Speakers

Christoph Backes

Christoph Backes is managing director and member of the board of u-institut. Uinstitut operates as project sponsor of the Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes (Federal Government's Centre of Excellence for the Cultural and Creative Industries) and initiator of the Kultur- und Kreativpilot*innen Deutschland award. Christoph Backes is one of the leading experts in the cultural and creative industries. With his business partner Sylvia Hustedt, he promotes creative entrepreneurship and innovation and is acting as a main supporter/advocate
for the creative industries in Germany. Since 2020, he mentors the first generation of the Social Innovation Award winners, presented by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research: Gesellschaft der Ideen (Society of Ideas).
Christoph Backes is an economist, management consultant and theater actor. Before founding the u-institut, Christoph was founding managing director of the GründerZentrum Kulturwirtschaft Aachen (2004–2005). Since 2008, he has been advising the Federal Government’s Cultural and Creative Industries Initiative, which comprises representatives from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action.

Jens Badura

Jens Badura is a philosopher and cultural manager with a focus on applied cultural philosophy and aesthetics. As a research fellow at the Zurich Centre for Creative Economies (ZCCE), he deals with the role of cultural and creative industries in the context of social transformation processes. He teaches in the Master's in Transdisciplinary Studies at the Zurich University of the Arts and is a senior fellow at the Institute for Alpine Cultures at the University of Lucerne. He also works as a freelance author and consultant for strategic process support in the university and cultural sector.

He studied philosophy, biology, history and political science in Konstanz, Innsbruck and Tübingen as well as cultural management in Vienna and was a postdoc at the Max Weber College for Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Erfurt, the International Center for Cultural and Technological Research at the University of Stuttgart and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 2006 he habilitated at the University of Paris 8 (Vincennes-Saint-Denis) with a thesis on cultural philosophy.

He lives with his family and a flock of Alpine stone sheep in Marktschellenberg near Berchtesgaden.

Hanja Blendin

Hanja Blendin holds a degree in economics and completed her doctorate with an interdisciplinary research project in which she investigated the influence of psychological variables, such as stress and group cohesion, on the behavior of political actors in international crisis situations using methods from experimental economic research. As an evaluation and monitoring officer at the University of Konstanz, she was responsible for quality assurance in teacher training and for conducting survey projects as well as internal evaluations, e.g. of the EU-funded Institute for Advanced Studies (Zukunftskolleg). She has been project manager since 2016 and deputy head of the Office for Accreditation and Quality Development at ZHdK since 2022. One of her central projects is the “Monitoring of Professional Fields”. She is currently involved in a cooperative project with the ZCCE, which is using AI to investigate whether the skills profiles of ZHdK graduates are in demand in the creative industries and in which other sectors they might be compatible.

Eva Pauline Bossow

Entrepreneurship, communication and management in the creative industries are the common threads in Eva Pauline Bossow’s biography. As Head of Transfer at the Zurich Centre for Creative Economies, she is responsible for the knowledge & competence transfer – making the findings from research, teaching and practice accessible to specialists and the wider public, launching project cooperations with partners, providing a platform for debate on forward-looking issues in the creative economies and consultancy services together with the team. Besides that she is active as a coach and workshop leader for entrepreneurs, e.g. in the INNOSUISSE Startup Campus, and serves on the advisory board of the Novartis Pavillon, among others.

Marc Burkhalter

Marc is a co-creation enthusiast and entrepreneur. He is co-founder and CEO of Scrambl. The start-up leverages human-centered AI to match talents with companies offering the most suitable jobs for their individual skills, personal values, lifestyle and preferred employment model.
In addition to Scrambl., Marc holds guest lectures at various Swiss Universities on the topic of digital business ecosystems and collaborative business models. Previous to that, Marc worked as a strategic project manager and innovation consultant supporting blue-chip companies in the D-A-CH region in leveraging the potential of digital technologies through ecosystem-oriented business models.
He holds a Ph.D. in business innovation from the University of St. Gallen (HSG) where he worked on the topic of digital business ecosystems and developed an ontology for collaborative business models with industry partners from various fields.

Laban Coblentz

Laban Coblentz’s career crisscrosses multiple sectors of technology, education, and sustainable development. At the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he applied mathematical models of probabilistic risk to improve safety practices at nuclear power plants. In the US Congress, he led Senator Joe Lieberman’s effort to create The E-Government Act of 2002. At the International Atomic Energy Agency from 2000 to 2008, he worked with Director General Mohamed ElBaradei on nuclear diplomacy in Iraq, Iran, and other political hotspots – while also promoting hi-tech improvements to agricultural productivity, medicine, and groundwater management in developing countries. From the IAEA, he returned to New York to create new university- and community-based models for entrepreneurship, drawing on the Maker Movement and the democratization of advanced manufacturing. For the past 7 years, he has been the Head of Communication at ITER, in the south of France, where 35 countries are collaborating to make nuclear fusion a practical reality for energy generation. He is also the Chairman of Kloke, a U.S. based cybersecurity start-up venture.
→ ITER

Christian Diemer

Christian Diemer has studied composition, musicology, German philology, and arts management. PhD on traditional music, globalization, and national identity in Ukraine. In 2017, his opera “Bonnie and Clyde” was premiered at the State Theatre of Nordhausen. He was the executive director of the online magazine “Europe & Me” and is an alumnus of Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. He is leading House of Europe, an EU-funded programme implemented by the Goethe-Institut. It is an EU-programme fostering creative and professional exchange between Ukraine and the EU, now also responding to war-related needs.
→ Christian Diemer’s website

Katherine Foster

Katherine Foster is the Executive Director of the Green Digital Finance Alliance (GDFA) and serves on the Supervisory Board of the EIT Food and on the European Securities Market Authority Financial Innovation Financial Innovation Standing Committee Consultative Working Group. A former diplomat specializing in climate and human security, Katherine has been spearheading multi-stakeholder innovation at the nexus of technology, policy, finance, and sustainable development for 30 years. She has held leadership roles at Climate-KIC (Europe’s flagship climate innovation partnership and accelerator), GDFA including as including as Sherpa to the United Nation’s Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the SDGs and several award-winning startups focused on emerging technology and open innovation for climate. She has served in advisory roles with the World Bank, the United Nations, FIDES Microfinance, the Bank of International Settlement and impact accelerators and has led key research on the impact of emerging technology including Web 3 and NFTs for the SDGs. Throughout her career Katherine has integrated contextualized approaches including indigenous knowledge as core elements to innovation and sustainability including professional work in film and photography. Katherine is Swiss-Canadian and currently based in Switzerland.
→ Katherine Foster on LinkedIn
→ Katherine Foster on Twitter: @foster_change

Fabian Goppelsröder

Fabian Goppelsröder is a comparatist and freelance writer. His projects range from the “hut as form and symbol” to the “ideology of feedback” to a “jazz theory of communication”. The questions of improvisation and the imperfect are also vanishing points in his preoccupation with the consequences of a socially ever more comprehensive imperative of optimization. The seemingly endless possibilities of a technical perfection of all areas of life not only lead to the vision of an age of the posthuman; they also force a reassessment of the relationship between humans and technology in general.
Fabian Goppelsröder currently teaches as a professor of philosophy/aesthetics at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig. In 2018, his essay Aisthetik der Müdigkeit was published by diaphanes-Verlag in Zurich.
→ Aisthetik der Müdigkeit

Christine D. A. Hasebrink

When companies are in crisis, they are calling Christine D. A. Hasebrink. The marketing & communication expert is known in many industries as 'the fixer' - with the ability to change mindsets and breathe fresh air into blocked rooms.
With her background in international business studies, her training as a coach and change maker and her experience as entrepreneur and globe trotter (with a speciality in African Safaris!), make demanding fast-paced environments her natural habitat.
Christine has a proven track of rapid progression and outstanding achievements delivering creative, impactful and engaging leadership strategies with long-lasting effects for the companies she worked for like PageGroup, Dentex Health, Viridium Group, Alvarez & Marsal and Deloitte. They all still remember the 'female Winston Wolf", her passion, hands-on-mentality and out-of-the-box-thinking which makes her one of the most sought-after change makers in her field.

Alex Hirtzel

Alex Hirtzel is an artist, and bee activist and ecologist, whose creative practice has always focused on links between science and art. In recent years her painting, printmaking and ceramics have explored the interaction of pollinators and flowers – her previous interests have included current ecological crises, and the role of archaeology and museums in unveiling and preserving memories of the past. She enjoys working with what cannot be seen in normal human vision, and uses multiple techniques that ask the viewer to interact, including AR (augmented reality) and ‘smart’ materials – such as UV, thermochromic and iridescent paints, all the 2-D artworks are painted onto prints in very limited numbers.
Alex has exhibited widely, including this past year three recent solo exhibitions, in Brussels, London and Bristol, where she exhibited at Bristol University Botanic Gardens working with bee scientist Dr Dave Lawson. She has been Artist in Residence the Royal Parks in London and exhibited at Hauser and Wirth in Somerset for a bee weekend.
She studied History of Art at Cambridge University, then went on to the Byam Shaw School of Art, and MA Fine Art, Wales. She has worked for many years as an artist educator with museums, groups and organizations, including the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection in London.
→ Alex Hirtzel’s website

Muchaneta Kapfunde

Founding editor-in-chief of FashNerd.com, Muchaneta is currently one of the leading influencers writing about the merger of fashion with technology and wearable technology. She has also given talks at Premiere Vision, Munich Fabric Start and Pure London, to name a few. Besides working as a fashion innovation consultant for various fashion companies like LVMH Atelier, Muchaneta has also contributed to Vogue Business, is a senior contributor at The Interline and an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion, UAL.

Michael Karg

Michael is founding partner and executive producer of the acclaimed production company cray cray based in Berlin. The interdisciplinary production company is uniting a multi-faceted and diverse team to deliver the most engaging music videos, art projects and commercials for clients all across the globe. Karg has been recognized by his industry as one of the fast and creative minds, paired with his positive hands-on attitude and a deep passion for the craft and integrity of the creative and culture sector.

Funktion: Michael Karg, founding partner and executive producer of cray cray

Pascal Kaufmann

Pascal Kaufmann is a neuroscientist-turned-entrepreneur. The renowned US business journal “Inc.” named Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Pascal Kaufmann some of the leading voices in a new understanding of intelligence.

Having received his Master’s Degree in Neuroscience and Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and Northwestern University in Evanston, IL (USA), Pascal has worked at the prestigious Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Zurich, Switzerland and on numerous projects researching the interface between brains and machines to unravel the secrets of neural networks and brain activity.

In 2010, Kaufmann founded the company Starmind for self-learning knowledge networks together with the business IT specialist Marc Vontobel. In 2017, he launched the Mindfire group that aims to decipher the principles of intelligence and to make this knowledge available to cutting edge research for empowering humans. Kaufmann sits on numerous boards and institutions and is currently president of the Tech category of the Swiss Digital Economy Award.
→ Mindfire

Birgitte Kofod Olsen

Birgitte Kofod Olsen is a human rights lawyer and holds a Ph.D. in privacy and biometrics. She is a partner and co-owner of the Copenhagen based general management consulting firm, Carve Consulting, where she advices organizations in public and private sector on strategic planning and implementation of data protection, human rights, sustainability and data ethics. She serves as independent expert for EU and UN projects on trustworthy use of artificial intelligence and is the co-founder and chairperson of the thinkdotank DataEthics.eu. Birgitte is the author of several books on privacy and data protection aspects of new technology, and will publish a handbook on data ethics in 2022. With her background as National Director and spokesperson at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, CSR Director in the largest Danish Insurance company and as the first chairperson of the Danish Information Security Council, Birgitte has contributed to the public debate on the human, social and democratic consequences of digitalization and technology for almost three decades.
→ Carve Consulting

Milos Labovic

Milos is a public affairs expert and author of the book the EU Superlobby which is a book about public affairs in Brussels. Milos has a double master degree from Aachen and Maastricht University in European Studies. He was and is a political and policy advisor to governments, parliaments and development banks. On top of that, he was also nominated in 2012 for a Public Affairs Award. Additionally, together with Shannon van Schaeck Mathon, he has a weekly newsletter “The Superlobby Community” in which they share tips and tricks about public affairs, lobbying and political communications. Besides the newsletter, they also regularly host events, give masterclasses in EU public affairs, and provide strategic advice on EU public- and political affairs.

Lisa Lang

Lisa Lang is the Director for EU Affairs & Policy Orchestrator for EIT Climate KIC.
Climate-KIC is a knowledge and innovation community established and funded by the EIT – European Institute of Innovation and Technology in 2010.

Our purpose is to tackle climate change through innovation. We are Europe’s largest public-private partnership with this purpose – a growing pan-European community of diverse organisations united by a commitment to direct the power of creativity and human ingenuity at the climate change challenge.

Lisa Lang has gained recognition as one of Forbes Europe’s Top 50 Women in Tech, and has been listed as one of the 50 most important women for innovation & startups in the EU.
She founded highly recognized companies like ElektroCouture, ThePowerHouse and FNDMT who are dedicated to push innovation within the creative and innovative industry eco systems. Lisa Lang is a direct adviser for creative industries, digitalisation and entrepreneurship for the European Commission on several high-level advisory boards, including Pact for Skills, Industrial Forum and the US/EU Trade & Technology Council.
Lisa Lang is on the advisory board to the Zurich university of arts as well as a policy advisor for Fashion Innovation Centre Sweden. She has been given guest lectures at TEDx Athens, KryptoLabs Abu Dhabi and Oxford University.
→ Climate KIC
→ FNDMT
→ EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology)

Gunter Lösel

Gunter Lösel is a researcher and improvising actor holding a doctorate in Theatre Studies and a diploma in Psychology. He was involved in “Actor and Avatar” from 2014–16 and is currently one of the principal investigators of “The Answering Machine” (Volkswagen Foundation 2022–2026), exploring speech assistants as partners in acting on the theatre stage.

Ashley Lukasik

Founder of Murmur Ring, Ashley Lukasik's passion is creating the conditions for collective creativity. She has built her career exposing organizations to human-centered design as a means to respond to complex challenges for which they do not have a preexisting roadmap. After completing an M.A. in Anthropology at the University of Chicago and running a medtech startup company, Ashley spent several years leading partnerships at the visionary design school, IIT Institute of Design, which inspired her to launch and co-produce The New Bauhaus feature documentary with Opendox. She produces immersive experiences and multimedia content worldwide that connect design pedagogy with emerging technology and culture. Her work has appeared in Architectural Digest, Design Milk, New York Times, Forbes, and more.
→ The new Bauhaus

Leighton McDonald

Leighton McDonald is a painter turned spatial interaction designer from the United States of America. Based in NYC, Leighton works on conceptual trend research for sportswear apparel companies, to augmented reality marketing activations for major tech brands like Meta and Snap. Evolving with time with skills in 3D design, AR/VR exploration, and AI tools help push Leighton's mind forward and fast towards a better vision of the future.

Murielle Perritaz

Murielle Perritaz studied at the School of Social Work and Socioculture in Lausanne, Switzerland and did a Master in Cultural Management in Dijon, France.
From 2013 to 2020, she was a member of the executive board of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, where she was responsible for programmes, the external network and international affairs. From 2001 to 2004, she was programme dramaturge at the Theaterhaus Gessnerallee in Zurich. The areas of dance and theatre also accompanied her in other engagements. Among other things, she was the founder and, between 2007 and 2013, the managing director of Reso, the national coordination office for the promotion of dance.
Since August 2021, she is Co-Director of the Cultural Affairs of the City of Zurich with Rebekka Fässler and a member of the Executive Board of the Department of the Mayor.

Elahe Rajabiani

Elahe is a designer at the EU Policy lab. She designs tools, methods and processes for creative collaboration between the scientists and the policy makers.

Before joining the EU commission, Elahe was the creative lead at the Open Innovation Centre of the University of Bologna. She led dozens of multidisciplinary and cross-generational teams in designing new product and services for various companies in pharma, food, automotive and entertainment industry.

She was also a design educator and coach for student programs at the Design Factory Global Network and the Challenge Based Innovation at CERN IdeaSquare.

She is passionate about Design in all its forms and functions and strives to bring speculative design and visual thinking into policymaking.

Jessica Segerlund

Jessica Segerlund is trained as a curator and current head of Think Tank at ArkDes, Sweden’s National Centre for Architecture and Design. Jessica is an urbanist and has extensive experience in commissioning art, architecture, and design within city planning and development. Previously heading the award-winning project of developing the area of Frihamnen, Gothenburg and in specific “Jubileumsparken”. She has many years of experience in planning and developing including advisory work.

Tania Singer

Tania Singer is a social neuroscientist and psychologist and scientific head of the Social Neuroscience Lab of the Max Planck Society. She is a world expert on empathy and compassion and focus on ways of how to improve mental health and wellbeing through mental training. She has a passion for creating bridges between fields that typically never interact such as linking neuroscience with economics, science with arts or science with spirituality. She developed the ReSource project, a large-scale longitudinal study on the effects of meditation on brain, behavior and mental health. Besides that, she is developing new models of caring economics together with micro- and macro-economists. Further, she is involved in advising start-ups that enable to scale compassion-based practices via online platforms to benefit broader society. Her main aims are to help to translate this scientific knowledge into different arms of society to provide the basis for deep inner change for larger societal change.

Katrin Stowasser

Katrin Stowasser holds a Master's degree in art history, sociology and psychology. She also completed a postgraduate degree in research management and is working on her doctorate in a research project funded by the Swiss National Fonds (snf). Her research focuses on theories of aesthetics, artistic practices and critical thinking. She has been working as a researcher at the ZHdK in the research area of aesthetics for 14 years. She loves bringing people together and is convinced of the importance of the creative industries for the challenges of the future.

Päivi Tahkokallio

Päivi Tahkokallio is the Founder and CEO of Tahkokallio Design+, a strategic design agency operating from the Arctic north in Finland.

With her track record in strategic and social design Päivi has been called the Mother of Arctic Design, a design approach to support sustainable development of the Arctic, more topical than ever at the time when Europe has set an objective to become climate neutral by 2050. We know the Arctic is warming two times faster than the rest of the world, and design is an effective tool for transformation, be it environmental or social.

Päivi is the past President of BEDA, The Bureau of the European Design Associations with 53 members in 27 countries in Europe. As President Päivi was leading the design policy work in Europe, with climate change, digitalisation and values as key topics, especially relevant in BEDA’s input related to the New European Bauhaus initiative, an initiative with the strongest co-design approach in the European Commission’s history.

Päivi has acted as a jury member of international design competitions, with Compasso d’Oro, DesignEuropa, German Design Award, Taiwan International Student Design Awards, The One Show and Turkey Design Awards amongst them.

Päivi is Fellow of Royal Society of Arts in the UK, FRSA, and a Committee Member of Arctic Society of Finland.

Fredrik Timour

Fredrik Timour has a broad, deep and holistic perspective to digital fashion.
Fredrik is currently head of Fashion innovation center. Fashion Innovation Center operates like a switchboard between the industry, content providers and academia. Fredrik have also worked for the Swedish Fashion Council setting up their strategy and roadmap.
Fredrik is also the founder of Neue, a platform for digital fashion development including both hardware, software and cloud services, for fashion brands and end user applications.
He has been running courses in fashion tech at Fashion Institute of Technology – NYC, London College of Fashion – London, IFA – Paris, Beckmans – Stockholm. Furthermore, he has been working directly with clients like Fusalp, POC, IKEA, BACK, Snickers Workwear, SAS, IBM developing new business models and concepts for digital fashion.

Shannon van Schaeck Mathon

Shannon van Schaeck Mathon has a solid understanding of the EU public affairs as she obtained her bachelor European Studies, MA European Public Affairs and LLM European Law. She has also acquired hands-on experience in public affairs at a Brussels-based consultancy where she worked, amongst others, on platform regulation and sustainable mobility. She also did an internship at the Dutch Ministry of Interior Affairs where she worked on the regulation of emerging technologies and AI. On top of that, together with Milos Labovic, she has a weekly newsletter “The Superlobby Community” in which they share tips and tricks about public affairs, lobbying and political communications. Besides the newsletter, they also regularly host events, give masterclasses in EU public affairs, and provide strategic advice on (EU) public affairs to their clients.

Lauren Wildbolz

Lauren Wildbolz swore off meat-eating at 14. At 27, she cut the last ribbon to animal mass production by choosing a vegan lifestyle. In 2010, she opened the first vegan restaurant in Switzerland. Inspired by the vision that the middle of society is ripe for a diet without suffering and a more sustainable approach to nature. She has been running a premier catering company Future Cuisine since 2012. It offers creative solutions on how food can be a rich culinary taste experience, healthy for the body and sustainable for the environment. In 2015, she graduated from the Zurich University of the Arts with a Master of Fine Arts. Her artistic works revolve around food waste, among other things. Her long-term projects include the theme „The future of food“. She regularly appears as a guest at panel discussions and TV and radio programmes. She has published two books. She is the Co-Founder of the vegan patisserie company KUBO, which sells frozen vegan raw cakes cubes to star restaurants. In the corona lockdown, she developed the startup company plantbox.ch, home delivery with vegan products coupled with an app that plays inspirational cooking videos for the private kitchen at home. Lauren has excellent knowledge and a global network in the food technology industry and is constantly educating herself on the latest technology in this field. Since 2022, she has had a mandate as creative director at the symposium soil to soil and she is on the Gastro Advisor Board for the Co-working with a vegan Café at Tessinerplatz in Zurich.

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