Alberto Masetti Zannini

Global Programmes Director | Impact Hub

Alberto joined Impact Hub Company as Global Programmes Director in January 2019. “I am based in London and work across a number of areas to help support the development of the network, the establishment of partnerships and donor-relations with UK-based funders and organisations, and the overall awesome growth of our association.In my spare time, I raise my two kids, take pictures of London, go to the cinema, cycle a lot and read sci-fi novels!

Monica Cummings

Counselor for Public Affairs, U.S. Embassy Athens

Monica Cummings arrived at US Embassy Athens as the Counselor for Public Affairs in September 2016.  Previously, she has served as the Spokesperson of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan (2014-2015), Deputy Public Affairs Counselor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (2011-2014),  Head of the Western Media Unit of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq (2009-2010), Political-Economic Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Valletta, Malta (2006-2009), Press Officer at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York (2003-2006), and as a Consular-Economic Officer at the U.S. Consulate-General in Sao Paulo, Brazil (2001-2003).

Suzanna Pollack

President ”Games For Change”

Susanna Pollack is the President of Games for Change, the leading global advocate for the power of games as drivers of social impact.  In her role there, she produces the annual Games for Change Festival, the largest gaming event in New York, dubbed by national media as “the Sundance of video games.”

With a commitment to Learning and Education, Susanna launched the Games for Learning Summit at the G4C Festival in collaboration with the Entertainment Software Association.  Now an annual event, the gathering attracts educators, policy makers, game studios and publishers to explore how games can be more effectively used in the classroom. Susanna also developed the G4C Student Challenge with the NYC Department of Education. The program is now scaling nationally in 2016/17 encouraging middle and high school students to design games around social issues.

Vassilis Tsolis

Co-founder/ CEO Congitiv+

Vasilis is the Co-Founder & CEO of Cognitiv+, an AI-powered document intelligence platform that automates and accelerates document review and insight.
With a dual background in law and engineering, Vasilis has worked under various roles in dispute resolution, contract, commercial and procurement management for various sectors including energy, infrastructure and IT for more than 12 years. Vasilis has worked for clients, contractors and consultants to undertake various assignments for a wide spectrum of the outsourcing lifecycle and also on a strategic level. Vasilis has a degree in law (LLB) and is a chartered engineer in the UK and Greece.

Despina Mitropoulou

Vanessa Mason

Research Director ”Institute for the Future”

Vanessa Mason is the research director for IFTF’s Future 50 Partnership, a network of future-smart organizations that support strategic foresight research into the urgent futures that will shape the next decade across the business, social and civic spheres. Her research and foresight work delivers and scales behaviors, products, services, technologies and spaces with a focus on health and wellbeing.

Vanessa has led work at the intersection of inclusive design, innovation and health for global companies including Genentech, government entities including the City of Oakland and the Brazilian Ministry of Health, startups such as Iodine, and pilot innovations funded by foundations including the Aetna Foundation. Vanessa has written for and been quoted in several media outlets including NPR and Fast Company.

She is a frequent speaker and has been recognized as a 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival Spotlight Health Scholar, 40 Under 40 Tech Diversity Silicon Valley, 2016 New Leaders Council San Francisco Fellow, 200 Black Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter and as a 2016 TEDMED Research Scholar. She serves on the American Heart Association’s Social Impact Fund Investment Advisory Committee. Vanessa earned her BA in psychology from Yale University and her MPH in global health from Columbia University.

Vassilis Kostakis

Professor of P2P Governance, TalTech Faculty Associate, Harvard University | Founder ”P2P Lab”

Vasilis Kostakis is the Professor of P2P Governance at Tallinn University of Technology and Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center.

Vasilis is also Visiting Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Moreover, he is the founder of the P2P Lab and core member of the P2P Foundation. In 2018, Vasilis was awarded a prestigious four-year grant from the European Research Council, to study the convergence of the digital commons with local manufacturing technologies. While at Harvard, he focuses on how to create an economy based on locally sustainable communities that are digitally interconnected.

Vasilis has written essays for several outlets such as the Harvard Business Review and Aeon. His work has appeared in 13 languages.

He is also an artist.

Thomas Patzko

Partnership Curating | Business Development | Future of Work | ”Impact Hub Zurich”

Thomas Patzko is CFO and Partnership Lead Google for Startups, AXA, and Credit Suisse and has been with Impact Hub Zürich for 3 years. Before joining Impact Hub, Thomas held executive positions at financial services corporations and, for almost ten years, was a self-employed business consultant and mentor. He holds an M.Sc. in economy and business administration and has completed advanced degrees in coaching and sociology.

Elena Mavromichali

Senior Consultant of Cultural Policies

Elena is working for many years in the Arts, Culture and Philanthropy, beginning her career at Sotheby’s Auctioneers in London UK, and later at the Onassis Foundation in Greece, at the Impact Hub Athens and for the last three years at SolidarityNow in Athens, (an Association that provides assistance and support to those most affected by the economic downturn and the refugee crisis). Being actively involved in creative and social economy projects, she has shared her knowledge and experience with foundations, private organizations and municipalities, as an independent associate evaluator and advisor. She is also the founder of a network on the creative economy in Greece, trying to connect urbanists, creative professionals and researchers in order to co-design innovative projects for cultural and economic growth.

Charles Landry

Researcher on imagination & creativity in urban settings

Charles Landry works with cities around the world to help them make the most of their potential. He is widely acclaimed as a speaker, author, innovator and facilitates complex urban change projects.

An international authority on using imagination in creating self-sustaining urban change Charles helps shift how we harness possibilities in reinventing our cities. His Creative City concept has become a global movement and his book The Art of City Making was recently voted the 2nd best book on cities ever written by the planning website: http://www.planetizen.com/node/66462. Other books cover the digitized city, the senses of the city and interculturalism.

For further information: www.charleslandry.com

Tom Fleming

Creative Consultant

Dr Tom Fleming is a leading international expert on cultural policy creative cities and regions. His work focuses on advising governments, municipalities and institutions across the world to develop effective research, policy, strategy and action across the cultural sector and wider creative and social sectors. Tom is director of Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy (TFCC), which he set up in 2003. Based in Porto and London, Tom has worked in over 80 countries and 200 cities to shape cultural strategies, develop creative industries plans and advise on inclusive culture-led transformation. This includes a focus on urban creativity and innovation, interculturalism and the convergence of social and creative entrepreneurship.
www.tfconsultancy.co.uk
@tfconsultancy

Sebastian Schlueter

Program Coordinator Actors of Urban Change, Berlin

Sebastian Schlueter is a Berlin based urbanist and the coordinator of Actors of Urban Change, a program of the Robert Bosch Stiftung in cooperation with MitOst e.V. Trained as an urban geographer, he worked previously as a lecturer at Humboldt-University Berlin and was the publisher of a magazine on architecture and everyday life in cities. Sebastian is a trained car-mechanic and holds a PhD from King’s College London and HU Berlin.

Miograd Kuc

”ZK/U Berlin”

Miodrag Kuč is an interdisciplinary artist and urban theorist trained as architect / urban planner in various cultural settings. His work explores the role of ephemeral structures in uncertain urban conditions and spatial appropriations of marginal social groups. He is a founder of the studio ParaArtFormations which moves at the intersection of urban studies, performative-planning, artistic interventions and micro politics. Currently, he works as programme director, researcher and curator at ZK/U (Centre for Art and Urbanistics) Berlin, exploring new ways of knowledge production through the lenses of critical urban pedagogy.

Gala Pin Ferrando

Barcelona City Councillor and activist

Gala is a Councillor of the City of Barcelona, district of Ciutat Vella, for Barcelona en Comú (Catalan for Barcelona in Common), and Councillor of Participation and Districts.

Licensed in philosophy, she has worked for the third sector and is a specialist in digital communications. Gala has been an activist for open software and network freedom, and the implementation of techno-political practices and digital democracy. She was a member in the 15M movement in Barcelona for rights to the city and rights to housing, and the anti-evictions struggle through the PAH platform (Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca, Spanish for Platform Affected by Mortgage). She has been active in the local movements of La Barceloneta neighbourhood participating in the recovery of the cooperative memory, the defence of a citizen port, and the movement against predatory tourism.

*She is going to join the panel online

Eleni Takou

Deputy Director  ”Human Rights 360” | activist against Golden Dawn

Eleni Takou is Deputy Director and Head of Advocacy of the HumanRights360. She has studied communication, political science and political philosophy in Athens and Paris.

She has worked in Advocacy and Programs sector of several NGOs, including the Hellenic League for Human Rights and SolidarityNow. During 2015, she has served as Chief of Staff of the Minister for Migration Policy. Prior to this, she has been coordinating the Racist Violence Recording Network, a coalition of CSOs under the auspices of UNHCR Office in Greece and the Greek National Commission for Human Rights. She has also been a consultant on issues of statelessness for UNHCR Greece.

Her work is focused on refugee protection, migration, hate crime and anti-racism advocacy. She is co-writer of the books “Immigration in Greece. Eleven myths and more facts” and “Persistent myths on migration in Greece”, published by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Lila Tsatsi

activist ”Save Epirus”

Born in Athens in 1975 . After having finished her studies in sociology, she travelled the world and worked for cinema production companies in Athens. She volunteered for different purposes. Her motivation was always to make a positive impact on the world leading by example. Since 2007, when she left Athens and moved to a village in the mountains of North West Greece in Epirus, she found herself adapting successfully to various compelling situations that had nothing to do with the urban lifestyle she had been used to. During these years, she raised her two children, worked in tourism for some of the most successful businesses in Zagori and established her own  business ( www.anemi-zagori.gr) that started operating a few years ago.

Leaving the city , she  thought , her motivation for activism would come to an end. She was wrong. Today, protecting Epirus , her land , and the water.. from the oil companies,  is the strongest motivation she ever had.

Cleo Barnett

Deputy Director ”Amplifier”

Cleo Barnett is Pākehā and White American curator, creative strategist, and visual artist. Her practice explores the relationship between public art, storytelling, and collective liberation grounded in sustainability. Cleo’s work at the intersections of art and cultural organizing has taken her around the world, curating, producing and exhibiting work in festivals, exhibitions and public art campaigns across the United States, New Zealand, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Since 2015 Cleo has been a core part of the Amplifier team, a non-profit organization which builds visual media experiments to amplify the voices of social movements. As the Deputy Director, Cleo co-produces and co-creative directs global public art campaigns such as the iconic We The People Campaign, Women’s March on Washington, and March For Our Lives. The result has been millions of iconic posters distributed and downloaded around the world and building the non-profit into a globally recognized art and social justice organization.

Athina Spyridaki

Bussiness Planner ”Patagonia”

Originally from Athens, Greece, moved to The Netherlands 5 years ago. Also lived in Egypt and Scotland for work and studies. Having developed a love for the mountains and curiosity about social innovation projects, joined an expedition in the Himalayas  to electrify a village with solar panels (GHE 2016). Currently with Patagonia Europe, working as a Direct to Consumer Business Planner.

Ivan March

Guerilla Foundation- activist

Ivan has over ten years of experience in campaigning & movement building with a diverse mix of collectives, NGOs, philanthropic foundations & academic institutions. He has managed anti-extractive industry projects in West Africa & Latin America and worked in community organising in India, Indonesia and South Eastern Europe. He’s spearheaded campaigns & events for Oxfam, Greenpeace, People and Planet & Impact Hub, conducted research for the University of Cambridge and University of Göttingen, and evaluates programs for Ashoka, EPIM, Bosch & NEF.

Ivan is location independent, and when not busy at work he can be found reading Emerson, Seneca or Tolstoy in a hemp hammock somewhere near a waterfall.

Costas Noutsopoulos

Associate Professor, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Faculty of Civil Engineering,
Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering

Costas Noutsopoulos is an Associate Professor at the School of Civil Engineering, N.T.U.A.  He has more than 20 years of experience in teaching and research on water and wastewater treatment and reuse. He has been engaged in more than 70 research projects dealing mainly with water, wastewater and sludge treatment, removal and fate of priority substances and emerging pollutants in wastewater treatment plants, water resources management and mathematical modelling of biochemical processes. He is the author of over 100 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings.

Evgenia Tsianou

alchemia-nova

Evgenia holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Environmental Engineering from DUTH in Greece and a master’s degree in Atmospheric and Climate Science from ETH Zürich. The focus topics of her master thesis were “indoor air-pollution” and “natural disasters related to climate change”. She has pursued internships and worked in Tunisia and Greece on environmental impact assessments, in Germany on process engineering and in the energy sector in Switzerland. She worked for The Mountain Research Initiative, a European network to facilitate mountain research cooperation between countries and regions, with the long-term goal of increasing awareness among decision makers of the importance of mountainous regions to all of Europe. She has worked on a social ecology project to develop and support the regional communication strategy and coordinate an organic waste separation project, and numerous other sustainable development projects.

She is especially interested in topics related to community supported agriculture, society’s vulnerability to climate change, natural disasters and the manner in which society can confront or adapt to these occurrences. She enjoys coordinating projects, facilitating research and closing the communication gap between researchers and the community. At alchemia-nova, she works on the AGROMINE and HYDROUSA projects.

Galya Taneva

alchemia-nova

After years of employment in the art and music industry in Germany, Austria and Brazil, Galya embarked on a new endeavor in the field of natural sciences. She moved to Vienna in 2006 where she completed her studies in landscape planning and landscape architecture at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences.

In her work as a landscape architect, she uses as guiding principles the sustainable use of natural resources and the preservation of biological diversity. She has since collected extensive practical experience in the consulting, planning, management and execution of garden design and vertical interior greening projects, and in the planting of roofs and façades in Austria, Portugal and Italy. Her enthusiasm comes from her passion for plants, their diverse applications and multifunctional properties.

Her interest and commitment to promoting sustainable practices has now brought her to alchemia-nova, where she continues her work on plants and greening management projects.

Daniel Mamais

Professor, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) ,Faculty of Civil Engineering,
Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering

Daniel Mamais is a Professor at the School of Civil Engineering, N.T.U.A. and the head of the Sanitary Engineering Laboratory.  Daniel has more than 25 years of experience in teaching and research on water and wastewater treatment and reuse. He has been engaged in many research projects dealing mainly with water, wastewater and sludge treatment, removal and fate of priority substances and emerging pollutants in wastewater treatment plants, wastewater disposal and reuse and bioremediation. He is the author of over 130 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings

Efthymios Lytras

Deputy Director of Environmental Affairs and R&D at EYDAP

Experience in Evaluation of  R&D results and water and wastewater networks quality control results and incorporation to the planning roadmap of EYDAP.  Design and supervision of research programs. Supervising and participating to the writing of proposals for EU funding. Lead Assessor (test laboratories) and proficiency Testing Module as an International Expert. Laboratories’ personnel trainer on wet chemistry and instrumental analysis and on ISO 9001 and ISO 17025. Consultancy in accreditation of test laboratories. Quality manager in chemical laboratories. Test laboratories: Method development, equipment calibration, personnel training, chemical analysis supervision and quality control assurance, data process and evaluation, research in new methodologies and in the environmental field.

Alessandro Zecca

Design Engineer ”Planet”

He is master graduate in Design & Engineering at Politecnico di Milano where he developed a bio-inspired oil/water separation system as graduation thesis. Bachelor Degree in Industrial and Environmental Design. More than 2 years in Bio-inspired design for environmental and industrial solutions. Currently he is working as Design Engineer at Planet.

Nicolas Bedau & Marilia Kalouli

”Tinos Ecolodge”

Nicolas Bedau.  Dipl Ing. Landscape Planning, TU Berlin. Ecolodge Tinos owner. Nicos has designed and implemented the ELT infrastructure on rainwater collection system from roofs and terraces, waste water treatment through a reedbed filtration system, and irrigation system, as well as the photovoltaic system for energy production and autonomy. Has worked for various environmental NGOs in Greece. Has also worked at Planorama Berlin, as a Landscape planner.

Marilia Kalouli. MSc on Rural Resources and Environmental Policy, Imperial University, UK. Owner of Ecolodge Tinos. Active environmentalist and Project manager for Hellenic Ornithological Society from 1997-2009. Has organised and assisted to all building infrastructure of Ecolodge Tinos.

Johannes Kisser

CEO of ”alchemia-nova”

Degree in Chemical Engineering – dissertation on recovery of metals from plants – Started with environmental analysis for the Austrian Environmental Protection Agency, worked through waste management to end up working on circular economy solutions from 2006 onwards. He holds three lectureships on “Sustainable Product Design”, “Supply chain management” and “CSR management” at two Austrian Universities of Applied Science. He has worked at alchemia-nova since 2002, became Chief Executive Officer in 2010 and gave up this position in 2019 with founding two more daughter organisations and also to become Technical Director focusing more on innovations, knowledge sharing and consulting for ministries and companies. He is the developer and initiator of several national and international projects including the trans-disciplinary H2020 projects HYDROUSA, HOUSEFUL and the COST Action Circular City – co-creating ideas and nurturing them to life, coordinating proposals and sharing these ideas with the world.

Simos Malamis

Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering NTUA

Dr Simos Malamis is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering of the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens. He was a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Civil Engineering at Brunel University and at the Cyprus University of Technology. Dr Malamis was also a Marie Curie research fellow at the University of Verona. His research activities focus on the development and application of novel processes/systems for wastewater purification, resource recovery and carbon footprint minimization. Simos has more than 70 publications in international peer reviewed scientific journals with impact factor and more than 90 presentations in international conferences. Simos has significant experience in the implementation of National and European projects. He has participated in numerous water related projects and is the coordinator of the 12 million Euro Horizon2020 project of HYDROUSA dealing with the valorisation of non-conventional water sources within the concept of circular economy.

Matthias Reisinger

Head of Entrepreneurship and Creative Industries Austria Business Service – ”Impact Hub Vienna” Co-Founder

10 years ago, after graduating from business school with a master in international management, Matthias Reisinger co-founded Impact Hub Vienna and served as its managing director until the beginning of this year. After transitioning the operational management to a new team, Matthias took on a new role as the head of the department for Entrepreneurship and Creative Industries of Austrian Wirtschaftsservice, the largest funding institution of the Republic of Austria.

Prof. Michael Scoullos

Chairman, MIO-ECSDE; GWP-Med