Αctivist, writer
Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, was born in Durban, South Africa during the apartheid years. At age 12, Arun was taken to India to live with his famous grandfather and learn ways to cope with his anger and violent reactions, having been a victim of color prejudice while growing up. During his time in India, he learned valuable lessons on life next to his grandfather.
Arun is now the President of the Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute to take the message of nonviolence all over the world and to rescue and train children living in poverty so that they can break the oppressive cycle crushing them. He has also started the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in 1991, based since 2008 at the University of Rochester, NY, which runs programs for inner city children, inmates of correctional facilities and poor families while teaching nonviolence to students.
During his years in India Arun and his late wife, Sunanda, started self-help economic programs for the impoverished and oppressed sections of society, designed to rebuild the crushed self-respect of poverty victims. They also found loving homes for new born babies abandoned by unwed mothers. Arun also leads two Legacy Tours to India and South Africa, both annual and open to all interested in field studies of nonviolence and peace.
Grammy-winning producer, writer & musicologist
Christopher C. King is a Grammy-winning producer, musicologist as well as a prominent 78 rpm collector. He has been profiled in the New York Times Magazine and the Washington Post, and has written for the Paris Review and the Oxford American.
Christopher was born and raised in southwest Virginia and studied philosophy at Radford University. Over the course of the last ten years, he has researched the tradition of Greek demotika songs, especially in Epirus. In 2018, W.W. Norton published his book, Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Old Surviving Folk Music, to wide critical acclaim. His book was named one of the top ten books of 2018 by the Wall Street Journal and Christopher has presented his work at the New York Public Library, the Gennadius Library of Athens as well as the Odeon Conservatoire in Athens, among other venues.
He currently splits his time between the United States and Greece.
Film maker
Udayan Prasad has been directing documentaries, television drama and feature films since graduating from the National Film & Television School in Beaconsfield, UK. Among his numerous television credits are five single dramas all written for BBC Television - three of them by Simon Gray and two of them by Alan Bennett, ultimately granting him two Golden Gate Awards and two Bafta Nominations.
His first theatrical feature was Brothers in Trouble in 1995 (winning the Golden Alexander Award for Best First Feature at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival), followed by the awarded My son the fanatic in 1997 (Directors Fortnight Cannes Film Festival, Best Feature at the Potsdam Film Festival), Gabriel & Me in 2000 (Edinburgh Film Festival) and OPA! in 2005 (Toronto International Film Festival). His latest feature The Yellow Handkerchief (Sundance Film Festival) was released in the United States in 2010.
When not actively involved in a production, he is a frequent visiting lecturer on directing and screenwriting programmes at several film schools including The National Film & Television School in Beaconsfield, UK; London Film School; The Wajda School in Warsaw and the National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź́́, Poland. He is also an advisor and mentor on various international directing and screenwriting workshops.
Musicians
The percussion musical instruments of Percussion4one create a contemporary personal sound, mixing rhythms originating from West Africa, Latin America, Eastern Mediterranean as well as the Greek folk music.
Their excitement for experimentation and discovery of new "sounds" marks Percussion4one as an outstanding act in their kind. Their live performances are a unique experience full of powerful vibes and beats, living up to the standards of the most demanding Greek and foreign audiences. Percussion4one consists of Nikos Ntarilas, Alekos Roupas kai Vasilis Katsampelas.
Singer
Tzeni Kapadae was born in Athens and has studied musicology and photography.
To this day, she has cooperated with important names of the blues, jazz and pop scene (among which Blues Wire, Giorgos Kontrafouris, Dimitris Kalatzis, Christos Rafaelides, DNA, Papercut, Monsieur Minimal, Expert Medicine, Thee Holy Strangers, Dustbowl, Rosewood Brothers, Quasamodo Timewarp) both in records and live performances, in music stages and festivals in Greece as well as abroad.
She has done voice-overs for various cartoon characters, movie soundtracks and theatrical plays, while her new record is expected soon.
Artists & Events Manager
Christos Panoilias is a hip hop artist with the alias “Lagnis” and an events artist manager. Recently he celebrated 20 years as an active hip hop artist with his band NTΠ (or Nea Taksi Pragmaton), having performed over 400 shows. Throughout his career, he has been awarded with gold and platinum record, released 15 videoclips and has featured in 17 albums and compilations.
He studied Business Administration at the University of Piraeus, earned an MBA from Nottingham Trent University, has two diplomas in Public Relations and has been trained in Life Coaching. He has worked in Marketing and Public Relation departments and in 2012, he started his own business called “Action Εστί | Events Artist Management”. Through this venture, he has organised more than 200 concerts, theatre plays, festivals and cultural events all over Greece. He has also organised “Festival Amarousiou 2014” and “Events Expo 2018” in Peace and Friendship stadium.
Christos enjoys spreading his experience through seminars in “Artist Marketing” and “Theatrical Plays Promotion”.His new venture “Spoudaia Events” will be launched in fall 2019, and will support NGOs through music concerts. He is currently studying Client Centered Psychotherapy in Athens.
Journalist and Author
Victoria Turk is a senior editor at WIRED UK, where she edits the magazine's culture section, leads video strategy, and writes regularly for print and web. She specialises in stories at the intersection of technology and culture, which explore the impact of technology on our everyday lives. Before working at WIRED, she was technology editor at New Scientist and UK editor at Motherboard, VICE’s tech and science channel.
Victoria’s first book, Digital Etiquette, was published by Ebury Press in March 2019 and explores the way we use digital communication tools across different spheres of our lives – from work to romance, friendship to social media – to set out the new rules of online etiquette.
Environmental Engineer
Prof. Dimitri Lalas’ professional career has focused on energy, environment and economy matters and particularly the interplay between them. He has worked on aspects of wind and solar energy utilization and ways to attain a low carbon economy as well as on climate change and its impacts.
He has represented Greece in the international climate change negotiations from 1995 to 2005 and from 2009 to 2013. Prof. Lalas was chaired professor of Meteorology at the University of Athens and has served, as Director of the National Observatory of Athens, the oldest research center in Greece, as the first president of the Greek National Centre for Renewable Energy Sources (CRES), as Chairman of the Governing Board of the Greek National Petroleum Corporation and as President of the Greek Wind Energy Association.
For the last 25 years, he has acted as an advisor to the Greek ministries of Development, Environment and Energy and Foreign Affairs and the European Commission, and as a consultant to companies in US and Europe, including General Motors Research Labs, Ford, ENEA and the Public Power Corporation of Greece.
Author and Commentator
Chris Skinner is known as the most influential person in technology in the UK. He is an independent commentator on the financial markets and fintech, through his blog theFinanser.com, as well as author of the bestselling books Digital Bank, ValueWeb and Digital Human.
Chris is described by Seth Wheeler (Former Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House) as “one of the most authoritative voices on Fintech anywhere”. In his day job, he is Chair of the European networking forum The Financial Services Club and Nordic Finance Innovation, as well as a Non-Executive Director of the Fintech consultancy firm 11:FS and on the advisory boards of various firms.
He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand, as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal’s Financial News and Thomson Reuters. He is also a regular commentator on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC and Bloomberg about banking issues, a judge on many awards programs as well as having worked closely with leading banks such as HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Designer/Animator
Michael is an award-winning designer, a traveller and speaker. He’s spent the last decade in the industry as a motion designer and animator working with major brands like Nike and Sony as well as start-ups and social enterprises.
Two years ago, in a quest to redesign his life he decided to ditch the hustle culture, embraced minimalism and has been travelling full time, living out of a 30L backpack ever since.
His goal is to help people re-evaluate the way they spend their time and resources and to start living more intentionally. His next project is about creating sustainable and affordable housing and a co-living community from shipping containers, addressing to people who are finding the cost or availability of suitable housing preventative for the life they want to live.
Co-Founder @ EarlySense, Entrepreneur
Avner Halperin is Co-Founder and Board Member at EarlySense. Avner was CEO of EarlySense for 15 years, bringing the company from the idea stage to developing breakthrough analytics and sensing technology, with over one million patients served and tens of thousands of lives saved or significantly affected.
Previously, Avner was CEO of Emmunet, VP Marketing at Radcom (NASDAQ: RDCM) and R&D team leader at Eldat Communications (acquired by Pricer(PRIC.ST)). Prior to that, he was Department Head of an R&D Unit in the Israeli Defence Forces Intelligence Corps, where he won the Intelligence Innovation Award.
Avner earned an M.Sc. in Applied Physics from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan Fellows Executive MBA Program. He has been teaching courses on economy and entrepreneurship in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with his research papers and 30 US Patents having been cited close to 3,000 times.
Magician
At just ten years of age, Issy Simpson has been hailed as one of the most unique magicians in the world, after she captured the hearts of the UK public on the last series of Britain’s Got Talent, forcing Simon Cowell to exclaim, “This is like real life Harry Potter”.
Since then, she has become one of the most watched magicians online with over 200 million views and an army of avid fans. After BGT, she signed to the same management team as Daniel Radcliffe, appeared as a special guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, headlined at the world’s largest Magic Convention and has been given a prestigious award at the world famous Magic Circle. Issy also appeared in a run of sold-out shows in Abu Dhabi and made her US prime-time TV debut on NBC’s “Little Big Shots”.
Most recently, she was invited by Simon Cowell to the US yet again to appear on the NBC TV show “AGT Champions”, which featured the greatest 50 acts to ever appear on the worldwide franchise, and where she was one of the youngest performers to partake.
Entrepreneur, Scientist & Sportswoman
Born in rural Australia, science proved to be Renée Watson’s catalyst for exploration and discovery, sparking her imagination early and leading to a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology. Her early experience working with the science community inspired a new goal; to shatter the preconceived ideas about the world of STEM and make it accessible to everyone, regardless of background, financial status or gender.
Renée has been on the road to giving a jaw-dropping science experience to 1 million children ever since she landed in the UK in 2000 with a mere €16 to her name. On the way, she has raised more than €4.5 million for emerging scientific research charities, won awards for STEM leadership and role modeling and in 2016 launched The Curiosity Box, a STEM activity subscription box, that is now sold across the EU, Australia and South Korea.
Currently, Renée is taking on the UK primary education system, championing a move away from test-led classrooms and back to celebrating a child’s innate inquisitive nature through curiosity-led learning. She also plans to set the rugby pitch alight in 2019 when she’ll co-captain the Europe over 35s team at the Touch Rugby World Cup.
Computer Scientist
Dr. Costas Bekas (Distinguished Research Staff Member & Manager, IBM Research - Zurich), is responsible for foundational research in AI, spanning areas that include ML/DL, knowledge extraction and representation, new computing paradigms for AI (with applications in Healthcare & Life Sciences), Materials Discovery and acceleration of R&D.
Costas studied at the pioneering Computer Engineering & Informatics Department of the University of Patras, Greece. He received B. Eng., MSc and Ph.D. diplomas in 1998, 2001 and 2003 respectively, along Prof. E. Gallopoulos. From 2003 to 2005, he worked as a postdoctoral associate with Professor Yousef Saad at the Computer Science & Engineering Department, University of Minnesota, USA.
Dr. Bekas’ main focus is in Cognitive Systems and their impact in industry, science and business. His research agenda includes Machine & Deep Learning, large scale analytics, HPC and very large scale distributed systems. He is a recipient of the ACM Gordon Bell Prize (2013, 2015), as well as the PRACE Award (2012).
Futurist
Lisa Lang is a German entrepreneur, technologist, and international speaker. Her brands ElektroCouture and ThePowerHouse are leading agencies for FashionTech, wearable technologies and smart textiles manufacturing. From her experience as an entrepreneur, she has gained recognition as one of Forbes Europe’s Top 50 Women in Tech, top 100 most influential people in wearable tech worldwide, one of 25 leaders in fashion and technology worldwide and has been listed as one of the 50 most important women for innovation & startups in the EU.
Lisa founded ElektroCouture in 2013, believing in the opportunity to fuse technology with fashion even though she did not come from a background in fashion. With the success of ElektroCouture, Lisa then started ThePowerHouse in response to the growing demand from companies searching for educational workshops, prototypes, and needs for consultation on FashionTech.
Beyond her work on her companies, she has been a mentor for fashion and tech-focused programs, as well as has also advised the Ministerium für Wirtschaft Arbeit Energie und Verkehr and the European Union on the future of fashion technology within Germany and Europe. In 2018, she was included as an expert in the prestigious ‘The State of Fashion 2019’, an annual report written and researched by the Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Company.
Presenter
Dimitris Dimopoulos started out in comedy as a stand-up comedian in 1996, as part of the comedy group "Comedy Nights". As an actor and singer, he has collaborated with the Greek National Opera, the music theatre company "The Beggars' Operas" as well as commercial theatre and dubbing companies.
He has written the librettos for the operas "Twilight of the Debts", "AirRossini" and "Yasou Aida!", for which he was awarded the 2012 "Karolos Koun" Honourable Mention for Greek Play by the Association of Greek Theatre and Music Critics. He has directed the music theatre pieces "Kafka Fragmente, "Das Schubert Diploma" and "Evening Songs", the operetta "Satanerie" as well as the theatre pieces "The Minions of Midas" and "Tsaika!". As a translator, he has worked in subtitling, dubbing, theatre and opera.
He speaks greek, german, english, spanish and russian and holds a degree in Acting (Iasmos Drama School) as well as a degree in Tourism (Technical Education Institution of Athens). He is also a graduate of the German School of Athens.
Musician, Network technician, Activist
Giorgos Mparkouris completed his studies in Computing and IT in 1985 and during the 80s, he worked in a record company, was a radio producer in the national broadcasting as well as had his own band. He went on to work as a technician in computer labs in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens as well as IT Manager in the Greek Center of European Studies, leaving his band days behind.
Up until the early years of the economic crisis, he continued to work as a freelancer. However, in late 2011 he ended up as homeless and sought refuge in a homeless guest house, from which he left in 2013 firstly to move in with friends and later on in a commune up until 2017.
It was in that year that he started to teach computer science in refugee communities at Tech Talent School. In 2018, he was assigned the coordination of Start Project, an educational program on computers and technology for economically challenged social groups, supported by the Municipality of Athens and Microsoft. During all these years, he has traveled extensively in many destinations including Europe, the Middle East and South America, in his quest to learn more about new cultures.
