We are shaping a better digital future society

John Hoffman is CEO and Director for GSMA Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the GSMA. In this role, John oversees various lines of business, including the GSMA’s portfolio of award-winning trade shows and conferences, its online, print and broadcast media properties, industry research services and a range of network managed services.

John is a member of the Future Trends Forum, Bankinter’s global think task focused on issues impacting Spanish society and businesses. He serves on the GSMA Ltd. Board of Directors as well as the Board of the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation.

John is the author of the “Wireless Evolution Insider” as well as “GPRS Demystified”.

Mats Granryd is Director General of the GSMA and a Member of its Board. In this role, he leads the GSMA in supporting its global membership through a range of industry programmes, advocacy initiatives and industry-convening events.

Mats is a strong proponent of sustainability and led the mobile industry in becoming the first sector to broadly commit to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2016. Mats chairs the Working Group on Digital Gender Divide to address the digital gender divide and foster the equal inclusion of women and girls in broadband access and use.

Mats holds a M.Sc. from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Michelle Greenwald is a unique blend of corporate executive, graduate business school marketing professor, entrepreneur and author. She was a Senior Vice President at Disney, a Vice President and General Manager at Pepsi, and Business Director at Nestle.

Michelle curates visits for global firms to leading innovators in diverse fields at Inventours™. Has written the book Catalyzing Innovation, that provides a systematic way for firms to innovate with 950 cross-sector, global examples categorized into 63 different types of innovation. She is also a contributor for Forbes Magazine, being the CMO of the Network Column re: Innovation & Marketing Strategy.

Audrey Tang, a civic hacker and Taiwan’s Digital Minister in charge of Social Entrepreneurship and Open Government, is known for revitalizing global open source communities such as Perl and Haskell.

In the public sector, Audrey served on Taiwan’s K-12 curriculum committee and national development council’s open data committee; and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project.

In the private sector, Audrey worked as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography.

In the third sector, Audrey actively contributes to Taiwan’s g0v (“gov-zero”), a community focusing on creating tools for civil society, with the call to “fork the government”.

Carlota Perez studies the socio-economic impact of technical change and the historical context for growth and development.

She is currently Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, Professor of Technology and Development at the Nurkse Institute, TalTech, Estonia. Her long career has combined civil service, academic research and teaching, and she has acted as consultant for several governments; for international organisations such as the EU, UNIDO, CEPAL, the Andean Pact, the World Bank, and the OECD; and for many global corporations including IBM, Cisco, Telefonica and Ericsson.

Author of the influential Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages (Elgar 2002).

Dr. Joan Clos is the former Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). He held this office from October 2010- December 2017.

He was twice elected Mayor of Barcelona, serving two terms from 1997 until 2006. He was Minister of Industry, Tourism, and Trade of Spain between 2006 and 2008. Prior to joining the United Nations, he served as the Spanish Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Dr. Joan Clos is also widely credited with inspiring far-reaching investment programmes for Barcelona. One of the most ambitious was the “Barcelona@22” programme, which gave the city’s dilapidated industrial zones a facelift.

Dr. Daria Gołębiowska-Tataj is #1 business growth strategist through innovation, entrepreneurship and Network Thinking™. She helps develop business growth strategies for multinational companies, venture capital funded start-ups and private equity backed mid-size companies, cities and entire countries.

Dr. Tataj is a trusted business and government advisor. At the World Economic Forum, she has been helping shape the Davos agenda. As a Chairwoman of High-level Advisors to European Commissioner for Science & Innovation she leads the policy reflection €100 billion Horizon Europe budget.

In 2006, Daria was recognized by FORTUNE Magazine as one of 17 emerging global women business leaders. 

Rahilla Zafar is a Managing Director at ConsenSys helping open the Middle East market where the company is currently the official blockchain advisor to the city of Dubai.

She has conducted research, co-author, and edit The Internet of Women: Accelerating Culture Change. 

Rahilla previously was based in Afghanistan and Pakistan working for the International Organization for Migration, the NATO-led mission, and government initiatives focused on humanitarian outreach. 

She has contributed to numerous publications from the Financial Times to Quartz, and for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Initiative.

Jeff Merritt is an expert in the area of smart cities, emerging technologies, and government innovation with more than two decades of experience driving social change in the U.S. He currently serves as Head of IoT, Robotics and Smart Cities for the World Economic Forum in San Francisco, California.

He served as New York City’s first-ever Director of Innovation. Key highlights from his career include laying the groundwork for the world’s largest, fastest municipal Wi-Fi network; orchestrating the launch and roll-out of the world’s largest city top-level domain; and leading the creation and adoption of new guidelines and tools to promote the responsible and equitable expansion of IoT.

Andrew Axelrod serves as Chief Strategy Officer for the UN Foundation. In this role, he leads organizational strategy development, resource mobilization and allocation, business planning and implementation, information technology and digital services, and is responsible for the organization’s ongoing operational effectiveness. Andrew also serves as Board Chair for DIAL, an initiative working to create a more inclusive digital society for the world’s most vulnerable people.

 Andrew graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Commerce and holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Her latest book is Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard University Press 2014) now out in 18 languages. She is the recipient of diverse awards, including multiple doctor honoris causa, the Principe de Asturias 2013 Prize in the Social
Sciences, and made a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences of Netherland.