Focus: Civil Society
ElsaMarie D'Silva
ElsaMarie D’Silva is an Indian gender activist and is the Founder and CEO of Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) and is President of Red Dot Foundation Global. Safecity is a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces. This data gets aggregated as hot spots on a map indicating trends at a local level. Since Safecity started in December 2012, it has become the largest crowd map on the issue in India, Kenya, Cameroon and Nepal. ElsaMarie is listed as one of BBC Hindi’s 100 Women and has won the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award, Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Niti Aayog’s #WomenTransformingIndia award and…
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Taz Chaponda
Taz Chaponda is the CEO of Malawi Agricultural and Industrial Investment Corporation, a government initiative but private sector-led development finance institution, launched by Malawi President Peter Mutharika. Taz is a development economist with extensive experience across Sub-Saharan Africa, having worked in the major economic centers of Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg. Previously, he was a public financial management specialist at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. and a partner at Genesis-Analytics – a South African economic advisory firm working in emerging markets. Prior to Genesis, Taz was the head of the South African Budget Office, responsible for the national and provincial budget framework. He was also head of infrastructure finance…
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Ying Lun “Allen” FUNG
Ying Lun “Allen” FUNG is Vice President, Business Development for Aerospace Technology Group Hong Kong. Prior to this he served as Political Assistant to Secretary for Development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Before joining the government in 2014, Allen was a personal assistant to Mr. CY Leung from 2006 to 2012 and advised on his successful Chief Executive election campaign. Allen has extensive experience in politics and public administration in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland. He is a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong & Macao Studies and the All China Youth Federation, and Standing Committee Member of the Guangdong Youth Federation. He was Vice President (External)…
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Pablo Bereciartua
Pablo Bereciartua is Argentina's Secretary of State for Infrastructure and Water and is Founder and CEO of Bereco SA & Bereco Labs, Inc., a company focused on innovation, technology, and management. He is also the founder of other technology based companies such as B3 and Agro Appgrade SA. In the public sector, he has served as the director of infrastructure for the city of Buenos Aires, where he faced both enormous challenges and opportunities to apply new technologies to city and regional infrastructure. Pablo is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires and former dean at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology, where he focused on teaching and researching…
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Onur Burçak Belli
Onur "Burçak" Belli is a Syrian-Turkish journalist. For most of her career, Burçak has focused on conflicts in Turkey, where she has been based for the past five years, working for Die Zeit, a German weekly newspaper, covering conflicts and crises in Turkey and the broader region. With 13 years of experience writing for international media outlets, her reporting is often through a lens of comprehensive rights and freedoms, writing in feature, long-form, or non-fiction storytelling styles. In 2010, Burçak was based in Damascus covering Syria’s reform plans and the Sunni-Alawite divergences amongst the ruling elite. She then moved London, working for the BBC as a broadcast journalist, before returning…
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Ala Qasem
Ala Qasem is a public policy maker and member of the Economic Team advising the Presidential Leadership Council and senior cabinet members in the Republic of Yemen. Ala is also CEO of DeepRoot Consulting, a prominent social enterprise that is focused on Yemen’s development. He previously served as Managing Director of Yemen’s delivery bureau where he led government negotiation efforts to develop a rapid stabilization program for the interim capital Aden, secure debt relief from the IMF, and participate in the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative. In 2013, Yemen went through its largest ever political dialogue exercise which included 556 delegates from all political parties and factions. Ala served as…
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Alex Muñoz Wilson
Alex Muñoz Wilson is National Geographic's Pristine Seas Director for Latin America. He has been the driving force behind the creation of the seven largest fully-protected marine reserves in Latin America, covering 1.2 million square kilometers of ocean. He has also led many important ocean policy changes in Chile, including making it the first country in the world to legally protect all of its seamounts from destructive fishing; reforming Chile’s fisheries law to require science-based quotas and reduce incidental mortality of species; stopping coal-fired power plants from destroying marine habitats and fishers’ livelihoods; protecting vast areas of Patagonia from salmon farming; establishing the first regulations to reduce antibiotic use and…
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Sahar Albazar
Sahar Albazar is an Egyptian MP and the Deputy Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee at the Egyptian House of Representatives. She is also the President of the forum of young Parliamentarians representing more than 179 countries. Before that, she was an advisor to the Minister of Social Solidarity and a social protection consultant at the World Bank on youth employability in Egypt. In addition to her experience in the governmental sector and international organizations, she has worked at several Forbes top 500 companies including P&G, J&J, Abbott, and BP. Sahar was named a Young Global Leader in 2022. She holds an MPA from Harvard University.
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Stephen Shashoua
Stephen Shashoua is a seasoned programme designer, trainer, and capacity-building specialist committed to fostering peace, cohesion, and preventing violent extremism through innovative approaches at the intersection of peacebuilding, identity, and culture. With over two decades of experience spanning diverse regions and sectors, Stephen brings a wealth of expertise and a track record of impactful leadership to his work. As the former Director of the UK-based 3FF (Three Faiths Forum, now Faith & Belief Forum) for over a decade, he spearheaded the development of pioneering social cohesion programs aimed at promoting interaction and learning between people of different faiths and beliefs. Under his leadership, the organization grew from a staff of…
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Dayo Olopade
Dayo Olopade works at the intersection of media and technology, with more than a decade of content, strategy, product, communications, partnerships, contracts, and change management expertise. As Partnerships Lead at YouTube, she structures and negotiates product and licensing deals with video storytellers–major TV broadcasters and cable networks, sports leagues, movie studios, digital native publishers, and fresh, individual voices. She gets to do this across Africa, where the content industry is dynamic and creative problem solving is fundamental. Dayo began her career as a reporter in Washington covering politics, policy, and the Obama administration. She spent two years in Nairobi as a New America Foundation fellow, reporting The Bright Continent, a…
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