European Young Leaders (#EYL40)

Audrey is a Belgian businesswoman with a wealth of experience in advising corporate, government and philanthropic clients on a range of development and social impact topics. As an Associate Partner at Dalberg Advisors, she works with clients to improve education, employment and health outcomes worldwide through the development, implementation and impact evaluation of inclusive development strategies. Audrey currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors at bpost, leading the Belgian postal operator’s transition from a mail to parcel network. She is the Chair of the Board at Be education, an organisation that supports the improvement of education in Belgium. Audrey is also the Co-Founder and former operational director of Spectralys Biotech, a start-up that provides a unique protein analysis technology for the biopharmaceutical industry. She was previously the president of Groupe Vendredi, a think tank focused on societal issues in Belgium, and head of philanthropy at Telos Impact, a venture philanthropy firm.

Oisin became an entrepreneur at the age of 18, when he set up the Clearwater Group, a real estate development company in Budapest while a student at Trinity College, Dublin. Oisin founded Handybook in May 2012 with Umang Dua to address the difficulty of finding a reliable handyman that Oisin experienced in Budapest. Oisin also established MiCandidate, which became the leading source for online election information across Europe in 2009, and set up the Undergraduate Awards, which has become the world’s largest pan-discipline awards programme. Supported by Google, Microsoft and others, it is a global annual awards event hosted in Dublin with the award distributed each year by the President of Ireland. In 2019 Oisin became Chief Product Officer for ANGI Homeservices which operates HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List and other brands.

Jens is a Danish diplomat focused on the changing international architecture, climate, the UN sustainable development goals and the role of the United Nations in addressing global challenges. Jens was Counsellor at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the Permanent Mission of Denmark to the United Nations in New York. Having worked and studied in the United States, France, Palestine, Israel, Denmark and Jordan, Jens Ole defines himself as “a dedicated internationalist and multi-lateralist”. He has 15 years of experience in international relations and international negotiations.

Julia is a sculptor producing a variety of independent work as well as numerous commissioned pieces. These include urn designs for Bestattung Wien (Vienna funeral service) and a life-size graveyard angel made of bronze for a Viennese crypt. Julia regularly collaborates with artists and gallery owners, creating exhibits showing video and photographic visualisations of her sculptures as well as a glass version of her sculpture “Who killed Smiley?”. She also works with a German jewellery-maker, turning her ideas into pieces of jewellery. In 2014, she was named one of the most important figurative artists worldwide, a recognition which led two of her sculptures to be included in the art book “500 Figures in Clay” (Lark Crafts/New York).

An award-winning journalist and political commentator, Mehdi is the host of The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock and MSNBC, and the presenter of the Head to Head, The Café and UpFront shows on Al Jazeera English. Prior to this, he hosted The Intercept’s Deconstructed podcast and was the political editor at Huffington Post UK. At the start of his career, Mehdi worked as a researcher and producer for several programmes on London Weekend Television (LWT), BBC One, Sky and Channel 4. He has been named among the 100 most influential Britons on Twitter and was included in the annual global list of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. Mehdi is also the recipient of the British Muslim Award’s Services to Media award. In addition to having authored a book on debt and the 2008 financial crisis, Mehdi is the co-author of a biography of the former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.

Sally Hayden is an award-winning Irish journalist and photographer, whose work focuses on migration, conflict and humanitarian crises. Reporting from across Africa, the Middle East and Europe, there are few major outlets in which Hayden’s work has not featured. In 2023, she was named Journalist of the Year by the Irish Journalism Awards. Her first book “My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route”, focuses on human rights abuses fuelled by European anti-migration policies, particularly in Libya. It was awarded the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, the Michel Déon Prize and the Irish Book Awards’ Overall Book of the Year. It has also been published in Italian and Dutch, and is forthcoming in Spanish, French and Polish.

Fabian founded the leading German couponing company DailyDeal in 2009. To date he still leads DailyDeal together with his co-founder and brother. In private, he invests as a business angel in technology start-ups through his holding Heilemann Ventures. Before founding DailyDeal, Fabian worked for various German law firms and as a business consultant for Booz & Co. Prior to that, he passed the First Bar Exam of the State of Hamburg with distinctions and submitted a PhD thesis in Corporate Law at Heidelberg Law School. He was a visiting student at Santa Clara University and Stanford University, CA, USA and founded the Entrepreneurs Club at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, Germany.

Jeanine is a Member of the Dutch House of Representatives since 2010 and a Member of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. She previously worked at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Enlargement, KPMG, the City of Amsterdam and also served as a Member of the European Parliament. In February 2010, as rapporteur on the issue, Jeanine led the European Parliament vote that rejected an EU-US agreement which would have granted US authorities access to European citizens’ banking data without taking account the European legislation on data protection.

Monika Herceg is a poet, playwright, editor, feminist and activist from Croatia, who also creates and coordinates cultural programmes. Her work explores poverty, domestic violence, migration, and class and gender inequalities. In her debut poetry collection “Početne coordinate” (“Initial Coordinates”), Herceg portrays the lives of women in rural Croatia throughout the 20th century to tell stories of poverty and struggle, recounted through the voices of her own family members. The critically acclaimed collection has been awarded the Goran and Kvirin awards for young poets, the Slavić Award, the Mostovi Struge international award, as well as the Fran Galović Award in recognition of its discussion around homeland and identity. Her drama scripts, short stories and books, including “Lovostaj” (“The Closed Season”) and “Vrijeme prije jezika” (“Time Before the Tongue”), have enjoyed similar successes. Altogether, her works have been translated into over 15 languages and she has received more than 15 literature awards.

“Victoria Herrmann is the President and Managing Director of the Arctic Institute. Her
research and writing focus on climate change, community adaptation, human
development, and resource economies, with a particular focus on Arctic oil and gas.
Herrmann previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s
Energy and Climate Program. She was awarded a Eureka! Prize from the Baker
Institute for Entrepreneurship in 2012 and a Fulbright Scholarship to Canada to
pursue Arctic research in 2013. She is the author of Arctic Melt: Turning Resource
Extraction into Human Development (2015). She has been published in many peerreview
journals and appeared on BBC and CNN, among others. In 2016, Herrmann
travelled across the United States for the National Geographic-funded book on
climate change stories America’s Eroding Edges. She is a Gates Scholar at the
Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, where she is pursuing
a PhD in Political Geography of the Arctic.”

Sabrina Hersi Issa is the CEO of Be Bold Media, a digital agency for global advocacy that notably produces a hackathon series to build and improve technology tools used for humanitarian relief and refugee services. She is the co-founder of End Famine, a campaign dedicated to developing sustainable solutions to hunger, food security and humanitarian assistance. Hersi Issa organises Rights x Tech, a gathering for technologists and activists, and runs Survivor Fund, a political fund dedicated to supporting the rights of survivors of sexualised violence. She currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, where she leads research on journalism ecosystems and how philanthropy can support efforts to build diverse, inclusive media ecosystems. In addition, she curates New/s Disruptors, a project working to re-frame the narrative of digital disruption in journalism to champion the experiences and contributions of diverse voices. Sabrina is a former fellow of the Roosevelt Institute where she worked on issues related to technology, human rights and humanitarian disasters. She has also worked for Afghans for Civil Society, Oxfam America, NBC News and National Public Radio.

Christel Heydemann is committed to connecting people in a sustainable world, while addressing today’s societal challenges, in her role as the Orange Group’s CEO. Prior to her current appointment, she served as the executive vice president of European operations and of France at Schneider Electric, where she also sat on the company’s executive committee. Heydemann first joined Schneider Electric as the senior vice president of global strategic alliances, in which role she focused on the launch and adoption of the Internet of Things. She previously worked at Alcatel-Lucent, where she was entrusted with a range of responsibilities, specifically in the context of the merger of Alcatel and Lucent. Having first joined Alcatel’s project finance team, she progressively made her way up the ladder to serve on the executive committee of Alcatel-Lucent as the director of human resources and transformation. Heydemann began her career at the Boston Consulting Group in Paris.

Daire is the Managing Partner at 150 Bond, a strategic advisory firm based between New York and Dublin, which advises fast-growing tech companies, venture capitalists and Fortune 500s. He also co-founded Web Summit, Europe’s largest tech start-up event and the largest technology conference in the world. In this role, he has facilitated a number of tech conferences across the United States and Europe. Daire has previously written for top publications in Ireland as a journalist and worked at Irish broadcaster, RTÉ. An active angel investor who also sits on the advisory boards of several companies, Daire has received recognition as a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and on the Forbes’ ‘30 under 30’ list.

Karoli is an Estonian entrepreneur and creator of Jobbatical, a digital visa and relocation platform using AI and automation to digitise archaic immigration systems. On a mission to make immigration more resourceful, Jobbatical is changing individuals’ lives and building high-performing teams by relocating exceptional people to impactful tech jobs around the world. Since founding her first company at the age of 16, officially making her the youngest inventor in Estonia, Karoli has been on a fast-track to setting up innovative initiatives. She is regularly counted amongst today’s most influential women, having received numerous awards and recognition from prestigious organisations, including EU-Startups and the European Council. She was also nominated as speaker of the 2017 Fortune Magazine Most Powerful Women International Summit. Thanks to her influence, she also led the launch of seven television channels in Northern Europe, including National Geographic Channels and MTV.

Lars is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He is the Founder and CEO of both Cinco Capital, a private equity fund that invested in tech companies throughout Europe and the United States, and HackFwd, a pre-seen venture capital company which invests in technical talent across Europe. Lars also founded XING, a networking platform dedicated to cultivating business contacts. His other projects include Apartimentum and politik-digital.de. Among the most successful web entrepreneurs in Germany, Lars has received several awards, including the 2004 German Internet Prize of the Federal Ministry of Economics and the Lead Award, Germany’s top award for print and online media. He was also elected Germany’s most important web entrepreneur in 2008 by the Startups Initiative. A true expert in his field, Lars is a member of the supervisory and advisory boards of various companies and advises politicians on digitalisation at the local, national and European levels. He is also an honorary member of the German Committee of UNICEF.