Boris Herrmann is a professional offshore sailor from Hamburg. On 8th November 2020 Boris set off on the Vendee Globe, a solo non-stop race around the globe as the first German to ever attempt this mission. He arrived after 80 days at sea, sailing through the Southern Ocean in the toughest conditions in the world and completed this emission free. The team’s main mission is to create awareness around climate change and solutions. He carries the message A Race We Must Win on his sails and is furthering scientific knowledge on all his sailing missions with an onboard laboratory.

Cees joined OVG Real Estate 10 years ago to be the head of the Sustainability Center. His first project was the first LEED Platinum TNT HQ and the first sustainable lab/office/factory, the Danone Innovation Center, both initiated by his team. The well-known office building The Edge in Amsterdam was the best example of smart and sustainable development and become a blueprint of the future of working and according to BREEAM, the most sustainable office building in the world. Today Cees is one of the initiators of the new company EDGE, a tech scale-up of OVG. With over 15 healthy, sustainable and tech EDGE buildings in Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London and the US, this seems to be the answer to disruption in the global real estate market.

Melati Wijsen is a 20 year old full-time changemaker. She founded Bye Bye Plastic Bags with her younger sister and has been leading the movement driven by youth since 2013. She also started the people movement One Island One Voice and the social enterprise, Mountain Mamas. Melati has spoken on world stages such as TED and the UN and has also been selected as FORBES top ten most inspiring women in the country. She has been honoured by TIME as part of the annual list of most influential teens in the world along with CNN Heroes Young Wonders and FORBES 30 under 30. Today, Melati is excited about her new youth empowerment project; YOUTHTOPIA, empowering youth through meaningful and short peer to peer programs and providing them the tools they need to be change makers.

Josef Brunner is a successful entrepreneur and active investor in a range of industrial start-ups and deep tech firms across multiple industries including IT, cyber security, and construction, to name a few. He is also a board member for various industrial start-ups in both Europe and the United States, and acts as advisor to large industrial customers and governments.
Josef has successfully founded several companies, most recently JouleX, which was acquired by Cisco for $107 million and relayr – where he still serves as CEO – which was acquired in 2018 by MunichRE for $300 million.
For each company he is invested in, Josef is actively involved to guide the leadership teams and offer his hands-on expertise, business insights and network.
With his in-depth knowledge of the IT, IoT, and technology worlds, Josef is a regular key-note speaker and panelist at high level international conferences and meetings.

Born in 1969, she graduated from Bielefeld University and received a doctorate in Psychology.
She began her career in the management of a medium-sized company in Bielefeld, and joined Deutsche Bahn in 1996. Her work took her to Dresden and Frankfurt, until she settled for freight transport in Duisburg/Cologne and Mainz, initially as the Head of Human Resources.
She was soon appointed Head of Production and became spokeswoman for the management of block train transport in Mainz. Subsequently, she held the position of Board Member for Production at the subsidiary, DB Cargo Polska.
In October 2010, Sigrid Nikutta left DB to become Chairperson and Chief Operating Officer at Germany’s largest public transport company, Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG). As the first female Chairperson, she made the company operate profitably for the first time.
In late 2019, she was appointed Member of the Management Board of Deutsche Bahn. As CEO of the Mainz-based DB Cargo AG she will also be responsible for operational management.

Kate Brandt serves as Google’s Sustainability Officer and leads sustainability across Google’s worldwide operations, products and supply chain. In this role, Kate coordinates with Google’s data centers, real estate, supply chain, and product teams to ensure the company is capitalizing on opportunities to strategically advance sustainability.
Previously Kate served as the Nation’s first Federal Chief Sustainability Officer. In this capacity, she was responsible for promoting sustainability across Federal Government operations.
Prior to the White House, Kate held several senior roles in U.S. Federal Government including Senior Advisor at the Department of Energy, Director for Energy and Environment in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, and Energy Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy.

Benedikt Bösel is founder and CEO of Gut & Bösel near Berlin. Benedikt and his team are implementing different forms of regenerative agriculture like syntropic agroforestry, holistic grazing, market gardening and different composting methodologies on his estate that is characterized by extremely low precipitation and sandy soil. The estate also ties in startups and technology to combine both worlds. Benedikt is engaged and sits in various boards of initiatives around the future of land use and rural development. For instance, he sits on the board of Soil Alliance – an association of Regenerative Agriculture as well as is part of the Advisory Board of Digitalisation of Agriculture for the Ministry of Food & Agriculture in Germany.

Dominik Schiener is an entrepreneur from Italy and the Co-Founder of IOTA and the IOTA Foundation. He has been in the Blockchain ecosystem since 2012 and has founded several startups in Switzerland and Germany. With IOTA he is working to establish trust to the Internet of Things and bring forth the emergencyof a Machine Economy. Through distributed ledgers he hopes to empower peopleall around the world through financial inclusion and new economic opportunities.

Driven by a profound belief in the potential of people, the power of humanity, and the genius of nature, Ole dedicates himself to combating some of the greatest threats to life on earth. With 20 years of experience from leading change and inspiring hope as a problem-solver, his critical takeaway is that global challenges must be recognized and solved from the edges. We must think big, start small, act fast, and design to scale exponentially. In 2019 Ole took the helm of ClimateTech start-up Desert Control, fueled by a passion for creating hope for a better future for “people and planet.” He is a global steward for our planet’s vital soil ecosystem, dedicated to stop and reverse desertification and soil degradation.