Speakers 2023

Vanessa Cann

Vanessa Cann, an accomplished professional in the European AI landscape, now the CEO of Nyonic Europe. With her wealth of experience, she brings valuable insights and expertise to Nyonic. 

As Managing Director at the German AI Association, Vanessa has built the largest network for AI companies in Europe. She was one of the initiators of the initiative LEAM (Large European AI Models), where she pushed towards building up a dedicated AI infrastructure and more European collaboration in the field of foundational models. At the German AI Association, Vanessa founded a non-profit academy for artificial intelligence to educate the general public about AI and united ten international AI associations through the European AI Forum, giving European founders a voice in politics. 

Prior to joining the German AI Association, Vanessa worked at the German Startups Association and advised Fortune 500 companies in their digital policies. For her commitment to the European AI ecosystem, she was named one of the 30 most important people under 30 by Forbes in 2022.

Laura Dornheim

City Councillor and CDO Dr. Laura Dornheim holds a Diploma in business informatics and a PhD in Gender Studies. As head of the IT Department she is responsible for the IT infrastructure as well as the digitalization of the City of Munich and its administration.

Ryan Gersava

Ryan Gersava (Ra-yan Her-sa-va) (he/they) is a neurodiverse social entrepreneur, educator, and
disability champion. He is the Founder and Chairman of Virtualahan, an online vocational school
providing inclusive training to people with disabilities and other disadvantaged communities who
experience employment inequality, while simultaneously empowering companies to become inclusive
employers. He is also an Ashoka Fellow, an honoree of Forbes 30 under 30 and a TED speaker.

Omar El Gohary

Omar is a tech entrepreneur and business leader with Mexican and Egyptian roots.
He grew up in Mexico, Egypt, and Austria.

After completing his engineering studies, Omar began his career at P&G where he
pioneered industrial digitalization and the use of IoT in manufacturing.

In 2013, Omar and Karsten Neugebauer founded G2K, where he led the technology
and engineering teams as CTO. In 2023, G2K was recognized as one of the Top 100
most innovative companies in Germany given its pioneering work in IoT and AI,
especially in retail.

As of May 2023, ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) intends to close the acquisition of G2K in
Q3'23, subject to regulatory approval, in what would be the largest AI exit in
Germany to date.

Aside from his entrepreneurial activities, given his background, Omar participates in
organizations bridging the gap between Mexico and the Arab world and was named
the Honorary Consul of the Sultanate of Oman in Mexico

Lubomila Jordanova

Lubomila Jordanova is the co-founder and CEO of Plan A, a software provider offering an end-to-end platform that uses machine learning and science to enable businesses to reduce their emissions and improve their ESG performance.

Lubomila is also co-founder of the Greentech Alliance, a community of more than 2,000 startups connected to more than 500 advisors from VC, media, and business.

Prior to Plan A, she worked in investment banking and venture capital as well as the fintech industry in Asia and Europe. She has been recognised as Obama Leader Europe 2022, MIT Innovator Under 35 Europe 2022, Marshall Fund Fellow 2022, Top 50 Women in Tech in Germany 2021 (Handelsblatt) and 30 under 30 (Forbes), among others.

Olaf Koch

Olaf Koch is a partner at ZINTINUS - a Food Tech venture capital fund focused on supporting startups entering the growth stage. Throughout his career he has continuously promoted young companies and paid special attention to sustainability. Prioir to founding ZINTINUS with his partners he was CEO at METRO AG for nine years, where he initiated a comprehensive restructuring and realignment from a diversified retail conglomerate to a modern and focused food wholesaler. Under his leadership, numerous digital solutions and services were brought to the market and thus taking on a leading role, especially in the catering industry. METRO also committed to substantial sustainability improvements and achieved a leading position in the Dow Jones Sustainability index. Prioir to that he worked at PERMIRA as Managing Director Operations and before that as CFO of  the Mercedes Car Group within DAIMLER AG. Olaf started his career as author of IT books and lecturer. Thereafter he founded a startup that specialized in network solutions, which he sold in 2000.

Olaf has been an active member of various associations including a two-year Co-Chairmanship at the Consumer Goods Forum. He is also a member of the supervisory board of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, where he chairs the Audit and the Legal Committee.

Marina Löwe

Marina Löwe is ada´s Head of Learning & Development. She joins us in our belief that growth rarely happens alone, and shares our passion to inspire the connections that will drive future change. Marina is an experienced change expert with a proven track record in creating personal and business transformations. She accompanies executives and teams in the development of mindful digital high-performance cultures for sustainable business. Marina has been working as an internal and external consultant, facilitator and trainer in international companies ranging from DAX corporations to startups since 2002. She is an industrial and organizational psychologist, multi-certified trainer, mediator, Co-active and Berkeley Executive Coach.

Miriam Meckel

Miriam Meckel is founding publisher and Chief Executive Officer of ada. Since 2005 Miriam has held a professorship in communication management at the University of St. Gallen, and was editor in chief and publisher of WirtschaftsWoche. She served one legislative period as government spokesperson and State Secretary for Media and International Affairs under the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, and she also worked as a consultant for the Brunswick Group for many years. During her time as a journalist and scientist she received the Cicero Speakers Prize in the science category, published numerous books, and was accepted engagements as a guest professor at Harvard University, Singapore Management University and the University of Vienna.

Cassandra Myers

Cassandra Myers (they/she) is a queer, trans, crip, mad, South Asian-Italian poet, performer, educator, and social worker from Toronto, Ontario. A National Poetry Slam Champion, Cassandra has performed poetry across the United States and Canada. A recent winner of the ARC Poetry Magazine Poem of the Year Award, and longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, Cassandra's first book of poems is set to be released with Write Bloody Publishing in 2022.

Verena Pausder

Verena Pausder is one of the best known faces of the startup scene in this country. She is an entrepreneur, digital education expert, author and founder of Fox & Sheep and the HABA Digitalwerkstätten.

In her eyes, giving children equal access to digital education is one of the core prerequisites for the future viability of our country. To this end, she founded Digitale Bildung für Alle e.V. in 2017. During the Corona period, she put homeschooling-corona.com online and initiated the country's largest education hackathon #wirfürschule. For this, she was honored by Handelsblatt and BCG as Vordenkerin 2020. In 2022, she launched the site edu-cloud.org to give schools and parents transparency and guidance about digital education offerings.

Her book "Das Neue Land" is a Spiegel bestseller and was awarded the special prize "Unternehmerbuch des Jahres" by the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2020.

In her podcast "FAST & CURIOUS" she talks with her co-host Lea-Sophie Cramer about current trends and developments in the startup scene.

She is on the advisory board of DELIUS and Röhlig Logistics, a university councillor at CODE University in Berlin, and founder of the #stayonboard initiative. In 2016, she was named a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum. In 2018, she was included in Forbes Europe's Top 50 Women In Tech list. Born in Hamburg in 1979, she lives in Berlin with her husband and children.

Brett Perry

A graduate of The Juilliard School, Brett has performed works by acclaimed choreographers Lar Lubovitch, Ohad Naharin, Cystal Pite, Robert Battle, Medhi Walerski, Eliot Feld, Jose Limon & Sharon Eyal.

Brett begin his professional career in Boise, Idaho as a founding member of the celebrated Trey McIntyre Project. With TMP he toured to 18 nations, serving as a United States Cultural Ambassador. He has danced with Ballet British Columbia, Aszure Barton & Artists, LED, Ballet Idaho and Adam Weinert. Perry was a 2010 recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Dance and is the inaugural 2020 Alexa Rose Foundation Fellow.

When he is not in the studio or onstage Brett is cultivating the land at Meadowlark Farm in Nampa, Idaho under the tutelage of food activist, Janie Burns.

Kimo Quaintance

Kimo Quaintance is ada’s Director of Community. He first worked with ada as an external consultant in 2019, and joined the team full-time in 2021. He has spent the past 10 years consulting on collective learning and technological change to clients such as Facebook, Microsoft, General Motors, Lufthansa, Siemens, the United States Army, and the Royal Opera House in London. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of St Andrews in Scotland and has developed curriculum and lectured at the University of Denver, the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in Munich (Universität der Bundeswehr München), and the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

John Michael Schert

John Michael Schert is an artist, advisor and producer working in multiple sectors. He began his career as a ballet dancer with American Ballet Theatre and Alonzo King LINES Ballet. In 2004 he co-founded Trey McIntyre Project, concurrently serving as the company’s Executive Director and a dancer. During this time, he gained a unique insight into the process and product of art-making and realized the ability to translate the creative process across disciplines and domains. 2013-2017 he served as the inaugural Visiting Artist and Social Entrepreneur at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Schert is the founding principal of JMS & Company, an executive producer of Boise’s B Corp Treefort Music Fest, and is the founder of the American Ballet Theatre Leadership Lab. He was a 2019 USA Eisenhower Fellowship and holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Léa Steinacker

Léa Steinacker is founder and Chief Innovation Officer of ada. Prior to 2018 she worked for Wirtschaftswoche, most recently as Chief Innovation Officer. In 2018 the american magazine Forbes named her one of the “Top 30 Under 30” managers in Europe’s media landscape, the same year she was one of the “Top 30 Under 30” journalists named by Medium Magazin. Raised in Germany, Australia and Wales, she studied at Princeton, Harvard and the American University in Cairo before writing her doctor’s thesis on the social impact of artificial intelligence systems at the University of St. Gallen.

Kate Stone

Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Novalia whose passion is creativity and blending art, science, design and technology.  Founded in 2006, Novalia  combines printing and electronics to create magical and immersive experiences, typically for some of the world’s biggest brands including McDonalds, Bud Light, Pizza Hut, Google and Unilever, which have been seen and shared by millions.   Kate calls herself a ‘Creative Scientist’.  Turning Pizza Huts’ box into working paper DJ decks, walls for SXSW in Austin, Texas that trigger music when touched and a paper notebook that also works as a piano, amongst many other things. 

Now based in Los Angeles, Kate is a lay member of the Editors Code of Practice Committee in the UK. She is former Chair of the Executive Board of the MIDI Manufacturers Association and Chair of the Board of Just Bee, a charity in Dundee that helps the vulnerable and underserved.  Kate has a degree in Electronics from Salford University and a PHD from Cambridge University.

She is obsessed with hiking and camping, whilst trying her best to avoid getting eaten by bears or other wild animals!

Silvia Wirth

Silvia Wirth is an expert for the digital transformation of Germany’s healthcare system. She works for Techniker Krankenkasse and focuses on the intersection between communications and digitalisation. She focuses on how new technologies such as the electronic health record or apps on prescription can be implemented in Germany and how health data can improve medical care.  She is committed to address health disparities and works for closing the data health gap. Silvia has background in Economics and Journalism. She worked many years as freelance journalist for german newspapers and the public-broadcasting institution WDR.

Sally Wyatt

Sally Wyatt is professor of digital cultures in the Maastricht University Science and Technology Studies group. Together with an interdisciplinary group of colleagues, she launched a new bachelor degree in Digital Society in 2019. She has a long history of working on social issues raised by the development and use of digital technologies.  More details: https://sallywyatt.nl/

Nina Zimmermann

Nina Zimmermann has been CEO of the employer review platform kununu since mid-2021 and is an expert in leadership and corporate culture. Prior to her current role, the British-born Nina Zimmermann worked at Burda, where she held overall management responsibility as CPO/Managing Director for the lifestyle and people portal Bunte.de, the affiliate network tracdelight and Burda's content influencer platform Brands You Love.