Hedda Hövel

Hedda Hövel is a high school student from Stockholm, graduating this spring. She has a big passion for international politics and has participated in several European youth conferences on the matter. Hedda’s aim is to provide the perspective and opinions of a 19-year-old who wants to make a global impact. This fall, she will attend UCL in London to start studying European Social and Political Studies. Her main focus for the future will be on issues regarding security and defense. She also plans to be a part of the generation prioritizing equality and sustainability around the world. In her free time, she sails, coaches soccer and writes for the school newspaper.

Hartmut Neven is an Engineering Director at Google. He is the founder and manager of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence lab. The objective of the lab is to fabricate quantum processors and develop novel quantum algorithms to dramatically accelerate computational tasks for machine intelligence. Previously, Hartmut was the head of Google’s Visual Search team.

He was also a co-founder of project Glass and led the team that built the first prototype. Hartmut started two computer vision companies. His second company, Neven Vision, was acquired by Google in 2006. Neven Vision pioneered visual search and launched the first face filters based on facial feature detection. Hartmut obtained his Ph.D. in 1996 with a thesis on “Dynamics for vision-guided autonomous mobile robots”. Then he became a research professor at the University of Southern California.

Haisam Mohammed

Haisam Mohammed is the 22-year-old CEO and co-founder of a creative agency working in the landscape of pop culture, PR, design, and business values. His company, BRONS, aims to learn how the consumer of tomorrow will behave.

Starting his first brand at the age of 16, Haisam has always had a passion for merging business and creativity. He is now on a mission to broaden the perspective and representation of the communication industry by giving a platform to young and upcoming talents that live in the outer city part of Stockholm.

Despite his young age, Haisam is a well awarded and trustworthy advisor to numerous boards and has helped companies recognize and work towards a more inclusive workforce. Haisam represents the new generation of entrepreneurs that bring in values such as equality, social sustainability, and flexibility into the foundations of their business.

Gwyneth Paltrow

Oscar®-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow is also a best-selling cookbook author, singer and entrepreneur.

In 2008, Paltrow founded goop from her kitchen table. goop has grown into a lifestyle brand devoted to helping women make their own choices count in the various facets of their lives—from style, travel, work, food, and beauty to physical, mental, and spiritual wellness.

goop now has a tightly edited digital shop, a book imprint, permanent and pop-up retail experiences, a live event series and its own product lines, including skincare, fragrances, apparel, body, bath soaks and supplements.

Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old climate activist, diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, who has ignited the souls of people, young and old, around the world to fight for the environment and sparked the school strike for climate movement globally. In less than a year, she has given the strongest call to action we’ve seen to date to the CEO-elite at the World Economic Forum, the policy elite at the United Nations and the spiritual elite at the Vatican—addressing the Pope himself—in simple and powerful language: Do Something. Now.

Her passion and determination to make a difference can be seen from her protests to trying to minimize her and her family’s carbon footprint through becoming vegan and not traveling by plane. She has received several prizes and awards for her activism and is currently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Greta is demanding that the world respect the harmony between humankind and land and is challenging everyone do better.

Furhat

Furhat Robotics is a Stockholm-based startup building the world’s most advanced social robotics platform.

The company was born from research at KTH – the Royal Swedish Institute of Technology, one of the leading technology universities in the world. Furhat Robotics is rooted in 15+ years of research in human/computer interaction, spoken dialog systems, and 3D animation.

The company’s award-winning social robot, Furhat, is designed to communicate with humans the way we communicate with each other and provides ground-breaking possibilities for advanced interactions. Both the hardware and software are customizable and can be used to build incredible conversational interfaces. The goal is to make Furhat the key platform for human-to-robot interaction in various industries, transforming the way humans interact with technology.

Forest Whitaker, artist and social activist, is the founder and CEO of the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI), whose mission is to empower young women and men to become leaders, peacemakers and entrepreneurs in their communities through a unique conflict resolution and peace building program, combined with innovative use of technology and skills building.  Mr Whitaker is also the UNESCO Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation, and a member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Advocacy Group.  In 2014, he started collaborating with the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, a topic on which he was invited to speak before the Security Council in September of that year.

Whitaker is also one of Hollywood’s most accomplished and versatile figures, having received the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actor. Through WPDI, he has developed the Youth Peacemaker Network, a global peacebuilding social network with hubs in South Sudan, South Africa, Uganda, and Mexico. He and WPDI are committed to providing educational tools and economic opportunities to young women and men in regions touched by violence and armed conflict.