Jaani heads the global investment promotion and advisory operations at Business Sweden in Stockholm. From 2019 to 2021 he led the Business Sweden investment promotion and advisory operations in APAC and was based in Shanghai. Jaani has over 25 years’ experience in global business, technology and government operations in Europe, USA, Brazil, Russia, India and East Asia including 14 years living in Shanghai. Jaani was a Founder and later the Board Chairman of the successful FinChi Innovation Center in Shanghai, which was established in 2005 and has so far supported over 150 Finnish companies in their China market entry. He has a broad experience in consulting companies and leading organisations in their international strategies, in investor relations and innovation projects.
Lisen Schultz is a sustainability scientist, author of the book “Kursen – 10 lektioner för ett hållbart näringsliv” (The Course), and Director of Education at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. In 2018, she launched the first ever executive programme in resilience thinking for CEOs and chair persons, which has now trained more than 75 business leaders in Sweden. Her research focuses on the role of learning and collaboration in shifts towards sustainability.
Tony Mc Carrick is a Strategic Advisor at Atea. He has more than 20 years of experience in digitisation, primarily in the public sector. He has previously been digitalisation strategist in Södertälje municipality where the focus was on creating value for the citizens and organisation in synergies between different technology such as AI, IoT, Open data and Blockchain. The time for changes is always now.
Margrethe Vestager is the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for a Europe fit for the Digital Age and Commissioner for Competition. She previously served as Minister for Economic Affairs and the Interior (2011-14) and Minister for Education (1998-2001) of Denmark, and as President of the ECOFIN Council (2012). She was Political leader of the Danish Social Liberal Party (2007-14), and has worked for the Danish Ministry of Finance (1993-95). Ms. Vestager holds an MSc in Economics (University of Copenhagen).
Agneta Jacobson is the Head of Strategic Partnerships and International Relations at AI Sweden. Teyi founder and a serial entrepreneur, she is a facilitator for the co-creation of digital innovations and the creation of disruptive opportunities based on technology.
Agneta is also a founder of the Innovation Strategy Forum, an executive group of more than 160 innovation and strategy managers from 80 large organizations in Sweden and led the development of Innovation Essentials, a high-level framework for supporting cooperation between corporates and startups.
In addition, she has successfully managed the sale, deployment and support of complex technical and business solutions, major customer contracts and long-term agreements, global channel and OEM relationships, and enterprise partnerships with customers and technology partners in a diverse set of industry verticals in both the private and public sector. Between 2016-2018 Agneta was the COO of Stockholm IT Region, a joint effort of public and private groups aimed at fostering the IT industry in the Stockholm region.
Passionate about using disruptive technologies to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, she has also engaged to organize The Stockholm Act – a festival in the city of Stockholm to create awareness for sustainable development towards 2030.
Alexandr Hobza is Chief Economist at the Directorate-General for Research & Innovation of the European Commission. He leads a team of economists who enhance the evidence base in support of science, technology and innovation policies of the European Commission. Previously, he headed teams working on assessments of structural reforms and was an advisor to the Director-General of DG ECFIN of the European Commission. Before joining the European Commission, he also worked as a Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Economics in Prague, D.E.A. degree in quantitative economics from Université Libre de Bruxelles and M.A. degree in Economics of European Integration from an international programme delivered by University of Antwerp, Staffordshire University and University of Economics in Prague.
Allison Cohen is the Senior Applied AI Projects Lead at Mila. In this role, Allison works closely with AI researchers, social science experts and external partners to professionalize and deploy socially beneficial AI projects. Her portfolio of work includes: a misogyny detection and correction tool, an application that can identify online activity suspected of containing human trafficking victims, and an agricultural analytics tool to support sustainable practices among smallholder farmers in Rwanda.
She was on InspiredMinds an appeared in the Top 50 Influential Women in AI list and was the Runner Up for the 2022 Women in AI “Leader of the Year” Award in the category of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. She holds an MA in Global Affairs from the University of Toronto and a BA in International Development from McGill University.
Anders Almgren (Social Democrat) has been the Mayor of the City of Lund since 2022. He also served as mayor from 2014 to 2018. Anders has a professional background from the construction industry, as a technical expert specialising in low energy buildings, energy use, environmental impact, life-cycle assessment and life-cycle costs. His educational background is a MSc. in Civil Engineering and five years of research in the field of environmental impact of buildings. Anders is a committed advocate for climate neutrality, goal-oriented city planning and the need for further innovation within the public sector as well as intensified collaboration with industry and academia.
Anders Cronholm is the CEO at Blekinge Business Incubator and Chairman of SISP Swedish Incubator and Science Parks. He is also the co-founder of Octacon AB and Blackdrop Interactive AB. Professionally skilled in Product Management, Management, Entrepreneurship, Business Development, and Business Strategy, Seed funding and Venture Capital, Anders has been working with early stages startups for more than 20 years.
Anders Sand holds a doctorate in Chemical Engineering from Åbo Akademi University, Finland since 2010 and is Docent in Mineral Processing at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden since 2017. Anders has about 15 years’ experience in senior academic and corporate positions within the mining industry, with his main field of expertise in process technology. At Boliden he has held positions as Process Manager, Manager of the Process Technology R&D and currently as Research Manager. In his current role, Anders coordinates research and innovation across Boliden Mines, with particular focus on external research programmes in collaboration with other industry, research institutes and academia. He is active in a number of boards and steering committees, including Swedish Mining Innovation, EIT Raw Materials, Svemin, and the European Technology Platform on Sustainable Mineral Resources (ETP SMR).
