"Everybody who mixes with people in corporate jobs, in academic roles, needs to step back and meet people like the Kairos fellows, because you’ll have your ideas challenged. You’ll understand emerging trends. You’ll get an early sense of what sort of companies are going to meet changing consumers needs. And it recharges you."
"I thought the level was high, right from the start. […] I decided to stay. Normally, I just rush out, I do my thing, and then I go. […] It comforts my way that the future lies in the hands of young people. When I see that, it makes me feel good about the future."
"As a Kairos Fellow, the Barcelona Summit has been the highlight of my year. Throughout the ThinkTank sessions, I was able to gain unparalleled insights and a deep understanding of the global healthcare system that ultimately allowed me to attract the former Head of Innovation Mount Sinai Hospital, former Head of Healthcare IBM Research and the Founder of AWS to launch my dream AI company with.
Looking back, the Kairos Society and the Summit in particular really have been the pivotal experiences that got me to this point."
Exchange ideas with the best young entrepreneurs in the world and co-conceptualise solutions to the world's biggest challenges together.
Our top 10 founders have achieved an aggregate valuation of over 10 BN €. Connect with a curated group of the brightest young minds that build the unicorns of tomorrow.
Early exposure to the companies and technologies that will shape the future in a fundamental way. Meet those who disrupt your businesses.
In October 2019, we will unite in Venice with a mission to engineer serendipity, create explosive innovation, and explore opportunities which will change the course of many lives.
ProgramThe event is invite-only. You can apply above.
To tackle Europe's most pressing problems effectively, we bring together the brightest minds who develop the most innovative technologies. AI, Blockchain and IoT bear the potential to solve problems that have been prevailing in society for centuries. In our innovation process we evaluate the problems through the lens of ethics, philosophy and long-term thinking to ensure a holistic solution.
Become a partner of Europe’s most impactful event and let’s co-create the future together! Get in touch with us
David Rowan is founding Editor-in-chief of WIRED’s UK edition,
currently writing a book searching for bold corporate innovation.
Rowan has interviewed influencers ranging from will.i.am to James
Murdoch, Zaha Hadid to David Cameron. He has keynoted on
technology, business and innovation themes from Melbourne to
Monaco, and has chaired and moderated high-profile events for
the UK and French governments, for Google Zeitgeist and TED
Global, and for international banks and Fortune 100 businesses
David Rowan has written columns in GQ, Condé Nast Traveller,
Campaign, The Times and The Guardian.
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Corinne Vigreux is co-founder of TomTom, a location technology specialist on a mission to create the most innovative technologies to help shape tomorrow’s mobility and create a safe, connected, autonomous world free of congestion and emissions.
Voted one of the top 50 most inspirational women in European tech, Corinne champions women in the workforce and advocates passionately for improved social mobility through education.
In 2018, she launched CODAM, a tuition-free, nonprofit coding college in Amsterdam, because she believes coding is the engine for innovation that is driving the world forward faster than ever before. CODAM’s learning system is based on the famous Ecole 42 curriculum and ethos, and its mission is to help a new generation shape the future.
Additionally, Corinne is a member of the supervisory board of takeaway.com NV and Groupe ILIAD in France, member of the advisory board on Mass Transit of SNCF Transilien, member of the supervisory board of the Dutch National Opera & Ballet and advisor to the Amsterdam Economic Board. She is also chair on the trustee board of the Sofronie foundation (www.sofronie.org). Corinne was made Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 2012 and Officier in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau in 2016.
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Erik founded CELLINK, the first company in the world to 3D print organs. CELLINK was listed on Nasdaq First North within ten months of incorporation and amassed total sales of 1MM in its first year. It is currently valued at several hundred million €. Moreover, Erik has published several papers in the spheres of biology and is an active keynote presenter.
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Nicolas is the founder of the online travel portal Opodo, which has been acquired and valued at several billion €s. He has furthermore helped to raise €100 million for the internet company beenz, which was sold to US Carlson Marketing Group. Nicolas is a frequent advisor to the government and European Union and has played a critical role in shaping the European identity and the Euro as a currency.
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Antoine is known as one of the founders of Siri and has subsequently founded Sentient AI, which was the world’s most funded AI company until 2017. He is moreover the founder of Genetic Finance Holdings Limited and an advisor at Active Starts.
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Sridhar founded Misfit Wearables which received over 64 Million in funding and is valued at several hundred million dollars. He has also founded Elemental Machines together with John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple. Elemental Machines improves experimental reproducibility and thus helps scientists invent faster. Sridhar received a PhD from Cambridge University.
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As an UN SDG Advocate, Social Innovation, Climate Change
Agriculture, Food and Beverage Expert Network member of the
World Economic Forum, Global Food Reformist, and Sustainable
Futurist, Marc is on a mission to empower billions of global
citizens to live an adaptive lifestyle of health and sustainability
within planetary boundaries. His aim is to reform the agriculture,
food and beverage industry with impactful projects and moonshot
companies. Marc has co-founded the ALOHAS ECO-Center
which is a sustainable food and beverage production company
that creates renewable energy and resources without fossil fuels,
greenhouse gas emissions, or waste. Marc is also a Champion
for Global Citizen social movement to end extreme poverty. The
Germany Country Coordinator for Al Gores Climate Reality Project
and a international speaker on the climate crisis.
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Alex is a serial entrepreneur and the former European Managing Director of IDEO, the world’s largest design thinking firm. He is recognized to be one of the world’s most creative and innovative design thinkers and has designed several interfaces and processes at large corporations such as McDonalds and larger airline corporations.
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Inna is the founder of Eco Wave Power, a start-up that aims to provide the world with alternative energy sources. Inna was named as one of the top ten most influential women in business worldwide, listed on Wired’s “Females Changing the World”, and called “Tomorrow’s Hero” by CNN.
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Daniel has founded SOLBEN, a bioenergy provider which produces 80% of biodiesel in Mexico. He was recognized as the most innovative entrepreneur at TR35 at Massachussetes Institute of Technology (MIT) and holds the INC and Forbes 30 under 30 award.
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Pascal founded his first company with 13 and his second with 16 and sold both for several millions to Google. He was an AI and Machine Learning Engineer at Google, Head of AI and Rapid Prototyping at Alpha Telefonica and currently builds another stealth AI company in New York. Pascal is a Kairos fellow, as well as investor in and advisor to several start-ups.
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Joachim Jaeckle is corporate SVP at Henkel Group. Responsible for the financial organisation of all regions and subsidiaries worldwide, he leads the group’s shared-services initiative and global finance transformation programme. His role encompasses process design and harmonisation, IT and talent management.
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Mattias Bergstrom is a successful innovator, entrepreneur, and
futurist with a main focus on business and technical strategies of
decentralized P2P based solutions, but also holds patents in wind
turbine and agricultural technologies. He has been designing highspeed
network solutions for more than 25 years and deployed
Voddler a P2P based video delivery system in 2006. He has
founded and co-founded six startups as CEO and CTO, is a huge
believer in the Internet, and technology overall, for good.
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Vishal is an Anaesthetic Consultant at the Royal Free Hospital, London, and Founder of MedicalandMe a startup using artificial intelligence to predict and prevent patients dying in hospital.
Passionate about preventing patients dying in-hospital, he uses advanced technology to improve patient care and describes himself as a Medical Machine Learning Ninja. He built his expertise in the interface of medicine and technology by initially developing a proficiency in space medicine and it’s interplay with advanced spacecraft technology. Over the years, he has worked on systems engineering at the International Space University, long term human adaptation/acclimatisation at the European Space Agency, the management of heart rhythm disorders on the international space station at NASA (Johnson Space Centre), and the training of the doctor on a mission to mars. He is a former president of the aerospace medicine residents association and a council member of the aerospace medical association (www.asma.org). He is on the Faculty of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (aimed.ai), a group dedicated to exploring, educating, and expanding the applications of AI in medicine.
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Om was Global Head of Behavioral Science at Walmart. He is a frequent lecturer at UCLA on Creativity and founded Take Her Back, India’s biggest anti human trafficking initiative.
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Vishal was Head of Continental Europe at Infosys, a 200.000 employee strong global leader in next generation digital services and consulting. Vishal subsequently founded Acellere, a start-up that produces self-writing code.
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Omar is the founder of Goodwall, a professional development platform for young, ambitious individuals. The platform counts over 1.5 Million members to date. Omar is a Kairos Fellow and was named on Forbes ‘30 under 30’ list.
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Trevor Martin holds degrees at Princeton and Stanford, and is founder of Mammoth Biosciences. Mammoth has raised over 30 Million in funding and builds the next generation CRISPR platform for diagnostics.
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Björn has founded 7 companies to date. Most recently, he founded Penguin Academy, which educates students, young professionals and top level executives on emerging technologies. He is a board member at AI business school and a lecturer at University of St. Gallen on artificial intelligence. Visit LinkedIn Profile
Julian founded Eva Tech at age of 17, a biosensors and big data company dedicated to boosting women’s quality of life through EVA, a bra which cures breast cancer. Julián has been awarded Mexico's Presidential Medal for Scientific and Technological breakthroughs and the Vanguard Award from Minerva University for his research in wearable technologies to detect breast cancer. Visit LinkedIn Profile
Nana is a digital health transformer and medical sciences expert.
Nana is passionate about new life sciences technologies and believes that innovation means adapting to the future. To translate the latest global technological developments into life sciences and align it with the healthcare industry, Nana has successfully led a broad scope of innovative programs and partnerships between SMEs, NGOs, healthcare industry and academia in her previous roles as Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Charité Foundation and Head of Digital Health & Life Sciences program at the German hub of Singularity University, an executive education organization based on NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, and Head of Strategic Relations at Berlin-based start-up Medicinisto. Nana Bit-Avragim is currently the Program Lead at the Brandenburg Medical School Theodor Fontane in Germany.
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Andreas Wil Gerdes sold his first business at the age of 20.
Working out of a garage, he then successfully built what would
become part of Orange PLC. Andreas has been at the forefront
of the mobile telecoms revolution empowering lives. He was one
of the seven winners of the European Award “Elite of the Future”
(Elite der Zukunft), the nominators of which include Egon Zehnder
International, BMW, Deutsche Bank and Bertelsmann. Andreas
co-founded the non-profit foundation Startup Malta that boosted
entrepreneurship within young people. Andreas has also been
prominently featured in the Financial Times publication ‘101
Leaders of the New Economy’. He discovered Malta in the late
90's and saw its potential to become a UNITED Nations Hotspot
and the natural capital of the digital transition of the Greater
Mediterranean ‘country’ aka the world’s second-biggest economy
after the US in terms of GDP.
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Christine Gould is the Founder and CEO of Thought For Food (TFF), the world’s entrepreneurial innovation engine for food and agriculture. To date, TFF has empowered more than 15,000 millennial and GenZ entrepreneurs in 160 countries with the mindsets, skills and connections they need to build successful, socially-responsible businesses, and has helped to launch over 50 startups on all continents and across all parts of the value chain.
Christine has spent her career in the agriculture industry, working around the world in multi-billion dollar companies through to fast-growing startups. She has held leadership roles in external affairs, innovation, business development and public policy, and established and led the Next Generation Innovation function at Syngenta in Switzerland.
Christine is a visionary leader and community builder, who is known for injecting energy, creativity and diverse perspectives into how we solve our food system’s most important challenges. She is an expert and invited public speaker on the new minds and methods shaping the future of agriculture, which is the topic of her forthcoming book “The Changemaker’s Guide to Feeding the Planet - How to Solve Big Problems the Next Gen Way.” Christine serves on the Boards of YPARD (Young Professionals in Ag Development), the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF), and the Ashoka Changemakers League of Intrapreneurs. She holds an MPA in Science and Technology Policy from Columbia University and a BA in Political Science and Economics from American University. In her free time, she enjoys architecture, dancing and DJs electronic music.
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Jake Backus is Managing Director of Empathy Sustainability and Visiting Senior Member of Linacre College, Oxford where he lectures on plastics and ocean plastics amongst other things. Jake is formerly Commercial Leadership Manager for Coca-Cola Europe and then Customer Sustainability Director for Coca-Cola Europe where he created the commercial role for sustainability at Coca-Cola globally.
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Dan Sobovitz is a disrupter. A civil society activist in Europe and Africa. Digital Strategist of the Vice President of the European Commission who together redefined the relationship between politicians and citizens using technology. He used digital platforms in order to crowdsource best policy ideas among European citizens and bring them to international fora, livestream from a solar plane or autonomous buses, fly drones over EU panels, blog in a way that is actually read (by half a million subscribers); all in order to make the EU relevant, accessible and even sexy. As a young father to twins, Dan and his husband are prominent voices about gay rights and surrogacy in Europe and around the world. Originally from the West Bank, Dan recently made Berlin his home again.
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Cecile is the Founder and Managing Partner at Impact First Investments. Cecile specializes in merging technology, profit and social impact, and is considered a pioneer of the impact industry in Israel as well as a thought leader of the impact industry worldwide. Prior to founding Impact First, Cecile managed the Noaber Foundation’s Israeli investments for over 14 years and has extensive hands-on management experience with high-tech start-ups. Additionally, Cecile held executive positions and led several companies as a CEO and, on behalf of the Noaber Foundation, served as a chairperson and board member on many more. Cecile was one of the initiators of the Al-Bawader private equity fund, established to invest in businesses in the Arab community in Israel. Cecile volunteers as a mentor at the Keren Shemesh Foundation for the Encouragement of Young Entrepreneurs. Cecile is a board member and observer of Impact First’s portfolio companies. Prior to beginning her professional career, Cecile served as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces. Cecile is also an alumnus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she studied political science and international relations. Visit LinkedIn Profile
An internationally renowned preeminent transformational strategist, Lisa Short is an innovator, entrepreneur, advisor, mentor and ambassador of change. Lisa works with world state authorities, governments and businesses delivering systemic change initiatives crucial for the global economy to deliver social impact and growth; improve businesses; establish gender parity; develop scaleable, affordable education and advance and deploy fit for purpose frontier technology solutions.
Lisa has founded and leads several global technology initiatives. She is the Founder of Mind Shifting and the Frontier TechED Accelerator that places education forefront at the intersection of mainstream SME businesses and frontier technologies to accelerate potential for economic growth. Continuing her passion for education Lisa educated 1200 international youth on social entrepreneurship at the 17th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Mérida Mexico and is the Director for Learning & Ecosystems for the United Africa Blockchain Association who is delivering a 1M Learner Programme in Blockchain & AI throughout Africa. As the Co-Founder of OPTMZD, she brought together Nobel Peace Laureates with the foremost social impact aligned digital technologists and philanthropists at the inaugural Strategic Change Impact Meeting: Peace and Technology, in September to lead the process and Affirmation of Intent for a new venture, ImpactX that advances the betterment of civil society and global peace.
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Mali is shaping the female founders future globally and develops opportunities at the startup ecosystem in Berlin. She has been nominated for the Digital Female Leader Award 2017 by Women in Digital. Mali is an active part of several startups and is – as an investor –supporting companies in relation to growth and scalability. She is regularly speaking at various conferencesand is a mentor as well as jury member at competitions like eBay startUpcup, a program from the Silicon Valley in Berlin to connect eBay with startups. Mali founded the global brand Beezeebee, whose products sold in the US, Asia, EU market and Australia, and won numerous awards for innovation and design. Mali has played several roles as a board member in various organizations like WIT (Women in Toys) in the US. She’s an active member of the public leadership at the Israeli Export & International Cooperation Institute. She lectures at universities on entrepreneurship and international business. Visit LinkedIn Profile
Julia Zhou & Noah Hofmann
Co-MDs of Kairos EU Summit
Email: eusummit@kairossociety.org
Phone: +4915150647490