angel. His investments and holdings include more than 40 companies.

Spiros Margaris, venture capitalist and senior advisor (wefox Group), is the founder of Margaris Ventures, and is the first international influencer to achieve ‘The Triple Crown’ ranking. He was ranked the international № 1 FinTech, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) influencer by Onalytica. He regularly appears in the top three positions of established global industry influencer rankings. He is a speaker at international FinTech, and InsurTech conferences. He also gave a TEDxAcademy Talk. He published an AI white paper, “Machine learning in financial services: Changing the rules of the game,” for the enterprise software vendor SAP.

START Summit is proud to announce that, for the fourth consecutive year, Jack Vincent will return as our Main Stage Host for 2019. As well as the Founder of the S.C.O.R.E© Selling Method, Jack is a Master of Ceremonies who always helps us deliver a main stage that is professional and entertaining.

Aline has always been drawn to technological innovation and entrepreneurial challenges. Prior to joining Ananda Ventures she formed part of the investment team of Munich based growth fund Acton Capital Partners and developed expertise in the fields of digital health, direct-to-consumer brands and fintech. She started her career at Rocket Internet in Berlin where she gained operational experience and consulted founders across Rocket’s core geographies in marketing and communications. She also headed the global PR team of a fintech portfolio company.

After various positions in Germany and abroad as Managing Director in the retail (OBI) and rewards business (arvato-Bertelsmann), Markus Maus founded company bike solutions together with his business partner Derk Möller in 2012. By doing so, Markus managed to combine social trends such as health, mobility and environmental issues with his own passion for mountain biking. company bike solutions GmbH is a leading service provider in the fast-growing "MaaS" (Mobility-as-a-Service) market in Germany and offers companies and their employees innovative solutions for mobility on two wheels.

Leila Delarive began her career as a lawyer specialized in telecommunications, environmental and land use planning law. After more than 10 years of being a member of the Bar, Leila has become a committed entrepreneur. She has created several companies, including Be Curious TV, a citizen TV channel, and Amplify, a digital platform for amplifying messages with a positive social impact. Convinced that individual responsibility is crucial in the digital age, she is interested in tools that enable citizens to make enlightened decisions, to adapt and to benefit from the changes brought by technological evolution.

With a career spanning multiple decades, roles, organizations, and countries, Joanne has experienced many challenges and rewards on route. Through creative problem solving and inspiring leadership, she commits to delivering beyond expectation by finding the right solution, at the right time with maximum efficiency. In her current role as Global Head of IT within Siemens Process & Drives Solutions, she ensures maximum value add in End-to-end IT service delivery globally. #Digital Transformation #Shifting IT environments #Industry 4.0 #Global #Agile #Digitalization #BusinessPartner

Antoine has been active in the blockchain space since 2012 and is the founder of two companies: Proxeus is a set of open source blockchain standards for digitizing, registering, storing and managing assets and raised a CHF 25 million ICO in February 2018. BlockFactory is developing blockchain applications for crypto and traditional clients. In 2010 and in 2013, Antoine was named in the 100 top Swiss personalities by the magazines L'Hebdo and Bilan. He received several prizes including the Swiss FinTech Award 2018 (Early Stage category).

Karl-Johan is an architect and co-founder of SAGA Space Architects. He is the force behind SAGA's advanced modeling techniques, designing efficient and surprising solutions often inspired by biology. As a young man, Karl-Johan attended the United World Colleges with a drive to explore worlds other than his own. Never being a strong believer in nations and borders, he sees Space as having the ability to unite humanity under a common goal towards Outer-space and a common appreciation for Earth.

Hannah is a natural born host! Her talent for authentic and charming moderation as well as hands on stage training is unique and empowering. Since 2014 her moderation focuses on events with tech, digital, innovation and startups topics in GER, AUT and CHE. Hannah is a business trainer and coach mainly in communication. Starting in 2017 she is running her own public speaker program called STAGELOVERS.

Tatiana Benavides Damm is a scientist with particular interest and experience in space science. As manager of the Swiss Space Center hub in Zurich and Project manager of IGLUNA, the first ESA_Lab@ project in which student teams across Europe develop modular demonstrators that combined will set the foundation for living in space. The goal of the project is that ideas of everyday life find their way out into space and return solutions for a better living on Earth. Brick by brick these technologies will create the cornerstones for a community expanding into space.

Daniel Metzler is Co-Founder and CEO of Isar Aerospace, a Munich based company developing orbital space launch vehicles. Having brought former SpaceX executives on board as investors Daniel aims to lower the barriers for commercial space access. He previously led a team of 40 students at the rocketry group WARR developing sounding rockets. Next to his studies in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering he also developed multiple web services.

Karin is responsible for the technology teams driving the Elsevier portfolios of Research Data Management and the Funder/Funding focused product suite. This includes Mendeley Data – a research data lifecycle management solution, Mendeley Funding – a researcher focused funding search capability, Funding Institutional - an institutional focused funding search capability and Expert Look up – aided identification of top researchers for Funders to support proposal review and validation.

Experienced and multi-lingual Sales Representative & Account Manager in the Cloud Computing space. I have worked internationally at industry leaders such as Google and AWS, with a track record of success proven by multiple awards and positive customer references. Certified Google Cloud Engineer (Associate), Certified AWS Solution Architect and Developer (Associate).

Lisa Gradow is Co-Founder and CPO of Munich based Usercentrics, which helps businesses with its Consent Management Platform to process data in compliance with privacy regulations and user preferences. She previously did Legal and Compliance at BlackRock backed Scalable Capital with a focus on Information Security and Data Protection. Prior, she co-founded AdTech software Doorboost headquartered in NY. Lisa studied law at LMU Munich.

Peter Sage is a well known international & serial entrepreneur, author, philosopher and teacher. His unique way of looking at and relating to life has inspired tens of thousands of people worldwide to Reinvent themselves. Whether by improving or turning around a business or developing a new and empowering psychology through practical yet profound shifts in awareness, Peter hopes his insights and teachings can offer something of value to those who seek it.

Alen Arslanagic holds the CEO position of Visium, an AI product development company, which aims to translate cutting-edge Machine Learning (AI) academic research to Applied Machine Learning for the industry. He strives to help companies identify their highest value opportunities and then with his team at EPFL Innovation Park he builds highly performant & fully customised AI-powered solutions.

Glenn Meleder is specialist with 11 years experience in the humanitarian aid sector, he has worked in several conflict areas such as Darfur, Colombia and Middle-East. He is passionate about bridging technology and people.

Rob Holub is an accomplished television and film producer, a sought-after public speaker and a singer/songwriter under the name of SOKOL. With more than 15 years of international experience, Rob has made a name for himself in television production, both behind and in front of the camera, including working for SRF, Pro7, Sat.1 in Switzerland and various projects in New York City.

Sebastian Aristotelis is an architecture student from Denmark and co-founder of SAGA Space Architects. Saga is a new design practice working on making space livable for future space travelers by approaching the design of habitats from a human perspective, where mental well-being and social sustainability is part of the life support equation. The main goal is To prepare for the day when extraterrestrial settlement becomes a reality, we design analog habitats, architectural experiments, habitat concepts, space visualizations and high-tech earth architecture.

Thomas was the first to join Cherry and is particularly excited about product-centric founders and industry-defining opportunities in software. Prior to Cherry, Thomas gained experience as an entrepreneur building Bonusbox, an e-commerce data and loyalty network.

Omar, 25, is the co-founder of Goodwall. He started Goodwall to inspire and encourage the next generation to achieve more, maximize their potential and impact society positively. He leads Goodwall's operations, marketplace and product strategy. He has been named on Forbes' 30under30, has served on the Editorial Board of the United Nations Magazine, is a Kairos Global Fellow, has been a speaker at TEDx, Google, and the IB Heads Conference.

Victor Leuenberger has been Head of Digital Business Services and Member of the Executive Board of SAP (Switzerland) AG since July 1, 2015. He has been with SAP (Switzerland) for nine years and held various management positions during this time. Before joining SAP, Leuenberger worked for the Information Management Group as Vice President and Business Unit Manager. Victor Leuenberger is a business economist and graduated from the Higher Business School in Zurich

Having graduated as a mechanical engineer from TU Munich, Carl Schmidt-Ehemann joined the Lufthansa Group in 2006, first at Lufthansa Technik. Since then, has held various positions for project management and process optimization in Hamburg and Frankfurt. Currently, he works at Lufthansa Cargo Flight Operations, being responsible for multi-project steering, process management and the integration of cross-divisional teams in both the Flight Ops Matrix and special tasks on the LH Group Flight Ops level. Besides his tasks, he is assigned the special task as Head of Emergency Repsonse Lufthansa Cargo including the representation in internal and external committees.

Paul Brody is the global blockchain innovation leader for EY. In this role, he is responsible for building our global blockchain business, from R&D to product development to driving engagement sales. Prior to joining EY, Brody led IBM's global electronics industry business unit, working on technology strategy, mobile and Internet of Things, including the strategic alliance between IBM & Apple. At IBM he was a founding member of the Industry Academy. In addition to his time at IBM, he was previously a consultant with McKinsey & Co. in the US and Korea, and a co-founder of the online movie streaming service Zediva.com. Brody has a degree in Economics and a certificate in African Studies from Princeton University.

David is heading Swisscom Kickbox, the bottom-up intrapreneurship program at Swisscom, Switzerland’s leading telco company and one of its leading IT companies. He fosters the internal innovation culture and empowers employees to experience “Lean Startup” methodologies by validating their start-up ideas. Employees get a project budget, work time, an innovation booklet and access to internal experts and external service providers. Besides his job, David is teaching the “Lean Startup Academy” course at ETH Zurich and is a guest lecturer at the HSG EMBA and CAS “Digital Banking” at HSLU/IFZ.

Robin is responsible for all things product at Tamedia’s non-publishing operations. He’s member of the supervisory boards at Ricardo, Gowago and CarForYou and supports the deal flow at Tamedia. With his internal product and UX team he supports all portfolio companies to build better products. Before his Tamedia-days he was building up several startups for over nine years.

Pascal has worked at the interface of wearable technologies and healthcare for more than 15 years. Before Ava he built up Limmex (a watch-based emergency system for seniors) and Cardiosafe (a real-time alarming system for cardiac patients). Pascal won various international prizes for his projects and was named one of the 300 most influential Swiss persons by the Swiss business magazine Bilan. Pascal has studied at the University of St. Gallen and Columbia Business School. Before focusing on wearable technologies, he worked as a product manager at medtech company Synthes and as a strategy consultant at McKinsey. Ava was named best Swiss Startup in 2017 and 2018.

Sean McHarg is the Insight & Design Strategy Lead within McLaren Applied Technologies Design Group, advocating research-led design which recognises the value of combining human insight, data science, and technology with design to deliver life improving innovations. He is currently working on several programmes in Health and Public Transport, focussing on both improving health outcomes and patient experience by collecting real-world data, and providing insight on systemic challenges that will lead to improved operational performance. Sean has experience leading global brands through a process of research led design including planning and conducting in depth, generative and evaluative, research studies that aim to uncover what is possible, what is wanted, and ultimately what benefits a strategic business direction.

Ryan Jongwoo Choi is an Industrial Designer with the ability to communicate and collaborate across various fields involved in design and engineering innovation. He has built strong communication skills; in verbal collaborative work, though sketching, 3D prototyping as well as software and hardware engineering capabilities. He respects and values diverse opinions and expertise from his collaborators, seeing this as the strongest way to design products which will be truly useful and valuable to people. He has extensive experience working in design consultancies as well as for in-house design teams in consumer electronics industry. This has exposed to a variety of different cultures and systems, currently he is working within the Design Group of McLaren Applied Technologies and is mainly focused on driving innovation across Public Transport, Automotive, Motorsport, and Health industries.

Jörg is a mover and innovator within the fashion and retail field, dedicated to helping leading brands transform their business and gain competitive advantages from the new digital environment. He has 10 years+ experience as CEO and 17 years+ of P&L responsibility. He has extensive experience in growing and restructuring international multi-channel retail organizations as well as in digitally transforming multi-channel fashion companies.

Martin Halblaub has 25 years of experience in the Financial Service Industry, having served as Chairman, Board Member, CEO, Senior Executive or Senior Advisor in internationally active Financial Institutions, Asset Managers and Market Infrastructure Providers as well as having been President of a regional Stock Exchange and General Manager of a Bank in London. In the last decade he has also been consulting and coaching Leaders and Executives with their teams and supported High Potentials in their development.

Vasily Suvorov is a technology strategist with extensive experience in defining and creating software and hardware systems based on emerging and science-intensive technologies. He is particularly interested in ventures and projects related to Blockchain, Realtime Big Data, Car Connectivity and IoT.

Alexander Stoeckel is a Partner and Member of the Board of Directors of btov. He has an academic background in international business administration and has studied at the European Business School (ebs) in Oestrich-Winkel and Paris as well as at the International School of Management (ISM) in Dortmund and San Diego. He holds an MBA from the University of Oxford. Prior to joining btov in 2007, Stoeckel has worked for Hauck & Aufhaueser Private Bankers as fund-of-funds manager, and as Executive Management Assistant (Vorstandsassistent) to KPMG’s Global Managing Partner for Tax. Alexander is a member of the Swiss Private Equity & Corporate Finance Association (SECA), where he was a member of the Executive Board from 2015 to 2017. He is also a guest lecturer on venture capital topics at the University of St. Gallen. Stoeckel was born in Berlin and lives with his family in St. Gallen.

Lukas is an investment communications professional and entrepreneur with a track record of helping dozens of companies to successfully expand and raising the profile of governments and locations. Lukas speaks frequently at international technology events and conferences on economic development, foreign direct investment, blockchain, augmented and artificial intelligence and other topics at the intersection of society, economy and technology. He has been leading the operations of Greater Zurich Area in North America attracting investment to Switzerland in life sciences, software, blockchain, artificial intelligence, AR/VR and other technologies, creating hundreds of jobs. Lukas is also the Co-Founder of the Mindfire Foundation, a blockchain-backed research and collaboration platform to decode human intelligence. In addition, Lukas has been heading the international affairs department for the leading communications and marketing agency Warschawski. He has worked for Burson Marsteller in Europe, and for the Swiss Embassy in Washington, DC as head of Public Diplomacy. Lukas holds a master’s degree from the University of Zurich in Political Science and Geography and earned a Masters in International Business Management from Georgetown University. Lukas lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is an active rock climber and paragliding pilot.

Prof. Dr. Kuno Schedler is the Vice-President of the University of St. Gallen as well as Full Professor of Management with special focus on Public Management. He focuses his research on topics such as public organisations and smart government. Additionally, he founded the Smart Government Lab in which the effects of smart technology on public administration are examined.

Emmy-winning reporter-turned-entrepreneur.

Florian Gunz Niedermann is a partner at Walder Wyss. He specialises in international and domestic M&A transactions (mainly private M&A and private equity) as well as transactions in the venture capital industry, with a focus on projects in the sectors e-commerce, healthcare and life sciences. In addition, he advises corporate clients on all matters of corporate and commercial law related to their daily operations as well as startups with regard to the implementation and financing of their business models. Born in 1973, Florian Gunz Niedermann was educated at Zurich University (lic. iur. 2000) and the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LL.M. 2006). Before joining Walder Wyss, he gained working experience as a trainee and law clerk in the District court of Winterthur and as lawyer in another business law firm in Zurich. Florian Gunz Niedermann’s professional languages are German and English. He also speaks French and has a basic knowledge of Spanish. He is registered with the Zurich Bar Registry and admitted to practice in all Switzerland.

Dr Peter Harrop PhD, FIEE is Chairman of IDTechEx Ltd. He was previously Director of Technology of Plessey Capacitors Scotland and Chief Executive of Mars Electronics, a start-up he took to $260 million gross sales value with highly automated factories built in US and UK, without acquisitions. He was a board member of $1.5 bn Mars UK, a division of Mars Inc. Mars Electronics was sold for $500 million after he left, generating an excellent return. He has been Chairman of 15 high tech companies over a period of years including turnrounds on behalf of venture capitalists such as Computer Security International. The largest was Pinacl plc in Wales, made profitable and grown to $100 million in fiber optic manufacture and multimillion dollar structural networks. Peter lectures and consults internationally on electric vehicles, energy storage, RFID and printed/organic electronics. He writes a minimum of five openly published techno-marketing reports yearly at IDTechEx. Read more at: https://www.idtechex.com/contact/team/dr_peter_harrop.asp

Christoph is a mechanical engineer (ETH Zürich and UC Berkeley) and holds an MSc with distinction and a PhD from ETH Zürich. Together with Jan, Christoph is responsible for the management of the company. Christoph’s passion is the exploration of new places on a kitesurf board, skis or mountain bike.

Nicolas Bürer, studied Physics at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. After several years in management consulting and young startups, he then went on to co-found MOVU, of which he still is Chairman. Movu has been acquired through a Swiss insurance Group in 2017. Since October 2016, Nicolas Bürer is Managing Director at digitalswitzerland. Nicolas is one of the 100 "2019 Who is Who" and „2018 Who is Who“ of the Swiss Economy and has been awarded as 2018 „Swiss Business Angel of the Year“. He is a passionate entrepreneur and startup investor.

Nenad is the Founder and Managing Partner of DN Capital. Prior to DN Capital, Nenad was a Partner at Advent International in London, where he focused on TMT investments. Nenad focuses on investments in marketplaces, software as a service (SAAS), fintech, consumer mobile applications and digital health companies. Nenad is also the Chairman of the Venture Capital Board of Invest Europe and an active member of YPO in London and Berlin.

Mario Facchinetti is the initiator & leader of the innovation network SwissPropTech. As a young lateral thinker he is a member of international advisory boards as well as juries and an appreciated discussion partner in strategy committees. Due to his commitment, the leading branch magazine ImmobilienBusiness ranked him among the 100 leaders of the Swiss real estate industry in 2017.

Roland Haag is a member of the directorate for research and technology at the University Hospital Zürich. Besides his work at the hospital, Roland works at the Swiss Innovation Agency Innosuisse and coaches Healthtech startups. He graduated from the University of Basel and holds an MBA from the Northwestern University in Chicago.

Until February 2018, Matthias worked for several years as a strategy consultant at Boydak. During this time, he was responsible for the setup of the ”Boydak Digital Health Practice”. Until December 2017, he also served as a Health 4.0 Program Leader at C-Level and was responsible for the establishment and management of a community of senior managers from the Swiss healthcare sector. In addition, Matthias has been involved with the Swiss digital health startup scene since several years. He acts from time to time as a startup advisor and coach on a voluntary basis.

Ghayth studied business administration at Aleppo University in Syria, and after working in various companies in Syria, Turkey and the GCC he moved to Berlin in 2015. Together with his colleagues at SINGA Germany, Ghayth co-created an Incubation Program with new immigrants and immigrants entrepreneurs in Berlin, believing that newcomers have a unique vision to discover the needs of communities and economic opportunities in their new society.

Niclas is a former professional Triathlete and works as an endurance sports and triathlon blogger since 2014, writing inter alia for the German magazine triathlon. He is Co-founder and CEO of Pushing Limits, which is his own blog on all topic associated with endurance sports.

Andreas Iten is a highly experienced innovation & entrepreneurship strategist, with proven leadership in high-level innovation, open-innovation, information technology management and entrepreneurship. Andreas has worked for over 15 years within leading institutions in the IT service, airline & transportation and the financial industry. Since 2015 Andreas he was leading technology innovation and he was the Chief Information Officer for the division Financial Information within SIX. Today he is responsible for the SIX FinTech venture fund. His specific areas of expertise focus on end-to-end innovation frameworks, innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurial spillovers, emerging technologies, digital innovation and business transformation. Andreas is co-founder of the the SIXHackathon (Europe's largest Fintech coding contest), co-founder and board member of the Zurich based F10 FinTech Incubator & Accelerator. He is a public speaker and active communicator on social media.

Florian Nägele is an Associate Partner in McKinsey’s Zurich Office. Since joining the firm in 2010, he has been serving clients in the industrial, automotive and high tech sector. Florian is a core member of McKinsey’s Advanced Industries and Product Development practices and has been working with OEMs, suppliers and technology ventures. Besides his industry focus, he has experience in strategy, operations and technology development and large scale transformations.