Notable Speakers of the Unconvention

Carlos Eduadro Espinal

He is the partner as well as the co-manager at Seedcamp, focusing on investments such as mobile, gaming, and network technologies. Before Seedcamp he was a venture capitalist at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures (an early stage investment firm in London). Prior to Doughty Hanson Technology, Carlos have had a lot of recognized positions, for example as an engineer focusing on the next generation of wireless and mobile trading platforms and as a network security consultant with global clients in telecommunication and data services sectors. Carlos has two degrees (MBA & B.S.) from universities and he has won the Telecommunications Research Award in 2005. He is also a part of the steering committee of the European Venture Capital Network.

Carlos Silva

Silva is NED and co-founder of Seeders. He is an expert of IT development and security with ten years experience in leading roles of industry. He has served as head of New Product Development at Sysvalue (innovative information systems security consulting firm) in Lisbon. In addition he has been information security consultant in European leading financial institutions. Silva is MBA from Oxford University and Masters in Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico.

Jan Reichelt

Another speaker of the Unconvention was Ran Reichelt. He is the co-founder and President of Mendeley, which is one of the world’s biggest research collaboration platforms. Mendeley offers valuable tools for organizing and collaborating on research projects. At the same time he is making academic research more accessible and transparent. Prior to Mendeley, Reichelt was leading scientific, technical and medical publisher of Elsevier which later integrated into the Reed Elsevier group. He is a Ph.D. in Information Management and was a lecturer at the University in Cologne. He also graduated as MBA with focus on Electronic Business, Accounting and Entrepreneurship and studied at multiple Universities. 

Alexandra Choli

She is a partner of Metavallon VC, a creative venturer, advisor and active investor whose passion is to get early stage technology companies growing. Choli founded Metavallon.org, a model social enterprise which rose from the formation startup ecosystem in Greece. She is also founder of Metavallon Ventures Limited (micro-fund that pioneered pre-seed investments). Before Metavallon she worked in operations, management and business development (in several early-stage businesses & SMEs) in Greece, UK, USA, Nicaragua and India. Choli is a Master of Mechanical Engineering from University College of London and MBA from New York University Stern School of Business.

Anthony Gardner

Gardner is the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. Before his current position he was the managing director at Palamon Capital Partners (private equity firm based on London) for six years. While working there he managed financing, legal and tax structuring issues related to acquisition and divestitures. In addition he previously served as an executive director (Bank of America and GE Capital), as director of the international acquisitions group of GE International, as a senior associate at international law firms (London, Paris, New York, Brussels). Gardner also dedicated over twenty years to U.S. -European affairs working as a government official, lawyer and investor. In addition he has multiple other notable positions in different organizations. Gardner holds a B.A. in Government from Harvard University, a M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University, J.D. from Columbia Law School, and a Masters in Finance from London Business School. In addition to all this he speaks fluently French, Italian and Spanish (speaks also German).

Cesare Barbieri

Barbieri is a Professor in the Department of Astronomy at the Padova University since 1973. He has been the President of the scientific committee for the national telescope OAN and COLUMBUS (nowadays LTB). Barbieri was also the director of the Astronomical Observatory of Padova, director of National Telescope Galileo and part of the italian Halley Multicolour Camera Mission GIOTTO and construction for space probe Rosetta.

Dean Russell

Russell is EMEA Creative Strategy Director for LEWIS PR which includes the digital marketing offering LEWIS Pulse for the region. The work history of his contains over 12 years in the online industry providing strategic consultancy to major B2B and B2C brands. Russell’s present position focuses upon developing pan-region and global communications campaigns for key clients. As a result of his industry experience he has gotten the access to work as a judge in several awards, for example the British Video Association Awards. Russell has passion for storytelling why he has also authored several children’s books.

Fadi Bishara

Bishara is the founder of Blackbox, and recognized person because of his deep knowledge and experience in building successful startups in Silicon Valley as well as all over the world. He has been serving successful human capital and venture capital needs across the globe and guiding gifted technology entrepreneurs. Before founding Blackbox he was also the founder and CEO of tecVenture. Bishara has a great experience in building teams and is an angel investor in US and international startups. With all the experience he is a common speaker in entrepreneurial conferences and academic programs.

Fanuel Dewever

He is the founder of Crowd as a Service Solution CrowdAngels.co. He makes crowdfunding and crowdsourcing and his known startups are for example Crowd Girls (women entrepreneurship), Kayros (heritage preservation) and Campus Angels (schools&academia). He was also the co-founder of Emphas.is and the leading platform for crowdfunding visual journalism. Dewever have professional experience from PwC, IBM and Accenture and he have been working with Digital Transformation, Innovation as well as coaching start-ups and scale-ups. He has notable study history. In addition he wrote two acknowledged books and is the author of several articles and papers.

George Kartakis

He is the co-founder of PayPal as well as the co-founder of Braintree.

Johann Stan

Stan is Patent Examiner at European Patent office. He holds a PhD in Computer Science and very passionate about innovation, research and development. Stan is interested in developing technology that improves people’s lives. He is author of patents, publications and prototypes in many fields, like information extraction and privacy preservation. Stan is an expert in natural language processing technologies, knowledge management and machine learning. He has also developed methods to extract meaningful information from unstructured and structured contents. In addition he organizes international workshop and is member of the board f experts of the European Young Innovators Forum where he sits as Open/Big Data Expert and founder of TEDxTarguMures (independent TED event).

Jorge Schnura

Schnura is a 23-year old co-founder of the Tyba. Tyba is a platform for junior recruitment which is made for companies to find the right junior talents. Jorge Schnura is the currently Vice President of Users and member of the board. He was studying Business Administration at IE University in Madrid and has also previously worked for Banco, Santander, Ernst & Young and for three mineral exploration companies.

Juan José Güemes

Juan José Güemes is the chairman of IE’s International Center for Entrepreneurial Management, and professor of Entrepreneurship. His career is remarkable and full of achievements as well as different positions. He graduated for Bachelor’s degree in economies and business administration, and as Master’s in Financial Markets. He has recently served in wide range of government departments. His career started as an analyst at the Bank of Spain, went then for economic adviser to Spanish Parliament and was later the advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance (Rodrigo de Raro) who then appointed him deputy director of his cabinet. In 2000 Güemes became general secretary of tourism in Spain. In addition he promoted equal opportunities for men and women, opened new hospitals, medical schools and so much more.

Kathleen D. Kennedy

She has been 16 years at MIT, helping MIT technology Review to redefine the brand of the magazine and achieving great success in constantly changing market. She has started many new lines of business in USA, Asia, europe and Latin America. She is the lead of MIT’s media company’s events, sales and international licensing who also leads the global team of the MIT Enterprise Forum (entrepreneurial support organization). She started with accounting, realized fast that media is her thing and joined a startup for the film industry working with multiple major movie studios. She has worked for long as a judge in many awards (MITX awards, etc.) and has also been awarded herself. She studied both at University of Virginia and accounting at James Madison University.

Kumardev Chatterjee

Chatterjee is highly-regarded, awarded Young Innovation Luminary by EU and INTEL as well as Founder and CEO of three companies in the EU and US. He is said to be thought leader, expert on entrepreneurship as well as Tech Expert among highly-respected resources. Chatterjee was entrepreneur first time at age 14 and when he got 19 he had already his first tech company. He is wanted speaker and presenter at leading institutions around the world and his opinions have been published by New York Times, European Commission etc. He is a judge for prestigious global startup competitions. Chatterjee holds MSc. in Computer Sciences from University College London.

Ludwig Dumont

Dumont is a co-founder of Tech Media Group, which is a service agency. He is also a partner of the news-tech startup Look Live Media. Dumont founded the online media publication called Technologium and is also the co-founder of scale-up accelerator and co-working space Co.Station BXL. He has a large list of personal skills. For example: Digital Marketing, Marketing Management, Business Development, Social Media Marketing, Mobile, App Optimization/ASO, SEO/SEM, Content Marketing and Community Management. Dumont’s passion is to build and bring beautiful consumer products to life.

Ben Rooney

Ben Rooney delivered the opening speech at the Unconvention 2015. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chef of a technology company called Informilo European Technology & Innovation. The company headquarters is located in London. They’re producing high-quality insight as well as analysis on the current European technology scene.