European Young Leaders (#EYL40)

Nina Rawal is a Partner and Co-Head at Trill Impact Ventures, Europe’s leading impact investing house. Prior to her current role, she founded Emerging Health Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on affordable medicine and medical products. She was also the head of life science at the Swedish Industrial Development Fund, a €500mn venture capital fund, where she was responsible for international business development in early life science companies. Rawal has also previously served as the head of strategy and ventures at Baxter Group, formerly Gambro, a leading global medical technology company. She also sits on the boards of MedCap AB and Stockholms Sjukhem, a non-profit hospital. In recognition of her work, Rawal has been recognised among the Women’s Forum Rising Talents.

Nasima is an Afghan-Finnish politician.  She is currently a member of the Finnish Parliament, where she is a member of the Education and Culture Committee and the Environment Committee. Until recently she served as deputy mayor of Helsinki and a former member of the Finnish Parliament, representing the Social Democratic Party. She also works with Finnish NGOs that work to promote gender and ethnic equality in Finland. Nasima’s family first moved to Finland from Afghanistan in 1992, and her refugee experience has shaped her political career, in which she prioritises social welfare such as education, the environment, and housing. Nasima is the first Member of Finnish Parliament to have a refugee background, and in 2010 was named refugee woman of the year by the Finnish Refugee Council for her work to promote equality and the preservation of the Finnish welfare system.

Emma is a public affairs expert and former politician, who currently serves as the Managing Director at TheCityUK, an advocacy group for the financial and professional services industry in the United Kingdom. She is a former member of the British Parliament, during which time she was a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, shadow Europe minister and shadow housing minister, as well as shadow secretary for communities and local government. Prior to becoming an MP, Emma helped set up a business which supported British companies in understanding and influencing EU laws. She was also a political advisor to Geoff Hoon during his time as Minister for Europe Minister and Labour Chief Whip, and worked for the Party of European Socialists in Brussels as an advisor to Robin Cook.

A Czech politician, who serves in the Czech Chamber of Deputies, Olga Richterová is the Deputy Speaker of the parliament’s lower house and former vice-chair of the Česká pirátská strana (Czech Pirate Party). Throughout her political career, she has been a vocal advocate for freedom of information and progressive social, health, housing and urban planning policies. Richterová sits on parliamentary committees concerning social health borders, consumer protection, freedom of speech and the media, foreign relations and military intelligence. Previously, she previously represented Prague’s tenth district as a member of the municipal council and founded a civic watchdog association, Zaostřeno na Desítku (Focused on District Nr. 10), to provide the district’s residents with objective information and increase citizen engagement. In addition to her political pursuits, she has published a collection of poems, “Napříč kůrou” (“Through the crust”).

Mate is a Croatian innovator, entrepreneur, and founder of the car company Rimac Automobili. He started off at the age of 19 in a borrowed garage, tinkering, dreaming, and already thinking several years ahead of the traditional car industry. Soon enough, he built a global name for himself, crafting battery tech for the likes of Aston Martin and Renault. He also created the world’s first electric ‘supercar’, the Rimac Concept One. In 2012, he set out to prove that electric cars could be faster than conventional fuel. His dream became reality, as Mate’s ‘Green Monster’ electric car won a Guinness World Record for the fastest ¼ mile. He’s received widespread recognition and support for his projects, including USD 90 mi investment from Hyundai and Kia.

Dominik has held various management roles at Lanxess, a leading global specialty chemicals group, throughout his career. Prior to his current role in rubber additives, Dominik has worked in mergers and acquisitions, colorants and rubber chemicals, which included a four-year assignment in Southeast Asia. His political record includes activities at both the regional and national levels for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), as well as for the Young Union of Germany and the Economic Council of the CDU.

Denis (also known as Jaromil) Roio is a media artist, activist and free software programmer, who founded Dyne.org, a website dedicated to the development of free software. He has made significant contributions to the development of multimedia and streaming applications on the Linux platform and has led R&D activities at the Netherlands Media Art Institute. Roio was honoured with the Vilém Flusser Theory Award for his outstanding digital arts practice.

Anne-Solène is Director of Heritage and Collections at the  Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. She previously headed the department of museums at the French Ministry of Culture. A fierce advocate for history and heritage, she has shaped her career around showcasing the societal benefits of cultural conservation. As a curator of heritage, she has held leading positions at the prestigious French National Museum of Immigration History. Anne-Solène has also been director of research and collections at the Louvre Museum, where she oversaw the acquisition and lending of the museum’s artwork. She played an instrumental role in increasing the availability of the world’s finest art to a greater number of people.

Daan is a Dutch artist and innovator; he’s a creative thinker who explores the relations between people, technology and space through social designs. Having been inspired by natural phenomena like light-emitting fireflies and jellyfish from an early age, Daan’s long-standing fascination with nature and technology is reflected in designs that include his Smart Highway project (roads which charge from sunlight and glow at night) and Waterlicht (a virtual flood). His Smog Free Project has seen the creation of the largest outdoor air purifier in the world, transforming smog into jewellery, and the Smog Free Bike which cleans the surrounding air with every pedal. In 2007, he founded Studio Roosegaarde, a internationally renowned social design lab where he works with his team of designers and engineers to craft a better future. Together, they develop ‘Landscapes of the Future’ by building smart sustainable prototypes for the cities of tomorrow.

A serial entrepreneur, Lara is the Founder and CEO of Levia.ai, a unique virtual vender which creates highly-personalised, one-to-one shopping experiences through the use of AI technologies. She is also the Founder of Selectionnist, a mobile app which seeks to bridge the gap between offline content and the online experience by allowing users to find any item featured in French fashion magazines. Working with top magazines in France, including Elle and Marie Claire, Selectionnist has become a high-performance analytics tool for brands, retailers, advertisers and publishers. Her first entrepreneurial venture was Dealissime, a website that provides buyer groups with daily offers related to products and services for women, which was acquired by LivingSocial, a part of the Amazon group. Lara is also a member of the French Digital Council and part of the French Movement for a Benevolent Economy (MEB).

A stalwart of independent journalism, Olga Rudenko is a Ukrainian journalist and the Editor-in-Chief of the Kyiv Independent, an award-winning media start-up that was launched by the former editorial team of the Kyiv Post, where she was the deputy chief editor. Under Olga’s leadership, the Kyiv Independent covers Russia’s war against Ukraine, does investigative reporting about corruption and Russian war crimes. The recipient of the Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs Award for excellence in journalism, Rudenko was also named among the Next Generation Leaders by Time magazine, and featured on the publication’s cover in 2022, shortly following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Sara is an engineer at S.A. de Electronica Submarina (SAES), a company specialised in submarine electronics and acoustics. Prior to this, she was a Member of the Murcian regional Parliament where she served as First Secretary of the Defense Committee as well as a Member of the Science and Innovation and Equality Committees. She has been a Member of the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party since she was 16. She studied communications engineering and has worked in the defence policy sector. She stands for male-female parity in Spain’s politics and for the presence of members of parliament of all ages.

An Estonian designer and innovator, Marko is passionate about the open sharing of knowledge and its capabilities to shape the future. Having most recently founded Grantful, he helped launched a global online hackathon series, Hack the Crisis and The Global Hack, to address challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Marko delivered a TED talk on how the initiative could create solutions for the post-pandemic world. He is the Co-Founder and former CEO of Guaana, an online platform that connects scientists and researchers to break down barriers between disciplines. Marko is a Member of Accelerate Estonia’s Advisory Board, the Estonian Founders Society and the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs’ mental health think tank. He has worked closely with research organisations and government institutions, including CERN, the European Space Agency, Dubai Future Foundation and the European Commission, to empower researchers and innovators. Marko previously worked as a creative and art director at branding and service design companies.

An engineer and social entrepreneur from Portugal, Tiago Sá is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wisecrop, a web-based operating system on a mission to support the productivity, sustainability and efficiency of farm management through the use of technology. Wisecrop provides farmers and other agricultural professionals with integrated, real-time data related to the weather, irrigation, soil nutrition and fertilisation, crop health, as well as field and labour operations and costs, in order to maximise field profitability and reduce the negative environmental impacts of agricultural practices. Recognising the challenges of digitalising a sector that is traditionally slow to adopt change, Sá combines environmental and business incentives to unlock disruptive tech solutions, while also ensuring that Wisecrop features a simple and user-friendly interface. Since its inception over seven years ago, Sá has overseen the company’s growth to assist over 60k hectares of more than 250 different varieties of crops, with plans to push for the modernisation of the agri-food industry across Europe.

Riccardo is a renowned Italian scientist and entrepreneur specialised in numerical modelling of complex systems such as financial markets and computational genomics. In 2015, Riccardo and his lab presented an algorithm to predict traits such as height, eye colour, and even facial structure based on reading a person’s genome via a tiny blood sample. Today, he’s attempting to solve drug design at the genomic scale with his company, Orionis Biosciences. Riccardo is also deeply involved in education for entrepreneurs. He founded the Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation, a non-profit charity supporting young researchers around the globe to get involved in material science.