LEADERS OF TOMORROW – KNOWLEDGE POOLThe International Students’ Committee is proud to present a selection of the 48th St. Gallen Symposium’s Knowledge Pool

candidates. These young talents from all around the globe are carefully hand-picked on their outstanding profiles and their unique impact on their individual environment.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied (AU/SD)FounderMumtaza

Trishneet Arora (IN)Founder & CEO TAC Security

Tasneem Omar Ava (BD)Co-Founder & COOSynergy Global.co

Yassmin Abdel-Magied (born in 1991) is an author, broadcaster, engineer and award-winning social advocate. Yassmin founded Youth Without Borders at the age of 16. While studying mechanical engineering at the University of Queensland, Australia, she designed a race car and later graduated valedictorian with First Class Honours. At 21, Yassmin went on to work as one of the few female engineers on oil and gas rigs around Australia. In 2016, she began her broadcasting career as the presenter for the national current affairs show, “Australia Wide”, and the host for the groundbreak-ing documentary “The Truth About Racism”. Yassmin’s TED talk, “What does my headscarf mean to you” was selected among the most influential ideas of 2015 by TED.com. Now, an internationally renowned speaker on the topic of unconscious bias, Yassmin has presented in over 20 countries across 5 continents. She published her best-selling debut memoir at the age of 24 and her writing has appeared in publications including the Guardian, Teen Vogue and The New York Times. In 2017, Yassmin founded Mumtaza, and is continuing her mission to empower others through empathy, understanding and stories.

Trishneet Arora (born in 1993) is the Founder & CEO of TAC Security Solutions, a cyber security con-sulting partner that specialises in securing the IT infrastructure and assets of some of the leading enterprises globally. TAC Security provides complete vulnerability assessment solutions, which involves the process of identifying, quantifying, and prioritising the vulnerabilities in network infrastructures. It provides network, application and web security solutions to corporates, banks, start-ups, governments and law enforcement agencies.

Trishneet is a veritable technology wizard, author, cyber-security expert and entrepreneur. Due to his work in investigating cybercrimes for the Punjab State Police in India, the Chief Minister of Pun-jab bestowed a State Award upon him making him a Punjabi icon. As an author, Trishneet has writ-ten books on cyber security, ethical hacking and web defense. Due to these accomplishments, he has been listed as one of the most influential young Indians by GQ Magazine in 2017.

Tasneem Omar Ava (born in 1994) is a social entrepreneur from Bangladesh. Her social start-up Synergy Global.co connects marginalised entrepreneurs from the slums of Dhaka to the global mar-ket of ethical fashion through an e-commerce platform. Tasneem’s start-up has been recognised as one of the top five social start-ups in the world by HULT Prize Foundation in 2016. Her contribu-tions to achieving SDG-8 as a social entrepreneur has brought her the coveted acknowledgement of being one of the 16 Young Leaders in the world for the European Development Days-2017, by the European Commission whereby she has given voice to youth as a high level panelist alongside professor Muhammad Yunus, Professor Jeffrey Sachs among others. She has also been recognised as an international delegate for the Yenching Social Innovation Forum at Peking University, China, whereby her start-up was awarded as the “Most Innovative Idea” under her representation.

Conor Begley (born in 1987) co-founded Tribe Dynamics in April 2012, after he discovered the pow-er and potential of influencer marketing while working in Australia. With extensive experience in search marketing, reputation management and CRM systems, Conor decided that influencer mar-keters needed their own analytical systems and enterprise-class technology. What began as an intuitive theory shared by two long-time friends, the Silicon Valley based start-up has now become a leading authority in technical marketing and social analytics within the beauty, fashion, and life-style industries. Under Conor’s direction, Tribe Dynamics has developed close relationships with some of the beauty industry’s top brands, organisations and publications, including WWD/Beauty Inc., CEW, and NPD, who feature the company’s analytics and expertise on an ongoing basis.

Conor Begley (US)Co-Founder and PresidentTribe Dynamics

Dushyant Chautala (born in 1988) is the youngest Member of Parliament in the history of Inde-pendent India. He was elected in the sixteenth Lok Sabha (Lower House) from Hisar constituency, Haryana. Hailing from a political family, Dushyant is notably the great grandson of the former Dep-uty Prime Minister of India, Chaudhary Devi Lal Chautala. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from California State University, Bakersfield, USA.

Dushyant is amongst the most active legislators in the Parliament. Time and again he has raised matters of urgent public importance with specific focus on Farmer’s wellbeing and development. He is also a member of the Committee on Estimates and Standing Committee on Commerce in the Parliament. Having a young and energetic persona, Dushyant takes keen interest in sports and youth affairs. He is also the youngest president of a sports governing authority in India, “Table Tennis Federation of India”. Furthermore, he is also an accredited Member of the Indian Olympic Association.

Dushyant Chautala (IN)Member of ParliamentGovernment of India

Heather Evans (born in 1994) is an entrepreneur turned civil. She currently works in the Province of Ontario, Canada as a Senior Advisor in Advanced Technologies. Specifically, she focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Quantum Technologies. Prior to joining the public sector, Heather co-founded a deep learning automatic speech recognition company, Spreza, and a 3D printing technology company, Mosaic Manufacturing. She holds a business degree from Queen’s Commerce and is an alumnus of Canada’s top entrepreneurial program for recent graduates, The Next36. In the fall, she will be moving to Beijing as a Schwarzman Scholar to pursue her Master‘s degree at Tsinghua University, China.

Heather Evans (CA)Senior Advisor in Artificial Intelli-gence and Quantum TechnologyGovernment of Ontario, Canada

Markus Gnirck (born in 1988) is Co-Founder & CEO of tryb Group, a private equity investment com-pany focused on bringing global capital markets closer to underserved ASEAN consumers of capital by acquiring, developing and operating financial infrastructure. Additionally, he is also one of the founding committee member of the Singapore FinTech Association, co-author of the Asia FinTech 100 list and is a recurring keynote speaker at global financial technology & innovation conferences.

Prior to tryb, Markus co-founded Startupbootcamp FinTech, the world’s largest incubator for Fin-Tech start-ups. He led investments in more than 20 FinTech start-ups worldwide and serves on the board of multiple companies in Europe and Asia. He now plays an instrumental role in building FinTech ecosystems across the continent and driving policy change. He is also rated as one of the key FinTech influencers in APAC and was nominated as one of Asia’s Forbes 30 Under 30. Over the last two years, Markus has worked with more than 200 early stage companies in Asia to create partnerships with financial institutions and governments.

Markus Gnirck (DE)Co-Founder & CEOtryb Group

Akash Gupta (born in 1989) is the man behind the culture of innovation at GreyOrange, a multina-tional firm that designs, manufactures and deploys advanced robotic systems for automation at warehouses, distribution and fulfillment centres. The company is disrupting the way logistics and supply chain processes across the world are being optimized. His key focus is driving research and development, pushing the efficiency benchmark, and hiring the best talent globally for the compa-ny. He has led mentoring sessions and workshops at more than 25 educational institutions globally, including Stanford University, USA, Louisiana University, USA, and MIT, USA, among others. Akash graduated from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, here he holds a Master’s degree in Mechanial Engineering.

Akash Gupta (IN)Co-Founder & CTOGreyOrange

Kristjan Kangro (born in 1992) is the Founder and CEO of Change, the world’s next-generation in consumer banking. Originally from Estonia, Kristjan has been a successful technology entrepreneur from an early age. At 17, Kristjan founded his first company, SockMe, an electronics accessories company, which attracted the endorsements of the Estonian Prime Minister and Norwegian Crown Prince. Following this, Kristjan moved to the Netherlands where he founded SwingBy, an automat-ed scheduling tool, from which he made a successful exit.

After noticing a huge opportunity for technological disruption in Asia, Kristjan then moved to Sin-gapore where he became the CFO for one of the oldest Venture Capitalist firms, Expara, where he led the growth of their fintech portfolio. Seeing an opportunity to create an ecosystem for fintech platforms - and motivated by a desire to build a company in the footsteps of Estonia’s previous illustrious start-ups such as Skype and TransferWise - Kristjan left his role in traditional finance to launch Change, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency-enabled consumer finance platforms.

Kristjan Kangro (EE)Founder & CEOChange

Hon Bogolo J. Kenewendo (born in 1987) is a Specially Elected Member of the Parliament of Botswa-na; the youngest Member of Parliament (MP) of the 11th Parliament and the youngest woman MP in the history of The Parliament of Botswana. She is the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Commit-tee on Foreign Affairs, Defence, Justice & Government Assurances and a member of the IPU WTO Steering Committee. During her first year in office, she has been able to pass two motions on the protection of children‘s rights and ease of doing business in Botswana.

She is a trained trade and economic diplomacy professional, has previously worked at the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Ghana as a Trade Economist and was partner at Econsult Botswana. She is a frequent commentator on economic and development issues on both local and international platforms including with various media houses. She holds an Master’s degree in International Eco-nomics from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom through the prestigious Chevening Scholar-ship. She is a women and youth empowerment activist and has been honoured with accolades in Botswana and internationally.

Bogolo Kenewendo (BW)Member of ParliamentBotswana National Assembly

Leandro Leviste (born in 1993) is a Manila native, and graduate from Yale Universty, USA, who has invested his savings into setting up Solar Philippines in 2013. Electricity rates in the Philippines are among the highest in Asia and Leandro is battling against this with solar power. Solar Philippines buys its panels from different suppliers and then provides its customers with financing, engineer-ing and installation. Inpired by Elon Musk’s work, he is on a mission to build the filippino equivalent of SolarCity. By now, the company has more than 700 employees, the lowest cost solar Power Pur-chase Agreement in East Asia, and a multi-Gigawatts pipeline, including the world’s largest solar projects in off-grid, un-electrified areas. The company also owns a 800 Megawatts solar panel fac-tory, one of the largest and most advanced in the region.

Leandro Leviste (PH)Founder & CEOSolar Philippines

Florent Malbranche (born in 1988) is a serial entrepreneur, Co-Founder of and CEO at Brigad, the French leading platform for on-demand blue-collar jobs. Launched in 2016, Brigad provides staff on-demand for hospitality companies. Brigad is currently available in Paris and Lyon and has re-cently been launched in London. Prior to Brigad, Florent founded Printic, a photo printing and sharing service.

He graduated from EDHEC Business School, France, in entrepreneurship and marketing in 2013. Platforms and on-demand economy are two of his main interests and he is deeply involved in de-veloping socially responsible platforms.

Florent Malbranche (FR)CEO & Co-FounderBrigad

Dr Ritesh Malik (born in 1989) is an Indian doctor, entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder & Managing Director of the Y Combinator company, Innov8, a co-working space. Ritesh runs a virtual start-up accelerator in India called Project Guerrilla, currently investing in over 40 start-ups across various industries. He was the first investor of FIN ROBOTICS, which became the first Indian hardware product company to raise a Series A venture funding. He is on a mission to make India the next en-trepreneurial hub of the world and had a instrumental role in building of the Make in India thought process.

In March 2013, after finishing his Bachelor of Medicine, he co-founded the technology company, Adstuck, that sold off its flagship product, the ALIVE App, to the Times of India. In 2016, he was nominated as one of Asia’s Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Finance and Venture Capital category.

Ritesh Malik (IN)Founder & Managing DirectorInnov8

Om Marwah (born in 1989) is Walmart’s first Global Head of Behavioral Science and has built a world-class behavioral team. His team creates impact across Walmart’s one billion shoppers and is redefining applied behavioral science. They apply research in psychology to the customer shopping journey, business strategy, human resources, stores, analytics, and more. They leverage behavio-ral science, data science, design, and rapid prototyping to turn cutting-edge academic concepts into tangible results. He reports directly to the CEO of Walmart E-Commerce. Marwah additionally teaches a course at UCLA, USA, on how to take ideas from academia and reapply them to industries in new ways. He also founded the behavioral science and marketing summit, the industry leading event for applied behavioral science in marketing. He also founded Take Her Back, a non-profit that raids brothels to rescue sex trafficked children in India. Marwah was named one of the top 5 young professionals in advertising by the ARF and is selected as a Forbes 30 Under 30.

Om Marwah (IN/US)Global Head of Behavioural ScienceWalmart

Michaela Musilova (born in 1988) is an astrobiologist with experience working at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of London Observatory, on European Space Agency’s and UK Space Agency’s projects, leading numerous expeditions to extreme environments and being an analogue astronaut and commander at the Mars Desert Research Station, USA. She holds a PhD from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom and she conducted research at University College London, United Kingdom, California Institute of Technology, USA, and Chiba University, Japan among others. Michaela is also a graduate from the International Space University’s Space Studies Program. She is currently the CEO of Spacemanic, chair of the Slovak Organisation for Space Activities (SOSA), a visiting professor at the Slovak University of Technology Slovakia, and a lecturer for ISU, France. She has received numerous awards, including the Emerging Space Leaders Grant from the International Astronautical Federation and she was selected as one of the most promising 30 Under 30 by Forbes Slovakia.

Michaela Musilova (SK)CEOSpacemanic

Lotfullah (born in 1987) is an award-winning journalist and the Head of TOLOnews TV, Afghani-stan’s most popular 24-hour news and current affairs television channel. At TOLOnews, he oversees the largest news operation in Afghanistan with a newsroom of over 100 journalists and media pro-fessionals in Kabul and offices around the country, producing about 18 hours of television content per day.

In 2012, Lotfullah was selected by the Asia Society for a class of the Asia 21 Young Leaders Initiative, on World Press Freedom Day 2016, Reporters Without Borders awarded him with the prestigious medal of Press Freedom Hero for his fight for free press in Afghanistan, in 2016 TIME Magazine profiled him as a Next Generation Global Leader and in 2017 Forbes selected him among the 30 Under 30 Asia influencers in Media. Lotfullah holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Kardan University, Afghanistan, and has completed journalism trainings in the United Kingdom and the USA.

Lotfullah Najafizada (AF)DirectorTOLOnews TV

Brian Pallas (born in 1987) is the Founder and CEO of Opportunity Network, a platform which pro-vides a new way to connect the best banking clients all over the world. The site is aimed at CEOs and family businesses around the globe looking for partnerships, or mergers and acquisitions. Since medium size entreprises can face difficulties when trying to grow through new business opportu-nities, Opportunity Network makes anonymous introductions for members who meet strict finan-cial requirements and are looking for deals of $1m or more. In 2016, Opportunity Network connect-ed more than 5,600 chief executives and family business leaders across 75 countries with potential mergers and acquisitions and was able to lead a flow of transactions valued more than $40 billion.

Previously, Brian worked for BCG, gained experience in investment banking and private equity, and earned his MBA from Columbia Business School, USA.

Brian Pallas (IT/US)Founder & CEOOpportunity Network

Pavan Kumar (born in 1991) is the co-founder of Cocoon Cam, a Silicon Valley start-up that is devel-oping the next-generation of smart baby monitors. Cocoon Cam uses computer vision to analyse video streams and provide real-time insights on the safety and wellbeing of sleeping babies.

In 2015, Pavan and his team presented Cocoon Cam to President Obama at the first-ever White House Demo Day. They are currently running a paid pilot program with 100 parents and have start-ed an IRB-approved study this summer in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

Pavan holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of California San Diego, USA. Pavan Kumar Pavagada Nagaraja (IN)Founder & CTOCocoon Cam

Alexandre Robicquet (FR)Research AssistantArtificial Intelligence departement,Stanford University, USA

Alexandre Robicquet (born in 1990) is a current graduate student and research assistant in the Arti-ficial Intelligence department at Stanford University. Alexandre is currently advised by Dr Sebastian Thrun, and was prior working under Professor Silvio Savarese on the Jackrabbot Project, also known as the Social Naviguation Robot. He is working in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, machine learn-ing, and deep learning and working on applying the findings domains such as robotics, healthcare, and medicine. Besides his research, Alexandre is the Co-Founder of Crossing Minds, a start-up that applies next-generation artificial intelligence, such as predictive models and cultural taste correla-tions, to enrich the human experience. Crossing Minds’ first product is an App named Hai which aims at creating the next generation of recommendation engine, and open people to the world and its cultures. This platform of cultural discovery personalises recommendations for its users in categories ranging from music, books, movies, tv shows, podcasts and videos games - with further channels in development such as restaurants, travel activities and alcoholic beverages.

Chlöe Swarbrick (born in 1991) is a politician and Member of the Parliament in New Zealand. In 2016, she ran as an independent candidate for the mayoralty of Auckland, the country’s largest city, gaining almost 30,000 votes in just four months of campaigning. This resulted in an astonishing third place, which considering her age, has been perceived as a remarkable victory. In 2017, she entered the New Zealand Parliament through the Green Party of Aotearoa list which made her the youngest politician to enter the Parliament since 1975.

Chlöe studied law and philosophy at the University of Auckland and, besides her political activity, she is an entrepreneur and journalist. With her first business named The Lucid Collective, a fashion label, she had the opportunity to expose at various fashion shows and exhibitions. Her involvement as a journalist and activist brought her to write for national radio broadcasts and magazines.

Julian Teicke (DE)Founder & Group CEOWefox Group

Julian Teicke (born in 1986) is Founder and CEO of Wefox Group, an online insurance management platform that enables customers, insurance brokers and insurance providers to transact and man-age insurance products digitally. The InsurTech App allows customers to choose and manage in-surance contracts while at the same time allowing insurance brokers to manage their customers and directly sell insurance solutions on the platform. This direct distribution channel and the new concept of gamification for insurance providers made Wefox Group one of the most innovative insurance company and the first fully digital insurance company in Europe.

Prior to Wefox, Julian co-founded DeinDeal AG, which is now one of the leading and largest e-com-merce platforms in Switzerland. Due to his great expertise, he also founded EMPAUA, a consultancy firm that provides solutions and services to businesses and start-ups.

Matthew Zeiler (CA)Founder & CEOClarifai

Chlöe Swarbrick (NZ)Member of ParliementParliament of New Zealand

Matthew Zeiler (born in 1986), Founder and CEO of Clarifai, an artificial intelligence company that excels in visual recognition, solving real-world problems for businesses. Clarifai’s image recognition systems recognize various categories, objects, and tags in images, as well as find similar images and is considered to be the world’s best image recognition technology. The company’s image rec-ognition systems allow its users to find similar images in large uncategorized repositories using a combination of semantic and visual similarities.

Matthew is a machine learning Ph.D. and thought leader, pioneering the field of applied artificial intelligence. Matthew’s ground-breaking research in computer vision alongside renowned ma-chine learning experts such as Geoff Hinton and Yann LeCun has propelled the image recognition industry from theory to real-world application. Since starting Clarifai in 2013, Matt has evolved his award-winning research into developer-friendly products that allow enterprises to quickly and seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows and customer experiences. Today, Clarifai is the leading independent AI Company and widely seen as one of the most promising start-ups in the crowded, buzzy field of machine learning.

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