Chris Barton is the Founder of Shazam. As the first CEO of Shazam, Chris led the creation of Shazam along with three co-founders from concept through inventing a new pattern recognition technology and then building and launching the world’s first music recognition service. The service has had over 1 billion downloads. Shazam was bought by Apple in September 2018. According to Wikipedia, it was the fifth largest acquisition by Apple in its history. Shazam raised $140 million in venture capital. Chris previously worked at Google focused on mobile as Head of Android Business Development for North America. He also worked at Dropbox as Head of Mobile Operator Partnerships. Chris holds an MBA from UC Berkeley, a Master’s degree in Finance from Cambridge University and a BA from UC Berkeley.

Zarah Bruhn has been named one of Capital magazine`s Top 40 under 40. She delivered two TED talks and is a frequent speaker and interview partner. Zarah founded her two companies in times of crisis and with a special mission. During the refugee crisis, she founded socialbee, a social temporary employment agency for refugees, which today stands for professional integration and sustainable employment of disadvantaged people. During the Corona crisis, she launched Bring & Ring, an app providing shopping aid for at-risk groups, within a few weeks. She was appointed Ashoka Fellow in 2018 and thus became a member of the largest global network of social entrepreneurs.

Jeff Hoffman is an award-winning global entrepreneur, proven CEO, worldwide motivational speaker, bestselling author, Hollywood film producer, a producer of a Grammy Award winning jazz album, and executive producer of an Emmy Award winning television show. In his career, he has been the founder of multiple startups, he has been the CEO of both public and private companies, and he has served as a senior executive in many capacities. Jeff has been part of a number of well-known successful startups, including Priceline.com/Booking.com, uBid.com and more. In his keynotes he aims to inspire change and innovation, to tackle challenges that seem impossible and to make a difference.

Dr. Carolin Gabor is CEO of Movinx. Previously, as Managing Partner at FinLeap, she was responsible for venture development and growth. Before joining FinLeap, Carolin spent ten years working for Boston Consulting Group. Afterwards, she became the CEO of Toptarif.de and later held the CEO position of autohaus24.de GmbH. In addition, she is a member of the Women’s Council of HypoVereinsbank which supports promising female entrepreneurs through mentoring.

Professor Pinkwart was a Member of the German Bundestag (2002 - 2005) and Minister for Innovation, Science, Research and Technology as well as Deputy Prime Minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (2005 - 2010). In 2011 Professor Pinkwart has been appointed as Dean of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and ever since holds the Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank Chair for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. In 2017 he became Minister of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Aya Jaff is a trader, founder and author. At a young age, Aya gained experience as a coder and had the privilege to work internationally for companies like Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. She was the long-time CTO for the largest social stock market simulation in Germany: Tradity. She worked at the startup incubator ZOLLHOF as Head of Communications and has significantly supported many startups on their way. She talks about her experiences and learnings in the financial and tech world in her SPIEGEL bestseller book "Moneymakers" published by FBV Verlag. She was dubbed "Mrs. Code" by ZEIT and made it to the cover of VOGUE Business, t3n and Business Punk magazines, as well as the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Sebastian Schaal is Founder and Managing Director at Luminovo, where he is responsible for Business and Product. Luminovo is a SaaS provider building the electronics operating system for EMS, OEMs, and distributors to accelerate technological progress. He graduated top of his class with an M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from TU Munich and holds an Honours Degree from the CDTM. He obtained his second M.Sc. from Stanford University where he focused on Management Science and Machine Learning. He worked for Intel and researched on NILM algorithms for the energy sector before transitioning to Deep Learning, working for the deep tech startups NavVis and Magazino on Computer Vision problems. Besides his technical experiences, Sebastian also worked as a consultant at McKinsey, focusing on IT and data strategy.

Judith is a General Partner at La Famiglia, a European seed stage venture capital fund investing into B2B technology companies that enable or disrupt large industries. She focuses on the future of work, as well as data and ML-driven business models.

Montgomery Jaritz is a Co-Founder of IonKraft, a young Spin-Off of the RWTH Aachen University, which is currently industrialising its plasma coating technology to make recyclable plastic packaging possible. In the previous years he made his PhD in the field of plasma coating technology at the institute for plastics processing (IKV) in Aachen. During this time, he developed a chemically resistant barrier coating for plastics, which layed the foundation for IonKraft and the opportunity to strengthen the plastics circular economy in Germany and beyond.

Florian is Co-Founder and CEO of the medtech company medical magnesium. As founder of a technology start-up, he realizes the market approval and clinical trials of innovative medical devices. He brings his expertise in Regulatory & Clinical Affairs to develop and implement market access strategies for innovative healthcare products and services. In addition, he takes an active role at EIT Health and RWTH Aachen University to support innovative healthcare startups.

In July 2019, tech pioneer, founder and innovator Rafael Laguna has been appointed founding director of the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation SPRIND. With more than 30 year’s experience, Rafael Laguna has a proven track record of success in building and growing software companies. The Agency aims to foster innovations with radically new technologies and a great potential to change the market with new products, services and value chains. The Federal Republic of Germany, represented by the BMBF and BMWi, is the sole shareholder of SPRIND. The Agency will operate initially for a period of ten years. The funding currently planned for this ten-year period is around 1 billion euros.

Dan Ram ignites the stage as an Event MC & Speaker at over 100 events a year. Hosting changemakers like President Barack Obama, billionaire founders like Sir Richard Branson, record breaking athletes like F1 champion Nico Rosberg, Grammy-winning artists and celebrities, he works on 4 continents from college campuses to parliaments to in-house corporate innovation days for Fortune 500 Companies to the biggest tech conferences in the world. His passion is to inspire people with his motto 'Start Now Start Simple' in building a future we all want to live in.

Vice-Rector and Professor at RWTH Aachen University, Adjunct Professor at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. Entrepreneur. Passionate runner.