Who we are

The Young Global Leaders ® Community is an accelerator for a dynamic community of exceptional people with the vision, courage, and influence to drive positive change in the world.

Our growing membership of more than 1,400 members and alumni of 120 nationalities includes civic and business innovators, entrepreneurs, technology pioneers, educators, activists, artists, journalists, and more.

Aligned with the World Economic Forum’s mission, we seek to drive public-private co-operation in the global public interest. We are united by the belief that today’s pressing problems present an opportunity to build a better future across sectors and boundaries.

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Meet our members

Eva Scherer

Chief Financial Officer, Daimler Truck AG, Germany

Eva Scherer is the Chief Financial Officer and member of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG. Eva joined Daimler Truck in April 2024 after having worked for Siemens AG for 20 years, where she held various leadership positions across different businesses and countries. She took over the regional Chief Financial Officer role at age 27 to set up the Middle East/Asia-Pacific headquarters for the Siemens Building Technologies division in Singapore. In this role she secured various projects promoting energy efficiency and sustainability across the region, including the company's involvement in the Greener Government Buildings programme in Australia. After five years in Asia, she transferred to Germany in 2017 to head the global finance and controlling function for the Mobility division and played an instrumental role in setting up Siemens Mobility as separately managed company within the Siemens Group. From 2020 to 2022 she led the Rail Infrastructure and Software businesses at Siemens Mobility as Chief Financial Officer with the mission of making sustainable transport easily and conveniently accessible to foster decarbonization and improve air quality. In October 2022, she was appointed Head of Group Investor Relations at Siemens, and served as interface between Siemens and the capital markets, while continuing to fight for reducing emissions and making air breathable for everyone as the Co-chair of the World Economic Forum‘s Alliance for Clean Air.

Mark Stoffels

Global Business Unit Leader, Image Guided Therapy Systems, Philips, Netherlands

Mark Stoffels is a senior global health tech executive. As Global Business Unit Leader and Senior Vice-President of Royal Philips’ Image Guided Therapy Systems, he is highly driven to improve global access to healthcare. Other roles at Royal Philips include Managing Director and Senior Vice-President Connected Care North America, Vice-President and General of Latin America, Country Manager Mexico, General Manager Health Systems Mexico and Strategic Marketing Director for Latin America. Stoffels is the author of "3 Billion Heart Beats", a novel on Buddhism which principles he works tirelessly to implement in his leadership style.

Tiffany Xingyu Wang

Chief Trust and Marketing Officer, OpenWeb, USA

An award-winning marketer and social entrepreneur, Tiffany Xingyu Wang’s deep technological understanding, digital trust stewardship and marketing prowess have positioned her at the nexus of the future of media, corporate ethics and the emerging community economy.

She currently serves as the Chief Marketing & Trust Officer of OpenWeb – a role that reflects her leadership in the field. The leading community engagement platform powers over 3,000 publishers and brands and is leading the way in creating trusting spaces for healthy conversations and diverse, engaged communities in the Web3 era. At OpenWeb, Tiffany Xingyu oversees marketing as well as the entire trust and safety P&L and is working closely with the company’s vast partner networks to scale market-leading best practices.

Tiffany Xingyu is also the President and Co-founder of Oasis Consortium. As part of the nonprofit created to define a digital sustainability model for businesses, she launched first-of-their-kind User Safety Standards for Web3, minting industry-backed consensus on digital safety early in the Web3 revolution and earning interest from TIME, MIT Technology Review and more. The momentum continues with over 20 platforms, including Roblox, Pandora, Grindr, Fandom, The Meet Group and Together Labs, pledging to the standards.

Tiffany Xingyu’s pioneering approach to marketing, innovation and advocacy serves as a model for future leaders looking to drive positive change at a global scale. She’s democratizing access to critical digital trust and safety knowledge through a first-of-its-kind LinkedIn Learning course for brand leaders. Active with global organizations that are elevating the dialogue around the future of media and the web, she is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program, the Atlantic Council’s Trust & Safety Taskforce and a board member of AdCouncil.

Prior to joining OpenWeb, Wang was the Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Spectrum Labs, a leading contextual AI platform that keeps over 1 billion users safe online. She also holds two USPTO patents in machine learning applications for marketing.

Tiffany Xingyu stays abreast of blockchain and quantum computing technologies through investments and advisory board roles. She’s also a venture partner at Tribe, a Singapore government-backed blockchain accelerator, where she leads investor relations in the US.

Her leadership continues to be acknowledged within the industry and the global business community. She was recently on the cover of Adweek’s first edition of 2023 in the “Year of the Tenacious CMO” feature and her work has been highlighted in leading publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Digiday, and VentureBeat. With further recognition from Forbes’ Most Entrepreneurial CMO List and the CMO Club’s Most Innovative Awards under her belt, Tiffany Xingyu has solidified her reputation as one of the seminal innovators of her generation.

Michele Romanow

Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Clearco, Canada

Michele Romanow is a serial entrepreneur who started six companies before her 35th birthday. A “Dragon” on CBC’s hit show Dragons’ Den (Canada’s Shark Tank), Michele is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Clearco (formerly Clearbanc). Clearco has invested more than $5B+ into 10000+ companies making them the biggest ecommerce investor in the world. She previously co-founded SnapSaves, acquired by American tech giant Groupon, and Buytopia.ca, which acquired ten competitors, including Shop.ca and WagJag.

A prolific investor, Michele was recently named Fortune’s 40 under 40, a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women, Canada’s Angel Investor of the Year and winner of RBC’s Women of Influence, Innovation Award.

Michele co-founded the Canadian Entrepreneurship Initiative with Richard Branson to encourage more women entrepreneurs. Michele has worked driving new digital solutions to many of the world’s leading brands, including P&G, Netflix, Starbucks, and Cirque du Soleil. In addition, she’s advised Fortune 100s and governments on innovation, AI, blockchain and the new economy.

During her Civil Engineering undergrad at Queen’s University, Michele founded The Tea Room, the first zero-consumer-waste coffee shop. At Queen’s, she was given the Queen’s Tricolour — the highest honor awarded by the university — and, after completing her Queen’s MBA, she founded Evandale Caviar, a vertically integrated commercial fishery.

Michele is a director for Vail Resorts (NYSE: MTN), BBTV and Queen’s School of Business. Previously she was a director for Freshii, Whistler Blackcomb, SHAD International and League of Innovators.

Uche Pedro

Founder, BellaNaija, Nigeria

Uche Pedro is a Nigerian entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of BellaNaija, a media tech brand known for entertainment and lifestyle content. Under her leadership, BellaNaijas social footprint has grown through its collective brands - BellaNaija.com, BellaNaija Weddings and BellaNaija Style - to be the largest on the African continent with more than 200 million impressions each month. In March 2019, Uche was honoured with the Forbes Woman Africa New Media Award for her innovative impact on media in Africa.
Uche is passionate about progress of youth in Nigeria and across Africa. Uche holds a Bachelors degree – Honours Business Administration (HBA) from the Ivey Business School at Western University in Canada where she graduated with distinction.

Adriana Cargill

Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Wave Maker Media, USA

Adriana Cargill is an independent public radio journalist based in Los Angeles. She’s reported and produced stories for KCRW, Southern California Public Radio (KPCC), Marketplace, LAist, Latino USA, Crooked Media, Wondery, KUSC Radio, VICE News and more. She graduated with a Master of Science in Journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism as a Bloomberg Scholar. She is also a fifth-generation Cargill family member. Founded in 1865, Cargill Inc. is a privately held agribusiness with over 155,000 employees in 70 countries around the world. By revenue, Cargill consistently ranks as one of the largest private companies in the U.S and in the top tier globally. Adriana has worked to support employees during the COVID crisis and advocated for the company to do business in a sustainable and more equitable way. Adriana is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Family Business Community and its Next Gen Working Group. She is also a member of The ImPact, a global membership community of families committed to aligning their assets with their values.

Hamad AlMahmeed

Director-General, Office of the Prime Minister of Bahrain, Bahrain

Director General of Bahrain Prime Minister's Office

Esra Eczacıbaşı Coşkun

Member of the Board of Directors and Group Digital Transformation Coordinator, Eczacıbaşı Holding, Türkiye

Esra Eczacibasi Coskun is a Board Member and Digital Transformation Coordinator at Eczacibasi Holding, a diversified industrial conglomerate based in Turkey. The Eczacibasi Group plays a pioneering role in both Turkish industry and society through major initiatives in education, culture and the arts, sports, public policy and scientific research. Esra leads the Group’s digital transformation as well as the design and implementation of sustainability policies across different industries and geographies. The digital transformation projects she has spearheaded have received international recognition and awards from institutions such as Fast Company, IDC, RFID Journal and SAP. A strong advocate for equal opportunity, she is a mentor and advisor to young women who want to pursue a career in technology. She gives regular talks on gender biases, inclusivity in the workplace as well as the future that awaits us in the digital age. Esra is also a member of the Board of Directors at the Istanbul Modern, Turkey's first museum of modern and contemporary art. With a passion for the arts and desire to support culture and arts in Turkey, she established the Genc (Young) Modern, Turkey’s first arts membership program for a young audience. As an affiliate of Istanbul Modern, Genc Modern’s mission is to increase the visibility of talented Turkish artists at the start of their careers and create opportunities for them in the contemporary art world. Esra holds an MBA from INSEAD and a BA in Economics and Art History from Harvard University. She previously worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Wawira Njiru

Founder and Executive Director, Food for Education, Kenya

Wawira is the founder of Food for Education an organisation that is feeding Africa’s future through innovative, cutting-edge technology. Food for Education has created a sustainable model of efficiently providing locally sourced, high quality, nutritious meals to public primary school children. Their scalable, efficient model is creating the first sustainable path to solve the child nutrition crisis for 500 million African children. She is a Ford Foundation Global Fellow, the youngest recipient of the University of South Australia’s alumni award 2017, a 2018 Rainer Arnhold Fellow, a recipient of the Builders of Africa Award 2018 and one of 2018’s Top 40 under 40 women in Kenya. She is also the first recipient of the Global Citizen Youth Leadership Prize 2018 presented by Cisco.