Programme

Alexander De Croo

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda, Telecom and Postal Services, Government of Belgium

Alexander De Croo is Deputy Prime Minister for Open VLD and Minister of Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda, Telecom and Postal Services in the Michel I Government.
As Minister of Development Cooperation, he focuses on strengthening human rights and promoting local economic growth in the partner countries.
The Digital Agenda, Telecom and Postal Services portfolio focuses on the maximisation of the economic potential of the digital economy.

Tibor Navracsics

European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, European Commission

Tibor Navracsics holds degrees in law from the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Budapest's ELTE University and a PhD in political sciences. In 1999 he became an Associate professor at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, ELTE. Between 1997–2000, he assumed the position of the Secretary-General of the Hungarian Political Science Association and he was also Head of the Department of the Prime-Minister's Office until 2002. In 2003 he became Chef de Cabinet to the President of the Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Union and between 2006–2010 he was an elected Member of Parliament as well as a Member of the Parliamentary Committee for Constitutional, Judicial and Procedural Affairs. He also served as Fidesz National Assembly representative from 2006 until October 2014.

Between 2010 and 2014 he was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Administration and Justice. In 2014 he also assumed the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In November 2014, Tibor Navracsics became European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport.

Kaja Kallas

MEP, European Parliament

Kaja Kallas is an Estonian politician. She is currently a Member of the European Parliament elected from Estonia and belongs to the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). She has previously worked as an attorney-at-law and been a Member of the Parliament of Estonia (Riigikogu), where she chaired the Economic Affairs Committee. She is also Vice-Chairman of the Estonian Reform Party. As an attorney, she specialised in European and Estonian competition law.

In the European Parliament, Kaja Kallas serves on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and is Vice-Chair of the Delegation to the EU–Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. She is also a substitute for the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and the Delegation for Relations with the United States. She was a rapporteur for the jointly drafted strategic report "Towards a Digital Single Market Act" that calls for ambitious action to remove barriers in the digital world as well as to avoid hindering the technological revolution by overregulating the sector.

Jo Deblaere

Chief Operating Officer, Accenture

Jo Deblaere is Accenture’s chief operating officer, responsible for leading the company’s business operations globally, executing Accenture’s business strategy and ensuring operational excellence company-wide. Mr. Deblaere is also group chief executive – Europe with overall leadership responsibility for more than 20 countries. In addition, Mr. Deblaere leads enterprise risk management for Accenture, working across the company to identify, assess and actively manage enterprise risks. He is a member of Accenture's Global Management Committee and chairs Accenture’s Capital and Investment Committees.

Brando Benifei

MEP, European Parliament

Brando Benifei, 31, European Federalist, is one of the youngest MEPs and is from La Spezia, Italy. He has been chair of European affairs for the Young Democrats and Vice-President of ECOSY (youth organization of PES) for 4 years and was part of the PES working group which originally drafted the European Youth Guarantee. His main fields of legislative work in the EP are Employment and social affairs and Foreign affairs. He is co-chair of the Youth Intergroup and vice-chair of the Disability Intergroup. Among his parliamentary activities in the Committee of Employment and Social Affairs, he was responsible for key legislative and non-legislative reports on the social inclusion and integration of refugees into the EU labour market; youth employment policy such as the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative. He is very active on digitalisation and innovation, throughout different platforms and networks, most recently specifically on the copyright reform.

Paweł Swieboda

Deputy Head, European Political Strategy Centre

Prior to joining the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), an in-house think tank of the European Commission reporting directly to President Juncker, as Deputy Head, Paweł Swieboda was President of demosEUROPA – Centre for European Strategy, an EU policy think tank based in Warsaw, from 2006 to 2015. Earlier, he was Director of the EU Department at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the years 2001-2006 and EU Advisor to the President of Poland from 1996 to 2000. 

A graduate of the London School of Economics (BSc in Economics), and the University of London (MA in International Relations), he is a member of a number of advisory boards of European think tanks as well as a member of the Global Agenda Council on Europe of the World Economic Forum. In 2013/2014, he was Rapporteur of the Review of European Innovation Partnerships.

Anna Sort

CEO & Founder, PlayBenefit

A nurse with a mission: Make health fun. Passionate about video games and engagement design. Entrepreneur, blogger and lecturer. Nurse by profession, and a Master’s graduate on Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media with a singular ICT-Health specialisation. Currently leading engagement design projects in a wide range of industries, working as a professor in several international universities (Stanford, Universitat de Barcelona, UAB) and collaborating in Serious Gaming projects and congresses. In 2016 Anna was chosen to be one of the 10 founding members of the Women of Health IT Community, created by HIMSS Europe to empower women in the health IT sector.

Karl-Filip Coenegrachts

Chief Strategy Officer, City of Ghent

Karl-Filip Coenegrachts is Master of Laws, specialized in European Law. From 1997 to 2000 he worked for the Belgian Ministry of Justice as co-ordinator for the European Union and Schengen.

In 2001 he started in Ghent as advisor to the Vice Mayor responsible for personnel and IT. In that capacity he co-founded Digipolis, the intermunicipal organisation for ICT for the cities of Ghent and Antwerp, and Gentinfo, the first local citizen service centre in Europe.

In 2004 he became head of Department of Strategy and International Relations of the City of Ghent and Chief Strategy Officer in 2015. His responsibilities include the long term strategy of Ghent including the implementation of horizontal policies, smart city/citizen strategy, data and information management, international relations, policy participation and European funding programmes.

He is currently also Ghent representative and President of the Executive Committee of Eurocities.

Robert Pepper

Head of Global Connectivity Policy and Planning, Facebook

Robert Pepper helps lead Facebook’s connectivity and technology policy activities focusing on new technology development, deployment and adoption.  Pepper previously was Cisco’s Vice President for Global Technology Policy for more than a decade, working with governments across the world helping them develop their digital strategies and address areas such as ICT and development, broadband plans, IP enabled services, wireless and spectrum policy, the Internet of Things, security, privacy and Internet governance.

Pepper was Chief of the Office of Plans and Policy and Chief of Policy Development at the FCC for 16 years beginning in 1989 where he led teams designing and implementing the first U.S. spectrum auctions, developing policies promoting the development of the Internet, implementing telecommunications legislation, and planning for the transition to digital television.

Before joining the FCC, Pepper was Director of the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy. His government service also included Acting Associate Administrator at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and initiating a program on Computers, Communications and Information Policy at the National Science Foundation.

His academic appointments included faculty positions at the Universities of Iowa, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and as a research affiliate at Harvard University. He chairs the U.S. Department of State’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy and has served on the board of the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Spectrum Management Advisory Committee and the UK’s OFCOM Spectrum Advisory Board.

Pepper received his BA. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lucilla Sioli

Head of Unit, Digital Economy and Skills, European Commission

Lucilla Sioli is the Head of the Digital Economy and Skills unit within the Directorate-General Connect.

Her unit monitors trends and performance in the digital economy and is responsible for country monitoring in digital in the context of Europe2020, and for the publication of the Digital Agenda Scoreboard. The unit also manages the oversight of the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs which addresses the impact of ICT on labour markets.

She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Southampton and one from the Catholic University of Milan. Ms. Sioli has been a civil servant with the European Commission since 1997.

Paul Adamson

Chairman, Forum Europe

Paul Adamson is chairman of Forum Europe and founder and editor of E!Sharp, an online magazine dedicated to covering the European Union and Europe's place in the world.

He is a member of Rand Europe's Council of Advisors and sits on the external advisory board of YouGov-Cambridge, a polling think-tank, He is a member of the advisory groups of the European Institute in Washington DC and the Washington European Society.  He is also on the advisory group of the EU chapter of Women in International Security (WiiS).

Paul is a Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, a patron of the University Association of Contemporary European Studies (UACES) and a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences.

 He founded the consulting firm Adamson Associates, which was sold to Weber Shandwick and The Centre, which was later sold to Edelman.

In 2012, Paul was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to promoting understanding of the European Union”, a part of the Queen's 2012 New Year Honours Diplomatic Service and Overseas List. In 2016 he was made a Chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite by the French government.

Isabel Van De Keere

CEO & Founder, Immersive Rehab

Dr Isabel Van De Keere is the CEO and Founder of Immersive Rehab, a Virtual Reality healthtech startup that focuses on the creation and development of interactive environments & games in Virtual Reality that improve the effectiveness of physical & neuro-rehabilitation. Following a long physical rehab period Isabel went through herself due to a work accident, she decided to start Immersive Rehab in September 2016. 

With a background in Electro-Mechanical Engineering and as a Biomedical Engineering Scientist, Isabel is passionate about healthcare technologies, digital health, immersive technologies (VR/AR) and its applications in healthcare, using tech for good, social entrepreneurship, and promoting women in tech.

Leen Segers

Co-Founder & CEO, LucidWeb

Leen has helped build startups in technology and media for almost ten years. From evangelising social media to monetising online video, she has experienced the frontlines of the startup world. As the COO of Tech.eu, she helped the company turn a profit within her first year there. In 2015 she enjoyed her first VR experience and was immediately enchanted by the prospect of a new venture. Convinced that the future of mobile video will be virtual, she founded LucidWeb, a VR and WeBVR consulting and software development company.

Hans Jørgen Wiberg

Founder, Be My Eyes

Hans Jørgen Wiberg is the founder of Be My Eyes. Be My Eyes is an app that connects blind and visually impaired people with sighted volunteers from around the world via live video connection. This means Be My Eyes can provide a friendly pair of eyes at anytime through your smartphone.
Be My Eyes is a worldwide service helping 33000 blind and visually impaired people in 80 different languages, and close to 500000 volunteers signed up to help.
Be My Eyes strives to keep the app accessible, so also new smartphones users are able to use the service. Be My Eyes  is an exponential organization with a very small team. This is a key aspect in the way the team use social media and have created their development strategy. 
For Hans Jørgen as a non-tech, visually impaired founder, it has been an exiting journey and learning experience to see Be My Eyes develop and spread all over the world, helping real people solve real issues.

John Burn-Murdoch

Senior Data-Visualisation Journalist, The Financial Times

John Burn-Murdoch is a senior data-visualisation journalist at the Financial Times, where he uses statistics and graphics to find and tell stories on subjects ranging from politics and demographics to climate chance and sport.

Lisa Talia Moretti

Digital Sociologist & Strategist

Lisa Talia Moretti is an award-winning digital sociologist and strategist with 10 years experience based in London. Over the last decade, she's worked across the entire content lifecycle studying the relationship between technology, brand and audiences for brands like Adobe, IpSoft, Hyatt Hotels, Dulux, Starwood Hotels, IKEA, seventeen magazine and National Geographic. During this time, Lisa has also presented keynotes and run workshops to audiences from a wide range of business backgrounds on the impact, opportunities and challenges of digital technology. Lisa is an Associate Lecturer in the Institute of Management Studies department at Goldsmiths College, University of London and a visiting teacher at Cardiff University and Plymouth University. Her teaching area of expertise is Digital Research Methods. Lisa's research collaborations with Goldsmiths College and IpSoft, Adobe, Mindshare and Rackspace on virtual reality, augmented reality, wearable technology and virtual assistants have gained international coverage with CNN, BBC, Fast Company, Campaign, Techcrunch, Forbes and others.  

Tobias Gantner

Founder, HealthCare Futurists

Tobias is a restless resident of different worlds, a roaming renaissance man: A medical doctor by training, a health economist and jurist by education, a philosophy aficionado by academic passion and curious by default. He has worked in a number of leading positions in patient care and major industry companies such as Siemens, Novartis, Bayer Healthcare and J&J. He is the founder of the HealthCare Futurists network and the Director of the European Center for Patient Centric Innovation and Medical Entrepreneurship which is affiliated with UNU MERIT.

The HealthCare Futurists is an international and independent network, think tank, incubator and catalyst for innovation in health-care, life sciences and medicine. The HCFs consist of renowned experts and thriving professionals of diverse disciplines with a persistent passion for patients.

The HCFs have successfully completed innovation labs with major health-care industry companies and health-care providers alike. They provide guidance to startups and are engaged in medical enlightenment to the public. The HCFs are initiators and home to the innovate.healthcare hackathon.

Peter Kerstens

Co-Chair, Fintech Task Force & Adviser for Investment and Company Reporting, European Commission

Peter Kerstens is Co-Chair of the Fintech Task Force and Adviser to the Director for investment and company reporting at the European Commission's DG for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, focusing on technology transformation and security questions. He is a career official with extensive experience in EU policy and legislation in a range of areas. Prior to his current position, he worked on international financial services regulation, equivalence and financial sector sanctions. From 2008 until 2013 he was Finance Counsellor at the EU Delegation to the USA in Washington DC. Prior to his posting to Washington DC, Mr. Kerstens was a Member of Internal Market and Services Commissioner Charlie McCreevy's Private Office where he was responsible for services policy and institutional relations. From 2001 until 2004, he was a Member of the Private Office of Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne, covering institutional relations for the health and consumer protection portfolio and advising the Commissioner on competition policy, justice and home affairs and economic and monetary policy.

Mr. Kerstens joined the European Commission in 1996 and also held positions in the Directorate-General for Enterprise and the Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection.

Prior to joining the European Commission, he worked as a public affairs consultant in Brussels advising major financial services and direct marketing companies on EU affairs.

Mr. Kerstens holds a magna cum laude Master degree in European affairs from the College of Europe in Bruges and a magna cum laude Master degree in political science from the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is a Dutch national.

Saf Nazeer

Co-Founder & CEO, Helpfulpeeps

Saf Nazeer is co-founder and CEO of Helpfulpeeps, a new social network built on the principles of ‘paying it forward’ where people share their time, energy, skills and knowledge to help each other for free. He believes in harnessing the power of technology to make a positive impact and is on a mission to bring back community spirit in an increasingly disconnected world.

Juma El-Awaisi

CEO & Co-Founder, Braci

Juma El-Awaisi is a Pharmacist and HCP with a vast experience in business and management. After graduating from the school of pharmacy at the age of 20, Juma took a different path and moved towards business and marketing. He is currently CEO of Braci and has led the company to a valuation of over £4 million.

Caroline Calomme

Founder, Brussels Legal Hackers

Originally from Brussels, Caroline studied at the European Law School in Maastricht before obtaining her graduate law degree from the University of Oxford. She worked as a Blue Book trainee for the European Data Protection Supervisor and as a private law lecturer for Maastricht University. She is now pursuing her passion for law and technology in Brussels.

Andrew Faiola

Director, Mobility Solutions, Intelsat

Andrew leads the Mobility Solutions sales team in Europe. If it floats, flies, or rolls, we’ve got it covered. Prior to this, Andrew led the European sales team and also led Intelsat’s Global Accounts teams on the Mobility and Broadband side of the business.

Prior to joining Intelsat, Andrew was European Sales Director at New Skies Satellites in the UK, and held various sales and marketing roles at ESATEL Communications, a small, independent teleport in the USA. In what seems like another life, he worked in the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC, and at NASA, where he conducted project development and implementation work for Latin America and the Asia-Pacific involving the provision of Internet service and remote sensing for environmental purposes.

He has also authored publications about the North American DTH market, distance learning in America, U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, and Latin American economic development.

He received a BA in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis, and an MA in International Affairs from The George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Intelsat S.A. (NYSE: I) is the world’s leading provider of satellite services, delivering high-performance connectivity solutions for media, fixed and mobile broadband infrastructure, enterprise and government and military applications for more than 50 years. Intelsat’s satellite, teleport and fiber infrastructure is unmatched in the industry, setting the standard for transmissions of video and broadband services. From the globalization of content and the proliferation of HD, to the expansion of cellular networks and mobile broadband access, with Intelsat, envision your future network, connect using our leading satellite technology and transform your opportunities. Envision…Connect…Transform…with Intelsat. For more information, visit www.intelsat.com.

Drew Sullivan

Editor & Co-Founder, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)

Drew Sullivan is the Editor and Co-Founder of OCCRP and served as its first director. He founded and is Executive Director of the Journalism Development Network, an innovative media development organization with programs worldwide. He has served on the board of directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting. Prior to establishing OCCRP, he founded the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and served as its director and editor. As a journalist and editor, his teams have been awarded the European Press Prize, Global Shining Light Awards, Daniel Pearl Awards; the Online Journalism Award for investigative reporting; the Tom Renner Award recognising outstanding crime and corruption reporting and many other international awards. He has spearheaded investment in technology as a means to innovate and revolutionize investigative journalism. Before becoming a journalist, he was an aerospace engineer on the Space Shuttle Project for Rockwell International Space Systems.

Juan Arregui Mc Gullion

Policy Developer, European Commission

Mr Mc Gullion joined the European Commission in 2004. Since 2010, he works for the Communications Networks, Content & Technology Directorate General (DG CNECT) in the unit responsible for Public Services. Prior, he worked in the Strategy and Policy unit of the same Directorate General.

Before joining the EC, he worked as liaison to the Brussels representations of two English regions: North of England and Lancashire, fostering communication between EU authorities and constituents in the UK region focusing on funding opportunities, policy developments and raising the profile of the region in the Brussels scene.

Alexandre Alaphilippe

Co-Founder, Saper Vedere

Co-Founder of Saper Vedere. Former digital consultant in EU Public Affairs working with European associations to improve their advocacy through digital communications.

Nicolas Vanderbiest

Teaching Assistant and PhD Candidate, Université Catholique de Louvain

Nicolas Vanderbiest is a teaching assistant and PhD candidate at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. His thesis subject is "Reputation crises of organisations on social media. A systemic approach". He is the author of the blog Reputatio Lab, which gathers a database of more than 450 social media crises. He also analyses crises, astroturfing and social media phenomena for Rue 89, France Culture / La Première (Radio) and RTBF (TV/Web).

Tommy Vandepitte

Lawyer, Brussels Legal Hackers

Tommy is a self-employed in-house lawyer with a keen interest in technology and financial law. An alumnus of the KULeuven, he started as a trainee attorney. Attracted to the early implementation of the law rather than litigation, he soon switched to in-house. His longest employment was with KBC where he first worked in the legal department and then as (first) data protection officer in the compliance department. Nowadays he freelances, generally in the financial sector.

Fabrizio Porrino

SVP Global Public Affairs, FacilityLive

Expert advisor to key decision makers such as CEOs, Commissioners, Ministers and Presidents in the areas of ICT, innovation, startup, tech and policy-making. Today in his role as SVP Global Public Affairs, Fabrizio is responsible for the global positioning of FacilityLive: "The European Search Platform of the Future”. 

Fabrizio is a regular speaker at international events and he is often invited as an External Expert by various EU Institutions. 

Fabrizio fulfills other roles such as Brussels Ambassador of Startup Europe India Network, Member of the Steering Group and Skills Issue Leader of European Tech Alliance (acting also as a Spokesperson during the launch at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 2015) , Member of the Steering Committee of the European Business Summit, Board Member of the European e-Skills Association. He is also co-founder and VP of Digit@lians - the professional network of Italians working in ICT. Also, Fabrizio is a former Board Member of ANITEC (the Italian Association of ICT services and technologies Member of Confindustria and Board Member of DIGITALEUROPE).

Before joining FacilityLive, Fabrizio worked for the Think Tank of the European Parliament, for the European Commission, and for Yahoo! in Dublin and in California. 

He is an Alumni of the College of Europe in which he attended after being awarded a scholarship by the Italian Government. His master thesis on "Web Search Engines and Sponsored Links: A Tale of Two-sided Markets?” was one of the first dissertations produced on the topic, and is currently available at the College of Europe's library.

Sara Colantonio

Researcher & Project Coordinator, Semeoticons / ISTI-CNR

Sara Colantonio is currently a Researcher at the Institute of Information Science and Technology “A. Faedo” of the Italian National Research Council (ISTI-CNR) in Pisa, as a member of the “Signals and Images” Lab. Her academic career started with a M.Sc. degree (Hons.) in Computer Science and a Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering, both from the University of Pisa. In 2008 and 2009, she received a grant funded by FINMECCANICA for investigation in the field of diagnostic imaging. Her research interests also include machine learning, image understanding, decision support theory, and personal informatics. She has co-authored over 70 scientific papers, and worked in several national and international projects. She conceived and coordinated the EU FP7 Project SEMEOTICONS, whose main outcome is a smart mirror, called Wize Mirror, for self-monitoring individuals’ risk of cardio-metabolic diseases.

Russell Beaumont

Architectural Designer, The Palimpsest / Curtis + Ginsberg Architects LLP

J. Russell Beaumont is an architectural designer with a focus on socially engaged architecture and interactive design. His research focuses on the intersection of social justice, dignity, beauty, and the built environment. He currently lives in NYC and works for an architecture firm that specialises in affordable housing.

Cheryl Miller

Founder & Executive Director, Digital Leadership Institute

Cheryl Miller is CEO of Zen Digital Europe and Founder and Executive Director of the Digital Leadership Institute, a Brussels-based, international NGO whose global mission is to bridge the gender gap and digital divide worldwide by educating and empowering digital leaders of today and tomorrow.

Cheryl is a serial social entrepreneur with twenty years of international experience in the tech and ICT sectors, and her work to promote ESTEAM (entrepreneurship, science, technology, engineering, arts & mathematics) and leadership to youth and women has been recognised by the United Nations, European Parliament and European Commission. She is consulted worldwide as an expert on topics related to digital inclusion, digital literacy, gender equality, youth and female leadership, and education and entrepreneurship, particularly in STEM fields.

Philippe Van Impe

Founder, Brussels Data Science Community

Philippe Van Impe is a Founding Partner of the Brussels Data Science Community, a large open community of specialists in data and business. The community's activities aim to bridge the gap between businesses and academia, through regular meetups, training and ‘Data for Good’ projects, where members contribute their skills to work on projects with NGO’s, public institutions and start-ups.


Philippe is also the Founder of the European Data Innovation Hub, which connects and supports data professionals throughout Europe to share and discuss best practices in open data, big data and data innovation.


Philippe is a Social Entrepreneur simultaneously pursuing both a financial & a social return on investment.

Roman Miletitch

Founder, OpenTechSchool Brussels

PhD student in Artificial Intelligence, award winning digital artist, founder of OpenTechSchool Brussels (opentechschool.org/brussels), lead community manager of Hack League (hackleague.io) and event planner (foodandcode.com). Roman is a Jack of all trades and thrives on applying what he learned from one field to another. Coding from roofs, subways or abandoned buildings, he’s always eager to explore the creative possibilities of this digital medium.

Michel Frezet

Head of On-Orbit Servicing, Airbus Defence and Space

Michel Frezet is currently responsible of the On-Orbit Servicing Division within the Program Line On-Orbit Services and Exploration since April 2015.
He has a strong background in Automatic & Control, space mechanics and GNC for Rendezvous, as well as in avionics for all type of space vehicles.
Michel Frezet started his career in 1982 at Matra Espace in Toulouse in the field of models and simulations, then continuing in space mechanics and GNC for Rendezvous for the programs Hermes and ATV.
He then successively was Head of the Space Mechanics, AOCS & GNC Department, the Data Handling, On-board software and dependability Division and the Functional & Electrical Check-out Sub-directorate in the different Space Systems industrial organizations.
Michel Frezet is graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris (1981), with focus on Systems and Control.

Khadijat Zahrah Abdulkadir

Founder & Executive Director, Digital African Woman

Khadijat Abdulkadir is the Founder and Executive Director of Digital African Woman, a social enterprise focused on developing tech startups across Africa and Diaspora. Currently a Master candidate in Business Engineering and Management Science from Solvay Brussels school of Economics and Management, Khadijat also holds a double Bachelor of Science degree in Anthropology and Environmental Science. A certified SAP Business Consultant and ABAP programmer with experiences from corporations such as Aramark, Accenture and Microsoft USA. She has held several positions including, Environmental Program Analyst, IT Program Manager and SAP Business Analyst. In her Passion for Business development, Khadijat has acquired experiences training over 600 hundred startups across Africa and Europe, equipping them with specialized training to build and scale sustainably across various markets especially within Africa. She is most passionate about empowering young women with the technology skills and tools necessary to be fully active innovators and entrepreneurs in the 21st century. She focuses her projects on entrepreneurship, innovation and access for women especially in Sub-Sahara Africa. Through Digital African Woman, Khadijat serves as the country manager and Belgian representative for the Startup Europe Awards. Her work has been featured in Forbes USA, Tropics Magazine SA, and People Centered Internet- Silicon Valley.

Long Pham

Researcher, International Energy Research Centre, University College of Cork

Long Pham is a researcher of the International Energy Research Centre, University College Cork since January 2014, after spending more than five years with IBM in Vietnam. Her focus is on resident engagement for smart city programs, local policy development and regulation for technology adoption. Apart from her research work, Long works on UCC’s internationalisation strategy, bringing the educational institutions in Vietnam and Ireland closer in research collaboration and student recruitment. She utilises her strong and well-connected networks with Vietnamese country leaders to meet goals for UCC and Ireland as a whole, especially in the education sector.

Long was an executive at IBM’s Governmental Programs for over five years and worked closely with Vietnamese and American governments on technology and free trade policies at all stages, including the formation of policies, drafting legal documents, and revising and evaluating the final documents. While being in Ireland, she still works closely with many ministries including the Office of Government, the Ministry of Education and Training, The Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Industry and Trade, and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. She holds in-depth understanding of the governmental and sectorial strategies in Vietnam and aligns them well in the context of the bilateral relation with Ireland for strategic engagements.

She is also well connected to city and provincial leaders when she oversaw the Smarter Planet agenda and Smarter Cities cooperation programs in Vietnam with a focus on major cities Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang and Ha Noi. Then, she led discussions from IBM with senior government leaders at the central level and with cities’ leaders on areas of priorities, technologies, policies, funding, business models and implementation plans. She became trusted partner for the leaders when it comes to growth strategies and applicable technologies.

Prior to joining IBM, Long was a career journalist and Managing Editor for the Viet Nam News, a daily English newspaper of the Vietnam News Agency where she was in charge of the various publication channels and wrote commentaries on politics and public policies for the daily, weekly and monthly editions. She has been honoured with numerous national awards in journalism. Her journalism career started as a Fulbright Scholar, for which she earned her Masters of Journalism. Long continues to participate in Fulbright activities, including being selected as one of three speakers at a town hall on Fulbright 20th Anniversary event chaired by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her 2012 visit to Vietnam.

In addition to policy advisory work and research, Long is a PhD candidate and her work focuses on resident engagement for smart city programs, local policy development and regulation for technology adoption to promote smart and sustainable city development. She is expected to complete her study by 2017.

Karim Grini

Technology Expert, Accenture

Karim is a Senior Analyst in Accenture Technology and a leading member of the Blockchain practice in Belgium & Luxembourg, where he is the main technology expert and works on various groundbreaking projects across Benelux. He has been active in this domain since the earliest days of Bitcoin and has built extensive knowledge of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger technologies. Karim is busy building pilots that will pave the way for large production systems running on a Blockchain-Core as well as working on global technology standardization initiatives within the Accenture Emerging Technologies practice. His background is in Electronics Engineering and International Business.

Janice Richardson

International Advisor, Literacy, Rights & Democracy

International advisor and programme coordinator in areas relating to literacy, the cyber wellbeing of children and teens and the protection of their rights, Janice is a public speaker, project innovator and author of a dozen books as well as publications for children and adults on the impact of technology on society. Creator of Safer Internet Day (in 2003), now celebrated annually by more than 50 million people in over 100 countries worldwide, she was co-founder and coordinator of the European Safer Internet network (Insafe) from 2004 to 2014. In 2014-2016 she created and led the EC-funded ENABLE initiative (European Network Against Bullying in Learning and Leisure Environments), which aims at eliminating bullying through the development of social-emotional literacy. She is currently Senior Advisor at Telefono Azzurro (Italy) and European Schoolnet (Belgium), a member of Facebook’s Safety Advisory Board, works as an expert for UNICEF, and is leading missions for the Council of Europe in the MENA region. Her overriding goal: promote the wellbeing of children and young people and ensure that their rights are protected in today’s blurred on- and offline environments. Janice studied in France and Australia, and has worked extensively in more than a dozen countries worldwide.

Nestor Dubnevych

Co-Founder, lexnet.io

Co-Founder at lexnet.io; CEO bot.lawyer; Ambassador at KYIV Legal Hackers; associate at Juscutum Attorneys Association; finalist of V International Summer School on Cyber Law; participant of Berlin Legal Tech Hackaton, AgTech Ukraine; mentor at AI Spring Hackathon; speaker on Moscow LegalTech Conference, Blockchain Conference Kyiv, IOT Conf Ukraine, HackIT Ukraine, UISGCON12; and author of articles about legal innovations, blockchain, cybersecurity, and the Internet of Things.

Martin Schmalzried

Senior Policy & Advocacy Officer, COFACE - Families Europe

Martin Schmalzried holds a Master's Degree from the ULB (Brussels) in Political Science and is a licensed sociology teacher in upper secondary education. He has been working at COFACE (Confederation of Family Organisations in the EU) as a Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer for over eight years, in charge of child online safety and digitalisation. He was responsible for the content of the #DeleteCyberbullying project and provides expertise to various actors and institutions among which the OECD and the Council of Europe.

Marten Kaevats

Chief Innovation Officer, Government Office of Estonia

Marten Kaevats is the digital advisor in the Government Office of Estonia who studies the impact of various scalable technologies on the spatial behaviour of individual people and communities, as he believes that the third industrial revolution and the hyperlocal model of life will create reformatory changes to the spatial and social behaviour of people. Marten has graduated from governmental talent management programme in 2017. He is educated as architect and city planner and has been the head of TAB 2015 "Self-Driven City" curatorial team. Marten is also an active member of several civil society organisations; having among other things led the team that won second place at the design competition for the Monument to the Estonian War of Independence, he was also one of the founding members of the Uue Maailma Selts (New World Society) in 2007 and contributed to the creation of freeware community web platform Community Tools, established in 2008.

Aarti Holla

Secretary General, ESOA

Aarti Holla-Maini joined ESOA in 2004. She was named one of the Faces of Satellite of 2014 by the Society of Satellite Professionals International and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Space where she served as Vice-Chair from 2013 - 2014.

Ms. Holla-Maini has nineteen years' experience in the aerospace industry, starting at Daimler-Benz Aerospace (now Airbus Defense & Space) in Germany. She moved to Brussels in 2000 to represent former Astrium in the Galileo Industries joint venture towards European institutions on the European satellite navigation system Galileo, working on the development of the public-private partnership scheme and other management aspects of the Galileo programme. Since her MBA she has organized workshops on negotiation skills for young managers and remains an active alumnus of HEC.

Ms. Holla-Maini holds a Masters of Business Administration from HEC, France & Stern Business School, NY, USA. She qualified as Solicitor of the Supreme Court in the UK in 1995, holding a LLB Hons Law with German Law degree from King's College, University of London & the University of Passau, Germany. Aarti lives in Brussels, has 3 children and speaks 5 languages.

Kumardev Chatterjee

Founder & President, European Young Innovators Forum

Kumardev Chatterjee, 38, is a multi-awarded Innovation Luminary, Tech Founder, European Commission appointed expert on Innovation and expert on Entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum. He has been published by the New York Times and Politico, amongst others. He is one of the 50 experts who co-wrote the book ‘Digital Minds for a New Europe’, alongside Google’s Eric Schmidt. Kumardev is Founder and CEO of Unmanned Life, the world’s first AI-driven IoT platform that uses patent pending technology to deliver Autonomous Drone-as-a-Service (A-DaaS) for Commercial purposes, using both aerial and ground drones, indoors and outdoors, disrupting human-intensive industries like logistics, surveillance and infrastructure. Kumardev also leads the European Young Innovators Forum’s board community of young innovators, entrepreneurs, startups and SMEs and led Europe’s first-ever delegation of Young Innovators on a joint US State Department-EYIF program, the InnotourUSA. Kumardev in his role as a European Commission appointed independent expert has evaluated more than €86 Million EUR of grant proposals since 2013. He has evaluated across multiple topics and calls for both FP7 and H2020 framework programmes. He is also a Eurostars Technical Expert. He holds a MSc in Computer Science, as a British Chevening Science Scholar.

Olivier Gillerot

Managing Director, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Financial Services, Accenture

Olivier is Managing Director at Accenture. He is leading the Financial Services practice in France and Benelux. With more than 20 years of experience in this sector, Olivier has advised banks, insurance and capital markets companies in multiple transformation programs. He has been developing and executing strategies to explore new distribution and marketing approaches, back-office optimizations and also new market entries. He has always been exploring the use of new digital technologies to enable change and transforming business models. Olivier is based in Brussels and Paris.

Matthew Vincent

Co-Founder & Developer, Rekrei

Matthew Vincent is the co-founder and developer of Rekrei (formerly Project Mosul), a project focused on the crowdsourcing of the memory of lost heritage. Matthew has been passionate about the use of technology in cultural heritage, particularly how technology can serve heritage, make it more accessible and bring it to life in new ways. Since 2004, he has been digging up the past in Jordan as an archaeologist, and in more recent years, has combined his love of archaeology and passion for technology to continue to develop new ways of enhancing the world of cultural heritage.

Gert Jan Ridder

Digital Officer, Digital City of Groningen

Gert-Jan Ridder is a Digital Officer at the Digital City of Groningen. As part of the team he will hunt for projects to start or accelerate and is an ambassador towards local, national and international stakeholders.

Other than this, Gert-Jan is also involved in Samenwerking Noord, an organization promoting collaboration in the North of the Netherlands.

Valentyn Pivovarov

Founder, lexnet.io

Justice entrepreneur. Innovation in law. Founder at lexnet.io - legal technology laboratory; CEO Legal Alarm (HiiL Justice Accelerator winner in 2016); Chief Innovation Officer Juscutum Attorneys Association; participant of Berlin LegalTech Hackathon; Speaker on Moscow LegalTech Conference, Innovation Justice Forum; Ambassador at KYIV Legal Hackers. Triathlon runner.

Tinna Rós Steinsdóttir

Child Participation Officer, Eurochild

Tinna Rós Steinsdóttir works as a Child Participation officer at Eurochild, a network of organisations and individuals working in and across Europe to promote the rights and well-being of children and young people. Eurochild puts great emphasis on communicating with children and young people and do their work for children, with children. Within her role, Tinna is responsible for supporting the participation of children at all levels of Eurochild’s work.


Originally from Iceland, Tinna has lived in Austria and Switzerland before relocating to Brussels in 2016 to work with Eurochild. Tinna has great experience in child/youth participation, leadership training, and personal development from years of involvement in the YMCA and YWCA from an early age; on a local level in Iceland, European level, and global level. 
Tinna is currently a bureau member of the Joint Council on Youth of the Council of Europe (CMJ), is involved in the work of the European Youth Forum (YFJ) and sits on the Youth Policy Group of YMCA Europe.

Ruy Pinto

Deputy Chief Technology Officer, SES

Ruy Pinto is currently the Deputy Chief Technology Officer at SES leading various technology initiatives in the company. In particular Ruy is responsible for managing the SES HTS Programme, including satellites, infrastructure, platforms and integration.

Ruy worked at Inmarsat from 1990 to 2016, in various technical and managerial roles. His last position at Inmarsat, from December 2013, was Group Chief Operations Officer, responsible for all operational functions at Inmarsat: satellite and network operations, operations engineering, customer services, service assurance, Group IT, partner platforms, business applications, including billing, plus navigation activities. As part of his remit Ruy also established a Digital Office for Inmarsat, responsible for the company digital strategy and digital commercial models.

Ruy Pinto started as a satellite operations software engineer at Inmarsat in 1990 and held a number of technical project management functions until 1999. In 2000, Ruy Pinto became Director of Satellite Operations and Navigation with responsibility for control of the fleet of Inmarsat satellites and development and maintenance of all satellite control functionality. From 2009 to 2011, as Vice President of Satellite and Network Operations Ruy Pinto managed network and satellite operations, spectrum management and yield optimisation functions for the Inmarsat product portfolio plus navigation services. From 2012 to 2013, Ruy Pinto was the Group Chief Technology Officer responsible for all engineering, satellite and network operational functions across Inmarsat and its subsidiaries. As part of his role Ruy Pinto has spear headed a number of Inmarsat commercial initiatives such as the company involvement on Galileo, Alphasat and other high profile projects requiring public funding. Ruy Pinto also served on the Boards of INVSAT, Inmarsat Navigation Ventures and PT-ISAT, fully owned subsidiaries of Inmarsat plc. Finally Ruy was a founding Board Member of the Space Data Association (SDA), a not for profit organisation established in the Isle of Mann for improving the safety of flight for satellite operators.

His external positions portfolio included two years as the Chairman of UKSpace, the UK space industry trade association, and four years as a Director and VP of Space for the Association of Defence, Security and Aerospace Companies (ADS). Finally, Ruy Pinto is a Non-Executive Director of the Space Application Catapult, established by the UK government to foster the development of the space sector and space applications in the UK and an SSPI (Society of Satellite Professionals International) Board member.

Previously, Ruy Pinto worked with VSAT data communication networks and data communications software as the project manager for the deployment large scale VSAT networks in Brazil. Ruy was also the manager of the satellite software control segment for the first generation of Brazilian satellites. Ruy Pinto has a background in electronics and satellite data communications having graduated in Electronics Engineering in 1981, followed by a post-graduate degree in Digital Telecommunications Systems, both from the Rio de Janeiro Catholic University.

Ruy Pinto was born in Brazil and became an UK national in 1998. Ruy is married with two daughters.

Anne-Sophie Aberi-Moska

Co-Founder & Program Director, Digital African Woman

Anne-Sophie Aberi-Moska is the Co-Founder and Program Director of Digital African
Woman, a social enterprise focused on developing tech startups across Africa and
Diaspora.

Anne-Sophie holds a Civil Engineering Master in Biomedical Science. After studying all
job opportunities offered to her, she chose to start an exciting career as an IT Consultant, which has led her to now work as an « hands-on » IT Project Manager, combining both keen technical and management skills. Passionate about people, she’s been trained in coaching and counselling, and she is very devoted to potential development, driven by the ambition to help and see each individual writing its own success story. She’s also a confirmed trainer, with a proven track record of empowering many individuals, teams and enterprises in topics such as strategy, team management or talent management -to name a few-, but also on technical topics related to IT Infrastructure (Cloud computing, Network Technologies, Virtualization, GDPR, etc.). She believes in the revival of Africa, with a focus on the youth. Through DAW, Anne- Sophie really believes that outstanding African Youth potential will be revealed.

Vincent Wirtz

Renewable Energy and Sustainable Economy Expert, ING Belgium

As industrial engineer in chemistry Vincent followed a four-year evening school course to obtain a diploma in Small and Medium Enterprises management. He also obtains a management diploma from Solvay Business school. He acquires commercial and management skills in risk management, programming and automation and process optimization (lean) through a career in Research, industry and banking, as well as skills in renewable energy and circular economy. At ING lease he was a precursor in the application of one of the Business Models of circular economy. Identified with Accenture the model ‘product as a service’ (leasing the responsible energetics)’ provides an enormous economic and ecologic potential. This model was also applied with an innovating client’s project (co-creation for washing machine renting-without-purchase). He is a father of three children, beekeeper, eco-sustainable, rock climber and likes the wild nature. This explains his passion for sustainable economy. He is a strong believer that technological revolution can facilitate the transition towards sustainable development.

Carine Saloff-Coste

Director, Competitiveness and Employment, Paris City Council, France

Born in 1973, Carine Saloff-Coste is a graduate of the engineering school Supelec, of SciencePo Paris and of the national institute INET. She began her career in the industry field as a telecom engineer for Siemens Transport, implementing line 14 of the Parisian subway. She then worked for the Banque de France on transforming securities settlement systems. After graduating from INET, she moved to Boston on behalf of the Ile de France Region and Essonne Department to create an office dedicated to promotion and prospection in the biotechnology sector. Back to France, she became Director of Spatial Planning and Development for the Conseil General de l’Essonne. She joined in 2007 the city of Paris, in charge of the Economic Development Branch. In 2013, she became Assistant Director of the Economy, Innovation and Higher Education Branch. Senior Administrative Manager of Paris, she is now Director of the Economic Development, Employment and Higher Education Department.

Bruno Mellado

Head of International Payments and Collections, BNP Paribas

After a career in project management in consulting in Canada, Bruno Mellado joined BNP Paribas in 2006. He has managed large investment programs to create payment capabilities across Europe for BNP Paribas. He is now responsible for payment and collection cash management products for the group.

Sandra Vandorpe

Talent & Organisation Lead BeLux, Accenture Strategy

An ‘Out-of-the-usual-HR-box’ thinker, with an entrepreneurial mindset, instinctive understanding of business objectives, and a natural ability to achieve results with people, Sandra has more than 20 years of experience in Human Resources Management, in both national and international environments and within the private and public sectors (Arthur Andersen, Deloitte, Belgacom and Belgocontrol).

She is passionate about helping companies to become better places to work (for their people) and succeed (for their customers and all stakeholders). She recognizes talents in all people and enjoy coaching colleagues at every career level, stimulating them to step outside their comfort zone.

She currently leads Accenture’s Talent & Organization (T&O) team in Belgium & Luxembourg, where together with other Accenture professionals, we help organizations to create, lead and manage the Workforce of the Future. We design and implement tailor-made strategies that integrate Talent, HR, Organizational and Cultural Change capabilities to dramatically improve the performance of their enterprise in the digital era.

Her main expertise lies in developing HR strategies that support business objectives and designing HR organizations to implement these strategies. Her skills include Leadership Alignment and Development, HR Management, Employee Engagement, Corporate Cultural Change, Employer Branding, HR information Systems & Reporting, and Business transformation.

Marine Falize

Innovation Advisor & Cluster Manager, impulse.brussels

Marine Falize (Brussels, 1986) holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Management from the Louvain School of Management (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium). She is currently working as an Innovation Advisor at Impulse Brussels and a Manager at Cluster Software (IT Services).

Her teaching and research interests lie between Entrepreneurship, International Business and Strategic management. Her work has been presented at various academic conferences such as the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, the Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference and recognized with best paper awards at the McGill International Entrepreneurship Conference and the Congrès International Francophone en Entrepreneuriat et PME.

Chris Sherwood

Head of Public Policy, Naspers

Chris Sherwood was appointed Head of Public Policy for Naspers in late 2016, creating the function from scratch. In this role, he is responsible for Naspers’ own policy priorities globally, as well as for providing support to group companies. Chris moved to Naspers from the Allegro Group, where he was the first permanent Brussels public policy professional to be employed by a European Internet company. While at Allegro, he co-founded and chaired the European Tech Alliance for its first year. He previously worked for Yahoo! as Director for Public Policy, and at the US Department of Commerce at the US Mission to the EU, where he worked on ICT sector-related issues, including privacy and environmental rules. He has also been a public affairs consultant in Brussels and an IT systems implementation consultant. He has Masters Degrees in German and European Studies. He speaks fluent English, French, German, and Polish. He has UK, French, and US nationalities.

Stephanie Hare

Principal Director, Accenture Research

Stephanie Hare is a Principal Director at Accenture Research, where she is responsible for developing thought leadership on security. Prior to joining Accenture, Stephanie worked as a deployment strategist at Palantir Technologies, a political risk analyst at Oxford Analytica, and a visiting fellow and tutor in French history at the University of Oxford. Her publications and media commentary on technology, political risk and history can be found at https://lse.academia.edu/StephanieHare and she is on Twitter at @hare_brain.

James Cemmell

Vice President, Government Engagement, Inmarsat

James Cemmell is Vice President, Government Engagement at Inmarsat. He is responsible for Inmarsat’s corporate level engagements with a wide range of government stakeholders. James also leads Inmarsat’s UK government supported emerging market partnership programmes, which presently include: a multi-year disaster response project with the government of the Philippines, a major fisheries traceability initiative with the government of Indonesia, and an eHealth project in North and South Nigeria. He has a Master’s Degree in International Development from BCID, an Advanced Certificate in International Trade Law & Regulation from the World Trade Institute (Bern), and is an EMBA Candidate at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. James is a member of the Advisory Board of City & Islington College, London’s leading STEM specialised College.

Allan Haughton

Digital Mobility POD IOT / IIOTSecurity Lead, Accenture Digital

Robert Smith

Senior Manager, Engineering, SES

Mr Smith's biography will appear here shortly

Andy Lunness

Programme Director, BluWireless Technology

Andy is currently Programme Director at BluWireless Technology, an innovative pioneer of mmWave wireless technology developing cutting edge 60GHz wireless systems. Responsible for platform delivery, Andy and his team design and deploy integrated systems that showcase Blu Wireless’ IP.

He has over 25 years’ experience in embedded systems covering both hardware and software design. Prior to Blu Wireless Andy held a progression of roles with STMicroelectronics delivering satellite digital television and wireless technologies to tier-1 customers including Sky and Nokia.

Lionel De Somer

Manager, Business Strategy Practice BeLux, Accenture Strategy

Passionate about innovation, growth opportunities and previously a three-time entrepreneur, Lionel is a strong believer that reality is open and still in the making. He is a Manager at Accenture Strategy, bringing his innovation and mindset to management consulting to help companies create opportunities based on both micro- and Macro-level experiences of analysing, creating, planning and building successful businesses.

Simon Gray

Vice President of Humanitarian Affairs, Eutelsat

Simon Gray is the Vice President of Humanitarian Affairs for Eutelsat and he is also a member of the ITU Advisory board for developing disaster comms strategy worldwide. He has been elected by the other 8 satellite fleet operators to coordinate the Satellite charter with the UN for the satellite industry as the coordinator for the ESOA Humanitarian working group. Simon has been a Director of the GVF, for over 6 years. He has worked in the satellite industry for over 20 years and while at Eutelsat has been responsible for the largest training program ever undertaken by a satellite operator. His role in Eutelsat has also encompassed developing a new class of satellite terminal, equipment approval, mobile Apps, training courses & training tools. His team has also been responsible for overseeing over 350,000 terminal installations across 4 continents and he is the point of reference for the Eutelsat fleet for remote terminal technology.

Lenard Koschwitz

Director Public Affairs, Allied for Startups

Lenard Koschwitz joined Allied for Startups in 2015. Previously he was the senior advisor to a Member of the European Parliament and Spokesperson for Justice and Home Affairs. During his time in Parliament, he focussed on the data protection reform, cyber security and the Common European Asylum System. Further, he was involved in coordinating the legislative work of the Parliamentary Group and its the position papers on these issues. Lenard is a passionate European and a member of the European Federalists and the Europa Union. He studied political science, German literature and psychology in Germany and European Studies in Brussels. Lenard speaks German, English, French and Italian. During high school, he founded an online magazine and event agency for music and lifestyle.

Thomas Verhoef

Co-Founder, PinWin

Thomas Verhoef has battled his way through a long series of startup challenges, losing a lot and winning a few, the way it seems to go when being an entrepreneur.
In several areas, he has worked together with gifted people making products where he feels he is proud of: A digital service platform, a dating app based on the mode of transportation, a one-stop shop second-hand car buying platform to name a few. Having taken valuable lessons from all of them, he now spends his time developing Pinwin, a smart city application where the user can find its way easily in an unknown city, enriched with extra information to guide him along the way, based on his persona.

In his spare time, he enthusiastically writes about digital topics, ranging across the board, trying to make sense of the whole digital revolution to the Jane & John Doe's of this world.

Oh, and if you don't know what to wear and want to be wit about it, wink wink, check out Cultureboy, a Belgian clothing brand he founded with his girlfriend!

Mark Purdy

Managing Director & Chief Economist, Accenture Research

Mark J. Purdy is a managing director and chief economist at Accenture Research. His research examines issues at the intersection of macroeconomics and business, such as globalization, international competitiveness, economic growth and jobs. Recent projects have focused on Chinese productivity, emerging-market geographic strategy, inclusive economic growth and the economic impact of new technologies such as the Internet of Things. He is one of the co-authors of Accenture’s recent study on the internet of things, “The Growth Game Changer,” launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in January 2015. He is a member of the European Government-Business Relations Council.

Purdy has published widely in tier-1 media and specialized publications such as Strategy & Leadership, Rotman Management, Business Economics, Thunderbird International Review of Business, the European Business Review, HBR Online, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fortune, The Global Economy Journal and The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Disease.

Before joining Accenture, he was an economic advisor at the U.K. Competition Commission, the Consumers’ Association and Ireland’s National Economic and Social Council. He has a Bachelor’s and a master’s degree in economics from Trinity College, Dublin.

Franck Boissière

Policy Coordinator & Programme Officer, Internet of Things Unit, DG CONNECT, European Commission

Franck Boissière is in charge of IoT policy developments, with particular interest in interoperability, standardisation, cybersecurity, trust and privacy. During his 25 years in the European Commission, he has first been involved in a wide spectrum of research programmes (next generation Internet, high performance computing, research infrastructures, cyber physical systems and control systems), and during the last 10 years in many of the Digital Agenda and Digital Single Market policy such as standardisation, e-Commerce, digital payments and cybersecurity.
Before joining the European Commission, Franck Boissière was working research engineer at France Télécom in charge of multimedia equipment, protocols and services. He received his engineering degree from the French Ecole Polytechnique in 1983 and specialised as telecom engineer in Telecom Paris.

Martin Bragard

Founder, RobinFood.store

After a short career in Strategy consulting and Investment banking, Martin learnt to code and developed RobinFood.store, a startup decreasing food waste by connecting small retailers with consumers nearby. On RobinFood, food retailers and restaurants list their food approaching the sale deadline. Users can enjoy this quality food, sold nearby at a discounted price.

Enrique González Moreno

Customer Engineer, Hispasat

Since 2015 Enrique has been providing technical support on commercial proposals with a specific focus on broadband services and mobility solutions via satellite.
Prior to joining Hispasat, Enrique worked as a researcher on Lidar Telemetry in the Photonic Technology and Bioengineering department of the UPM and has been the Head of the Advertising and Media team of the Employment and Technology forum SATELEC.
Enrique received his Master’s in Telecommunication Engineering at the “Universidad Politecnica de Madrid”.

Homero Rivas

Director of Innovative Surgery, Stanford University

Homero Rivas, MD, MBA, FACS, FASMBS is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Director of Innovative Surgery at Stanford University. He has been involved in Digital Health for many years and has founded and advised many Digital Health startups. He has conducted several research projects using wearable devices to improve operating room safety as well as medical simulation and education, augmented and virtual reality, and telemedicine with drones among others. He is a strong proponent of novel technologies in healthcare such as 3D printing, drones, artificial intelligence engines, etc. He is a co-director of Stanford’s massive “open online” course on mHealth, with over 20,000 registered students from all over the world. He is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Innovation in Global Health (CIGH) at Stanford University School of Medicine. Also, he is a founding member and Vice-President of the Wearable Technology in Healthcare Society (WATCH). He is a digestive surgeon and he is a Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery. Dr. Rivas has pioneered and led numerous state-of-the-art innovative techniques of minimal access surgery including scarless surgery, natural orifice surgery, robotic surgery, and more. He has been involved in minimal access surgery both in the U.S. and internationally, in nearly all continents, as a surgeon-in-training, a practicing surgeon, and also as a teacher of other surgeons. He holds an MBA from the Cox School of Business at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.

Marco Marsella

Head of Unit, Learning, Multilingualism and Accessibility, European Commission

Marco Marsella is Head of Unit, Learning, Multilingualism and Accessibility in the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) of the European Commission.

The unit supports policy, research, innovation and deployment of learning technologies and key enabling digital language technologies and services to allow all European consumers and businesses to fully benefit from the Digital Single Market. The unit is responsible for the Web Accessibility Directive which aims to make public sector websites and mobile applications accessible to people with impairments. The unit also promotes a better internet for children by protecting and empowering children online and improving the quality of content available to them.

He has worked on policy development, innovation and research implementation in the areas of digital content, technologies for learning, e-inclusion, assistive technologies and better internet for kids. Prior to joining the European Commission, Marco worked as a researcher and AI specialist in Italy.

Alexandra Paul

EU Government Relations Manager, Accenture

Passionate about public policies, public sector transformation and the role of government in bringing economic, social and sustainable outcomes, Alex has collaborated with multiple governments across Europe to design and shape their innovation and EU strategies. She is a government relations manager at Accenture, acting as a trusted advisor to public administrations and the third sector across Europe by bringing her EU and public policies knowledge. She is currently working on how governments are in practice embedding platform approaches. Alex holds master degrees in European Public Administration and EU Policies from the College of Europe (Belgium), European Political Economy from the London School of Economics (UK) and in European Affairs from Sciences-Po Paris (France), as well as bachelor degrees in Economics and Sociology from la Sorbonne (France). She is fluent in French, Spanish and English and learning Italian.

Cyrille Bataller

Managing Director, Emerging Technology Group, Accenture

Cyrille Bataller is a Managing Director in the Emerging Technology group at Accenture. He is the Artificial Intelligence lead, incubating the next generation of cognitive technology services.

With over 20 years of experience in technology innovation, Cyrille leads Accenture’s exploration of the disruptive Artificial Intelligence field, where cognitive IT systems can sense, comprehend, act and learn, interact naturally with people, data and their environment, and can deliver value by automating or augmenting work activities in various domains. Artificial Intelligence specialties notably include Text Analytics, Deep Learning, Cognitive Robotics, and Virtual Agents.

Cyrille’s recent work has also focused on Video Analytics, an artificial intelligence specialty that applies computer vision to video surveillance cameras to derive operational, security/safety and marketing insights. Most notably, he supported various police Safe City initiatives, where Accenture integrated advanced analytic capabilities into existing video monitoring systems to increase situational awareness, streamline operations and enhance response time to public safety incidents.

Cyrille also oversees Accenture’s Unique Identity activities, another artificial intelligence specialty which includes for instance the provision of a biometric identity management system to UNHCR to manage refugee populations globally.

Previously, Cyrille directed European R&D activities within Accenture Technology Labs.

Cyrille is a certified Accenture Solution Architect, Digital Architect, Master Technology Architect and Quality Assurance Director; he is also an IEEE CBP-Certified Biometrics Professional. He received an Electrical Engineering degree from the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris.

Anna Rose

Co-Founder & CEO, Videopath

Anna Rose is the co-founder and CEO of Videopath - an interactive video solution that allow users to bring clickable websites into video. Videopath has been highlighted by TechCrunch, Venture Beat, BBC, Vanity Fair and Horizont as a leading content marketing tool for brands and content publishers.

Anna is originally from Montreal, Canada but has been a resident of Berlin for the past decade. Previous to founding Videopath, Anna built up the EMEA video content network for Gracenote (formerly owned by Sony Inc) and worked with a number local startups as a video and digital producer. She holds a degree in Business Management and Music Technology from McGill University.

Claudio Truzzi

Program Manager icity.brussels, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Claudio Truzzi has 30 years of experience in the field of Microelectronics technologies, through all aspects of the industry: R&D, Engineering, Manufacturing, Product Development. Experience encompasses Molecular Engineering, Semiconductor Technologies, Electronic system Design, MEMS and Wireless Sensor Networks

Currently icity.brussels coordinator with ULB in Brussels, he has held C-level positions in a number of high-tech startups: ViaFactor, AlphaSzenszor, Alchimer, Convergix, CS2. Claudio Truzzi holds a Ph.D. in microelectronic engineering, has published 70+ articles in scientific journals and specialized press and has co-authored several patent applications.

Ben Vaparys

Co-Founder & Managing Partner, GraduAid and Student.be

Ben Vanparys is the cofounder and managing partner of GraduAid and Student.be. The biggest Belgian student community with over 130 000 active users,

One of their most important missions is to create innovative tools in order to help students make the step towards the professional world.

Ben is fascinated by the digital revolution and wants to make sure that millennials and employers create a mutual understanding, as a means to shape the workforce of the future.

Juha Heikkilä

Head of Unit, Robotics & Artificial Intelligence, DG Connect, European Commission

Dr Juha Heikkilä joined the European Commission in 1998 and currently works in its Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG Connect). Since 2014 he has been the Head of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence unit, which is in charge of the Commission activities in these technologies in their various aspects. The Commission has been funding a multidisciplinary research programme on Cognitive Systems, Robotics and AI for about 13 years, focusing on smarter and more flexible robots and artificial systems. In recent years, the annual budget has been between €70 million and €80 million.

At the beginning of the current EU seven-year funding programme, Horizon 2020, a Public-Private Partnership in Robotics was set up, which brings together all the key stakeholders in the area. In this partnership the European Commission will invest up to €700 million via Horizon 2020 in roadmap-based research and innovation in these areas over a seven-year period. Previously, Dr Heikkilä was involved in computational and corpus linguistic research at the University of Helsinki, and he did a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Cambridge.

Doris Bogunovic

Founder, Rijeka Legal Hackers

Doris graduated from the Law faculty of the University of Rijeka with a strong focus on European Private Law. She was also the initiator of the first Croatian chapter of Legal Hackers. After a year in compliance she continued her professional development at the European Parliament as an intern at the MEP's Office while pursuing her interests in IP&IT Law, Data protection and New Technologies

Richard Hayton

CTO, Trustonic

Richard leads the architecture and research teams within Trustonic, focusing on new opportunities in IoT whilst extending our reach in Smartphone security. Prior to Trustonic, Richard was Chief Architect for Citrix Mobility, where he was responsible for crafting the XenMobile Enterprise Mobility Suite. During almost 20 years at Citrix, he lead projects ranging from embedded software to global enterprise systems, with a focus on user and developer experience. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Cambridge University, focusing on identity federation for users, device and services.

Patrick Bunk

Founder & CEO, Ubermetrics Technologies

Patrick founded Ubermetrics Technologies in 2011 after working as a researcher for 3 years on news shocks and their effects on financial and goods markets. He and his cofounders built Ubermetrics to make sure that every company is armed with the best information possible to support and guide their business decisions. He leads Ubermetrics as the CEO and is responsible for the product and strategy. The company is based in Berlin and San Francisco, has more than 30 employees and over 200 customers, among them well known brands like BMW, Activision Blizzard, T‹V Rheinland, and DHL.

Patrick studied at the Humboldt-University, Northwestern University and the ESMT, Economics and Management, M.Sc.

Rosanna Kurrer

Cofounder & Managing Director, CyberWayFinder

Rosanna Kurrer is Cofounder and Managing Director of CyberWayFinder, a startup that brings innovation into the field of cyber security by offering a training and mentorship program that aims to attract new talent and increase diversity in the growing industry.

She is also a creative confidence coach and passionate design thinker, leading Design Thinking workshops in the context of developing innovative corporate strategies, as well as the Design Thinking Your Professional Life career seminar series. She is an Architectural Engineer by training and holds a Masters Degree in Building Physics from Kyoto University in Japan. As EU Code Week Ambassador and MIT Master Trainer, Rosanna has led development of innovative, hands-on curricula to promote the uptake of digital skills, and regularly designs and leads hands-on, result-oriented workshops in the areas of computer programming, mobile app development, data visualisation and 3D design.

“If you want a good idea, start with a lot of ideas.” -Linus Pauling

Patrick Devis

CIO, Belfius Bank

Patrick Devis is CIO at Belfius. After finishing his studies in economy, he started his career as a computer engineer. He then became product manager in 1996, when he helped start their first ever banking websites. Since then, he has been active in sales and marketing, whilst also playing an important role in product management of the “direct channels”. Following a brief incursion into the world of human resources, today, he has come back to marketing the segment of “public and corporate banking” at Belfius.

Thanks to Patrick Devis, Belfius can count on a CIO (chief information officer), capable of playing a progressive role thanks to his long and vast experiences within the bank. The fact that he has prior knowledge dealing with Belfius, will of course be welcome within the framework of strategic projects to come, for which Devis will have to collaborate closely with the CDO (Chief Digital Officer).

Gerald Reindl

Programme Manager, Business Service Portal, Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance

Gerald Reindl works as Programme Manager for the Austrian Business Service Portal (www.USP.gv.at) at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Vienna. Gerald Reindl started in 2006 in Brussels at Pleon Public Affairs and moved to the Ministry of Finance in 2008. As part of the Unit on reducing administrative burdens he dealt with the Standard Cost Model and the initiative on cutting red tape in Austria. The flagship measure of this initiative is the Business Service Portal.

His current activities as deputy head of unit Multiprojectmanagement and Steering are mainly focused on rolling out further eGovernment services in Austria including the business life situation starting a business, open government data in eProcurement and digital government mailing. The Business Service Portal is also pilot partner in the “Once-Only” Principle (TOOP) Project, which is part of the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020.

Raf Ganseman

Digital Transformation Consultant, CGI

Raf is a digital transformation consultant with CGI and the lead of the CGI Global Blockchain Core Committee. He has a background in Banking & Marketing, and has been focused on Blockchain technology since the days when Bitcoin and Blockchain were used to refer to the same thing. Raf has been working actively to get the buzzword bingo out of Blockchain, and providing clarification and guidance to large enterprises looking to understand the new concepts. CGI has been at the forefront of Blockchain since 2014, working together with their clients in amongst others Energy, Trade Finance & Crossborder payments and the biggest players in the Blockchain field on every level, being a sparring partner, building Proofs of Concept, or setting up strategic studies.

Fulvio Sansone

Senior Advisor, ESOA

Fulvio Sansone has more than twenty years experience in the information and communications technologies, satellite communications, positioning, and location-based services.

Fulvio is one of the owners and Chief Technology Officer at SatADSL, offering satellite broadband services in Sub-Saharan Africa. He also serves as Senior Advisor for ESOA. In the past Fulvio worked at Oracle Corporation, SAIT-RadioHolland and served as the first Secretary General of ESOA.

Fulvio got his degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Naples and a MBA from CUOA. He speaks fluent Italian, English, French and Spanish.

David Riemenschneider

Senior Advisor, Inmarsat Connected Car Program

David has been in the automotive industry for 32 years in leading roles at OEMs, T1’s and business services suppliers.

David works closely with the Inmarsat team to help bring all the benefits of satellite to automotive manufacturers and T1 suppliers. David has a long-history working with industry leaders in interim and consultancy roles on auto tech, IoT and M2M applications. Roles have included automotive M2M and connected vehicle implementations to IoT-focused smart farming and intelligent transport initiatives. David also has a strong auto technology M&A background and often works with OEM’s and T1’s on both buy and sell-side mandates. David is an early stage investor in several technology sectors including AI in the automotive domain.

David has worked for a global OEM as aftersales director and many of the global OEMs in the automotive aftersales business services & technology sectors delivering managed data solutions and SaaS platforms as the CEO of the UK-based Clifford Thames Group.

Massimiliano Dragoni

Senior Policy Officer, European Commission

Biography will appear here shortly. 

Erik Childerhouse

Principal Consultant, Avanti Communications Group

Erik Childerhouse delivers applied technology projects to the most marginalised areas of sub-Saharan Africa using high speed satellite connectivity in Education, eHealth, FinTech and Agri-technology. He is most proud of ECO, a ground-breaking initiative to get Every Child (and community) Online in Africa in a sustainable way. (www.avantiplc.com/eco)
Before his role at Avanti, he has worked for the British Government as Senior Trade and also had his own successful online business which I sold.

Erik has almost 20 years’ experience in international project delivery and business development, he has worked over the world in 80+ countries building long term multi-stakeholder partnerships in both public and private organisations, and extremely diverse Ministries. He shows leadership managing complex, large scale, technology-based ICT4 Education & Enterprise programs leading teams which empower learners through the delivery of high quality education paid for by public and private corporations, the World Bank, Department for International Development, USAID and the Templeton Foundation. He is passionate and excel working on multi-tiered problems, creating solutions that have the potential for transformational, value-for-money sustainable change.
Since 2016 he Chairs the Innovation Alliance for the Varkey Foundation. The Varkey Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation established to improve the standards of education for underprivileged children throughout the world. https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/
He is a keen hands-on committed strategist and project manager with a can-do attitude, who works tirelessly to foster collaboration, integrity and excellent stakeholder relationships. He considers himself a European Citizen and is an extremely pro-EU. He is a family man with 3 wonderful children.

John Frank

Vice President EU Government Affairs, Microsoft Corporation

John Frank is Microsoft's Vice President, EU Government Affairs. In this role, John leads Microsoft’s government affairs teams in Brussels and European national capitals on EU issues.

John was previously Vice President, Deputy General Counsel and Chief of Staff for Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith based at Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond Washington. In this role, he managed several teams including the Law Enforcement and National Security team, the Industry Affairs group, Corporate, Competition Law and Privacy Compliance teams and the department’s technology and business operations team.

For his first eight years at Microsoft, John was based at Microsoft’s European headquarters in Paris. Initially he was responsible for the legal and regulatory issues involved in the launch of the Microsoft Network (now MSN). From 1996 to 2002, Mr. Frank led Microsoft’s Legal and Corporate Affairs group for Europe, Middle East and Africa focusing on issues including privacy, security, consumer protection and antitrust. Mr. Frank began the company’s European Government Affairs program, which focused on advocacy on software and online policy issues.

Prior to joining Microsoft, John Frank practiced law in San Francisco with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Mr. Frank received his A.B. degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and his J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Eddy Wagenaar

CEO & Founder, European Blockchain Federation

Eddy Wagenaar is the CEO & Founder of the European Blockchain Federation: the first official European trade association representing the digital asset industry. Aim is to unite companies, local governments, and educational institutes within digital technologies. To shorten and simplify law-making, compliance, and regulatory issues. To break down barriers and unite parties despite obvious antagonistic interests. To warrant digital security. To enforce digital privacy. To teach young entrepreneurs digital responsibility. To educate decision-makers on letting go of old power. To unite Europe digitally.

Mr. Wagenaar is a frequent speaker at international events and in the process of writing a book about Blockchain.

Debby Shepard

International Market Development, AltspaceVR

Debby Shepard heads up market development in Europe for AltspaceVR, a software company using virtual reality to build a new communications platform that is now used in over 150 countries. Most recently, Debby led product, marketing, and art and design for AltspaceVR. She is passionate about the potential of virtual reality to bring people together regardless of distance.

Prior to AltspaceVR, Debby held product management positions at Skype, Cisco Systems, and Amazon Lab126 where she helped bring Amazon Echo to market. Debby graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.