Graham Phillips Weihmiller

Chairman and CEO

Business Network International (BNI)

Graham Weihmiller is Chairman & CEO of BNI, a position he has held since 2014. Graham is extremely passionate about BNI’s unique ability to foster job creation, economic growth, and lifelong relationships through collaboration amongst purpose-driven business leaders. As CEO, he is focused on building The BNI of the Future and dedicated to making the BNI membership experience the best that it can be. His goal is to ensure BNI Members and Leaders across BNI’s 77+ operating countries achieve their dreams.

Graham also serves as a Director of the BNI Foundation, which helps underprivileged children access life changing educational opportunities throughout the world. Prior to joining BNI, Graham was the CEO of a 35-year-old homecare services company with over 250 locations across the United States. Previously, Graham worked in leadership roles with American Franchise Company, Bank of America, and Merrill Lynch.

Graham received his MBA from Harvard Business School and his BBA from The College of William & Mary. He has done subsequent executive education with Harvard Business School in Boston and in Mumbai, and is a two-time participant in executive training from Johnson & Johnson’s Human Performance Institute. He is a Certified Franchise Executive and a Six Sigma Blackbelt. He was elected to the board of the International Franchise Association (IFA) in 2020 and selected as Vice Chairman of IFA’s Franchisor Forum in 2021. He is an active member of YPO and he speaks frequently on entrepreneurship, franchising, and operational excellence. He has participated in seminars and panels at Harvard University, Stanford University and Georgetown University. In 2020, along with Dr. Ivan Misner and Robert Skrob, he wrote The Connector Effect, which became a best seller on Amazon.

Originally from Virginia, Graham lives with his family in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is a three-time Ironman triathlete, a marathoner, and has summited Mt. Kilimanjaro. He and his wife, Sarah – a pediatric emergency room doctor – are active members of their church, enjoy movie time with their three children, playing with their two German Shepherds, camping trips in the Carolina mountains, and traveling together throughout the world.

Ullas Marar

Head of the ICC Centre of Entrepreneurship

(ICC)

A firm believer in the power of entrepreneurship to alleviate poverty and uplift societies, Ullas leads the ICC Centre of Entrepreneurship, where he designs and implements high-impact programmes. In his most recent role, he designed a support programme for women entrepreneurs in small town India, which had more than 900 participants. With work experience spanning over 15 years, Ullas previously headed up scouting at a globally renowned social enterprise incubator, traveling across India to support social enterprises. He holds a Master’s in Marketing Management.

Baybars Altuntas

Chairman of the Board of Directors, World Business Angel Investment Forum

(WBAF)

Former Senior Advisor of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) for the Elite Program, Executive Chairman of the World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF) – an affiliated partner of the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) chaired by the Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, Council Member of the Inclusive Capitalism – founded and chaired by Lynn Forester de Rothschild and operates under the moral guidance of Pope Francis.

The only entrepreneur to be granted a personal audience with President Obama at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington DC. Awarded as JCI Ambassador, following Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations.

Recipient of the European Trade Association of Business Angels (EBAN) award for the Best Individual in Europe Globally Engaging with the Global Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in 2014 (Ireland), 2015 (Netherlands), 2016 (Portugal), 2017 (Spain) and 2018 (Bulgaria).

A co-author of Planet Entrepreneur: The World Entrepreneurship Forum's Guide to Business Success Around the World, published by Wiley (2013). Author of Off the Bus, Into a Supercar! How I Became a Top TV Star and Celebrated Investor, published by Balboa Press (2014) and translated into Chinese, Croatian, Albanian, and Macedonian.

Star of the Turkish version of the television show Dragons’ Den / Sharks Tank. Profiled by leading international media such as CNN International, Bloomberg, BBC.

Vincent Lau

Co-founder

Digital Vision Brands Holdings Limited

A blockchain industry veteran, Vincent previously led business development and investment at other leading cryptocurrency exchanges. His proven track records are as below:

Leader roles in various global exchanges, such as Huobi Global, OKEx and Bitfinex

Lead of a global venture and incubation lab, fund size reaching 500M USD

High success rate in crypto and NFT related incubation, has successfully raised project values up to 100 times , up to 30M valuation

Management roles at E-commerce marketplace HKTVmall, Groupon and marketing firm iClick Interactive

Monika Froehler

CEO

Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens

Monika Froehler is CEO of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens and is a passionate change maker, advocate, founder and speaker. She was entrusted to create the BKMC after working at the UN in Geneva, NY and Vienna, the EU, the Austrian Foreign Ministry and in field missions around the globe. She is passionate about the implementation of the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement. Throughout her career she managed to support hundreds of women, young people and communities all over the globe e.g. working in Africa and Latin America to ban landmines; working to improve hospital care in rural Central Asia and Africa; assisting in eco-friendly city planning in Asia and bettering the living conditions of women in the Middle East and West-Africa.

Kate Landon

Executive Director

Ban Ki-moon Foundation

Kate Landon holds over twenty years of experience in a variety of leadership positions within social impact organizations, and is passionate advocate for the advancement of gender, racial and economic justice within philanthropy at large. She currently serves as Executive Director of the Ban Ki-moon Foundation, which works to mobilize leadership for the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement in the U.S., Americas and globally. Previous roles include Executive Director of the New Haven/Leon Sister City Project and Vice President of Programs and Institutional Advancement at The New York Women’s Foundation. She holds an M. P. A. in Public and Nonprofit Management and Policy from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at NYU and a B. A. in Sociology from Rutgers College.

Chester Shum

Global President

AIESEC

Chester Shum is currently the Global President of AIESEC, a global youth-led non-for-profit organization present in 100+ countries and territories that strives deliver youth leadership development and cross-cultural experiences. Chester has had many leadership positions within AIESEC, including National President of AIESEC in the UK, and Global Director of People Development. In his seven years in AIESEC, he has been passionate in diversity and inclusion and unlocking potential in young people through people-centric learning experiences. In the future, Chester hopes to make an impact through people development and ethical business solutions.

Linda Peterhans

Programme Officer

Kofi Annan Foundation

Linda Peterhans is a Programme Officer working on youth-related projects under the Youth Leadership programme. She manages the Kofi Annan Changemakers, an intergenerational initiative which aims to make the voices of young people count by giving them a chance to dialogue with and seek counsel from experienced leaders on diverse issues whilst allowing leaders to better understand the preoccupation of young people.

Prior to that, Linda worked in the Arts and Culture team of the World Economic Forum, leading a leadership programme with artists and managing the Cultural Leaders network. She also worked in the humanitarian sector in the Middle East where she coordinated cultural projects.

Linda holds a Master's Degree in Anthropology and Sociology from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and The American University in Cairo.

Stefanie Beßler

Innovation & Community Lead

Social Impact Award (SIA)

As Innovation & Community Lead at Social Impact Award (SIA), Stefanie leads (social innovation) consulting projects and builds up SIA's international alumni community in over 25 countries. Previously, in her role as country coordinator of Social Impact Award in Austria, she accompanied more than 100 aspiring social entrepreneurs in founding their social enterprise.

Today, she also shares her gained experiences a mentor and impact coach for several incubation and acceleration programs by advising founders on their impact strategies and measurement as well as social & sustainable business models.

Before joining Social Impact Award, she has been actively engaged in several student and social organizations around the topic of social innovation and supported social entrepreneurs in Brazil and Colombia.

She studied International Business at ESB Business School in Germany and stayed one semester abroad in Argentina. Stefanie obtained two Master’s degrees in Latin American and International Development Studies at the University of Vienna and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

Sanjana Chhantyal

Deputy Project Lead Youth Solutions Program

UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN Youth)

Sanjana Chhantyal is the Deputy Project Lead of the Youth Solutions Program at SDSN-Youth. She is a Fulbright Scholar and MBA graduate from Emory University's Goizueta Business School. She currently works in the Private Equity and Venture Capital industry and previously worked as a Financial Analyst in the US. She is one of the 10 members globally in USAID Youth Excel’s Global Youth Advisory Council. She was selected by UN Women Asia and the Pacific as a 30 for 2030 Youth Leader. She founded the Next Steps Project and designed a Higher Education Research toolkit to help aspiring students make informed academic decisions. She co-founded the Stree-Shakti Project that was awarded the Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund by the U.S. Department of State. The Project aims to encourage and prepare young women to pursue a career in and take on leadership roles in Nepal’s Energy sector. Additionally, she designs and leads training workshops for youths on entrepreneurship and innovation.

Sanjana was selected by the U.S. Embassy in Nepal to mentor young Nepali professionals in the inaugural United States Government (USG) Alumni Mentorship Program. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she volunteered in a community health center in the US and translated health guidelines to refugee communities from Bhutan, Myanmar and Nepal to help combat misinformation.

Matthias Scheffelmeier

Co-founder and Managing Director

ChangemakerXchange

Matthias Scheffelmeier is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of ChangemakerXchange, a growing global collaborative community of more than 1000 of some of the world's highest impact young innovators, activists and changemakers, as well the initiator of The Possibilists, a global alliance, research project and joint initiative between 20 of the world’s biggest and leading youth social innovation communities.

Until end of 2020 and for more than 11 years he also was a Partner at Ashoka Germany, Co-Founder of Ashoka in Turkey, Co-Initiator of the "Carry for Good" Pledge (enabling Venture Capital & Private Equity Funds to pledge a % of their carried interest towards social innovation) and a Member of Ashoka Europe's regional leadership team. Beyond that he's been contributing to the social impact eco-system in Germany and Europe as Founding Board Member of the Social Entrepreneurship Netzwerk Deutschland (SEND), as New Work practitioner at the "Inner Work Alliance" and as a small scale impact investor, with a focus on ventures tackling climate change. Building on 15 years of experience in all things social innovation he's also a well versed facilitator and speaker on social entrepreneurship, social innovation, systems change and distributed leadership.

Matthias also is a Member of the global board at MasterPeace, a grassroots non-profit and non-governmental peace movement, a global advisory board member at the Social Impact Award, an international network of startup social entrepreneurs and a global advisory board member at Snowball Effect, a social enterprise for the replication of successful social ventures.

He's been on the jury of the Google.org Impact Challenge in Germany, the Social Tides program by INCO, Euclid and Google.org, a member of the jury of the "Next Economy Award", a member of the jury of "Land der Ideen", as well as an advisory council member for StartSocial.

Before founding ChangemakerXchange and before joining Ashoka he was Microsoft's Community Affairs (Corporate Social Responsibility) Program Coordinator for the Middle East and Africa region.

He received his diploma degree in communication science at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany (being awarded the SIEMENS prize for "best thesis in communication science"). In 2017 he earned an Executive Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the European School of Management and Technology (Germany's Top Business School). He lives in Berlin with his wife and son

Victor Ugo

MHPSS and Youth Engagement Advisor for the MHPSS Collaborative, One Young World Ambassador

Victor's previous role as the Senior Campaign Officer for United for Global Mental Health and Co-Chair of the Child and Youth Working Group of the Global Mental Health Action Network has provided him with ample opportunities to be a thought leader in the field of global mental health. Currently serving as the MHPSS and Youth Engagement Advisor for the MHPSS Collaborative, hosted by Save The Children, in Copenhagen, Denmark, he is now dedicated to building infrastructures that enable young people to lead and participate authentically in mental health, both within, in the intersection with other sectors and beyond the sector.

Stefan Muehleisen

Director of Innovation

Adidas AG

Stefan Muehleisen (GER) is a member of the junior Chamber International, Senator of JCI Germany and was the 2021 chairman of the JCI Europe sustainability committee. He is currently employed at Adidas AG a multinational corporation and global fortune 500 company, founded and headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, that designs and manufactures sport Footwear, Apparel and accessories. It is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe, and the second largest in the world. It is the holding company for the Adidas Group, which also owns an 8% stake of the football club Bayern München and Runtastic, a digital fitness technology company. Stefan studied business administration, law and sport Science with Engineering at the universities of Bayreuth (Germany), Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) and Los Angeles (USA).

At adidas he held various positions within global operations, Global Product and Brand Marketing and most recently within the adidas innovation team, a collaborative group of dedicated teams focused on products, processes and business model innovation, driven to create the best for the athlete and shaping the future of sport and the sporting goods industry.

Francisco José Tavira Sánchez

Co-Founder & CEO, Loomee

Fran is a multifaceted and serial entrepreneur, passionate about digital health solutions. He is a Telecommunication engineer and has an MBA and a PhD specialized in Acoustics and Neuroscience. He has 16+ years of experience in startups (as co-founder, mentor and advisor) and corporates (as an intrapreneur and other business responsibilities) working in Spain, France and Germany.

Currently, he is the co-founder and CEO of Loomee, a platform for the prevention, monitoring and improvement of mental health for young people.

Edoardo Giudice

Co-founder

Virtuosis Artificial Intelligence SA

Co-founder of Virtuosis AI & Ambassador of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce.

Transitioning from a corporate executive to a socially-driven entrepreneur, Edoardo aims to humanize the corporate world. With a decade of experience in high-pressure roles, he founded and scaled ventures while working on humanitarian causes. Co-founding Virtuosis, Edoardo strives to reduce burnout and mental health issues using technology. A yogi and sax player, he holds an MSc in Economics from Bocconi and an MSc in International Management from HEC Paris & RSM (Cems).

Lara Gervaise

Co-founder

Virtuosis Artificial Intelligence SA

Co-founder of Virtuosis AI. Following a thesis at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Behavioral Analysis using Multimodal Deep Learning, Lara co-founded Virtuosis with the goal of enhancing people's well-being and communication capabilities. She is knowledgeable in the field of AI and recognizes the significance of diverse and high-quality data. Impact-driven, Lara firmly supports the responsible use of technology for the good and values privacy.

Natalia Bayona

Executive Director

World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)

Natalia Bayona leads as Executive Director of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the United Nations specialized agency for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and accessible tourism worldwide. With a diverse background on politics, destination management and business, she has become the first innovation director at UNWTO, has introduced entrepreneurship and education as key factors for tourism and development, and has positioned UNWTO as an innovation benchmark within the wider United Nations system as recognized in the UN 2020 Mapping of Innovation, Data and Digital Capacities. Furthermore, she has joined the UN Executive Leadership Programme for Sustainable Development led by the UN System Staff College (UNSSC).

Her work consists of identifying the most disruptive startups and investment projects and matching them with Member States and leading corporations. As an advocate of youth and technology, she seeks to make entrepreneurs grow for a promising future in all regions.

As recognition for her work, Natalia has been awarded the IIPT (International Institute For Peace Through Tourism)’s 5th “Celebrating Her” prize for “Innovation & the Empowerment of Women Through Tourism” at ITB Berlin 2021, an acknowledgement that is only given to 3 women from all over the world each year. Natalia is also a part of the “100 de COTEC” network which gathers experts who speak Spanish from multiple areas of knowledge for analyzing social, economic and technological challenges that innovation faces.

Recently, she has also been recognized as one of the 10 Colombian nationals in Spain contributing the most to the country’s positive image, as one of the 150 most influential people in tourism in Spain by Sergestur, and as part of the women-led think tank The Club G100 as Colombia Country Chair for Smart and Sustainable Cities.

Natalia graduated in Government and International Relations from Universidad Externado de Colombia and holds an Executive MBA from the IE Business School. Nowadays, she is part of the World Economic Forum (WEF) network as a European Digital Leader and is an Eisenhower Fellow as the first Colombian on the Women Leadership Program for creating the first Tourism for Tomorrow Programme: a high-level network focused on joining public-private efforts for high-impact investments in digital education and innovation for tourism’s sustainable development and post Covid-19 recovery. Additionally, she enjoys sharing knowledge by teaching at universities – Harvard (USA), Cornell (USA), Externado (Colombia) and Bilkent (Turkey) – and public schools in Colombia as part of her give back to youth and her country.

In 2017, she served as the Vice President of International Development for the Spain Startup - South Summit and organized the first South Summit Pacific Alliance, connecting the main stakeholders of the entrepreneurship ecosystem of Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru. Having worked in ProColombia for ten years, she has lived in six countries where has developed strategies to boost exports, foreign investment and tourism for Colombia. Her career started in 2006 as part of the team that created the first international tourism campaign for Colombia: “Colombia, the risk is wanting to stay”, which sought to change the image of the country abroad. The successful execution of this campaign in more than 15 countries was possible thanks to her work.