Inspirational Speakers
Please meet your International League of Extraordinary Thought-Leaders
Paula Saul
Creative Director of @PHSD Team
Creator, curator and multidisciplinary communicator. Passionate about generating experiences and exchanging knowledge with other people. Moving between fashion, education, advertising and production. During the academic period, at fashion university, she got involved with the academic directory, scientific initiation and won awards such as the 9th Young Designer Salon at Feevale University and had her brand, PHSD, chosen for the Brand Accelerator and participating in DEMO project in 2016. Already in São Paulo, she worked in fashion production with major brands such as Nike, RedBull, Uber and Rolling Stone. Today, as a recruitment and community analyst, she builds dialogues with talents and professionals in the areas of communication and advertising through THE GRID for the FLAGCX ecosystem - the largest independent publicity group in Latin America, with more than twenty operations between São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and New York. Together with the House of Blyndex, she has works and initiatives that include and support black and transgender bodies immersed in the Brazilian Ballroom culture.
Email: contactphsd@gmail.com
Social: @saulblyndex
Mahan Charmshir
President & Co-Founder of Gandom Foundation (A World without Borders) & Researcher at Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies (Humanitarian Law)
Born in 1991 in Tehran, Iran, Mahan Charmshir is a graduate of the University of Warsaw in (BA) International Relations. He has a MA degree in International Humanitarian Action from the University of Warsaw & the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, with a specialization in International Humanitarian Law . Mahan worked with the Center for International Relations (CIR) as a Middle East analyst. He established “Gandom Foundation” in Poland, a NGO which focuses on the promotion of human rights and humanitarian principles through education. He is currently a research fellow at the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law (IHL) at Leiden University. Now based in The Hague.
Email: m.charmshir@gandom.ngo
Alice Nell
Global Campaigner at Avaaz
After 10 years in marketing and communications in the Dutch music industry and the Berlin startup scene, Alice decided she wanted to do something different with her skills —and chose a new career path. Without any experience in activism or politics, she applied for a job at global campaigns group Avaaz. 3 years in, she’s worked on campaigns fighting issues ranging from disinformation to human rights to climate change. She can’t imagine ever going back to marketing. Alice holds a Bachelors in Art & Economics and an Masters in Media Studies, with a specialisation in New Media & Digital Culture. She’s Dutch and has been based in Berlin for almost 8 years. .
About Avaaz: Avaaz is, a global citizens movement with over 64 million members worldwide, campaigning on a wide range of pressing global, regional, and national issues; from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change. Avaaz takes action with petitions, media campaigns, direct actions, lobbying, offline protests, and events. It is "the globe's largest and most powerful online activist network" according to The Guardian. Recent Campaigns:
Email: alicevalerienell@gmail.com
Eleanor Saitta
Eleanor Saitta is a hacker, designer, artist, writer, and barbarian. She makes a living and a vocation of understanding how complex transdisciplinary systems and stories fail and redesigning them to fail better.
Saitta leads Systems Structure Ltd. (https://structures.systems), a boutique security architecture and strategy consultancy that works with firms seeking to build or grow security practices or specific high-exposure products, advises news organizations and NGOs targeted by nation states, and researches and builds immersive transmedia participation events. She has been active in the Nordic Larp scene since 2011, and has edited two books for the community, The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp and What We Do When We Play, and has written and co-written numerous essays on the subject, including the one which coined the term "steering". She lives at and co-runs The Attic (https://theattic.fi), a private performance venue for queer art, culture, fashion, and politics in Helsinki, Finland. She is also a member of the advisory boards of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the IFTF Governance Futures Lab, and the Calyx Institute, and works on the Trike security ecosystem modeling project and the Briar/Bramble distributed messaging system.
Saitta is a regular speaker at conferences, universities, and other institutions including the O'Reilly Velocity, KiwiCon, the CCC Congress, Hack in The Box, Transmediale, ToorCon, Knutepunk, HOPE, Arse Electronika, Harvard, Yale, and the London ICA. Her writing, painting and talks can be found at https://dymaxion.org, and she's on Twitter as @Dymaxion.
Email: ella@dymaxion.org
Denisse Ariana Pérez
Creative Copywriter Content Creator & Photographer
A Caribbean-born, Copenhagen-based author, copywriter and photographer. Denisse is obsessed with words, people and imagery and finding ways to make them speak to one another.
As a copywriter, she thinks and write for brands. As a photographer, she gives a face to culture.
She is an Interactive Art Direction graduate from Hyper Island, Stockholm. Currently working as a Senior Creative at Belong Agency in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Email: denisse.prez@gmail.com
URL: http://www.denisseariana.com/
Social: @denisseaps
Basadi Dibeela
Cultural Connector
Basadi Dibeela is a Cultural Connector based in Kanye, Botswana.
She explores the concept of creative placemaking for village and rural re-imagaining, and how data can be used to build better communities.
In her work she incorporates and thinks about how arts, innovation, creative spaces, arts festivals and social entrepreneurship can be leveraged for community and transformation.
Email: elangbasadi@gmail.com
Nadine Bruder
Founder of She For Social Impact / Just Damn Right
German-born, international citizen. Award-winning strategist, executive advisor, system thinker, #GlobalGoals advocate and renaissance woman with a “tech, business, design & science mindset”.
13+ years of international experience in business strategy, technology innovation, sustainability, ESG/SDG, investing and strategic partnerships. Advisor to senior managers of internationally operating organizations. Industry advisor to investment companies. Advisory Board Member at technology startups. Founder of JUST DAMN RIGHT, a platform for sustainability-led ventures and an international strategy consultancy. Founder of the independent She For Social Impact Awards. Member of the Federal German Association for Artificial Intelligence. Her industry insights: Commerce, design, Fintech and Finance, Digital technologies, Sustainability Innovations.
Email: hello@nadinebruder.com
URL: nadinebruder.com
Shany Hadad
Owner & CEO of BrainnU
Shany Hadad is the owner and CEO of Brainnu house of creative & strategy, based in Tel Aviv and working with local and global unicorn brands and organizations, to create sustainable user-brand interactions. As the only all-women creative house in Israel, promoting women in various ways is part of Brainnu's DNA, as well as taking on and actively supporting projects that create a true positive impact on people’s lives.
Shany has an MBA in interactive communications, strategy & entrepreneurship, with an HCI major. An academic lecturer in digital interface user experience, the development of sophisticated digital marketing strategies and growth hacking of Tech companies, which are an integral part of the Startup nation’s ecosystem.
Email: shany@brainnu.com
Yeliz Üney
Managing Partner at btveen.
With her background in systemic thinking, Yeliz’s expertise is to build viable and sustainable organisations that put peoples needs, potential and power in the center of the teams. During her career in the creative industry, Yeliz has worked in various renown digital agencies in leading positions, where she built up new teams and established a culture of creativity and innovation.
Yeliz would call herself a world citizen - she was born in Izmir, grown up in Germany and is now living in Vienna with her partner and one year old son. Experiencing this blend of different cultures in her life, Yeliz leads by example and is consequently establishing diverse business environments to create value by fostering an open culture.
Currently Yeliz is working on building an innovation ecosystem that connects people and companies who want to have a positive impact on corporate culture and development.
Email: yeliz.ueney@btveen.com
Tom Laurenzo
Associate Professor of Critical Media Practices, University of Colorado at Boulder (starting on Jan 2021)
Artist, engineer, academic, and designer, working with physical and digital media, interested in data representation, music, interaction, and politics. With a background in both computer science and art, his research spans across different practices and interests, including artificial intelligence (machine learning), human-computer interaction, physical computing, and extended reality. He has several publications, mainly in the areas of New Media Art, and HCI.His artistic production is also diverse and includes installations, music, live cinema, and digital lutherie. His artworks and performances have been shown globally. Since 2014, he has been Assistant Professor at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong.
Email: tomas@laurenzo.net
URL: laurenzo.net
Daniel Montano
Creative Strategist & Design Lead at More Digital Studios
Daniel is originally from London but has lived and worked in Stockholm since 2007.
Previously a dancer & choreographer he now works as a Creative Strategist and Design Lead at More Digital Studios, for clients such as Adidas Originals, Y-3, Michelin, Supercell, SAS and many more.
Email: daniel.montano@hyperisland.se
Social: @unicorn.deluxe
URL: daniel-montano.com (Portfolio)
Penny Clark
Co-founder and Head of Research & Sustainability at Conscious Coliving
Penny Clark is Co-founder and Head of Research & Sustainability at Conscious Coliving, an impact-driven spatial and experience design consultancy. Penny is a strong advocate for the positive social and environmental potential of shared living, and as part of her role conducts R&D in order to help shared living communities thrive. Penny also has an expertise in environmentally sustainable practices within communities, as she is currently undertaking doctoral research which explores this topic.
Email: penny@consciouscoliving.com
Hila Meller
Vice President Security Europe & Global Vertical Security Lead - Resources, Manufacturing & Logistics at BT Global
Hila is tasked with protecting BT and some of the world's leading organisations against ever-changing cyber threats. She has more than 20 years of experience in the security world. During her career, she’s worked with some of the world’s best known brands and international organisations to protect their IT estate and business assets, while taking them through digital transformation initiatives.
She is experienced in leading diverse international security teams and has done so for several large Fortune 500 companies. Hila has a bachelor degree in computer science and mathematics, and an executive MBA. She is a passionate public speaker and an enthusiastic advocate of diversity in technical fields. Recently she was chosen as one of the top 100 STEM female experts by the “100 esperte” initiative, supported by the EU commission.
Email: hila.meller@bt.com
URL: BT Official profile
Pepe Borrás
Co-Founder of Internet Freedom Festival
Digital Media Expert, Creative Strategist and two-time founder at the intersection of advertising, technology and society (2009→present). The Internet Freedom Festival is unlike any other conference focusing on the fight against censorship and surveillance due to its spotlight on diversity of ethnicity, region, gender, and thought that’s represented” – Matt Mitchell, WIRED 25 2020, Ford Foundation Fellow, CryptoHarlem Founder. Pepe has built his career by combining the creative force of advertising with social impact and activism, focusing on issues involving technology and human rights. In 2015 he co-founded the Internet Freedom Festival, a renowned community development nonprofit, funded by the U.S. Department of State, Ford Foundation, Mozilla, Twitter, Facebook and Google. In 2013, he launched Listen to Help, a pioneer Cannes Lions-selected advertising campaign that turned Spotify into a fundraising platform, later replicated by UNICEF Sweden and ABBA. Since 2014, he’s been providing pro bono services to nonprofits supporting underrepresented groups, and he serve as a board member of the leading Washington, D.C. nonprofit Open Tech Fund.
Constantly exploring emerging trends in digital culture and global affairs, capturing thoughts as a frequent media contributor and conference speaker. Recently spoke at Internetdagarna in Sweden (Keynote: The Future Needs New Privacy Narratives), Oslo Freedom Forum (Panel: Creating Online Communities), and at the Open Tech Fund Summit in Taiwan (Session: Internet Freedom Community Building). Email: hola@pepeborras.com
Publications: Is the internet headed for an apocalyptic future? (Spanish)
Social: Twitter
Marian Kaiser
Writer, Media Theorist, Curator, Concept & Project Developer
Marian Kaiser is a writer, media theorist, curator, concept and project developer, who lives in Berlin and Kinshasa. He studied Theory and History of Media, Literature, Philosophy, and South East Asian Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and has been a lecturer and researcher at universities in Berlin, Dresden, Yogyakarta and Giessen. He received a PhD grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft between 2019 and 2013 and was assistant professor from 2013 to 2014 at "FAST-Framing Art, Science, Technology", a collaboration project between the Academy of Arts, the Technical University and the University for Applied Sciences in Dresden. As part of the Mobile Academy Berlin, Marian Kaiser develops dialog-based performances and installations with Hannah Hurtzig, e.g. at Silent Green in Berlin, Kampnagel in Hamburg, for the Goethe-Institute in Novosibirsk, the House of the World’s Cultures (HKW) in Berlin or as part of the Wiener Festwochen. The Mobile Academy Berlin is currently developing a show on a non-object-based ars memoria and the coming abolition of the museum archive for the House of the World’s Cultures (HKW) in Berlin for April 2021. Marian Kaiser often collaborates with artists and designers in a variety of media and formats, among others with James Hoff, Bernd Hopfengärtner, TheGreenEyl, NAND, Gerald Nestler, Sylvia Eckermann and Olaf Nicolai. He is co-founder of MEHL, an art group and dinner service specialized in concrete fabulation and synthetic theory (MEHL.group). In 2017 he developed, curated and staged the performance, installation, and live stream format Naurutica for the Viennese media art festival The Future of Demonstration in cooperation with various artists and theorists. With Dimitri Kaufmann he runs The Category (https://thecategory.com), a 21st century scriptorium and writing company as well as being part of the affiliated literature magazine The Decadent Review. He also works as an author for film and series and won the Bavarian Documentary Competition for the film treatment Horizonte Perdido with Robert Bohrer and Emma Rosa Simon. His latest book James Hoff in Conversation with Marian Kaiser hast recently been published as part of the book series “by NERO. It prints extracts of an ongoing 20 year conversation about art, media, theory, and technology between Hoff and Kaiser.
Cecilia Gentili
Principal & Owner at Transgender Equity Consulting
Cecilia Gentili started Transgender Equity Consulting in the beginning of 2019 after serving as the Director of Policy at GMHC, the world’s first and leading provider of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy from 2016 to 2019.
Originally from Argentina, Cecilia came to the United States for a safer life as a
transgender woman and lived, in the country undocumented for 10 years. During this time Cecilia gained her living through sex work, which came with drug use - for which she was continually targeted for policing. After multiple arrests and an immigration detention, she accessed recovery services and with more control over her life fought and won asylum.
Her experience surviving this time in her life impassions her desire to ensure that all people living on the margins are provided with access to the dignity and respect deserved in all spaces.
Cecilia’s first role within community services was when she started working as an intern at The Center in New York City. From 2012 to 2016 she was brought into Apicha Community Health Center to develop the transgender health services into a stand alone program where she managed a team of of 3 Patients Navigators and 6 Health Home Outreach Workers. Cecilia’s
involvement was instrumental in expanding the program from 27 patients in 2012 to over 500 in 2016.
Seeing so many clients affected by institutional discrimination and widespread lack of access, Cecilia decided to move from direct services into policy work at GMHC from 2016 to 2019. There she became the Managing Director of Policy and was one of the hardest fighters for the passage of GENDA (Gender NonDiscrimination Act).
Her successes in policy inspired her to found Decrim NY, a coalition working towards the decriminalization, decarceration and destigmatization of people in the sex trade. Cecilia was instrumental in the development of two statewide bills to provide survivors of trafficking with record relief, and to end the criminalization of ‘loitering’ - a charge overwhelmingly leveled against transgender women, regardless of their involvement in the sex trade.
Cecilia started working independently with Trans Equity Consulting in 2019, and has already collaborated extensively with organizations including the AIDS Institute, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Funders for LGBTQ Issues, Borealis
Foundation and Cicatelli Associates Inc. Her reputation amongst these organizations, and many more, is reflective of the deep personal commitment she brings to the work, and her unique insight which enables a deeper connection with queer and trans communities.
Email: cecilia@transequityconsulting.com
Social: @ceciliagentili72
Nandi Nobell
Senior Associate at CallisonRTKL
Nandi Nobell is a futurist artist and designer. His work centers around digital and physical experiences, with an ever-increasing focus on extended reality: VR & AR. As an inter-disciplinarian with a futurist mindset, Nandi strives to see beyond the horizons of human technology and creativity in order to envision new lifestyles in a time that is yet to manifest itself. Nandi has a background in fashion design with a BA from Central Saint Martin’s. He worked for Jean-Paul Gaultier in Paris and then proceeded with studies of mental practices in Yoga and Buddhist meditation across India. He shifted gears towards an MFA in experience design completed in 2012 at Konstfack, concluding in the artwork Entrance Not For Everybody, combining mnemonic theory, narrative, immersive theatre, large scale sculpture, character design, a mind machine creating fractals in your mind, hypnosis, a “mixtape” of yogic mental practices, as well as the offering of a physical artwork for each participant selected to be offered the experience, by an actress on her own whim for the persons she chose to commence individual journeys with beginnings but no end. Beyond fashion, Nandi has worked with design and development of optical experiments for future banknote technology, interface design for future forecasting software and immersive art using a combination of story telling, hypnosis and virtual reality. Nandi lives in London where his work with extended reality strategies and implementations form part of the digital technology group at CallisonRTKL - one of the worlds biggest architecture firms.
Email: nandi.nobell@gmail.com
Social: @nandinobell
URL: nandinobell.com
Elif Reşitoğlu
Creative Director and Architect at Blank
Elif Resitoglu was born in 1991 and has graduated in Architecture at Politecnico di Milano here she also completed her master in Sustainable Environments and Architecture in 2015. After making some experiences in the architecture industry in different countries like Finland, Italy, and Turkey, she opens her own creative agency, Blank, a communication and design firm that inspires companies and startups helping them to communicate their values and stories through design. She currently works at Blank as an architect and creative director. With Blank, she curated many events and exhibitions that took place during Milan Design Week and Dutch Design Week for the in-house projects Isola Design District and Milan Design Market. In addition to this, she also directed fashion events and organized unconventional fashion shows.
After the launch of the Isola Design District in 2016, the event reached more than 150.000 visitors in 3 years. During the lockdown due to Covid19 and the cancellation of all the physical events, it became a digital platform with over 300 designers and design studios from all over the world, virtual exhibitions, and important international partners and contributors.
Email: elif@blankhub.com
Social: @elif_resitoglu
Amaka Onyioha-Nkele
Founder and Editor-In-Chief of AfroStyle Magazine
Amaka Onyioha-Nkele is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of AfroStyle Magazine. The idea of the magazine started out as a fun project; however, as the magazine gained recognition, she became focused on creating room for the magazine amongst others out there. Her love and appreciation for fashion, diverse cultures, stories, ideas and concepts within Africa, the Diaspora and other continents, inspired her to create the magazine. "I created a multicultural, multi-racial African and African inspired magazine because I believe there are fashion statements, ideas and stories that highlight our differences and similarities. Hence, it is important to highlight stories of the African Continent and Diaspora so that people get a better understanding about us. In turn, our African brothers and sisters within and outside Africa, open their minds to the stories, cultures and traditions outside of their own. In doing so, a respectful dialogue can be had, which enables the break in stereotyping each other. It also allows us to have a voice and be the voice of the voiceless; as well as help in amplifying the voices of those who need to be heard despite our diverse skin tones, and despite where we call home in Africa, North America, Europe, or Asia. At the end of the day, we are global citizens, making our way through life."
Email: info@afrostylemag.com
URL: www.AfroStyleMag.com
Social: @afrostylemagz
Last updated
