Yuval Noah Harari

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and the series Sapiens: A Graphic History and Unstoppable Us. His books have sold 45 Million copies in 65 languages, and he is considered one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals today. Born in Israel in 1976, Harari received his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2002 and is currently a lecturer at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2019, following the international success of his books, Yuval Noah Harari co-founded Sapienship with his husband and original agent, Itzik Yahav. Sapienship is a social impact company with projects in the fields of entertainment and education, whose main goal is to focus the public conversation on the most important global challenges facing the world today.

Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin, (born August 21, 1973, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), American computer scientist and entrepreneur who created, along with Larry Page, the online search engine Google, one of the most successful sites on the Internet.

DR Werner Vogels

Dr. Werner Vogels is Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com where he is responsible for driving the company’s customer-centric technology vision. As one of the forces behind Amazon’s approach to cloud computing, he is passionate about helping young businesses reach global scale, and transforming enterprises into fast-moving digital organizations. Vogels joined Amazon in 2004 from Cornell University where he was a distributed systems researcher.

Allen Blue

Allen is one of LinkedIn’s co-founders and is currently responsible for LinkedIn’s content, community and communications product initiatives, including products such as LinkedIn Today, Signal, Homepage, Groups, and Polls. Prior to Linkedin, Allen designed exploratory products and marketing programs at PayPal, and was part of the founding team at SocialNet.com, a first-generation social site supporting dating, recreational and professional activities.

Gavin Wood

Gavin Wood is a British computer scientist and software engineer famous for being the co-founder of Ethereum, inventor of smart contract programming language Solidity, and creator of Polkadot. Before joining the blockchain industry, Wood studied at the University of York, where he earned a Master of Engineering degree in 2002 and a PhD in Music Visualization for Human Computer Interfacing in 2005.

Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim (born 28 October 1979) is a German-American Internet entrepreneur, who co-founded YouTube and was the first person to upload a video on it. The video he released was named ‘Me at the zoo’ and as of 2016 has reached 34 million views. Many of the core components of PayPal, including its real-time anti-internet fraud system, were also designed and implemented by Karim.

Steve Huffman

Steve is the co-founder and CEO of Reddit, the “front page of the internet” and fourth most visited site in the U.S. He has led the company’s development of native image and video hosting, a new mobile app, and a full site redesign while growing the Reddit community to over 330 million monthly users. In addition to his work at Reddit, Steve is a mentor at Hackbright Academy, a San Francisco-based coding school for women.

Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg is best known for co-founding WordPress, but his innovations didn’t stop there. A spirited public speaker, Matt Mullenweg shares his insights on the future of work and bringing companies imaginatively to scale. More than 40% of the Internet’s top 10 million sites use WordPress, the content management system co-created by Matt Mullenweg. As CEO of Automattic, the company he founded to develop WordPress, Mullenweg demonstrates the commercial viability of open-source SaaS software.

Dorothee Bär

Dorothee Gisela Renate Maria Bär is a German politician of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since 2002. From 2014 to 2021, she served in various capacities in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Richie Hawtin

Richard "Richie" Hawtin is a British-Canadian electronic musician and DJ. He became involved with Detroit techno's second wave in the early 1990s,and has been a leading exponent of minimal techno since the mid-1990s. He became known for his recordings under the Plastikman and F.U.S.E. aliases. Under the latter, he released his debut album Dimension Intrusion (1993) as part of Warp's Artificial Intelligence series.

Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson has been a venture capitalist since 1987. He currently is a partner at Union Square Ventures and also founded Flatiron Partners. Fred has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Fred is married with three children and lives in New York City. Fred is Chairman of the NYC Department of Education's CS4All Capital Campaign and is co-Chairman of Tech:NYC.

Jutta Steiner

Jutta Steiner is a Co-founder & CEO of Parity tech. Currently, Jutta is a Co-founder & CEO of Parity Technologies and Grid Singularity. In addition, she serves as a COO at Ethcore and Manager Security Audit and Integration at Ethereum. Jutta started her career in 2011, being an intern at Deutsche Post DHL. In 2011-2012, she was a Researcher at École Polytechnique. From 2013 to 2014, Jutta was an Associate at McKinsey & Company. In 2015, Jutta served as a COO at Project Provenance.

Alex Gluchowski

Alex is the co-inventor of zkSync and currently serves as the co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs. At Matter Labs, he leads a talented team focused on addressing blockchain scalability challenges using zero-knowledge proofs. Alex's passion lies in using technology to advance personal freedom, self-ownership, and decentralisation.

Juergen Mueller

Juergen Mueller is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, leading the Technology and Innovation board area. As Chief Technology Officer (CTO), he oversees SAP’s platform and technology development. In addition, he is responsible for innovation efforts related to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) as well as new technologies.

Adam D’Angelo

Adam D'Angelo (born August 21, 1984) is an American internet entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Quora, based in Mountain View, California. He was chief technology officer of Facebook, and also served as its vice president of engineering, until 2008. In June 2009, he started Quora. He invested $20 million of his own money into Quora as part of their Series B round of financing. He is a member of the board of directors of OpenAI.

Scott Croyle

Scott Croyle is a Director at Apple. Croyle worked on Android products for over a decade before moving to Apple. He oversaw devices like the HTC One M7 and M8 before moving on to Nextbit, where he worked on the cloud-focused Nextbit Robin smartphone. Several months after Razer bought Nextbit, Croyle departed for a studio called Attic, where he stayed for almost three years. He joined Apple as a director in April 2020.

Robert Habermeier

Robert Habermeier is a Thiel Fellow and co-founder of Polkadot. He has a research and development background in blockchains, distributed systems, and cryptography. A longtime member of the Rust community, he has focused on leveraging the language’s features to build highly parallel and performant solutions.

Dominik Richter

Dominik Richter is the Founder & CEO of HelloFresh. HelloFresh SE is a publicly traded meal kit company based in Berlin, Germany. It is the largest meal-kit provider in the United States, and also has operations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Europe (GB, D-A-CH, Benelux, France, Italy and Scandinavia) and Japan. It has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since its IPO in November 2017.

Maximilian Tayenthal

Maximilian Tayenthal is Founder and Co-CEO of N26. Together with his business partner and friend Valentin Stalf, he has built one of the fastest-growing mobile banks in the world. Their vision is to create a bank that 100 million people around the world love to use, giving people the power to live and bank their way.

George Church

George M. Church, PhD ’84, is professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, a founding member of the Wyss Institute, and director of PersonalGenomes.org, the world’s only open-access information on human genomic, environmental, and trait data. His team invented CRISPR for human stem cell genome editing and other synthetic biology technologies and applications.

Johannes Reck

Johannes Reck is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at GetYourGuide. He leads the company’s long-term vision and strategy. Under Johannes’ direction, GetYourGuide has grown into the leading global online booking platform for unforgettable travel experiences, with more than 80 million tickets booked to date. As CEO, he drives an internal team of 700+ employees from its headquarters in Berlin, Germany. Johannes is a German native. Prior to founding GetYourGuide, he studied biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich).

Luis Von Ahn

Luis von Ahn is an entrepreneur and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, regarded a pioneer of crowdsourcing. He is known for inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur Fellow and selling 2 companies to Google. He has been named one of the 10 Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science, 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover, and 100 Most Innovative People in Business by Fast Company. Luis is the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, the world's most downloaded education app with 120 million users.

Sebastian Siematowski

Sebastian Siemiatkowski (born 1981) is CEO & co-founder of the Stockholm-based payments company Klarna. While studying at the Stockholm School of Economics he was inspired to think about what kind of payment solution for e-commerce would make it possible to separate the fun experience of buying from the tedious process of paying. Convinced that the solution to this dilemma would truly add value for both buyers and sellers, the idea to introduce after-delivery payment as a service was born.

Boyan Slat

Boyan is the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, the foundation that develops advanced systems to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. In February 2013, he decided that the future of our oceans was a more pressing issue than his aerospace engineering degree, and now he dedicates himself full-time to managing the rapid growth of the organization, while also overseeing the team’s technology developments.

Beatie Wolfe

Musical weirdo and visionary" (Vice) Beatie Wolfe has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN role model for innovation, and held a solo exhibition of her ‘world first’ designs at the V&A Museum. Named by WIRED as one of "22 people changing the world,” Wolfe is at the forefront of pioneering new formats that bridge the physical and digital. Wolfe's latest innovations include a visualisation of 800,000 years of CO2 data, which premiered at the Nobel Prize Summit, and a Brain Installation which was exhibited at the London Design Biennale in Somerset House. Other recent projects include the world's first bioplastic record with Michael Stipe and new work with Brian Eno. Wolfe is also the co-founder of a groundbreaking research project looking at the power of music for dementia.

Mathias Döpfner

Mathias Döpfner is Chairman and CEO of Axel Springer AG in Berlin. He has been with Axel Springer AG since 1998, initially as Editor-in-Chief of Die Welt and since 2000 as Member of the Management Board. During his career he has held different positions in media companies. Among others he was Editor-in-Chief of the newspapers Wochenpost and Hamburger Morgenpost.

Paola Antonelli

Paola Antonelli is senior curator in the department of architecture and design of the Museum of Modern Art, where she has worked since 1994. She has lectured worldwide in settings ranging from peer conferences to global interdisciplinary gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, and she has served on several international architecture and design juries. From 1991 to 1993, she was a Lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Niklas Östberg

Niklas Östberg is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Delivery Hero. Niklas worked for five years as a corporate consultant for Oliver Wyman before co-founding Pizza.nu (later OnlinePizza.se), where he served as chairman. In 2011, he founded Delivery Hero with some collaborators from the Berlin start-up scene in order to roll out the business globally from Germany. The company so far has achieved from 1 to 30,000 employees and 1 million drivers across 50 countries in 4 continents, 1 to 9,000,000 orders delivered every day and a billion dollar IPO.

Kathleen Breitman

Kathleen Breitman is the CEO of Tezos, a blockchain-based smart contract platform with an on-chain governance mechanism to coordinate and push upgrades to its network. Prior to Tezos, Kathleen was a senior strategy associate for R3, a blockchain consortium of more than 70 financial firms. She has also worked at Accenture, Bridgewater Associates, and the Wall Street Journal. She holds a degree from Cornell University.

Tom Hulme

Tom Hulme is a General Partner at Google Ventures. Prior to GV, Tom was a design director at IDEO Europe. He founded OpenIDEO, an open innovation platform where 100,000 users from more than 170 countries solve challenges for social good. Tom also launched OIEngine, a SaaS platform with a number of clients, including Harvard Business School and the Knight Foundation.

Taavet Hinrikus

Taavet is the Chairman of Wise, which he co-founded in 2010. Prior to starting Wise, Taavet was Skype’s director of strategy until 2008, starting as its first employee. He’s also an active angel investor in Europe with 100+ investments including Bolt, Zego, Veriff, Gideon Brothers, Meatable, Farewill and many others. More recently he co-founded Jõhvi Coding School to help increase the amount of people with coding skills and Certific to help bring trust to the medical testing market.

Renaud Visage

Renaud Visage co-founded the world's largest event technology company, Eventbrite (NYSE: EB), and now helping start-ups scale as an angel investor (60+ startups in portfolio), as a venture partner with seed fund Point Nine Capital, and as a non executive board director (ABTasty, Athenian, Bearer, Meister).

Alex Salnikov

Alex Salnikov is the Head of Product and co-founder of Rarible, a top-ranked community-centric NFT marketplace. A blockchain trailblazer and an active developer in the crypto space since 2012, Alex previously served as the chief technology officer of CoinOffering, the first company to offer its shares in the form of blockchain assets. With a BA in Computer Science and an MA in Data Science, Alex’s specialities span a variety of sectors including market analysis, decentralized finance, NFTs, and tokenomics.

Alexandra Cousteau

Alexandra Cousteau, is an award-winning advocate for ocean restoration and abundance. As a leading figure in ocean activism, Cousteau collaborates with world leaders across sectors to influence, convene and mobilize action to achieve measurable outcomes that will make the oceans more biodiverse and abundant. Cousteau is the President and Co-Founder of Oceans 2050, an organization that is dedicated to restoring abundant oceans in one generation.

Young Sohn

Silicon Valley entrepreneur, passionate about building businesses and excited about emerging technologies that have a positive impact to transform lives. Served as CEO of two successful Silicon Valley public companies and on boards of Arm, Cadence, Cymer (ASML) and others. Seed investor to innovative companies including Berkeley Lights, Fungible, Zoom Video, Graphcore and TTTech.

Arlan Hamilton

Arlan Hamilton is a remarkable entrepreneur who built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a venture capital firm dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started in 2015, Backstage has now invested nearly $5M into 100 startups led by underestimated founders.

Bryant Chou

Bryant Chou is the co-founder of no-code web design software, Webflow. Webflow is the next evolution of web design and online publishing. Experience the future of web design utilizing visual development.

Camila Russo

Camila Russo is the Founder at The Defiant, a daily newsletter decrypting the intersection of blockchain and finance. Author of upcoming Harper Collins book ‘The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum’. Russo is also a former market and crypto reporter at Bloomberg News.

Cassie Kozyrkov

Cassie is a data scientist and leader at Google with a mission to democratize Decision Intelligence and safe, reliable AI. She is also a popular keynote speaker. Cassie brings a unique combination of deep technical expertise, analytics management experience, and ability to lead organizational change. She provided guidance on more than 100 projects and designed Google's analytics program, personally training over 20000 Googlers in statistics, decision-making, and machine learning.

Daniel Krauss

Daniel Krauss is Chief Information Officer at Flix, where he manages the areas of technology, HR development and customer service. Working in collaboration with his co-founders, he was keen to give up his long-standing job at Microsoft to build and continue the development of Europe’s largest long-distance bus provider. Krauss is also an investor and a member of different advisory boards including powercloud, Cloudflight and uvex.

Mike Pondsmith

Michael Alyn Pondsmith (born April 14, 1954), typically credited as Mike Pondsmith, is an American roleplaying, board, and video game designer. He is best known for his work for the publisher R. Talsorian Games, where he developed a majority of the company's role-playing game lines since the company's founding in 1982. Pondsmith is credited as an author of several RPG lines, including Mekton (1984), Cyberpunk (1988), and Castle Falkenstein (1994).

Claire Novorol

Claire is a trained doctor, and served as a pediatrician in London before specializing in clinical genetics. With a degree in both pathology and medicine from the University of Bristol and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge, Claire oversees all of Ada’s medical affairs. As an industry thought leader, she gives a voice to the clinicians, patients, and doctors to ensure that our product meets their needs.

Fabian Heilemann

Fabian is the Founder & CEO of Aenu. Fabian co-founded six companies, including DailyDeal (acquired by Google) and Forto (valued at 2B.) Previously, he was General Partner at Earlybird, where he built the climate tech practice and helped scale the firm from EUR 700m > 2b in AUM.

Florian Heinemann

Dr. Florian Heinemann is a General Partner and co-founded the firm in 2012. He is responsible for the functional areas of marketing, CRM and business intelligence. Before co-founding Project A, he was managing director at Rocket Internet with the same areas of responsibility (2007-2012).

Frank Thelen

Frank Thelen is a European serial founder, technology investor and TV personality. Since 1994, he has founded and managed technology and design-driven companies, investing in startups like Lilium Aviation, Wunderlist, myTaxi, kaufDA and Little Lunch.

Nicole Moudaber

Nicole Moudaber is an event promoter, record label founder, radio host, and one of the most passionately followed DJ/producers in the world. Ignited by an internal combustion engine fueled by raw emotion, Nicole Moudaber is at the forefront of her own movement. The sought after DJ and Producer presides over an empire that includes MOOD; her highly influential record label and global party brand, as well as a hugely popular radio show, a back catalogue of incendiary techno releases and a range of philanthropic endeavors.

Dr. Martine Rothblatt

Martine Rothblatt is Chairman & CEO of United Therapeutics, a company she started to save the life of one of her daughters. She leads efforts to create novel therapies for rare diseases, to decode the pharmacogenomic properties of medicines and to manufacture an unlimited supply of transplantable organs. She previously created and led Sirius XM as its Chairman & CEO, and launched other satellite systems for navigation and international television broadcasting.

Anne Boden

Anne Boden is CEO and founder of Starling Bank. Prior to Starling, she was Chief Operating Officer of Allied Irish Banks Plc and Head of EMEA, Global Transaction Banking across 34 countries for RBS and ABN AMRO.Anna has more than 30 years experience in banking, having begun her career at Lloyds Bank, before moving on to Standard Chartered Bank and then UBS in Zurich and was recently recognised as one of the Global Power Women in FinTech. She holds a BSc in Computer Science and Chemistry, an MBA and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of IT.

Wade Davis

Former NFL Player Wade Davis is a thought leader, public speaker, and writer on gender, race, and orientation equality. Wade is currently the Vice President of Inclusion Strategy for Product at Netflix and has consulted for companies including Google, Procter & Gamble, Viacom, and others to co-create transformative solutions to build inclusive corporate cultures. Additionally, Wade coaches senior leaders to adapt and flex their leadership styles to meet the needs and develop their employee population.

Jeanette Epps

Jeanette J. Epps (Ph.D.) was selected as an astronaut in 2009. She has been assigned to her first spaceflight, Expedition 56/57, scheduled to launch in May 2018. Her training included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in International Space Station systems, spacewalk training, robotics, T-38 flight training and wilderness survival training. The New York native was a NASA Fellow during graduate school and authored several journal and conference articles.

Caterina Fake

Entrepreneur, investor at Yes VC, Host of Should This Exist?, a podcast about technology's effect on humanity. Writer, artist and reader. Homeschooling mother, thinker. Co-founder of Flickr, Hunch, Sesat School, Kahvila Silli. Serve on the Boards of Directors at Public Goods, Sundance and McSweeneys.

Jitse Groen

Jitse Groen (born 2 June 1978) is a Dutch businessman and the founder of Takeaway.com, a food delivery platform. He is the chief executive (CEO) of Takeaway.com, and, since 2020, also the CEO of Just Eat following its merger with Takeaway.com.

Erika Cheung

Erika is currently, the executive director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship, a non-profit whose mission is to foster ethical questioning, culture, and systems in startups and startup ecosystems. We provide programs catered to workers, investors, and founders. Erika is an advisor to several family offices, venture capital firms, and governmental investment programs focused on healthcare, biosciences, and biotechnology companies. She invests a portion of her time building cross-border networks between the US and the Asia Pacific region to facilitate the growth of companies operating in emerging markets.

Katie Rae

Katie serves as the CEO & Managing Partner of The Engine, a venture capital fund built by MIT, that invests in early-stage companies solving the world’s biggest problems through the convergence of breakthrough science, engineering and leadership. She serves as a Board Member at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Form Energy, Via Separations, Lilac Solutions, WoHo and VEIR.

Erika Lust

Erika Lust (born 1977) is a Swedish erotic film director, screenwriter and producer. Since the debut of her first indie erotic film The Good Girl in 2004, Lust has been cited as one of the current leading participants in the feminist pornography movement,asserting that an ethical production process sets her company apart from mainstream pornography sites

Leilani Farha

Leilani is the Global Director of The Shift, an international movement to secure the right to housing and the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing (2014- 2020). The Shift was launched in 2017 with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Cities and Local Government and works with multi-level stakeholders around the world including with several city governments in North America and Europe.

Lubomila Jordanova

Founder & CEO of Plan A. Plan A offers an award-winning Science- and AI-driven SaaS platform for business carbon accounting, decarbonisation and ESG reporting.

Lucas von Cranach

Lucas von Cranach is the Founder of One Football. He was a supporter of 1. FC Cologne long before he was set to become an entrepreneur in the football industry. It all started in the early days of the smartphone when Lucas realized that there was no service providing fans with live scores and results. He started out with a simple SMS-service delivering livescores to the fans’ pockets. Only a few years later this service has turned into one of the most successful football-apps around the globe connecting more than 20 million fans.

Magnus Resch

Magnus Resch, Ph.D., is one of the world’s leading art market economists. He is a bestselling book author, University Professor and serial entrepreneur. He founded Gymondo.de (exit), Magnusclass.com, Larryslist.com and Magnus.net, the Shazam for art. Leonardo DiCaprio is an investor and advisor to the company. Magnus lectures at Yale University, published in Science, the world’s leading academic journal, and has written seven books on the art market, including three bestsellers.

Markus Witte

Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Babbel, Markus is an entrepreneur with an academic, technical & marketing background. After completing his Humanities major, he began his career as a researcher and academic teacher at NYU and Humboldt University, where he found his passion for teaching. Following his time as an academic, he led the development of online marketing and web infrastructure and managed the online and systems teams at music software company Native Instruments for 6 years. Coming back to learning and teaching, he co-founded Babbel in 2007.

Monique Morrow

Monique Morrow is Senior Distinguished Architect for Emerging Technologies at Syniverse Technologies where her main role and responsibilities is to provide thought leadership and to help the strategic direction and vision for Syniverse's identified emerging technologies across the company, partners and industry forum. Specific focus areas include extensions of Distributed Ledger Technology [DLT] and other emerging components of Blockchain technologies to Syniverse’s Lines of Business and our Enterprise.

Om Malik

Om Malik is an award-winning journalist and the founder of GigaOm. With seed funding from True Ventures, he turned the one-man technology blog, which he started in 2001, into a pioneering media company and research firm. Om previously served in various editorial roles for Business 2.0, Forbes.com, Red Herring, and Quick Nikkei News.

Phil Libin

Phil Libin is co-founder and CEO of All Turtles and mmhmm. He started the globally distributed product studio All Turtles in 2017 to solve meaningful problems. mmhmm was hatched from All Turtles in 2020, and is a desktop and web app that puts you on screen with your slides so you can stay engaged with your audience. Previously, Phil was the co-founder and CEO of Evernote, growing the product to hundreds of millions of users.

Rem Koolhas

Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is often cited as a representative of Deconstructivism and is the author of Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan.

Rolf Schrömgens

Rolf is a serial entrepreneur. Right out of university, in 1999, he started one of the best-funded European first wave internet companies ciao.com. In 2005, he started his second company trivago.com, which became, within a decade, the most successful hotel search and one of the largest global consumer brands. He brought trivago public at Nasdaq in 2016 and moved lately from his CEO role into a board position.

Sarah Kunst

Sarah Kunst is the managing director of Cleo Capital & a contributing editor at Marie Claire Magazine. She has served as a senior advisor at Bumble where she focused on their corporate VC arm Bumble Fund and on the board of the Michigan State University Foundation endowment. Kunst has been named a Future Innovator by Vanity Fair, Forbes Magazine 30 under 30 and a top 25 innovator in tech by Cool Hunting.

Seth Bannon is a Founding Partner at Fifty Years. Seth has seeded a range of startups shaping the world for the better — companies like Upside Foods (culturing meat to eat), Solugen (engineering enzymes to produce industrial chemicals sustainably), and Astranis (small satellites to cover the Earth in Internet). A graduate of Y Combinator, Seth was named twice to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Social Entrepreneurship.

Tania Singer

Prof. Dr. Tania Singer is a social neuroscientist and psychologist and world expert on empathy and compassion. She has a passion for creating bridges between fields that typically never interact such as linking neuroscience with economics, science with arts or science with spirituality.

Chris Burniske

Chris Burniske is a partner at Placeholder, a New York venture firm that invests in decentralized information networks. Prior to Placeholder, he co-authored the best-seller, Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond, and spearheaded ARK Invest’s crypto efforts, including its 2015 bitcoin investment. His commentary has been featured on international media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, and Bloomberg. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BS from Stanford University. Twitter @cburniske.

Wendy Kopp

Wendy Kopp is CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent organizations that are cultivating their nations’ promising future leaders to ensure their most marginalized children have the chance to fulfill their true potential. Wendy founded Teach For America in 1989 to marshal the energy of her generation against educational inequity in the United States.

Wes Kao

Wes is co-founder of Maven, the first platform for cohort-based courses. Maven helps creators build a cohort-based course and deliver an incredible student experience at scale. More here and in TechCrunch. Previously, Wes was the co-founder of the altMBA. Under her leadership, the altMBA grew from zero to 550 cities in 45 countries in three years of high-growth. She designed the altMBA's beloved coaching system, grew the global community, built the marketing engine to drive sustainable acquisition/retention, and built a team of 40 people to support rapid scaling.

Audrey Tsang

Audrey is currently the Co-CEO at Clue, the female health app that helps millions of people better understand their menstrual cycle so they can live full and healthy lives. In this role, she leads product, design, data science, and growth. Before joining Clue, she was Product Lead of the Pinterest Home Feed, Director of Mobile at HotelTonight (acquired by Airbnb), and the first Product Manager at Yelp. She also co-founded, pivoted, navigated the business and emotional roller coaster, and shuttered a photo-sharing startup called Waddle.

Jeannette zu Fürstenberg

As La Famiglia's co-founder, Jeannette is the driver of the fund's history and vision, marrying her network with the tech ecosystem. Jeannette can context switch like no other, and rocks everything she touches, from board meetings to her family of six.

Ingmar Hoerr

Ingmar founded “CureVac, the RNA people“ together with colleagues in Tübingen, Germany in 2000. His entrepreneurship was motivated by his surprising discovery during his doctoral research that naked mRNA can be expressed in vivo without the risk of rapid degradation, while exhibiting the ability to generate strong specific immune responses, in contrast to what had previously been believed.

Adrian Locher

Adrian Locher is the co-founder and CEO of Berlin-based Merantix, an AI investment platform, and initiator of the AI Campus. He has been a serial entrepreneur and investor for the past 20 years, founding more than 10 companies. He sold his previous company, a leading Swiss e-commerce firm, at EUR 100M revenue.

Andy Yen

Andy is the founder and CEO of Proton. He is a long-time advocate for privacy rights and has spoken at TED, Web Summit, and the United Nations about online privacy issues. Previously, Andy was a research scientist at CERN and has a PhD in particle physics from Harvard University.

Anna Frebel

Anna Frebel is an MIT professor and world-renowned astronomer who studies 13 billion year-old stars to understand the origin of chemical elements and our Milky Way galaxy. Honoured with multiple awards, she has authored the book "Searching for the oldest stars" and founded LEAPS STEM leadership program.

Daniela Gerd tom Markotten

Daniela Gerd tom Markotten studied industrial engineering and holds a PhD in IT security, combining two passions: IT & technology. She held management positions at large companies like Daimler as well as start-ups. As Board Member at Deutsche Bahn, the national railway company of Germany with over 324,00 employees, she has a clear mission: utilising digitalisation and technology to make DB the most popular and sustainable means of transport for customers.

Mick Halsband

Zak Khutoretsky

Founder of the revenue-sharing service Aslice, Zak Khutoretsky, aka DVS1, is one the world's most revered DJs and prominent voices in preserving true club culture. Known for addressing issues within the electronic scene, DVS1 launched Aslice in 2022, a community-driven platform that encourages DJs to donate a percentage of their fees to the artists whose music they play.

Alain Ryan Bouwman

Alain Bouwman, Head of Strategy, Growth & Transformation at Mercedes-Benz.io, is leading the strategy of the company's digital hubs that build Mercedes-Benz's online sales channels. His strategic acumen and focus on organizational performance have propelled the company's digital transformation, making it a leader in the automotive industry.

Bradley Miles

Bradley is the co-founder and CEO of Roll. Prior to Roll he was one of the founding researchers at CoinDesk, creating the company’s State of Blockchain report and serving as a product lead on the research team as the Ethereum Mainnet went live in 2015. He was previously an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Techstars and is the best-selling author of #BreakIntoVC

Carla Glassl

Ucaneo aims to remove 1 million tons of CO2 from ambient air by 2030 by developing the world's first biomimetic Direct Air Capture approach. Carla is a visionary and ambitious female founder with 8 years of biotech, 4 years of machine learning, and 3 years of startup experience. She initiated 10+ research projects during her studies and is driven to harness technology to create a bright future.

Carrie Walter

Carrie is the co-CEO of Clue, the Berlin-based pioneer in femtech and digital health that is a companion for millions of people around the world who want to empower themselves through knowledge, from their first period to their last. She initially joined the company as GC, where she led Clue’s regulatory process for FDA clearance, which approved Clue Birth Control mode as a digital medical device

Christian Bogatu

Christian is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He advises the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (www.sprind.org), identifying and supporting innovators with radical ideas with a billion Euro budget. Since 2018, Christian also serves as Venture Partner for Eurazeo/Idinvest Partners, the largest EU based Venture Capital fund, investing in cleantech startups. From 2017 until 2020 he was co-founder and CEO of Fresh Energy, generating unparalleled insights based on smart meter data, before selling Fresh Energy to EWE end of 2020.

Dr. Anna Christmann

Dr. Anna Christmann is the Aerospace Coordinator of German Federal Government and the Commissioner for Startups and the Digital Economy at the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action. She has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2017 and is part of the parliamentary group Alliance 90/ The Greens. She received her PhD from the University of Bern in 2011 and then worked at the Center for Democracy at the University of Zurich. From 2013, she worked at the Ministry of Science in Stuttgart as the minister's office manager and as a policy advisor in science policy.

Friederike Ernst

Friederike, a physics PhD, is the cofounder of Gnosis and host of the Epicenter podcast. Gnosis DAO has created numerous essential infrastructure solutions for the Ethereum blockchain, including the widely used Gnosis Safe wallet and Gnosis Chain, a community-run, credibility-neutral public blockchain ecosystem.

George Goldsmith

George is an entrepreneur dedicated to bringing about positive change in society with particular focus on health and wellbeing. His early training and experience was a multi-disciplinary blending of cognitive psychology, clinical psychology and computer science. In 2016, he co-founded COMPASS Pathways, a mental health care company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health.

Josef Ackermann

Mr. Ackermann began his career as a banker in 1977 at Credit Suisse. In 1990 he was appointed to the Executive Board, becoming president in 1993. In 1996 he joined the board of Deutsche Bank, serving a decade, as spokesman and later as Chair of the Management Board and Executive Committee. He led Deutsche Bank into the top ranks of the world's investment banks and is a globally recognised leader.

Julia Maier

Julian Maier is the person behind his online presence, called Julian Mental Sixpack. His personal mission is to empower people on 3 levels: mentally, physically, emotionally. In 2017, his mother passed away due to heavy depression, so he decided to dedicate his life to help people with mental, emotional, and physical health. With this intention, he started URBNTIGER, a startup and a club with the mission to empower people with 3-Elements Training for Mind, Body, and Spirit.

Marc Christ

Marc-Alexander Christ is co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at SumUp. After graduating from the University of Maatricht, he started his career in Investment Banking at European Investors in New York, followed by a position as VP at JPM in London and Frankfurt. After collecting his first experience in the startup world as head of sales at CityDeal (Groupon), Marc cofounded MIOSATO, the online fashion gallery and SumUp the leading mPOS player in Europe.

Maxim Nitsche

Maxim is the Co-Founder & CEO of DeepNews — the first news platform that is trustworthy & personalized, without a filter bubble. The aim is to combat Fake News on a global scale. DeepNews is looking to partner with publishers to bring their content to younger audiences. Previously Maxim co-founded MATH 42 — a math learning app used by over 6 million students worldwide. The company was acquired by Chegg in 2017.

Melanie Joy

Dr. Melanie Joy is an award-winning psychologist and bestselling author. Her books include Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and How to End Injustice Everywhere. She received endorsements from Yuval Harari, Matthieu Ricard, and Peter Singer. She also received the Ahimsa Award—previously given to Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama—for her work on nonviolence. She’s the founder of Beyond Carnism.

Michal Pěchouček

Michal Pěchouček is the CTO of Gen, a publicly traded global company with a market capitalization of $11 billion, and AI Professor at the Czech Technical University. Gen is dedicated to powering Digital Freedom through its trusted Cyber Safety brands, which include Norton, Avast, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender, and CCleaner. As the CTO, Michal leads the core technology, innovation, and R&D teams at Gen, driving advancements in security engines, AI, and cybersecurity research. He plays a pivotal role in shaping the company's technological vision for human-centered digital safety.

Mik Naayem

Prior to becoming co-founder and President of Dapper Labs, a company valuated at $7.6 billion, Mik Naayem served on parent company Axiom Zen’s Board of Directors. He is currently responsible for business strategy, partnerships, and helping build out Flow’s ecosystem in order to create powerful blockchain-based user experiences.

Paul Kohlhaas

Paul Kohlhaas is an economist, biohacker and web3 pioneer on a mission to create public utility networks. He graduated from the University of St Gallen, founded Linum Labs and oversaw digital identity at ConsenSys. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Molecule democratising biopharma via decentralised science (DeSci), which aims to reconnect patients and scientists through liquid markets for IP.

Philipp Zentner

Philipp Zentner is a technical serial entrepreneur who's built B2B SaaS companies in gaming, biotech, and marketplace intelligence. With LI.FI, he's built a blockchain infrastructure company that has raised $23 Mio. USD within 18 months and grown to above 40 people. LI.FI aggregates crucial DeFi infrastructure, has processed over $1.5bn USD and serves the largest companies in the space.

Pia Mancini

Pia Mancini is a democracy activist, open source sustainer, co-founder at Open Collective and Chair of Democracy Earth Foundation. She worked in politics in Argentina and developed technology for democracy around the world. YC Alum, globe-trotter and Roma’s mum. She is now based in NYC. YC Alum, YGL (World Economic Forum).

Raffael Wohlgensinger

Raffael is the Founder & CEO of Formo Bio, Europes leading biotech food company that raised over €50M to bring animal-free dairy to the world. He holds a Master in Strategy and International Management from the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland.

Ralf Wenzel

Ralf Wenzel is the New York-based founder and CEO of JOKR, the next generation digital grocery offering across Latin America. As CEO he is involved in every part of the business, from Operations to Product & Tech and beyond. He has a 20-year track record of building companies up from scratch, bringing their products to consumers globally, and leading diverse teams with a focus in emerging markets.