SPEAKERS 2020

Sigmar Gabrial is a German politician who was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2017 to 2018 and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 2013 to 2018. He was Leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which made him the party's longest-serving leader since Willy Brandt. He was the Federal Minister of the Environment and the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy and had been Minister-President of Lower Saxony.

Rolf Schrömgens conceptualized trivago in 2005 and has served as a managing director of Trivago GmbH until 2019. Since 2005 trivago grew into a Tech-Unicorn and into one of the worlds biggest hotel-booking websites. Prior to that, Mr. Schrömgens was Founder of Amiro.de and later the VP of ciao.com, a consumer review website. Mr. Schrömgens was the President of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and also holds a diploma in management from the Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL).

André Street de Aguiar founded 5 companies, which include: StoneCo Ltd., Netcredit Promocao De Credito SA and Braspag Tecnologia de Pagamento Ltda. Currently, he occupies the position of Chairman at StoneCo Ltd. (which he founded in 2014), Chairman for Stone Pagamentos SA (which he founded in 2012) (a subsidiary of StoneCo Ltd.) and Partner & CEO at Arpex Capital Investimentos SA. He is also on the board of Lojas Americanas SA and Founding Partner of Acp Investments Ltd. (he founded the company in 2011). In the past André Street de Aguiar was Chief Executive Officer at Braspag Tecnologia de Pagamento Ltda. (he founded the company in 2005).

Barbara Stelzner is a member of the four-member Management Committee of DJI Europe and also leads the DJI communication team in Europe. She is responsible for the company's external communication and media relationships and for the region's digital marketing portfolio. Her passion for drones started many years ago when she was at Macromedia College teaching journalism, media and communication management. She particularly focused on the use of drones in the Sports Communications. Barbara Stelzner holds a diploma in film and television science from the Polytechnic of Central London and did her PhD in film and art history at the University of Bonn. She is a professor of media management and journalism. Before joining DJI, she worked as a journalist for the BBC for over 25 years, European Business News, Sky News and CNBC.

"Taavet Hinrikus is co-founder and Chairman of TransferWise. Prior to starting TransferWise, Taavet was Skype’s director of strategy until 2008, starting as its first-ever employee. Taavet acted as CEO of TransferWise until 2017, and since then has stepped into the role of Chairperson overseeing the business’ bigger picture direction and supporting the product teams. One of the World Economic Forum's Tech Pioneers, Taavet has acted as adviser to the former Prime Minister of Estonia on the digital agenda. He’s also a mentor for the next generation of talent, leading TransferWise’s 20 Under 20 programme to support Europe’s brightest teen CEOs, and volunteering with Estonia’s tech summer school Eesti 2.0. Taavet is an active angel investor; his investments include Tweetdeck, Mendeley, OMGPOP, Property Partner, Sunrise, Improbable and Cleo."

Myke Näf is the founder and former CEO of Doodle, the leading online scheduling service which he took to 25 million monthly users, profitability and exit. Before Doodle, he worked as an engineer, consultant, and lecturer in various organizations in Switzerland and abroad. Today, he is active as an entrepreneur, business angel, and advisor to start-ups. Myke is currently building Übermorgen Ventures, an early-stage VC fund that invests in decarbonization tech startups.

Marco Rodzynek is the Founder and CEO of NOAH Advisors, a leading corporate finance boutique focused on sizeable European Internet transactions. The team advises on secondary sell-side transactions, selected buy-side mandates as well as private debt and equity capital raisings for mature companies in the sector. Since its foundation in 2009, NOAH has completed 26 transactions including high profile digital European companies such as Fotolia, Bigpoint, Yad2, Facile, Trovit, Flixbus, Parship and many more. The company is also the host and organiser of the NOAH Conference which is now in its 9th year. Marco started his career at Lehman Brothers at the beginning of 1998, where he became the Head of European Internet Investment Banking. With over 18 years of investment banking experience covering the internet and media space, he has been involved in over 80 announced M&A deals with a total transaction value of over $110 billion and worked on 10 capital market transactions which raised a total of $16 billion.

As a General Partner at Swiss VC Lakestar, Oliver Heimes is in charge of their global investment strategy. Lakestar is a Venture Capital firm that invests in outstanding digital technology entrepreneurs worldwide. He has previously worked at Goldman Sachs and as a research assistant for Entrepreneurial Finance at the Arthur Rock Department at Harvard Business School. In 2017 he was elected by Forbes Magazine into the prestigious 30 under 30 in Finance Europe list.

Tom Elvidge is the Chief Operating Officer of WeWork’s Europe, Middle-East and Africa (EMEA) region, overseeing operations across 13+ countries and 1,200+ employees, and focused on growing the business and enabling companies and individuals to create a life and not just a living. Previously, Tom joined Uber in 2014 where he was involved in launching the service in 40 towns and cities across the UK. He served General Manager for Uber's ride-hailing business in United Kingdom & Ireland. Tom began his career in Management Consulting and was tasked with opening the first international office of Moorhouse Consulting in New York, where he lived for five years. Tom graduated with a first-class degree in Engineering from Nottingham University. He lives in London with his wife and two sons.

An industry award winner, Michael joined from Daimler AG where he was most recently vice president and CIO with responsibility for the smooth operation of all Daimler systems and the management of IT projects globally. He has held various CIO roles within the Daimler group and has spent many years working across SC's footprint. Michael joined Standard Chartered as Group Chief Information Officer in July 2015.

Cédric is a serial entrepreneur, investor and minimalist. He's lived without a home and just 64 things for several years. His involvement spans from fintech and eCommerce, to social networks and blockchain.

Rasmus Rothe is the founder and CTO of Merantix, a Berlin-based Venture Studio for AI, and a renowned deep learning researcher. He has published over 15 academic papers with more than 1000 citations on deep learning while attending Oxford, Princeton, and ETH Zurich, where he received his Ph.D. in computer vision and deep learning. In 2019, Rasmus was featured on Forbes “30 under 30”. Before founding Merantix, Rasmus worked at Google and BCG, and built a deep learning service with 150m+ users. He is a founding board member of the German Association of AI Companies (KI Bundesverband e.V.), devising and implementing the national AI strategy in close cooperation with the German government.

Liz Powers is the co-founder and Chief Happiness Spreader at ArtLifting, a business that empowers artists impacted by homelessness and disabilities. Liz was selected for Forbes “30 Under 30” and Boston Globe’s 2015 “Game Changers.” Liz has given keynotes to crowds of 5,000. She has spoken at TEDx, Lean StartUp Conference, FedEx HQ, Fidelity, and South By Southwest. She has worked in social service and given speeches about social change for the last decade. Her impact has been featured in the New York Times, TODAY Show, and Washington Post. She graduated from Harvard with honors and earned a MSc at the University of Edinburgh.

Alexander started Germany-based Loyalty Partner and PAYBACK in 1998 and turned PAYBACK into the world’s largest coalition loyalty platform with over 70 million active members in Germany, Italy, India, Mexico and Poland. He sold majority stake in the business to American Express in 2011. Alexander is an entrepreneurial investor focused on disruptive global retail platforms.

Adrian Locher is the founder of Merantix, a Berlin-based research and venture lab in the space of Artificial Intelligence. Merantix conceptualizes, builds, and scales machine learning ventures. He built his previous venture to more than CHF 100M sales and 200 employees. Prior to that, he has built several B2B software companies, some of them successful, some of them not. Adrian graduated with a degree in business and economics from the University of St. Gallen (HSG), where he started his very first business as a software developer. He was awarded "HSG Entrepreneur of the Year 2012", "Swiss E-Commerce Champion 2015" and was ranked "40 under 40" by Swiss Bilanz magazine.

Alan Frei is a Swiss entrepreneur, vagabond and minimalist. He studied at the University of Zurich (UZH). He is the co-founder and CMO of Amorana.

Prof. Dr.Dr.h.c. Uwe Krueger is Head of Industrials, Business Services, Energy & Resources and Joint-Head EMEA at Temasek, Singapore. Temasek is a leading globally diversified investment company headquartered in Singapore with a net portfolio of S$310 billion. He currently serves on the board of several international companies. He is the Senior Independent Director of Aggreko plc, Glasgow and Director of Gategroup AG in Zurich. Dr. Krueger received his undergraduate degree in physics and business administration and his PhD in complex system theory and brain research from the University of Frankfurt.

Marisa Tschopp is a researcher at scip ag and Women in AI ambassador Switzerland. She is conducting research about AI and technology from a psychological perspective, with a wide range of questions related to psychological phenomena, governance and ethical implications. Her research areas are about trust (What does it take to trust AI?), behavioral performance measurement of conversational AI (How smart is Siri?), and lethal autonomous weapons system (killerrobots and how to ban them!). As an organizational psychologist she has experience in social and educational institutions with specific passion for digital teaching-learning trends, and has been teaching in several higher education institutions in Germany and Switzerland. She published various media articles, books, and papers and is a frequent speaker on conferences and events worldwide. Marisa holds a Master’s degree in Psychology of Excellence in Business and Education from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany as well as a BA business degree, focusing on market and consumer psychology.

"Achim Berg is Operational Partner at General Atlantic, an US based growth investor. Before that he was CEO at Arvato and member of the Bertelsmann Executive Board, responsible for the strategy and operative business of Bertelsmann’s largest division with its 73,000 employees. Berg is also President of BITKOM, Germany’s Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media. He holds several board seats, eg Allianz AG, Giesecke & Devrient, Flixbus (Chairman), ControlExpert, Powercloud. Berg completed his studies in computer science in 1989 in Cologne."

Petra joined salesforce in 2016. In her current role as GM, Senior Vice President she is responsible for Emerging Markets & Israel at salesforce. Before that Petra has lead the Commercial Business Unit as well as the European Innovation and Transformation Services team where she has extended the reach of our high end advisory and built a talented and diverse team across EMEA. Prior to joining Salesforce, Petra was 7 years General Manager at Microsoft in Switzerland and in Austria where she has managed a large end to end business while transforming it to the cloud.

Jörn is globally recognized for digital transformation in Payment. He envisioned and now heads the prosperous Mobile Services and Innovation Lab in Wirecard AG. With his deep knowledge, experience, access to global networks and a strong affinity to spotting trends, his expertise lies in digitalization of retail and in developing innovative solutions for mobile payments: mobile wallets, smart value-added services and big data projects with partners and clients, e.g. Alipay, Wechat Pay, Berjaya, ÖBB, O2, Orange, Vodafone, Printemps, The Bodyshop and Deutsche Telekom. He is confident and dynamic on all big stages around the world, invigorating the crowd while sharing future trends in retail, customer satisfaction and value added services to make tomorrows journey of payment happens today.

Marcell Vollmer is Chief Innovation Officer at Celonis and is responsible for defining and driving innovations and digital transformation for customers globally. A thought leader in procurement, supply chain, finance and shared services, Marcell’s expertise lies in defining digital transformation strategy and to make‚ ‘Run Simple‘ a reality for global customers and consumers by delivering transformation success and process productivity gains. Previously, he was Chief Digital Officer in SAP’s Cloud Business Group and Chief Operating Officer for SAP Ariba where he successfully developed and led global business development, procurement, go to market, sales operations, and enablement. Prior to that Marcell was Chief Procurement Officer of SAP and was responsible for the reorganization and process optimization for and end-to-end source-to-pay organization. Since joining SAP in 2005 he has held various leadership roles involving restructuring, improving project efficiency and execution of global programs in finance, procurement, sales, human resources and post-merger integrations.

Caen Contee was part of the founding team of Lime, a venture-backed tech startup in the fast-growing smart mobility space. He is a deep operator and service-based leader steering Global Expansion, Marketing, Comms, Business Development, Sales, and Exec Strategy within technology startups. He has raised $50M+ for personal ventures, negotiated deals worth over $100M dollars, led marketing campaigns greater than $40M, grown a product to over 10M users, and advise companies generating $10millions in revenue. He has led International Expansion, Marketing & BD at Lime.

Varun Purandare focuses on enterprise, SaaS and marketplace businesses. Prior to joining Accel, he co-founded a fintech startup that helped freelancers manage their finances. Varun was earlier at Bessemer Venture Partners and worked at Booz & Company. He grew up in Mumbai and graduated from Yale University and London Business School.

Dave is currently the Chief Evangelist for Alexa and Echo at Amazon. He has been a professional speaker, trainer, and evangelist for over two decades. He has taught full-day courses on many topics including voice design, natural language understanding, mobile, and the cloud.

Hendrik Brandis is a co-founder and Earlybird Partner, and works out of the Munich office. Hendrik’s current domain focus is enterprise web-powered infrastructure and SaaS in addition to selected consumer services. Hendrik has served for many years as EVCA board member and the Chairman of the EVCA Venture Capital Platform Council. Hendrik brings together long-standing investment, operational and entrepreneurial experience. He was a board member of element5 AG, where he was a driving force behind the sale to Digital River (NASDAQ:DRIV), dooyoo.de (Berlin) which was sold to leguide.com and Dianoema, which listed on the Borsa Italiana (Milan: NOE.MI) as well as NFON AG which listed on the Frankfurter Boerse. Hendrik currently serves on the boards of Earlybird portfolio companies aiven (Helsinki, Finland), B2X Care Solutions (Munich); Instamotion (Munich), Onefootball (Berlin); Simscale (Munich); Movinga (Berlin), MediDate (Berlin) and MyDataModels (Valbonne, France). Hendrik gained his entrepreneurial experience as a Co-Founder of GMM, a group of private investors focusing on buy-outs of mid-sized companies and gained his operational experience as Project Manager in the Technology Department of Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm (now Daimler-Chrysler Aerospace) focusing on the design and innovative manufacturing processes of composite aircraft structures. Previously, Hendrik was a Partner with McKinsey & Co. in their Munich and Madrid offices where he led McKinsey's small and mid-sized company initiative and participated in creating McKinsey New Venture. He attended the Technical University of Munich and holds a Dipl.-Ing. (MSc equivalent) and PhD degree in Aerospace Engineering.

Dalith Steiger is an experienced AI speaker and entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of working in the ICT industry with a Dipl.math focused in Mathematics, Statistics and IT from Universität Zürich. She is particularly focused on AI and its impact on society and the new business potential associated with it. Dalith has experience in the fields of Strategic Partnership, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Truly passionate about moving people and giving them time back for the important things in life, Fabien joined Volocopter to achieve exactly that. While building up Uber in Germany as General Manager, he realized that innovation continues to challenge regulation and that cooperation is crucial for developing new mobility products and services. At Volocopter he works with cities, governments and legislators to enable air taxi services globally. Before dedicating his work to the future of mobility, Fabien gained broad experience in the tech, consulting, and VC industries.

Katharina is an investor at Cherry Ventures, where she focuses on investments in the DACH area. Cherry is an early-stage VC run by former entrepreneurs and focuses on seed-stage companies in the B2B and B2C space. Prior to becoming an investor, Katharina worked at The Boston Consulting Group in Zurich as well as worked with start-ups in the US and Germany. Katharina studied business at the University of St. Gallen and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Jenny von Podewils is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Leapsome. Together with her Co-Founder Kajetan Armansperg, she supports companies in building successful teams with people enablement technology. Jenny is an alumna of the Universities St. Gallen and Oxford as well as Singularity University, and has previously gained experience and led teams in business development, corporate development and digital transformation roles in media and tech companies.

Cris is CEO and Co-Founder of Beekeeper, an award-winning digital workplace app that digitizes the non-desk workforce in 137+ countries by connecting operational systems and communication channels within one intuitive platform. Beekeeper helps companies increase performance and productivity, enhance employee engagement, reduce turnover costs, and elevate corporate culture. Prior to founding Beekeeper, Cris worked for Accenture on high profile international projects in the field of IT Strategy for the financial and public sectors. Cris studied Chemical Engineering and got his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, both at ETH Zurich. Before moving to the beautiful Zurich, Cris was born and raised in an entrepreneurial Swiss-Mexican family in Mexico City.

Viktor Calabrò is the founder and Executive Chairman of Coople, a company revolutionizing the job-market. Prior to the foundation of Coople Viktor worked as an IT-process optimizer and as an analyst of management tools at UBS. In 2003 he founded his first company "la folie Erlebniskultur" which he led until 2016. The complicated search for workforce led him to found Coople in 2011, creating the world's first on-demand platform for flexible workforce. He was named "Swiss Entrepreneur of the year" in 2014 by EY and has furthermore written a book about flexible workforce.

Melanie Gabriel co-founded the AI and FinTech startup Expense Robot in 2019, after having previously gained valuable experience in the tech industry. Expense Robot leverages artificial intelligence to fully automate expense and company credit card processes. Melanie holds a master degree in business management from the University of St. Gallen and is also a member of WE SHAPE TECH.

Dr. Tillmann Lang is an expert in technology-driven innovation for sustainability and finance. He is the CEO and a co-founder of Yova Impact Investing, the leading digital platform for investments with a sustainability impact. Before founding Yova, Tillmann was an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Company, where he worked with global organizations on sustainability innovation and energy-transition strategies. Tillmann also served as the CFO of Benefiit Impact Investing and was the founding director of the Sustainability-in-Business Lab at ETH Zurich. He is a TEDx speaker and keynote speaker in subjects such as entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and sustainability. As a computer scientist and mathematician, Tillmann holds a PhD from ETH Zurich and studied in Heidelberg and Santiago de Chile. Tillmann lives with his family in Zurich and likes to spend as much time as possible with his feet in hiking or skiing boots.

We are proud to announce our first speaker! Pascal Mathis is the co-founder and former COO of @getyourguide. He is now investing in the future of Siwss entrepreneurs as a venture capitalist at Wingman Ventures.

Marco Boerries is a German entrepreneur with a passion for making ideas work. Enfore is his fourth start-up and was founded in 2009 as NumberFour AG. He founded his first company Star Division, inspired by a Silicon Valley school exchange, as a 16-year-old back in 1985. The company created the popular office suite StarOffice and later OpenOffice.org. Star Division was sold to Sun Microsystems in 1999 and Marco stayed on as Vice President. He started his second company Star Finanz as a joint-venture with the Deutsche Sparkassen Organisation in 1996, to re-invent online banking with StarMoney – that became the leading product in Germany. Marco sold his share in StarFinanz to his joint venture partners in 2001.

Dr. Christoph Birkholz is an entrepreneur based in Zurich, Switzerland. He is a co-founder and managing director of Impact Hub Zürich, the largest Hub in a global network of over 100 Impact Hubs. He also founded and directs Kickstart Accelerator, one of the world’s leading programs to accelerate partnerships between deep tech startups, corporates, universities and cities. Christoph is a co-founder of yova-investing.com to mainstream impact investing. He initiated several spinoffs and initiatives in the Impact Hub network, such as Viaduct Ventures and the Global Impact Hub Fellowship. Christoph has received a Ph.D. in impact investing from the University of St.Gallen, and teaches entrepreneurship, innovation and intrapreneurship at University of St.Gallen, Business School Lausanne and adschool Zürich. He is an alumnus of Witten/Herdecke University and INSEAD, as well as the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum. He is a member of the Sandbox Network and one of the 100 Digital Shapers of Switzerland. Christoph serves on the board of Panter AG, an international technology and engineering company.

Max Heyde is an Investment Manager at the European Investment Fund (EIF). Wish his work, he focuses on VC and Impact Investing, espsecially equity investments in technology and innovation.

Serial entrepreneur with experience in everything digital, in particular Search, Artificial Intelligence, Analytics, Big Data, Strategy, company & team building, financing, etc. Hall of Fame - Top 100 Digital Shapers.

Deborrah Schaer leads the scaleup & open banking programs at F10, a leading FinTech Incubator, Accelerator and Investment Fund based in Zurich and Singapore. At F10 she also manages the venture portfolio and scouts startups in Europe and Israel. Prior to F10, Deborrah co-founded a fashion startup before moving to Africa where she helped building several FinTech and HealthTech ventures. After a brief stop in management consulting, she then joined a Swiss IoT startup where she headed business development after its acquisition by Swedish hardware giant Husqvarna Group. Deborrah has graduated with an M.A. in Business at the University of St. Gallen in 2013.

"Hansi Voigt, born in 1963, was born in Germany and grew up in Switzerland. He studied history at Zurich University. Instead of completing his studies, Voigt founded a music label and emigrated to Great Britain for several years. After his return, Voigt began his journalistic career. In the weekly business newspaper ""CASH"", Voigt was promoted to interim editor-in-chief and in ""Beobachter"" he won the renowned Zurich Journalist Prize for a report on the subject of ""poverty"". A little later, when he was hired 20 Minuten Online as news editor at the free portal, the majority of his renowned journalist colleagues declared him crazy. But under his leadership, 20min.ch became Switzerland's largest news portal in 2008. In 2013 Voigt founded Fixxpunkt AG, from which the news platform watson.ch emerged, which later also opened a branch in Germany as a licensed product watson.de. The magazine ""Schweizer Journalist"" awarded Voigt three times as editor-in-chief of the year. In 2016, Voigt handed over the management of Watson to the son of the main investor and left the news portal for the young target group. Voigt is now the founder and part of the young communications and management consultancy dasnetz.ch. From strategy development to implementation, but also from the review of the current digital idleness to the cultural reorientation of the company, the range of topics covered by a clientele from various industries extends. Voigt holds various board mandates, sits on the Helvetas central board and on various journalism juries. Voigt is in great demand as a speaker on questions of media development and digital communication. Among other things at the Re:publika Berlin or as TedX-Speaker. As project manager in Basel, he is currently working on the local media project Bajour and is the driving force behind Wepublish, the joint technical infrastructure for independent journalistic media projects."

Isabelle Ringnes is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Equalitycheck.it, a platform for anonymous reviews about equality and diversity in the workplace. She is the co-founder and CPO of business.equalitycheck.it helping companies improve gender diversity through a data driven and evidence based approach by mapping their gender balance and providing solutions to improve based on best available research. In 2015 she founded TENK: a Technology Network for Women aiming to inspire women and girls to lean in and contribute to shaping our world’s future with technology. She has established two yearly tech-camps for young girls and spoken to thousands of girls around Norway to inspire them to chose technology. In 2014 she co-founded #Hunspanderer, a social movement addressing unconscious bias and gender stereotypes reaching millions of people and engaging CEOs across Norway’s most influential companies to champion the issue.

Reginald has over 10 years of experience in marketing, communication & branding working predominantly with SMEs and entrepreneurs. Along the years, his adaptability allowed him to garner experience in various fields such as : marketing, communication, product development, marketing research, event management, public speaking & in the media. Known for having introduced the Fuck Up Nights in Switzerland, his tenure as MC generated interest from companies looking to use his help on their storytelling and how they deliver content to their stakeholders. Passionate about technology, Reginald regularly coaches and consults for tech entrepreneurs around the World and currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer for Aequicens. a Geneva-based AI research Lab.

Julian Willner is a passionate entrepreneur from Germany. Already during high school, he started building pickar - the digital study advisor. Besides being CEO at pickar, Julian is a Fellow of Kairos Society, "the most influential tech club you have never heard of" according to Mashable. In 2019 he was awarded as „Top Talent under 25“ in the DACH region.

Joleen Liang is a Partner at Squirrel AI Learning, the leading AI+ education innovator and unicorn at the forefront of K12 AI revolution. Within 3 years of its product release, Squirrel AI Learning has established more than 2,300 learning centers in China and hosted the first series of human-vs-AI competitions in the Asia-Pacific region and proved the AI’s success. Squirrel AI Learning is recognized by Deloitte as one of the top 10 Global AI enterprises with high growth. Squirrel AI Learning is included in the MIT Review TR50 Smartest Company in China Award. Joleen is an Oxford graduate in Business Management and a Ph.D candidate at Intelligent Science and System, Macau University of Science and Technology. Joleen is the founder and director of Artificial Intelligence + Adaptive Education Conference (AIAED), an international conference focusing on important trends emerging from AI technology that applied to next-generation education and how these advances can impact adaptive human learning at scale and in various contexts.

John Leary is the Executive Director of Trees for the Future where he is focused on helping end hunger and extreme poverty for rural African farmers, through the revival of the forest garden. John has extensive experience living with and among the rural poor in Sub-Saharan Africa and deep knowledge of international agricultural development. He speaks three languages and has lived and worked in 13 developing countries. John has dedicated his life to creating innovative training approaches that empower farmers to rise out of poverty, including award-winning programs that are currently in use throughout the developing world.

Vanessa Candeias has worked extensively in global health exploring what systems changes are needed to enable healthier populations. She was up until recently the Head of Global Health and Healthcare Industries and a Member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum where she lead a dynamic platform for businesses, governments and civil society organizations to shape the global health agenda and co-design and accelerate the implementation of partnerships across the continuum of care. She previously worked with the World Health Organization Headquarters on global guidelines, technical assistance to countries and policy development for noncommunicable diseases. Prior to that, she worked at the Ministry of Health in Portugal and the Institute of Preventive Medicine of the University of Lisbon. She trained as a nutritionist at the Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences in Porto University, holds a Master’s in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and graduated as a Global Leadership Fellow of the World Economic Forum.

Gregory is the co-founder and Operations Director of the EuroTube Foundation, the first international research organization and technology incubator for vacuum high-speed transportation. The foundation is currently planning the construction of a research center and a 3 km-long vacuum high-speed test track in Collombey, Switzerland.

"Manuel founded the sales playbook to help founders & sales people of B2B Tech Startups who are dissatisfied with their current market traction with a Sales Accelerator to help growing faster profitably. This provides startups with a solution to hit Product-Market-Fit and scale up sales faster without hiring expensive sales reps. Unlike traditional expensive sales trainers, SalesPlaybook provides entrepreneurial, affordable, no bullshit sales support."

Eugenie is one of the co-founders of Sedimentum AG and she leads as COO the transition from product development into a fast-growing business. Sedimentum is a Swiss-based healthcare startup which develops a novel technological protection mechanism to ensure the physical safety of unattended individuals (for example elderly people). Their technological solution aims to support and furthermore relieve caregivers or the nursing staff in elderly care institutions in their day-to-day work. They get informed in near real-time about health related irregularities of their residents, for example triggered if someone is falling accidentally. This is done by the combination of a wide variety of sensors, algorithms from the field of artificial intelligence and a unique data anonymization procedure.

Timon Ruban is one of the founders of Luminovo, a young deep learning company from Munich. He graduated top of his class in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich and obtained his M.Sc. from Stanford University. In the U.S. he helped teach Andrew Ng’s machine learning class and applied deep learning at Google’s smart imagery team. At Luminovo he manages the engineering team and helps European companies accelerate the adoption of deep learning.

Till Quack is the VP of Product at Mapillary, the street-level imagery platform that scales and automates mapping using collaboration, cameras, and computer vision. Till has a PhD in computer vision from ETH Zurich and has worked in the computer vision field since the early 2000s. Prior to joining Mapillary, Till spent several years leading and managing computer vision teams at companies like Apple, Qualcomm, and PTC. He was the co-founder and CEO of kooaba, the computer vision company that exited to Qualcomm in 2014. At Mapillary, Till makes sure the product is built in a way that allows Mapillary’s users to understand map data at scale and update their maps accordingly.

"Gioia the CEO of swissnex San Francisco. Switzerland’s innovation outpost in the Bay Area located at Pier17. A public-private partnership, swissnex builds programs and offers services to Swiss universities, startups, corporate and creatives to accelerate their innovation capacity and fast-track their access to the Silicon Valley ecosystem. Gioia’s professional journey has taken her to various countries, from Switzerland and Colombia to Palestine and Brazil , before bringing her back to her country of birth, the US. Starting her post-university career in microfinance and sustainable investing working for small and large investment firms, Gioia has dedicated the last ten years to fostering cross-continental collaborations with a view to inspire and strengthen Switzerland’s innovation ecosystem. Before setting out to build the first Latin American swissnex office Brazil in 2013, she headed the Startup and Innovation team at swissnex in San Francisco, where she returned to as CEO, in July 2017. A curated innovation platform hosting 40+ startups, designers, scientists and corporates, swissnex’s Bay Area office at Pier17 acts as a convener for thought-provoking conversations on how technology and innovation shape our world, and fosters international connections and collaboration for meaningful action. Gioia is an Advisor to the women-led incubator DART Labs, which focuses scaling human-machine interfaces, as well as a Co-Founder & President of the cancer survivor storytelling platform MySurvivalStory. She holds a Master’s degree in International relations from the Graduate Institute (IUHEID) in Geneva, Switzerland, and a second Master’s in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School in Medford/Boston, USA. Last but not least, Gioia is the proud mother of two half-Mexican, half-Swiss, born-in-the-Americas toddlers. "

With experience working in the food and beverage industry both in kitchens and service Naomi witnessed every day the enormous amount of edible food that is being thrown away. This has led her to commit herself to reducing the avoidable food waste in this sector. The environmental impact that KITRO could have inspires her to push it to its full potential and leave a positive footprint. Since starting KITRO everyday has been an exciting learning experience, full of inspiring individuals and new discoveries. The opportunity to build something you can proudly stand behind and fully believe in has so far been an incomparable experience for her! The idea behind KITRO originated during Naomi’s educational studies at the Ecole de hôtelière de Lausanne. Since then, she together with co-founder Anastasia Hofmann have been vigorously working to bring the hospitality industry a solution to tackle this growing issue of food waste. Their goal is to bring back the value of food, so that all food is appreciated and not wasted.

Marc Gruber is Vice President for Innovation at EPFL and full professor at the College of Management of Technology. He co-authored the book "Where to Play: 3 steps for discovering your most valuable market opportunities", which features the Market Opportunity Navigator. This business tool for entrepreneurs and innovators has recently been added by Steve Blank to his Lean Startup Toolset.

Philipp is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at FYRFLY Venture Partners, an early-stage venture firm based in San Francisco and Zurich. Philipp brings a long track record as a leader, investor, entrepreneur, and consultant of building and accelerating technology businesses globally. Over the course of a 20+ year career, Philipp has served as a strategic advisor and investor to start-ups, Global 500 companies and technology leaders such as Google, Salesforce, Facebook, VMWare, Splunk, and Accenture. Philipp was a founding Managing Partner at Accenture Interactive, now a business with over 10,000 professionals globally and more than $10B in revenue. Philipp was also a driving force in Accenture’s early cloud initiatives including the billion-dollar partnership between Salesforce and Accenture. Philipp is a Founding Board Member of the Swiss Blockchain Federation (SBF) and a Board Member of the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce (SACC). He is also an Advisor to the Swiss Entrepreneur Foundation, an initiative initiated by the Swiss Federal Council, and an Honorary Ambassador to Switzerland for Swiss/U.S. Economic Development (GZA).

Gil Horsky's passion is creating innovative products and snacks that are good for people, kind to the planet and deliciously fun!. Gil is part of the founding team for SnackFutures, the new innovation & venture hub from Mondelēz International, with three pillars: invent, reinvent and venture. SnackFutures is on a mission to create a vibrant ecosystem of partners to invent or to make venture investments in the next generation of snacks. For more info www.snackfutures.com Throughout his career, Horsky had the privilege to work on some of the most iconic global brands: Milka, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Toblerone, Cadbury, Oreo, Tropicana & Nestle Purina. Horsky leveraged strong business & consumer insights to identify, develop and launch over $500MM of new FMCG products and businesses around the world. His professional career has taken him around the world gaining strong international experience in both developing & emerging markets, including: Europe, Brazil, India, China, North America & Africa. Gil Horsky is a regular contributor to leading industry journals and a speaker in international conferences about the topics of innovation, FoodTech and marketing. But most importantly, Horsky enjoys working, leading and learning from others and wants to make a positive impact!

Through various work experiences in Malta, Miami Beach, Lausanne and Zurich, Anastasia developed strong fascination for the hospitality industry. She holds a Bachelor of international hospitality management from Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne and is very interested in the development and implementation of sustainable practices within this dynamic industry. This led her to co-found a start-up called KITRO, which focuses on food waste management in the hospitality industry. Combining her personal interest for the environment with an industry she is passionate about has been a very fulfilling learning experience.

Thomas Kessler is co-founder and CEO of Locatee. He holds an M.A. from the University of St. Gallen in Business Innovation. He and his co-founder Benedikt Köppel founded Locatee with the belief that connecting employees with their workspace through technology enables organisations to strive. Today, Locatee's SaaS solution empowers some of the largest organisations worldwide to create more engaging work environments while significantly reducing the costs for space, energy and other resources.

Ardy Arianpour is CEO & Co-Founder of Seqster, an award-winning SaaS healthcare platform that enables organizations to drive efficient healthcare via comprehensive medical records (EHR), individual genomic profiles (DNA), and personal health device data. For the first time, users create their own matched, longitudinal health data profile across all of their US-based healthcare data sources through person-centric interoperability. Ardy is a visionary health tech executive and serial entrepreneur in biotech and digital health.

Marc Stampfli is computer scientist and responsible for developing NVIDIA in Switzerland focusing on modern artificial intelligence with deep learning. He has a master in computer science from University of Zurich and has more than 18 years of experience in developing new technology market segments for enterprise companies. Before NVIDIA, he was working in leading positions for major technology companies from Silicon Valley such as IBM, Oracle, but as well traditional companies such as Colt Technology Services and PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is an enthusiastic speaker that is able to explain difficult technological topics in simple words so that everybody can follow and understand.

Fritz was born in Germany in 1982, raised in Guatemala and studied Politics and Economics back in Europe. He financed his studies by working the night shifts in Hotels. After being part of the European Parliament's International Trade Committee for 3 years he joined several Online Startups such as Rocket Internet, Food Panda and Treatwell. In 2015 he then started Zenjob with two friends & Co-Founders to help people control their work life. Today, headquartered in Berlin and with offices in Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Bonn, and Düsseldorf, the Tech-Startup and its 200 employees offer students jobs in real-time through an app and provide companies with a platform that manages their staffing needs.

Currently Andrew Reid is the Start-up and Partner Development lead for Microsoft Switzerland. Andrew started his career as a software engineer, before moving into Software Project and Programme management. The search for running larger programmes led to time developing and running large outsourcing agreements before moving back to the software industry. He has a track record of delivery for technology consulting, customer service and management, and leading organisations for a number of multi-national services companies on assignments around the world. Prior to his current role, Andrew has been General Manager of Microsoft Services, where he was responsible for the transformation of the Microsoft Digital Services Sales function which powers a multi-billion-dollar consulting services business.

Andrew is the Managing Director for Microsoft Startups in Western Europe, covering 17 countries, where he engages to identify, support and develop start-ups and scale-ups who have the potential to be incredible partners with Microsoft. Andrew focuses on developing businesses by helping them evolve, develop new revenue, and engage with the Microsoft customers to close new business. Andrew has worked in leadership roles in Sales, Digital Marketing, Strategy and Customer Success across Organisational Change, Mobile Telecoms and Cloud for multinational organisations.

Marc Philipp is the Founder and CEO of CodeControl, a Berlin-based community connecting over 600 vetted freelance top tier developers, designers and product managers who have worked with leading tech companies such as Amazon and Google. They work on a remote or onsite basis, delivering top-notch digital products and projects for leading tech companies, consultancies and corporates such as Kiwi.ki, mymuesli, Roland Berger and Lufthansa. In previous years, Marc Philipp founded several companies like Sommelier Privé, an online wine-shop with an algorithm-based taste matching of 4'500 wines, and Sellah Ltd., a note-sharing platform for students among other engagements

Esther-Mirjam de Boer is co-owner and CEO of GetDiversity GmbH, an Executive Search and Consulting firm that promotes diversity in management and boardroom environments and supports companies in developing an inclusive corporate culture. The entrepreneur is actively involved in several companies and serves on four boards of directors. As a columnist in the Handelszeitung, she critically reflects on political and economic events in Switzerland from the perspective of a progressive liberal woman. She acts as a lecturer, speaker and moderator and illuminates diversity and leadership from a strategic perspective.

Julius Bachmann is an executive & team coach, venture capital advisor, Venture Partner at Joyance Ventures, and musician based in Berlin. He supports entrepreneurs around Europe in questions around organisational development, finance, and fundraising. Prior, Julius worked as a venture capital investor and corporate venture consultant in London and Berlin and served as a VC expert to the European Commission on its Horizon 2020 programme. You can also find him playing the guitar on Berlin's stages and recording studios.

Eva is the scientific co-founder and head of food at Peace of Meat. Peace of Meat is a B2B supplier of cultured meat and advancing the technology for cultivated fat and liver to supply it to costumers in the food industry as an ingredient to help them make their products tasty, healthy and sustainable. The company is forging scientific and commercial partnerships to cover the entire value chain, to speed up research and production processes and to incentivize the industry in general. Eva is scientist by heart and obsessed by deep-rooted understanding as well as the design of most delicious cell-based food on a molecular level -from a single cell to the final end product. Before Peace of Meat she has built up the food division at the Israeli cultured meat startup Supermeat.

Paolo is the Managing Director for Europe at Joyance Partners. Joyance is an early stage Venture Capital firm investing in Delightful Moments startups - companies that can create moments of delight for their customers, making them happier, healthier, or both. Joyance has built a global portfolio of 80 companies, 11 of them in Europe where it launched in 2019 with headquarters in London. Paolo is a veteran of the technology industry, with expertise in product development and strategy, international business development, and enterprise sales. Before Joyance he ran Cisco’s Data Center Networking business development team for the region of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia. He is an Angel investor and serves in various startup advisory roles, including mentoring at Virgin Startups and TechItalia Lab. Paolo holds an MBA from London Business School where he was recognized for excellence in asset management, and a Cum Laude MS Engineering degree from Politecnico di Torino.

Moritz is very interested & knowledgeable in the start-up financing environment and innovation. He is an expert in mobility and automotive. He has a Master of Science and Master of Arts from Copenhagen and St. Gallen, is founder of a startup and has working experience in consulting and private equity. Working for 2.5 years at a fast-growing start-up taught him the essentials of fundraising and growing a company.

As founder of you advance GmbH, a consulting boutique for business development, Smart City & Technology Expert at Kickstart Innovation, Board Member of Urban Innovation Association Switzerland and Futurepreneur.ship, Kathrin loves to connect people and opportunities. As business angel investor she focuses on divers teams and innovative products and services in the area "Smart Cities in Switzerland”.

SAP.iO Fund Investments, EMEA. Author of 'The Accelerating World: Speed vs. Control'. Former entrepreneur, investor and tech enthusiast.

Alexandros Tyropolis, born 1993 in Kilchberg ZH and raised in Stäfa ZH, completed his bachelor's degree in International Business in Berlin and Dubai after training as a real estate agent at Mobimo AG. During his studies, he worked for a Swiss real estate company where, as a research analyst, he consolidated the usual market analyses and reduced them to the most important information, while at the same time discovering the potential in dealing with vacancies. After his studies, he returned to Switzerland and founded NOVAC-SOLUTIONS GmbH in the same year, which he has successfully managed ever since with a team of 8 employees. In 2018 he met his current co-founders of RealbotEngineering GmbH, which he founded in February 2019.