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.

Learn more

Meet our members

Luis Cervantes

Managing Director; Head, Mexico Office, General Atlantic, Mexico

Luis Cervantes established and leads General Atlantic’s Mexico office, focusing on the firm’s growth investments in Mexico and across Latin America. Luis co-led General Atlantic’s investments and is a member of the Board of Directors of Justo (online supermarket), Kavak (used-auto ecommerce), Axo (fashion omnichannel retailer), Clip (payments platform) and Laboratorios Sanfer (pharmaceutical lab), and previously participated in the Board of Directors of Sura Asset Management and Santander Asset Management Mexico. Luis also serves as a member of the board of directors of Endeavor Mexico (entrepreneurship non-for-profit) and of Ordas-Howden (insurance brokerage), is a member of YPO and was an Adjunct Professor at Universidad Iberoamericana. Prior to joining General Atlantic, Luis was at Advent International where he concentrated on investments across sectors in Latin America. Previously, he worked in the Investment Banking team at UBS in the Latin American group based in Mexico City. Luis graduated as an Industrial Engineer, with honors, from Universidad Iberoamerica and has an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Gabriel Marcolongo

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Incluyeme.com, Argentina

Motivated by his visually impaired father, Gabriel left his successful corporate career to addressing employment biases against 85 million disabled people in Latin America. He founded Incluyeme.com, a certified B Corporation with more than 220,000 registered users and 600 companies as clients including Accenture, IBM, Walmart, Disney, McKinsey, and PWC. Through his work, +2500 people with disabilities found a job.
Gabriel also serves on the board of several NGOs and is a consultant on employment policies for people with disabilities with Development Agencies in Latin America.
Gabriel is a passionate traveler, who visited +80 countries on all continents. Gabriel also crossed the Andes mountains running 120km in a 3-day ultramarathon.

Matthew Katz

Global Head of Data Science, Blackstone Group, USA

Matthew Katz is a Senior Managing Director and the Global Head of Data Science for Blackstone. He leads Blackstone’s team of data scientists and in this capacity partners with management teams and operators to accelerate growth across Blackstone’s portfolio companies by leveraging data science. He and his team additionally work closely with Blackstone’s investment teams to provide a differentiated viewpoint through advanced analytics during the investment process.
Before joining Blackstone in 2015, Mr. Katz was a Vice President at Point72 Asset Management where he focused on data science and investing. He began his career at Credit Suisse.
Mr. Katz graduated with honors from Princeton University. He serves on the advisory board of Virginia Tech’s Academy of Data Science and is on the Blackstone Charitable Foundation Leadership Council.

He Zhengyu

Principal Scientist, Ant Group, People's Republic of China

Dr. Zhengyu He is a Principal Scientist at Ant Group and leads the Group’s technical infrastructure. His current focus of work is in building a financial-grade cloud-native computing platform for Ant. Dr. He strongly believes security and reliability, more now than ever, has to be the core of the technical infrastructure for financial institutions to ensure business continuity, while continuously improving user experience and satisfaction. Under his leadership, Ant has evolved to the fifth generation of its technical infrastructure, serving ~1.3 billion users of Ant and its global partners worldwide. Dr. He holds a Ph.D. from the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. He also received master and bachelor degrees respectively from the Beijing Institute of Technology.

Jessica Jackson

Chief Advocacy Officer, Reform Alliance, USA

Jessica Jackson’s quest for justice began in a Georgia courtroom. The high-school dropout held her two-month-old daughter and watched helplessly as her husband was sentenced to six years in prison. In that moment, she decided to turn her shock into a crusade to change the justice system. As a single mother, she graduated college and law school. Today she is a leader in the bipartisan movement to end excessive incarceration. Jessica’s specialty is bringing political rivals together to pass bills considered “impossible.” As the bill’s main advocate, she led the drive to pass 2018’s “First Step Act.” The New York Times called the law “the most substantial justice reform in a generation;” it has already helped free more than 16,000 people. While leading her national initiative, #cut50, Jessica helped ban the shackling of jailed pregnant women in 14 states. Her “Dignity for Incarcerated Women” campaign enlisted formerly incarcerated women and dozens of celebrities to deepen the focus on women’s issues. At the helm of #cut50, Jessica built the biggest national grassroots network for bipartisan reform, #cut50’s Empathy Network. Jessica has led not only on the national level, but was also elected the youngest-ever Mayor of Mill Valley, California where she focused on affordable housing. Today, she now helps lead the REFORM Alliance, an organization where she is continuing her work to end mass incarceration and mass supervision. Jessica continues to take clemency cases as well, working on both the federal and state level to secure a second chance for individuals who have lengthy prison sentences. Jessica turned her hopelessness into hope for millions.

Thomas Crowther

Professor, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Thomas Crowther is a Welsh ecologist in the
department of Global Ecosystem Ecology at ETH
Zurich, where he founded Crowther Lab, an
interdisciplinary group of scientists studying global
ecosystems and generating knowledge to protect
biodiversity and address climate change. He serves
as chair of the advisory board of the UN Decade on
Ecosystem Restoration and chief scientific advisor
to the UN’s Trillion Trees Campaign.
Crowther is the founder of Restor, a science-based
open data platform that provides ecological
insights, transparency and connectivity to
conservation and restoration efforts across the
globe. Restor was named a finalist for the Royal
Foundation’s 2021 Earthshot Prize. Crowther serves on the advisory council
of WEF’s Trillion Trees initiative (1T.org).

Gaurav Gupta

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Gabit, India

Gaurav Gupta is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Zomato, a pioneering food technology start-up. He launched the table reservation business and scaled it up across- India, UAE, Australia. Apart from leading advertising sales globally, Gupta played an instrumental role in launching subscription service Zomato Gold and scaling it to one of the fastest growing paid membership programs.

Mayur Patel

Chief Commercial Officer, M-KOPA, Kenya

A leader in Africa’s fintech and digital media sectors, Mayur Patel is Chief Commercial Officer at M-KOPA, the region’s largest connected financing platform. Previously, he served as COO for Cassava Fintech, a provider of mobile wallet and payment solutions, and was CEO of the award-winning mobile streaming company, Kwesé iflix, which pioneered pay-as-you-watch live and on-demand video services on continent. Mayur is passionate about building inclusive and sustainable businesses. He is an Advisory Council Member of NYU Stern’s Center for Business & Human Rights, Advisory Board Chair of Africa's leading go-to-market platform for plant-based alternative meat and dairy products, Infinite Foods, and Board member of children’s educational content company, Ubongo. His work has featured in the Lancet, Stanford Social Innovation Review and Chronicle of Philanthropy. A Rhodes Scholar, Mayur has a doctorate in International Development from Oxford. He is a 2020 World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow.

Anneliese Schulz

Chief Revenue Officer, Syncron AB, Singapore

Today being part of CvP & Partners as Managing Partner, I have the opportunity to act as Chief Sales Officer for Syncron AB and member of the Group Management Team, one of the fastest growing SaaS companies headquarters in Sweden in their pursuit of enabling digital transformation for the manufacturing industry.

Anneliese has been previously acting as the youngest Regional President in Software AG’s history having lead their Asia Pacific and Japan business operations and having been a member of the Global Executive Leadership Team.

Her achievements externally working with customers and partners to transform their operations to the digital world as well as internally to transformation the Software AG operation in region led her to be recognised as “Business Leader of the Year” at the 2019 “Women in IT Asia” Awards, to be shortlisted as the "Transformation Leader of the Year" at the 2020 "Women in IT Asia" Awards and to be called out as part of the top 100 list of Women in Tech Listing in 2020. Anneliese is committed towards gender equality, multi-culturalism, and employee engagement. She has been leading her regional team on diversity and inclusion which she views as key innovation enabler and actively promotes in her work environment growth mindset principles and purpose-lead operations.