50 Minds
for the Next 50.

Alfred Brownell is a Liberian lawyer and environmental activist with more than two decades of experience in advocating and defending communities in his native Liberia and West Africa. He has helped create conservation policies, educate and empower populations affected by resource exploitation on their rights as citizens to protect their land from deforestation and development by the government and government-controlled industries. Brownell contributed to protecting 513,500 acres of primary forest of Liberia which constitutes one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots. He was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2019 on behalf of Africa.

He also co-founded public interest law non-governmental environmental rights organisation, ‘Green Advocates International’, which pioneered a framework for environmental law within Liberia’s legal system and co-organized ‘Public Interest Lawyers Initiative for West Africa’ to combat climate issues in the region. Passionate for empowering rural communities and women, he also co-organized ‘Alliance for Rural Democracy’ ‘Natural Resources Women Platform’ and - ‘the Mano River Union Civil Society Natural Resources Rights and Governance Platform’ one of West Africa’s largest solidarity movements to raise awareness of corporate and governmental accountability of their operations.

Fatemah Alzelzela is a Kuwaiti youth climate leader and the founder of Eco-Star, which is concerned with the efficient collection of recyclable materials. Her organisation has also been involved in building a database, the first recent study in the field of waste collection and treatment for Kuwait. She is committed to fighting waste collection stereotypes, business community scepticism, and prejudice regarding her age and gender in Kuwait and continues to increase awareness and interactions with this issue within Kuwait and internationally. The company has since formed partnerships with schools, teaching children about recycling, threats to the environment and how young people can act for nature.

Alzelzela won first place in the projects and innovation competition We Unite in 2018 and was the youngest sustainability leader in the SEEDS Platform. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) named her a Young Champion of the Earth in 2020.

Ammar Khammash is a Jordanian architect, photographer, designer, and artist. With the conviction that “the site is the architect”, through the work of his studio Khammash Architects he shapes his projects around the concept of understanding the ecosystem of the site. He acknowledges the toll that human intervention can have on nature with a constant attempt to maintain the subtle balance and coherence between the human-made and natural environments.

Khammash was a laureate of the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2019. He was recognized for his dedication to interdisciplinary scientific research, as well as his artisanal and artistic approaches to architecture. The international award recognizes five architects each year who have contributed to sustainable development and created innovative and participatory approaches to meet societal needs. Some of Khammash’s projects include the Wild Jordan Center, the Royal Academy for Nature Conservation, as well as archaeological sites such as the Church of the Apostles in Madaba and the hot spring of Al Himmeh in Mukhaibeh.

Bianca Jagger is an activist from Nicaragua, and for over 30 years has been a leading figure and advocate in the campaign for human rights, social and economic justice and environmental protection throughout the world. Jagger is the founder and chair of The Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation (BJHRF), which is dedicated to defending human rights, ending violence against women and girls, addressing the threat of climate change, supporting the rights of indigenous peoples and defending the rights of future generations. It achieves these aims through research and advocacy: campaigning, fact-finding missions, reports, publications, lectures, debates, conferences and public meetings. The BJHRF is also a member of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.

Ms Jagger has participated in many fact-finding missions around the world to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, to remote rainforests in Brazil and Ecuador, as well as to Afghanistan, Bosnia, India, Iraq, Kosovo, Pakistan and Zambia. She is also a member of Amnesty International's Director’s Leadership Council. Her work has been recognized through several awards, including the 2004 Right Livelihood Award and the 2006 Office of the Americas Peace and Justice Award. Jagger is also a Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, Member of the Executive Director’s Leadership Council of Amnesty International USA and Trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust. In 2004 she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the Fight Against the Death Penalty by the Council of Europe.

Carissa Klein is an Australian Research Council postdoctoral research fellow with the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She works in conservation science, notably, land-sea conservation planning, ocean zoning and protected areas design, social equity in conservation, and sustainable seafood. Governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use her work to inform marine conservation and sustainable management decisions. She specializes in integrating social, economic and ecological information to develop solutions that improve outcomes for nature and people. She is particularly passionate about conserving marine and coastal ecosystems.

Klein was awarded the 2013 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE) – an annual award that recognizes young scientists from APEC member states. Klein was selected for her research with the University of Queensland, which addresses the fragile balance between ocean conservation and sustainable livelihoods.

Neeshad Shafi is a climate advocate, and energy and policy expert, living in Doha, Qatar. He is a design engineer in the water and wastewater industry, with a Master’s in environmental engineering. He is focused on environmental and climate change policy in the Gulf and Middle East. His core areas of expertise include analysing global environment, sustainability and climate policies. In March 2019, he was named in the Apolitical List of the 100 Most Influential People in Climate Policy 2019.

Ms Jagger has participated in many fact-finding missions around the world to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, to remote rainforests in Brazil and Ecuador, as well as to Afghanistan, Bosnia, India, Iraq, Kosovo, Pakistan and Zambia. She is also a member of Amnesty International's Director’s Leadership Council. Her work has been recognized through several awards, including the 2004 Right Livelihood Award and the 2006 Office of the Americas Peace and Justice Award. Jagger is also a Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, Member of the Executive Director’s Leadership Council of Amnesty International USA and Trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust. In 2004 she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the Fight Against the Death Penalty by the Council of Europe.

Małgorzata Górska is a Polish activist and a conservationist with the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds, concerned with the protection of birds and their habitats, mainly those of international importance. Gorska was the European winner of the 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize, a ‘green Nobel’ that is awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists to honour their achievements and leadership. She fought to stop a controversial highway through the Rospuda Valley in Poland, one of Europe’s last true wilderness areas. This led to a significant legal precedent for environmental protection.

The sites were already protected as national and landscape parks, and were included in the European ecological network, Natura 2000, following Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004. After eight years of campaigning, Gorska and her fellow campaigners were successful in getting the Polish Government to recognize the legal protection of these nature-rich areas and changing the entire Polish section of the Via Baltica expressway to an area that was much less harmful to biodiversity.

Hans Cosmas Ngoteya was among the first group of grantees selected for the National Geographic Young Explorer Leadership and Development Programme in 2016, comprising changemakers from around the world working to protect the wonders of our world. Ngoteya was awarded a grant to promote human and wildlife coexistence in Tanzania.

Ngoteya designed and worked on a capacity-building project called Vijana Mazingira (VIMA), ‘Youths and the Environment’, a youth-focused project providing conservation education and alternative livelihood options to young people in a remote region south of Katavi National Park in western Tanzania.

He is a co-founder of Ngoteya Wild, a Tanzanian conservation and storytelling company, and Landscape and Conservation Mentors Organization (LCMO), which focuses on promoting, supporting and improving community livelihoods through sustainable environmental practices. He is also a founder of Tanzania Wildlife Media Association (TaWiMA), bringing together professional wildlife content creators with the aim of marketing, promoting and educating about Tanzania wildlife resources.

Kat Borlongan is originally from the Philippines. Today she is a leading figure in the French start-up landscape. An entrepreneur and former director of La French Tech in France, she is committed to leveraging innovation and ideas to benefit communities and to improve their lives. La French Tech is a government-led mission built to bolster France’s start-up ecosystem; the only country to have a national start-up strategy.

Borlongan worked to raise the profile of start-ups and advocate for a more inclusive tech industry. She is also a founding member of Scale-Up Europe, an initiative launched by President Macron with the support of the European Commission and other Member States. She is currently the Chief Impact Officer at Contentsquare, a global company in digital experience analytics. Since November 2021, Borlongan is a member of the European Innovation Council. She also co-founded Five by Five, an open innovation consulting agency that addresses social inequalities through technology, which joined forces with the Ville de Paris to launch the Resilient Paris Innovation Fellowship, imagining solutions to climate change and social exclusion.

Chance Coughenour is an American digital archaeologist and head of preservation at Google Arts & Culture. Having studied computing engineering, history, archaeology, and 3D modelling and mapping, he is dedicated to digitally preserving and democratizing access to cultural heritage. In 2015, following the destruction of the Mosul Cultural Museum, he started ‘Project Mosul’ (later ‘Rekrei’), a crowdsourcing project to collect photographs of destroyed artefacts to digitally reconstruct lost heritage into a single 3D image. The initiative was endorsed by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture of Iraq, which stated: “the heritage of Iraq isn’t only for the Iraqis, this is our shared, global heritage.”

His work, ‘the Lion of Mosul’, was 3D printed and displayed in the Mosul Museum of the original. Its replica is currently on display in London’s Imperial War Museum. The Economist Media Lab was invited to collaborate in the creation of a virtual museum and a unique exhibition space at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam in November 2015. As head of preservation at Google Arts & Culture, Coughenour is committed to reclaiming and promoting antiquities, and coordinating global preservation efforts by employing new technologies. He leads documentation and dissemination projects on cultural heritage using emerging technologies, including machine learning, image detection and 3D technology. Other projects include ‘Mali Magic’, ‘Project Mosul’ and ‘Woolaroo’.

Refik Anadol is an internationally celebrated Turkish-American new media artist and designer known for data-driven machine learning algorithms that create abstract environments. He is also a lecturer for UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts.

Anadol’s site-specific audio/visual performances have been featured in iconic venues, such as the Venice Architecture Biennale, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. He is intrigued by the ways in which machine intelligence allows for a new aesthetic technique to create immersive environments that offer a dynamic perception of space. His studio, Refik Anadol Studio and RAS LAB, is centred around developing trailblazing approaches to data narratives and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as addressing the challenges and possibilities of ubiquitous computing. Using AI and data as material to create mesmerizing visuals, he refers to them as ‘data sculptures’ and ‘data paintings’, as well as immersive installations. This post-digital architecture redefines the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural elements, inviting his audience to imagine alternative realities.

Anab Jain is an Indian designer, futurist, filmmaker and educator, and co-founder and director of a multi-award winning design studio, Superflux. Her work on design, innovation, emerging technologies and complex futures is recognized internationally. Superflux works at the intersection of the climate crisis, politics and AI to respond to humanity’s current challenges. It received the Design Studio of the Year Award in 2021 in recognition of its contribution to future design with a committed social mission. Jain was also named one of 25 creative leaders of the future by FormaFantasma and for Wallpaper’s 25th Anniversary Issue ‘5x5’ project.

Jain’s work has been exhibited at MoMA New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Museum of China, Vitra Design Museum, Tate Modern and Science Gallery Dublin. She has spoken at TED, MIT Media Lab and MoMA’s first design summit ‘Knotty Objects’. She is also a TED Fellow. Her recent talks include ‘Why we need to imagine Different Futures’, which had around 1.8 M views, ‘More-Than Human Centred Design’, ‘Design for the New Normal’, ‘Valley of the Meatpuppets’, and ‘How Will We Live’.

Abeer Abu Ghaith is a Palestinian entrepreneur and social activist. One of the first female high-tech entrepreneurs in Palestine, Ghaith has tirelessly worked to use technology to provide employment opportunities to people living in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. She is the founder and CEO of MENA Alliances Group Inc., an international business providing high-quality and fully localized business and technology solutions, while also creating economic opportunities for talents in the region. It was selected as ‘Best Social Impact Company’ in the METKITE competition in Italy. She is also a co-founder of StayLinked, a company that acts as a talent broker between skilled Palestinian freelancers and businesses.

Ghaith was named one of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women in 2014 and 2015. She also received the Best Technology Enabler and Facilitator Award presented by Women in Technology Awards 2014. She was featured as the personality of the month for innovation in 2014 in This Week in Palestine magazine. Ghaith firmly believes that knowledge and experience of information and communication technology (ICT) empowers women and youth in society.

Vít Šisler is a Czechian researcher, writer, game designer and assistant professor of new media studies at Charles University in Prague. He is interested in educational simulations, culture, and digital media in the Middle East. Šisler designed the award-winning video game ‘Attentat 1942’, a unique historical narrative video game that explores World War II through the eyes of survivors. The game received the ‘Most Amazing Game’ by A MAZE Berlin in 2018 and was selected as a finalist for the Apple Design Awards in the category ‘Social Impact’ in 2021.

Šisler has published extensively on media, communications and digital culture, including: Methods for Studying Video Games and Religion; Playing cultural memory: Framing history in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Czechoslovakia 38-39: Assassination; and Procedural religion: Methodological reflections on studying religion in video games. As a senior game designer at Charles Games, he recently published the follow-up game, ‘Svoboda 1945: Liberation’ in 2021, which also received worldwide recognition.

Rachel Sibande is a Malawian digital and data development specialist and social entrepreneur in the technology and energy spheres. Her experience in managing socially impactful projects in technology, big data, governance and entrepreneurship is recognized worldwide. Sibande established mHub in 2013, Malawi’s first technology hub and incubator for emerging entrepreneurs.

Her company is dedicated to developing innovative technology solutions and accelerating the emergence of entrepreneurs with access to finance and investment support. The mHub has trained over 40,000 youths, equipping them with business and technology skills, and it has contributed to creating over 900 jobs so far. Sibande is committed to empowering women and youth to gain digital skills.

She is the recipient of the Forbes Woman Africa Gen Y Award in 2019. She was also named as one of Forbes’ most promising young entrepreneurs in 2016 and a New Wealth Creator in 2019. She is also an alumna of the State Department’s flagship Young African Leaders Initiative. She currently serves as a senior programme director at the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) at the United Nations Foundation where she helps digital transformation and big data for development models in Africa.

Johanna Figueira is a Venezuelan entrepreneur and digital marketer. She is dedicated to contributing to her home country and its communities, and she is a firm believer in the power of digital communities and technology for social change. She is one of the co-organizers of Code for Venezuela, an organization that aspires to transform Venezuela by using technology and innovation. Figueira and her team created successful projects like ‘MediTweet’ and ‘Blackout Tracker’ that provided solutions required by communities in Venezuela. MediTweet, for example, is an intelligent Twitter bot that connects seekers and sellers of specific medicines using hashtags and location data. Figueira participated in a Ted Talk, ’Simple, effective tech to connect communities in crisis’, which gained 2M views. In her talk, she presents the initiatives that Code for Venezuela spearheaded, emphasizing the importance of sharing knowledge and professional skills to bring hope to the community. Figueira currently works as a social community marketing manager at Meta. She also established Retiqueta, an online marketplace for buying and selling second-hand clothing in Venezuela.

Max Tegmark is a Swedish-American cosmologist, physicist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He uses physics-based techniques to better understand biological cognitive systems, artificial intelligence (AI) and cosmology.

His current research focuses on the interface between physics, AI and neuroscience. He combines theoretical work with new measurements to place constraints on cosmological models and their free parameters, often in collaboration with experimentalists. Tegmark is a board member of the Future of Life Institute and founder of the Foundational Questions Institute, an independent non-profit with the goal of maximizing the benefits of technology and reducing its associated risks.

Tegmark is the author of over 200 publications and is a leading advocate for research on AI safety. His bestselling book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence focuses on emerging technology, such as artificial general intelligence, which someday may be able redesign its own hardware and internal structure. Tegmark has featured in dozens of science documentaries and received numerous awards for his research. His work with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) on galaxy clustering shared first prize in Science magazine’s ’Breakthrough of the Year’ in 2003.

Tino Sehgal is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation renowned for his performance pieces that challenge excessive material productions in the art world and beyond. He is the winner of the 55th Venice Biennale Golden Lion prize (2013). True to his ecological politics, Sehgal rejects the production of physical objects and the excessive proliferation of goods in Western society. Instead, he uses ‘constructed situations’ animated through references to art history and the participation of interpreters.

Sehgal trains interpreters to approach museum and gallery visitors with a comment or a question to engage them, not just in talk but in performance. Having studied dance and economics, Sehgal considers visual art to be a microcosm of our economic reality, as both centre on the production of goods and their circulation. He is also known for the philosophical practice of refusing documentation of his work through photographs, film or video; mediums that would reify his work's ephemeral situations and result in ancillary material products.

Sehgal was the youngest artist to represent Germany at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005). Aged 35, he became the youngest artist granted a solo show in the Guggenheim Museum’s New York rotunda (2010). His This Progress (2010) was the first live work to be acquired by the Guggenheim Museum. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2013 following his Turbine Hall commission in the Tate Modern in London.

Jean-Michel Jarre is a highly celebrated French musician, composer, performer and producer. He is known as the ‘godfather of electronic music’ and a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and new-age genres, and for his achievements in harmonizing music and lighting. Jarre deeply reflects on technology as well as nature for the future of our planet. In 2017, he was honoured with the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.

Jarre’s commitment to harnessing technological trends for public access has distinguished him for first-time achievements, such as his Millennium concert in Egypt in 2000, the first concert ever to be live-streamed on the internet. He was also the first to release an entire album in 5.1 surround sound and the first artist to use 3D audio technology for music.

Jarre is a three-time Guinness world record holder for the largest outdoor performance. He was also the first Western musician to be officially invited to perform in the People's Republic of China, and he holds the world record for the largest ever audience at an outdoor event for his Moscow concert on 6 September 1997, which was attended by 3.5 million people. His album Oxygène sold over 18 million copies. He was also appointed as UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 1993, and he is a spokesperson for Environment and Education. In 2021, he received the Insignia of Commander to the Legion of Honour.

Ethel D. Cofie is a Ghanaian entrepreneur, CEO and founder of EDEL Technology Consulting, an information technology (IT) consulting company that develops strategies for building IT software and applications. Her company was named IT Consulting Firm of the Year by the Telecoms and IT Industry in Ghana in 2017. Cofie is a leading and influential figure in IT and for empowering women in Africa. She is also on the Advisory Board of Ghana’s Vice President where she helps design a digital strategy for Ghana.

She is the founder of Women in Tech Africa (WiTA), Africa’s largest ‘women in tech’ group with members in over 30 African countries and across the diaspora. She also created Women in Tech Week, a global event that brings together women in technology since 2016. Cofie joined Worldreader’s Ghana Board of Directors to advance digital literacy among children in West Africa. She contributes to e-reading programmes in schools and libraries throughout West Africa, aiming to impact the lives of over 100,000 students and their families. Cofie is a Mandela Washington Fellow of President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). She was named one of the top 5 women impacting IT in Africa and won the Glitz Africa Ghana Women of the Year Honours in 2020. She was also shortlisted for the United Nations GEM Tech Award in 2014 with her thoughts on innovation in emerging markets.

Adi Utarini is an Indonesian public health researcher and a professor of public health at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia. As an internationally established researcher, she focuses on researching disease control and quality of healthcare. She was one of TIME100: The Most Influential People of 2021. Her field of expertise is centred around disease control of dengue fever. She is known for pioneering the randomized controlled trials of the technique employing Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes, proving that it reduces the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.

During the pandemic, Utarini went through the loss of her husband from COVID-19. She held a virtual charity concert entitled, Life, Passion, and Music Volume 2: Tribute to Professor Iwan Dwiprahasto, where she performed the piano. All funds were donated to support the isolation facilities at the Tangguh COVID-19 Shelter and village shelters in Bantul Regency.

Her contribution to public health has earned her distinguished achievements including her selection as one of Nature's ‘Ten people who helped shape science in 2020’.

Frank Snowden is a historian and Andrew Downey Orrick Professor Emeritus of History and History of Medicine at Yale University. He specializes in the comparative history of epidemic diseases, the history of public health, the impact of emerging and resurgent diseases, issues in medical ethics, and bioterrorism. Snowden published Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present in 2019. In the book, he examines the ways in which disease outbreaks have not only influenced medical science and public health but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history and warfare. Snowden explains the ways in which social structures have allowed diseases to flourish.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, his commitment to exploring the social, cultural and political impacts of epidemics has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal for his historical expertise. Snowden argues that the COVID crisis not only reflects a society’s existing vulnerabilities it also presents an opportunity for transformational change. His book, The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962, in 2006, was awarded the Gustav Ranis International Book Prize from the MacMillan Center at Yale in 2007 as he ‘best book on an international topic by a member of the Yale Faculty’.

Maria Fernanda Espinosa is an Ecuadorian academic, politician and diplomat. Former President of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, she has served as Minister of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defence. She has decades of experience in international affairs, defence and security, as well as sustainable development, the environment, climate change, gender equality and indigenous peoples’ rights.

Espinosa served as an advisor on biodiversity and indigenous peoples’ policy, and was regional director for South America at IUCN. She is Goodwill Ambassador of the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latjn America and the Carribean (FILAC). As the President of the UN General Assembly, she launched the International Year of Indigenous Languages in February 2019 and spearheaded the high-level event on culture and sustainable development in May 2019.

Espinosa is deeply committed to promoting women’s full participation in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. She was the first woman to become Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations and the first female President of the General Assembly from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. She established the Group of Gender Equality Leaders to push for women’s leadership and joined GWL Voices for Change and Inclusion, an advocacy group for multilateralism and gender equality. During the pandemic, Espinosa joined as Commissioner and co-chair of the international Lancet COVID-19 Commission. She also co-signed the letter ‘What the G20 Should Do Now’, on the importance of taking measures for disadvantaged people in relation to COVID.

Salim Abdool Karim is a South African epidemiologist and professor of global health at Columbia University. He is also director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, and adjunct professor of medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Karim is known for his contribution to HIV prevention and treatment. He is also an inventor of patents used in HIV vaccine candidates and antibody-based passive immunization strategies. His TB-HIV treatment studies have shaped international guidelines on the clinical management of co-infected patients.

During the pandemic, Karim served as Chair of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19. As such, he contributed to implementing public health measures and managing the sanitary situation in South Africa. He also sits on the Africa Task Force for Novel Coronavirus. Karim is one of the most cited scientists by Web of Science. He also serves as Chair of the UNAIDS Scientific Expert Panel, Chair of the WHO's HIV and Hepatitis Scientific and Technical Advisory Group, and he is a member of the WHO HIV-TB Task Force.

Krista Kim is a Canadian digital artist and creator of the Mars House, the first ‘metaverse home’ for sale. She creates large-scale abstract art inspired by light, and she studies the concept of digital consciousness. Kim is the founder of the Techism Movement, which recognizes technological innovation as an artistic discipline and brings together artists and engineers with a vision towards the future. She considers technology as a significant factor in determining our social behaviour and believes this should be applied to art. She also responds to society's over-reliance on technology by encouraging artists to promote digital humanism to create our digital culture.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, Kim explored the potential of screens as digital instruments for well-being. She created 'Mars House', a completely virtual environment, and the first ever ’metaverse home’ for sale as a non-fungible token (NFT). The piece received global acclaim and reached the highest grossing sale of an NFT on SuperRare. It was shown at the Ethereal Aether exhibition at the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, in 2021. Kim is dedicated to redefining digital technologies in the context of art and humanity. She developed the term ‘digital consciousness’ to describe the expansion of the human consciousness: from binary into the network and the metaverse. She also advocates for ‘digital humanism’, an effort to bring artists into the digital technology domain.

Ahmed Salman is an Egyptian senior immunologist-vaccinologist and a research leader working in Professor Sir Adrian Hill’s Lab at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford. Salman works to identify, design and assess new target antigens as vaccine candidates for infectious diseases caused by human and veterinary pathogens or cancerous diseases. Salman was part of the research group that helped develop the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, one of the most widely distributed vaccines in more than 170 countries.

Salman has worked on malaria vaccines and has three Plasmodium falciparum malaria vaccine patents. His research on this topic has shown that three previously underutilized antigens possessed superior protection to two commonly studied antigens. He is also a member of the British Society for Immunology, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and the International Veterinary Vaccinology Network.

Jimmy Jean-Louis is a Haitian award-winning actor and human rights activist. Referred to as a ‘source of pride for Haitians’, he continues to promote the heritage and creativity of Haiti around the world. Jean-Louis won Best Actor at the Pan African Film Festival and was nominated for Best Actor at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2012 for his starring role in Toussaint Louverture, as well as Best Actor in a leading role for Desrances in 2020. He is best known for his role as ‘The Haitian’ in the hit television series, Heroes.

In 2008, he founded Hollywood Unites for Haiti, a charity organization that provides sport and culture education to underprivileged youth in Haiti. Following the 2020 earthquake, Jean-Louis raised funds for relief efforts. He was also named Ambassador of the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) for Haitian children. Dedicated to supporting his home country, he was named as Ambassador-at-large to Haiti in 2014. Following COVID-19, Jean-Louis used his platforms to sensitize the Haitian public about the pandemic. He created videos in which he encouraged people to respect sanitary measures to help prevent the spread of the virus.

Hoor Al Qasimi is an Emirati curator, and president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation. She works to make the United Arab Emirates (UAE) the centre of the region’s art scene, as well as a hub for dialogue between the East and West. Al Qasimi established Sharjah Art Foundation in 2009 to advocate for the arts in UAE. Under her leadership, the foundation has expanded its positive influence globally and supported artist and curator residencies in visual art, film and music. She also co-curated Sharjah Biennial 6 in 2003 and is the current Biennial director.

Hoor Al Qasimi was a board member for MoMA PS1 in New York (2010–2021) and a member of the Prince Claus Awards Committee (2016–2020). She is the current Chair of the Board of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, which was inaugurated in November 2019. Al Qasimi also serves on the board of directors for Kunst-Werke Berlin e.V. in Germany and is a board member of Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Lebanon. She is also the Chair of the Advisory Board for the College of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Sharjah in UAE and a member of the advisory board for Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi.

Rana Dajani is a Palestinian-Jordanian molecular biologist, a Cmalakova Fellow at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, Virginia, a professor of biology and biotechnology at Hashemite University, Jordan, and an activist. Specialized in molecular cell biology, epigenetics and biomarkers of trauma among refugees, she is also interested in raising the health, education and social status of women and children in the region.

Dajani is dedicated to education for children. She established, We Love Reading, an organization that encourages reading among children so that they can lead change in their communities. Her commitment is recognized widely, with such honours as the Library of Congress Literacy Award for Best Practices, a STARS Impact Award, the Synergos Arab World Social Innovator award, a WISE Award, and recognition from IDEO.org as well as the recipient of the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize in 2017. Dajana also organized Three Circles of Alemat, a mentoring and networking programme for women academics, uniquely targeting women scientists, especially from underrepresented regions.

Dajani’s career has earned her numerous accolades worldwide. She has received the Order of Al Hussein for Distinguished Contributions of the Second Class, the King Hussein Cancer Institute for Cancer and Biotechnology award in 2009, a place in the U.S. Embassy’s Women in Science Hall of Fame in 2015, and the Jordan Star of Science in the biology category.

Zoe Butt is a curator and writer from Viet Nam with over two decades of international experience in the arts across public and private sectors. She was artistic director of the Factory Contemporary Arts Centre in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam’s first purpose-built space for contemporary art. Her practice centres around building conscious artistic communities and facilitating South-South dialogue.

Butt formerly served as executive director and curator of Sàn Art, an independent contemporary art space in Ho Chi Minh City from 2009 to 2016. She is also a former director of international programmes for the Long March Project, and former assistant curator of contemporary Asian Art at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.

She is a MoMA International Curatorial Fellow, member of Asia Society’s ‘Asia 21’ initiative, and a member of the Asian Art Council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She was also named ‘Young Global Leader’ by the World Economic Forum in 2015. In an interview with post at MoMA, she has shared her thoughts on the creativity of artists in the face of COVID-19.

Hamdan Abdul Majeed is the Managing Director of Think City, a social purpose organization that provides policy advice for urban development, management and implementation of sustainable solutions. He advocates for change in city planning, using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a framework.

He is interested in imagining more human-centred, resilient and livable cities. He has implemented the public grants programme for regeneration of George Town, Malaysia, part of the World Heritage site Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca and today a popular destination for cultural tourism in the region.

As a young leader in urban development and city transformation, Abdul Majeed received an Eisenhower Fellowship for his work in 2012 and was recognized at the World Cities Summit in 2014.

Michael Pinksy is an interdisciplinary artist who incorporates art, urban planning, environment and social well-being to respond innovatively to current world challenges. His large-scale thought-provoking installations are often shown in public spaces, casting a critical eye on how we use the public realm.

He is best known for his project ‘Pollution Pods’, which has toured the world. It was listed on Artnet’s ‘100 Works of Art That Defined the Decade‘ and included by Connaissance des Arts in the top 10 artworks that engage with climate change.

He has received awards from the RSA, Arts Council England, British Council, Arts and Business and the Wellcome Trust. His exhibition ‘Pontis’ was shortlisted for the Gulbenkian Museums Award.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel is the Director of the Archeological Park of Pompeii. Having studied classical archaeology, prehistory and Greek philology, he was part of the Great Pompeii Project, an Italian government and EU-funded initiative that began in 2012.

Since his appointment as Director in 2021, Zuchtriegel is leading the site’s ‘rebirth’. He uses innovative technology to restore Pompeii and limit climate change impact. He examines Pompeii’s history from the perspective of gender, race and class and explores its complex social stratification.

Previously, he served as director of the archaeological park and museum of Paestum, another UNESCO World Heritage site. In 2019, he was awarded the Ravenna Festival prize.

Doris Maria Woerfel is a South African tourism expert with more than 20 years of experience in tourism development and marketing. She empowers disadvantaged communities across Africa to harness domestic, regional and international tourism source markets.

She is a co-founder and Managing Director of the African Tourism Council, an NGO specialized in reinforcing the African tourism industry through capacity-building and entrepreneurship development of youth, women and community.

She was previously CEO of the Southern Cross Foundation, which promotes heritage-based tourism in Africa. Under her leadership, the organization consolidated the Heritage Routes network and provided research, capacity and leadership projects and heritage e-learning programmes.

Bruce Yerkovich is a Croatian-American biophysicist and bioinformatics scientist. He is dedicated to promoting sustainable tourism and environmental protection in Croatia. In 2008 Yerkovich founded Linden Tree Retreat & Ranch, a sustainable wilderness retreat and horse ranch in the Northern Velebit Mountain and National Park. The Ranch works closely with park authorities and the local community to develop sustainable tourism practices in the area.

Yerkovich has a doctorate in quantum biophysics. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Zadar in Croatia and worked as a Senior Research Scientist at Merck. His interconnected knowledge of conscious energy and ecosystems has enriched his sustainable tourism practices. His Linden Tree Retreat & Ranch initiative has received global recognition, including the Excellence Award from TripAdvisor.

Aubin Arroyo Aubin Arroyo is a mathematician and a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He specializes in reflection theory and is passionate about finding connections between mathematics and art.

Arroyo is a firm believer that art can be used to interpret the mathematical concept of ‘inversion of the sphere’. He also explores how art can be used to communicate messages from diverse disciplines that may not otherwise be easily accessible.

He collaborated with renowned French artist Jean Michel Othoniel to create the ‘Wild Knot’ exhibition, shown in Argentina and France. A winner of the MathLapse Festival 2016, the artwork adopted ‘knot theory’, embodying a new connection between art and mathematics.

He served as a tutor for the 2019 Art, Science and Technology programme of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts. He was also in charge of the Mathematical Imaginary exhibition that is now part of the permanent exhibition in the Science Museum of the National Autonomous University.

Jana Apih is the Managing Director of GoodPlace Factory of Sustainable Tourism in Ljubljana, one of the greenest cities in the world. She specializes in marketing, strategic planning of tourism development, and implementation of sustainable practices.

GoodPlace Factory of Sustainable Tourism is a non-profit institute dedicated to promoting the development of sustainable tourism in Slovenia. Under Apih’s leadership, the organization has received support from both the Tourism Ministry and the Tourism Board.

Based on globally established criteria, the project provides destinations and tourism businesses with a concrete tool to assess and improve their sustainability performance. Since 2015, more than 100 destinations and suppliers have joined the Slovenia Green programme.

Jascivan Carvalho is an Ecuadorian-Brazilian social entrepreneur, expedition tour operator, and CEO of Ecuador Sustainable Travel. With more than 25 years’ experience in tourism, he is committed to promoting indigenous community-based sustainable tourism in the Amazon and Galapagos.

Carvalho leads Tropic, an expedition tour operator that fosters positive impact on well-being and livelihoods, and protection of natural and cultural heritage. Tropic works with the Huaorani indigenous community in the remote Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. The company, which received National Geographic’s World Legacy Award for ‘Engaging Communities’ in 2015, currently offers its first community-based tourism programme on Floreana Island in the Galapagos.

Carvalho is also passionate about empowering small community-based tourism. He initiated Waponi, a business incubator for small communities in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia to provide market access and skills for ecotourism.

Kamal Mouzawak is a chef, food activist and founder of Souk El Tayeb. He has a deep interest in empowering Lebanese communities through food. He is committed to promoting sustainable agriculture, supporting rural producers, preserving diverse culinary heritage and uniting people around gastronomy.

Mouzawak created Souk El Tayeb – an innovative social enterprise to encourage sustainable culinary practices with low environmental impact and cross-community engagement – in 2004. It started as Lebanon’s first farmers' market and has grown into an influential organization with a wide range of national and international projects pursuing the preservation of Lebanese food traditions and strengthening of Lebanese communities. Mouzawak also opened Tawlet, a farmers’ kitchen and collaborative restaurant.

He received the Prince Claus award in 2016 and most recently the Foodics Icon Award from Middle East & North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants 2022.

Kotchakorn Vorrakhom is a Thai landscape architect, CEO of Porous City Network and founder of Landprocess. She is dedicated to bringing social and environmental transformation by building green public spaces.

Having observed the impact of the rising sea level on her hometown, Voraakhom established the landscape architecture design firm Landprocess. She and her team produce carbon-sequestering landscapes by using sustainable materials and adopting sustainable construction practices. She also founded Porous City Network, which increases the resilience of climate-vulnerable communities across Southeast Asia by building productive landscape design. Porous works to identify solutions to naturally reduce the impacts of flooding and increase urban resilience in the region.

Voraakhom is the winner of the 2020 UN Global Climate Action Award and one of BBC’s ‘100 Women in 2020’. TIME magazine included her on its ‘TIME 100 Next’ list in 2019, along with 15 other women fighting against climate change.

Adrian Jo Milang: Adrian Jo Milang is a musician and performer from the Kayan community, an indigenous tribe in central Borneo, Malaysia. He is recognized as one of the youngest practitioners of Parap and Takna’ – two Kayan oral traditions – that he began practising at the age of twelve. Reflecting the way of life of Kayan ancestors, these two art forms carry traditional metaphors and formulaic phrases inspired by the environment. In addition to performing Parap and Takna' at various events including the Borneo Jazz Festival and the Festival of Masks, Milang hosts workshops and demonstrations to pass on these traditions to future generations.

Milang serves as a Community Manager at The Tuyang Initiative, a community-led company concerned with improving the economic skills of the Dayak (Borneo indigenous) people. He cooperates closely with cultural practitioners from various communities to create livelihood opportunities and to promote expression of their own culture.

Mariam Kamara is a Nigerian architect and founder of Atelier Masōmīi, an architecture firm that works on public, cultural, residential, commercial and urban design projects. Her design focuses on open living spaces that serve and improve the lives of African communities, often constructed using locally produced materials. A further aim of her designs of public spaces is to give women in Muslim culture more freedom of movement.

She also cofounded ‘united4design’, a global network of architects who collaborate on projects in the US, Afghanistan and Niger. Her team worked with UN Habitat to rehabilitate an urban village in Niamey, which won the AIA Seattle Merit Award in 2016.

Internationally recognized for her innovative architecture with local communities at heart, Kamara received the Prince Claus Award in 2019 and the Gold Award for the Regional LafargeHolcim Awards in 2017. Her recent work for the Niamey Cultural Centre was exhibited at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Kidlat Tahimik is a Filipino filmmaker, writer, visual artist and actor. A celebrated figure in the independent art world of the Philippines, his medium ranges from film and photography to free-style architecture and carved installations. His films are centred on critiques of neo-colonialism and globalization, while offering a promise of hope. His debut feature film Perfumed Nightmare (1977) received the FIPRESCI Award (International Critics Award) at the Berlin International Film Festival.

As a life-long advocate for indigenous and local cultures, Tahimik has organized conferences for indigenous peoples from around the world, called the Kapwa Conferences. He also launched the Sunflower Film Collective in 1997 to share user-friendly video technology for tribal people.

Tahimik has received numerous awards including the Prince Claus Laureate Award (2018). His work was also presented at the Sharjah Biennial in 2019.

Bahia Shehab is an Egyptian-Lebanese multidisciplinary artist, designer, political activist, historian and professor at the American University in Cairo. Her work is concerned with identity and cultural heritage, and uses Islamic art history, calligraphy and graphic design to raise awareness of contemporary Arab societies, feminist discourse and social issues.

Shehab is interested in the ways art can be used to promote social change and explores this process through her artwork. Her graffiti series, ‘No, A Thousand Times No,’ illustrated the one thousand different ways to say ‘no’ in Arabic in relation to political and economic situations.

Shehab was named one of BBC’s 100 Women of 2013. She was selected as a TED Global Fellow in 2012 and received a TED Senior Fellowship in 2016. She was the first Arab woman to win the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture in 2016.

Nicolas Nova: is a Swiss researcher, writer, design researcher and anthropologist of technology. His work focuses on observing and documenting digital and new media practices and environmental changes.

Nova adopts ethnographic approaches to understand people’s needs, motivations and contexts. Using such information, he maps new design opportunities, encouraging fellow designers and engineers to implement solutions.

He is a co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory, a global network to create projects exploring design, engineering and anthropology. It examines how design can help generate prospective scenarios through everyday artefacts. Nova also co-founded and curated the Lift Conferences, a series of international events about digital culture, design and innovation.

Habiba Djahnine is a writer and filmmaker whose body of work consists of cinema dedicated to accurate portrayal of Algerian realities.

Her documentaries reveal diverse facets of Algerian society and its history. In Lettre à ma soeur (Letter to my sister), she denounces violence as a solution to social disputes.

To share her knowledge and skills as a documentarian with Algerian creators and storytellers, Djahnine co-founded Association Kaïna Cinéma, offering training courses to emerging professionals. She is also a co-founder of Cinéma et Mémoire Association, a network to empower young Algerians in the documentary sector. It hosts space for the film industry for debate, networking and the exchange of knowledge.

Since 2003, Djahnine has been active in curating several international film festivals.

Ibrahim Mahama is a Ghanaian visual artist and author. Mahama employs the transformation of materials to explore themes of commodity, migration, globalization and economic exchange.

Mahama’s large-scale installations use materials gathered from urban environments. He is best known for his installations that encase public structures with jute sacks, exhibited at Documenta 14 and in the Arsenale complex at the Venice Biennale.

Mahama has set up Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), an open-access cultural centre and research hub that creates opportunities for artists and community members and provides access to multipurpose facilities in Tamale. He also founded a vast studio complex, Red Clay, to provide employment, education, studio space and creative activities for local communities.

He represented Ghana at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. He was recently appointed as an artistic director of the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts.

Azra Akšamija is an artist, architectural historian and Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Her work is concerned with blending cultural heritage from different contexts to spark the creation of new art forms and future heritage. She also researches the representation of Islam in the West, as well as the destruction and restoration of cultural heritage in the Balkans.

She advocates for the cultural and emotional needs of the displaced through art, design and architecture. She published the book Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp in 2021 after observing the resilient and inspiring movement of a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan.

Akšamija received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2013 for designing the prayer space in the Islamic Cemetery Altach in Austria, and the Art Award of the City of Graz in 2018. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Generali Foundation and Secession in Vienna; Biennials in Venice, Liverpool, Valencia and Manila; the Royal Academy of Arts. London; the Jewish Museum, Berlin; and the Kästner Gesellschaft, Hanover.

Rita Keegan is an American archivist and multimedia artist based in the UK. She has experimented with new media as part of the British Black Arts Movement. She often approaches the subjects of memory, history, dress and adornment of Black artists.

Keegan has a deep interest in African women artists. From 1992 to 1994, she served as a Director of the African and Asian Visual Arts Archive, an online collection of over 140,000 images gathered across the UK, freely available for educational use. She recently held the first solo exhibition at Fire Station South London Gallery, exploring the intersection of new media experimentation, feminist practice and the Black Arts Movement of the 1980s. Keegan is a founding member of the Brixton Art Gallery, an artists' collective aiming to showcase Brixton culture to the international audience.

As an archivist, she is known for her contribution to establishing the Women of Colour Index at the Women Artists Slide Library (WASL). She also collaborated with the African Asian Visual Artists Archive to collate slides of the work of women artists from exhibitions and compile folders on each individual.

Laura Yawanawa is a Mixteca-Zapoteca activist originally from Oaxaca, Mexico. She is the President of the Yawanawá Sociocultural Association (ASCY) dedicated to the Yawanawá people of Brazil. She heads a Yawanawá fashion line inspired by indigenous designs, as an alternative economic livelihood for women.

As the President and Director of ASCY, her life’s work is dedicated to promoting the Yawanawá culture and providing sustainable income-generating opportunities for the Yawanawá peoples. She is also committed to triggering change towards an open and inclusive community where women achieve their full potential.

Yawanawa was previously the Executive Director of the South and Meso-American Indian Rights Centre in Oakland. She also co-founded organizations to support indigenous peoples, such as the Nawa Institute and INIYA (Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Alliance). She has worked with the Institute of Climate Change and Regulation of Environmental Services (IMC), a government agency created in the State of Acre, Brazil. She organized workshops in indigenous communities about the climate crisis and environmental services.