Kaja Kallas has been the Prime Minister of Estonia since January 2021. She has been the leader of the Reform Party since 2018, and a Member of Parliament from 2019 to 2021, and previously from 2011 to 2014. Between the two terms at the Estonian Parliament, from 2014 to 2018, Kallas served as a Member of the European Parliament.

Chidi Afulezi’s personal mission is simple – inform, educate, learn, and entertain.

He is a product guy, digital insurgent, creative, teacher, and entrepreneur with a day job as Managing Principal of redKola Digital, a product management and digital transformation company. He is also a Managing Partner at theZVG—a communications products agency and consultancy. In addition to The Core Ventures, and jHunta, Chidi co.founded aKoma, a platform for the creative and cultural industries in Africa.

Chidi coaches and consults with leading product leaders and product teams globally and is also a prolific educator, serving as a product faculty and instructor at the African Leadership University School of Business, Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and General Assembly.

Meet Justina, Global Partnership Consultant at Big Cabal Media, Africa’s largest Tech Media Organization.

She is also Managing Partner Digital Equity Africa, a digital inclusion consultancy providing specialized digital economy design, digital inclusion, and equity consulting solutions tailored for Africa. Her company serves governments, international organizations, corporate organizations, and Africa’s tech ecosystem. With over a decade in senior leadership, she has made contributions in companies like Decagon, a global digital talent production and placement institute that serves the African and global tech ecosystem, where she served as VP for marketing and grew into serving as VP for partnerships. She brings a unique perspective to the tech landscape in Africa, especially in ecosystem building, gender and digital inclusion.

She holds a B.Sc. in Mass Communication and an MA in International Relations from the University of Northampton in the UK and has spoken in international stages such as the UK, Algiers, Kigali, Kenya, South Africa and others. She is passionate about driving innovation and empowering the next generation of tech leaders through soft skill training that is applicable in the digital world where it mostly boils down to the products and codes, or so they think. Her passion for technology extends beyond her career. She is a career mentor, and youth empowerment advocate that is dedicated to empowering young people and guiding them towards their full potential

Kadri Tammai is the Head of Tehnopol Startup Incubator, one of the leading accelerators in the New Nordics, and she is also leading the launch of NATO DIANA dual-use accelerator in Estonia.

Kadri has advised top leaders in the public and private sectors for over 15 years and her focus is on customer-centric innovation, value proposition creation, and agile processes. Kadri has built several vertical-oriented acceleration programs in the deep tech domain and is herself an experienced startup mentor, expert, and trainer for several startup and innovation programs.

She also contributes to the next-generation startup founders by being a startup lecturer at the Tallinn University of Technology.

Ecosystem builder, mental health advocate & fintech entrepreneur.

Nektarios is a son of Greek immigrants, born and raised in Germany and moved to London 28 years ago. Nektarios ‘fell into’ banking and spent the first 15 years of his career in very traditional roles in financial institutions. This changed in 2011 when he joined an innovation team, a step that became his path out of the corporate world and into entrepreneurship.

Since then he has started multiple businesses and has worked closely with hundreds of entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses. He is the cofounder of The Future Farm, a global community dedicated to healthier entrepreneurship, cofounded Startupbootcamp FinTech, the world’s largest fintech startup accelerator, and the Innotribe Startup Challenge, the first global fintech startup competition.

His latest venture is Radish Credit, a lending-as-a-service platform, helping underserved communities to finance important life needs. Driven by entrepreneurship, collaboration, and the desire to improve the lives of people, Nektarios is a global nomad, travel geek, and sneaker freaker.

Surya Vanka has been transforming design impact across business, non-profit, and educational sectors in over a dozen countries with his Design Swarms approach, a revolutionary collective design method.

As the founder of Authentic Design, Chair-elect of the Industrial Designers Society of America, and founding advisor of the Global Impact Collective, his work focuses on using design as a tool for societal betterment and providing a competitive advantage for businesses from startups to enterprises.

Previously, he was Director of User Experience at Microsoft and a tenured professor at the University of Illinois.

Caleb Maru is an investor, startup scout & founder of Tech Safari, Africa’s leading tech newsletter & community.

Trisha Saxena is an Investment Associate at the NATO Innovation Fund, investing in dual-use deep tech startups. Prior to this, she spent two years at Seraphim Space, a VC fund focused on global space tech startups.

In her free time, Trisha helps run a STEM education charity in the UK called the Space Science and Engineering Foundation.

Eric Lagier, is founder and managing partner at byFounders, the New Nordic early-stage venture fund investing in the next generation of founders with global ambitions. byFounders is backed by a Collective of some of the most accomplished founders and operators from the New Nordics.

Staffan is an outspoken supporter of the European tech ecosystem who has been in the venture industry for more than 20 years. Before founding Creandum in 2003 he was Founder and Managing Partner at Startupfactory, the first venture investor globally exclusively focused on investments in mobile internet, with backing from among others Softbank and Investor AB.

In addition, Staffan has extensive management experience from IKEA, Procter & Gamble and McKinsey & Company. At Creandum, Staffan has a particular focus on enterprise products and services. His early-stage backings include Bolt, Epidemic Sound, and Klaus.

Kaspar Korjus is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Pactum AI – a tech startup that is revolutionizing the world of business negotiations with chat and AI.

Walmart, Maersk and other Fortune 500 companies use Pactum’s autonomous negotiation to automate their supply chain and logistics operations while realizing millions of dollars in savings. Prior to Pactum, Kaspar was the founding Managing Director of Estonia’s e-Residency, an ambitious Government initiative that attracted over 100,000 e-residents, generating over $400M in net new income for Estonia.

Clara co-founded the Singapore Deep-Tech Alliance, a venture builder supported by Enterprise Singapore and an ecosystem of Corporate and Research Partners, to take advanced technologies to market and fast-track the global goals.

With two decades of experience in the TMT industries partnering policy-makers on industry and enterprise development, Clara has a proven track record in building commercial operations engines for growth in regulated and complex markets that are intricately intertwined with governments. Clara is professionally trained in cross-border business and finance law, venture finance, due diligence, and go-to-market.

Sandra Särav is the Deputy Secretary General for Business and Consumer Environment at the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.

Her team is divided across five different fields with a common goal of making life more efficient for entrepreneurs. She was promoted to this role from the Data Policy Director in the Estonian Government CIO Office, where she led the work on data re-use as well as the application of privacy-enhancing technologies.

She’s been back at the Estonian government for just over a year, but it’s not her first time there – she simply made a detour to the private sector, gaining experience both at the Estonian tech unicorn Bolt, as well as Meta (Facebook), and decided to rejoin the public sector in early 2022. What brought her back to government was the sense of mission of building solutions for your own country. In parallel, she’s also a lecturer at TalTech, teaching the legal framework of digital government and EU law.