me Convention speakers

Alexey Li is a passionate internet entrepreneur and angel investor. He is the co-founder of the largest online travel agency in Kazakhstan, Aviata.kz. After a successful merger he is working on his new ventures. Earlier, he founded Ticketon.kz, the first Kazakhstan online ticketing platform for movies, theaters, sports and cultural events. He has some background in art, information design and computer programming. He is an active member of startup community and is often invited as a speaker to startup events on entrepreneurship and management.

“Every record I make has an archetype,” says Annie Clark aka St. Vincent. “MASSEDUCTION is different, it’s pretty first person. You can’t fact-check it, it’s not a diary entry, but if you want to know about my life, listen to this record.” Working with co-producer Jack Antonoff, St. Vincent has created a defining statement with MASSEDUCTION. As ambitious as it is accessible, the album has marked milestones both critical and commercial, breaking St. Vincent into the U.S. and UK top 10s while landing at #1 on the Best of 2017 lists of Jon Pareles of The New York Times and The Guardian—and placing high in the year-end rankings of The AV Club, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, Mashable, The New York Daily News, the NME, Noisey, Paste, Pitchfork, Q, Stereogum, USA Today, and more. The record is grounded with “New York,” an intimate song born of a text message that became both a love letter to its namesake and an elegy to those who have moved on, and in contrast to “Los Ageless,” which paints an absurdist reality through a prism of outside self-awareness. MASSEDUCTION further establishes the 2014 Best Alternative Album Grammy winner's standing as one of the most innovative and enigmatic presences in modern music. Outside of recording and performing, St. Vincent made her directorial debut with the short horror film The Birthday Party and recently released the second edition of her signature Ernie Ball Music Man guitar.

Ben Clayton is a founding member of IntegrativePermaculture.com, developing new planet and people friendly food and agricultural enterprises redressing the causes and effects of climate change and helping young adults who are looking for economic, social, and environmentally responsible employment and cooperative business opportunities alternative to traditional extractive economies. Through advisory board membership at www.Recolte.ca, Ben is working to strengthen the impact of social food innovation projects and project leaders through project and skill development. Also advisory board member of www.Corl.io, the world’s first revenue sharing and fully regulated security token designed to accelerate the growth of businesses through easy access to investment capital as an alternative to banks and VC’s. Turned on by the future, the present, tech, and nature. As a member of numerous startups, startup support organizations, hackathons, accelerators like d3center.ca, and longtime supporter of Montréal's international startupfestival.com, Ben works to ensure Montréal's startup scene continues to flourish.

Bernard Agius is particularly passionate about anything tech and disruptive. He leads the Malta Communications Authority’s business innovation arm and is responsible for the development and implementation of initiatives aimed at growing digital business activity in Malta. Before joining the MCA Bernard headed the Maltese information society program coordinating initiatives addressing ICT take-up, digital inclusion and digital competence. Bernard holds a Doctorate in Business Administration from Durham University specializing in ICT diffusion in consumer markets.

Björn Ulvaeus is a producer and songwriter from Sweden. He is popular being the former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA. Furthermore, he has also co- produced the film Mamma Mia! and diverse musicals. Next stop: ABBA’s “avatar tour”, performing as computer-generated digital versions of themselves.

Christian Giacom holds a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Trento, in Italy, with a research thesis on the international implication of a cruise ship’s internal social structure. He travelled, worked and studied in different places around the world to improve languages, skills and social knowledge. Since 2010 he is employed at Trentino Sviluppo Spa, the Development Agency of the Autonomous Province of Trento, established to foster the sustainable growth of the “Trentino system”, by developing actions and services aimed at supporting the creation of new entrepreneurial and innovation projects. A reference point for the enterprises willing to operate in Trentino. During all these years, he’s been involved in territorial development projects, start-up and SME creations, business consultancies and the coordination of European Projects. Being a tutor of the mechanic and mechatronics’ cluster, he has worked together with national and well-established international companies with a view to support partnerships, understand and facilitate possible enterprise networks among companies, universities, research centers and Public Institutions in order to foster innovation at all levels. Currently he’s in charge of the start-up attraction project, which aims to scout and invites new ideas and companies in the Trentino Region’s Business Innovation Centre, a Government Certified Incubator, in order to give them the opportunity to grow and be ready for the market. He focuses on the mechatronics, greentech and sportech sector, managing local and international calls for tender. Together with the rest of the team offers continuous supports and spur to the almost 140+ companies (start-up and SME) hosted by Trentino Sviluppo in its six incubators.

Daniel Plotrino is entrepreneur, technology executive and innovation expert. He co-founded the startups Vivant, Wearbee and was CTO of IoT Experience, a knowledge platform developing the Internet of Things. Most recently founded Akaty Innovation, a company dedicated to accelerating corporate innovation and startups growth. He is Director at FIESP (Federation of Industry from São Paulo State), the largest Brazilian industry sector entity, representing more than 130,000 industries and hosting the largest startups hub from Latin America, where he is helping to develop the Brazilian startups ecosystem and connecting it with other around the globe. He is also is speaker, mentor and advisor in private and governmental programs for startup development.

Daria Lipatova is an international relations professional and business development expert. With her role as the Head of International Acceleration Programs at the Skolkovo Innovation Center - leading innovation ecosystem in Russia aimed at the country’s transformation from a resource-intensive to an innovation-based economy, Daria is focused on bridging world leading technology centers and accelerators with sparkling technology innovations nurtured in Skolkovo.

Denitsa is the CEO of the Association of the Bulgarian Leaders and Entrepreneurs (ABLE) where she leads and supports a community of 200+ members and entrepreneurs while running projects such as the Bulgarian National Finale of Central European Startup Awards, the digital startup map of Bulgaria - StartupNavigator.eu and others. She is also involved in several startup projects - in the blockchain-based Open Source University as a community advisor and in the program for digital entrepreneurship in the construction sector Leaders Academy as part of the advisory board. Denitsa's professional experience includes working as a business reporter at Capital.bg and as an expert on “General investment services” at Invest Bulgaria Agency. Denitsa holds a Master of e-Management and a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from the Technical University of Sofia and graduated a Summer Entrepreneurship Program at Babson College in the United States.

Edmund is the Nordic regional director for the Singapore Economic Development Board and is based in Stockholm. He is primarily responsible for working with Nordic companies on expanding their markets into Asia/South-East Asia, and using Singapore as a base where it makes sense. Travelling across Scandinavia, he has met with major start-up stakeholders and works to build bridges with Singapore’s start-up community. With a passion for organisation development, Edmund is also a change management practitioner and facilitator. He helped lead a 2-year effort to refresh the Singapore EDB’s mission and vision, and managed the EDB’s internal innovation platform. Edmund graduated magna cum laude with a double degree in Economics and Business Management from the Singapore Management University.

Eric Morrow is the Director of Design Thinking at ConsenSys. His mission is to introduce design thinking as the default way venture teams at ConsenSys engage with users and clients to create incredible product, service, and consulting experiences. He also helps internal teams use design thinking to create better processes and outcomes to serve the wider ConsenSys community.

Born in 1967 in Rietberg, Westphalia/Germany, Frank Briegmann became President & CEO of UNIVERSAL MUSIC Germany in 2004, making him the youngest ever CEO in the history of major labels in Germany. Since 2010, Frank Briegmann is also in charge of UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP in Austria and Switzerland and of the world’s most renowned classical label, Deutsche Grammophon. In 2013, Frank Briegmann was appointed President Central Europe, taking over management duties of local companies in Northern- and Eastern Europe as well as in Italy, the Benelux countries and Greece.He is also a member of the global UMG Executive Management Board. Frank Briegmann is a board member of the Federal Association of the Music Industry, of Deutsche Phono-Akademie and of media.net berlinbrandenburg. Additionally, he is a member of the advisory board East of Deutsche Bank and the board of trustees of the C/O Berlin Foundation. As one of the initiators of the charitable trust „Musik Bewegt“, he set up a funding platform through which artists and their fans can join forces to support social projects. He is also an advisor to Betterplace.org.

Gabrielle Costigan is the Managing Director for weXelerate. She spent 10 years in the oil and gas industry in the executive management roles of scaling the oil business in the Middle East. She has also worked for Accenture for 10 years, a global management consulting company and with Fortune 500 companies in the area of strategy, intelligent operations, digital value creation and innovation. With a civil engineering background - Gabrielle is passionate about “bridging” the gaps between (traditional) corporates and entrepreneurship for effective impact. She is a mum of an amazing 5 year old who has opened the eyes of what creative thinking means in every-day life.

Keith Jones runs Sw7 (Start with Seven), Africa’s largest technology accelerator, with his wife, Odette Jones. Keith worked in tech for ten years in UK, Belgium, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia before buying a boat and sailing back to South Africa to start his own tech business. He ran this business for ten years and listed it in London in 2009. He left in 2011 to ride his motorbike from Cape Town to Cairo and started Sw7 in 2013. Sw7 has run nine programs in Cape Town, Africa’s acceleration hub, and Johannesburg, Africa’s commercial hub. They have accelerated over one hundred and fifty tech business and have over one hundred tech CEO’s that Mentor for them. Their mission is Acceleration at Scale, their goal is to accelerate ten thousand businesses in Africa in the next four years.

Khalifa Almarri is the Director of the Infrastructure Operations Department at Smart Dubai. He is responsible for ensuring the continual operations of all of Smart Dubai’s underlying infrastructure and the Dubai Government Shared Infrastructure, like the Government Information Network, which serves as the backbone of communication between the Dubai Government entities. Khalifa has over 13 years of experience in IT Services and Infrastructure Operations. He began his career at Dubai Aluminium (now Emirates Global Aluminium,) working in fields such as IT Security, IT Networking, IT Operations, and Telecommunications. Since then he moved on to IT leadership roles at the Ministry of Health and Prevention, and later joined Smart Dubai. Khalifa holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Business Information Technology from The Higher Colleges of Technology, Dubai, and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing and Publishing from City, University of London.

First elected to the Austin City Council in 2014, Council Member Leslie Pool is one of ten city council members elected when Austin’s city governance changed from at-large to single-member districts. She is in her second term on the council. Pool’s priorities include supporting Austin’s neighborhoods, creative communities, the environment and public assets, and promoting historic preservation. She works to foster creative communities through cultural districts and other programs. Her legislative accomplishments include increasing funding for City parks, advocating for libraries, parks and pools, improving campaign finance and ethics ordinances, and strengthening transparency regulations for special interests.

Line Gerstrand has worked strategically with digital transformation, Business Development and Smart Cities since 2005. She is a co-founder of the Smart Aarhus partnership and works as Smart City coordinator in the City of Aarhus. Line was heavily involved in the launch of Denmark’s first open data portal in 2013 and is behind events like Internet Week Denmark and more recently Denmark’s first Sharing Economy Festival in 2017.

Maria works at Startup Portugal, a non-profit organization created to support entrepreneurs and investors who wish to set up their businesses in Portugal. Previously, she spent 2 years as special advisor to the Portuguese Government, helping to design public policies on entrepreneurship. Starting as a business journalist 20 years ago, she told the stories of countless startups and conspired to become a founder herself. After an 8-year detour through a couple of multinational consultancy firms, she left to create Too Small To Fail, a service-provider helping shape the startup Lisbon ecosystem.

Naveen Raja is a design strategist with hundreds of hours design thinking facilitation experience. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve by using design thinking. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play in creating an experience. When he’s not writing about design, you can find him doing Brazilian Juijitsu or hopping on a plane to see the world.

Paul is currently growing the ecosystem for CV Labs in the Crypto Valley in Zug and around the world. When he’s not in Crypto Valley, he’s supporting startups and entrepreneurs as investor, strategist and advisor. Helping them differentiate their offering, find new markets, and grow their business in FinTech, Blockchain, IoT, and eCommerce.

Sanja Stankovic is co-founder of Hamburg Startups and StartupSpot Germany. Hamburg Startups is the leading independent private startup platform in northern Germany and is committed to effective networking and presentation of the regional startup scene. The ecosystem, which has been significantly influenced by their work in recent years, has become a model for numerous other locations. In addition to the magazine, various extraordinary event formats such as the Startups@Reeperbahn Pitch and HamburgStartups@SXSW the team around the founders Sina Gritzuhn and Sanja Stankovic has created the StartupSpot, a platform that offers a transparent presentation of all startups in Germany and deep data insights into regions such as Hamburg, Baden-Württemberg, Rhine-Main and Central Germany. In April of this year, the StartupSpot Female Founders the first German database with startups with at least one female founding member, was published, which proves that 25% of startups in Germany are once again co-founded by women.

Stef is the go-to guy for startups in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. On behalf of the city he helps Eindhoven-based startups to succeed and grow by engaging them in the city’s innovation ecosystem. Next tot his, he is responsible for introducing outside startups and scaleups to Brainport Eindhoven – Europe’s leading high-tech region with Eindhoven at its very heart. Before joining the city of Eindhoven, Stef worked as a tech journalist and project manager for a EU-funded innovation project.

Tom Gray graduated from Queen’s University Belfast, holds a BSc. in Computer Science, and has studied Innovation Management at MIT Sloan. Tom is a 30-year tech veteran and, in addition to being Director of Digital Catapult Northern Ireland, is CTO and Director of Innovation at Kainos Group plc. Tom has been the driving force behind many of Kainos’ most innovative and successful customer and staff initiatives, including HealthHackEU, Kainos AI Camp, CodeCamp and Code4Derry. Tom founded and curates the content for the annual BelTech conference, which has a strong focus on emerging Digital technology. Tom invests in NI Startups and is a Director of SureCert and NEON. Tom is a member of the Board of the Northern Ireland Science Panel – MATRIX – and is Deputy-Chair of the MATRIX ICT panel. Tom is a member of the CCEA Regulatory Advisory Panel. Tom is Chairman of the University of Ulster Industrial Liaison Board, and is a member of the Industry Board of Manchester Connected Health. Tom is past-Chair of the IET in Northern Ireland.

Wilson Tseng is the Partnerships Manager for Alibaba Cloud and responsible for building an ecosystem of partners to support companies and businesses with their digital transformation. Previous to that, he has covered various roles within Alibaba Group, working across a number of business divisions including Ant Financial and AliExpress. A tech enthusiast, Wilson had co-founded eHealth startup MediQuo and has been an active mentor in the startup community in Europe. Having lived in places like Spain, UK and China, he has been able to experience firsthand both European and Asian business and cultural landscapes. Wilson holds a BEng on Electromechanical Engineering by the University of Southampton and an MBA by the IESE Business School.