Speakers

Allyson Hewitt is Senior Fellow, Social Innovation @MaRS, Toronto, Canada. She has developed and helps lead the social innovation programs at the highly respected MaRS. She has assisted hundreds...

Beth Simone Noveck directs the Governance Lab (GovLab) and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. She is the Jerry M. Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon...

Aaron Guiterman is Edelman's head of digital public affairs, based in Washington D.C. He leads a team of experienced political and corporate public affairs professionals focused on designing cre...

Vickie Cammack and Al Etmanski have been engaged as activists, teachers, innovators, entrepreneurs and writers in the world of caregiving and disability for more than three decades.

Vick...

Alex is co-founder of the innovation and collaboration agency Synthetikos Inc and is VP of Systems Innovation and Program Director of the MaRS Solutions Lab. He co-founded Alberta CoLab, the fir...

In media and in public debate, refugees are routinely portrayed as a burden. Alexander Betts explores ways societies might empower refugees rather than pushing them to the margins and provides a...

Benjamin Law is a Sydney-based TV screenwriter, journalist and newspaper columnist, who has PhD in creative writing and cultural studies. He’s the author of two books — The Family Law (2010) and...

Charles R. (Chuck) Wolfe provides a unique, broad-based perspective about cities as an urbanist writer, Seattle-based land use attorney, photographer, and affiliate associate professor.

David Shah is the man behind the Pantone/View Colour Planner, founder of Metropolitan Publishing BV, an international fashion media group, publishing the professional trade magazines Textile View, View2, VIFF China,...

Dion Sheppard (MSc, MCE) is the Forensic Research & Development Programme Manager at the Institute of Environmental Science & Research, Ltd (ESR), New Zealand. ESR is the NZ government’s...

Dr Fiona Kerr is a prominent thought leader in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, human connectivity and the impacts of technologisation. She combines her role as Industry Professor, Neural a...

Genevieve Bell is a Professor in the Australian National University (ANU) College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Genevieve is recognised as a world leader in the ethnographic appro...

Indy Johar is a Graham Willis Professor. Over the course of the last 15 years he has co-founded and established a RIBA London Building of Year award winning Architectural Practice - Architecture...

Jamie Bristow is director of The Mindfulness Initiative, a policy institute that grew out of a mindfulness teaching programme for politicians in the UK Parliament, which has so far seen 145 MPs ...

Joe Kochan is a co-founder and COO of US Ignite, a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC that spurs the creation of next-generation applications and services that leverage advanced networking...

Dr Jordan Nguyen is a young man on a mission to change the world. He is an acclaimed thought leader on the intersection between technology and humanity.

Expert on cultural policies, development and urban renewal, CEO of the Pablo Casals Foundation and Founder and partner of NARTEX BARCELONA (Culture, creative economy and development)

Dr Kirsten Dunlop is the CEO of Climate-KIC Europe. Kirsten’s career spans academia, consulting, banking, insurance, strategy, design, innovation and leadership across three continents (Europe, ...

Kyle brings over a decade of civic engagement, public policy, and political organizing experience to oversee the strategic and organizational development of the Jefferson Center.

He rece...

Madeleine O'Dea is a writer and journalist who has covered China’s political and cultural life for the past three decades. She first went to Beijing in 1986 as a correspondent for The Australian...

Merlynn Tong is a Chinese-Singaporean Actor and Playwright. As a playwright, she has recently published two of her one-woman shows, Ma Ma Ma Mad (2015), the true story of her mother’s suicide an...

“If you want to have a new idea, open an old book! The book was written over 3 billion years of evolution, and the text is the DNA of all living organisms. All we need is to read that DNA code a...

Rachel is a comics artist and the art director of Pencilled In. Her work has been published in The Lifted Brow, Suburban Review and Scum Mag. She works as an architect in Melbourne.

Rebecca Rumbul is the head of research at mySociety, a non-government organisation that is helping governments and the civic tech industry to understand and work with each other across Europe.