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

Paula Ingabire

Minister of Information Communication Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Information Communication Technology and Innovation of Rwanda, Rwanda

Holds a crucial and strategic portfolio in one of Africa's leading technological powers. Through passion and expertise, has propelled Rwanda forward in its adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution tools.

Luiza Mattos

Partner; Head of Healthcare South America, Bain & Company, Brazil

Luiza is a Partner with Bain & Company in São Paulo. As the Leader of the Healthcare practice in South America, she is passionate about developing strategies to deliver quality healthcare solutions under rationalized costs, being a catalyst for a more sustainable system. She has deep expertise in payers, primary care and hospital providers, as well as healthcare ecosystems, authoring points-of-view on how to advance the Brazilian healthcare system. She supports clients to develop deep understanding of their customer’s journeys, in order to deliver unique customer experiences, based on omnichannel approaches, state-of-the art technology and robust metrics. She is an enthusiast of transformations using Agile and Human-Centric co-creation approaches, as Design Thinking. As Womxn @ Bain Champion in South America, she dedicates time to promoting gender parity and developing young female leadership, within Bain as well as in the corporate world, by building studies on how to promote more women in leadership positions. Luiza holds a Master in Management focused on Information Businesses (Coppead Management School, Brazi), and a MBA with major in Finance, Operations and Marketing (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA). She graduated in Electronic & Computer Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Yoichi Ochiai

Associate Professor, University of Tsukuba, Japan

Yoichi Ochiai is an award-winning digital media artist, a recognized scholar, entrepreneur and media influencer. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, specializing in media art, human computer interactions and its application, and Head of the Digital Nature Laboratory. He is also Founder of Pixie Dust Technologies, a technology company developing digital fabrication through artificial intelligence-based solutions. Ochiai has received numerous awards for his work, including the 2015 World Technology Award, 2016 Prix Ars Electronica, European Union STARTS Prize, Laval Virtual Award and many others. He is the author of "The Century of Enchantment (Planets)" and "Survival Strategy of Super AI Era”. He has also given many lectures in Japan and abroad and at symposiums such as TEDxTokyo and at SEMICON Japan. Ochiai received his PhD in Applied Computer Science from the University of Tokyo.

Head of Research Development Center for Digital Nature, University of Tsukuba
Associate Professor, University of Tsukuba
Visiting Professor, Osaka University of Arts
Visiting Professor, Kyoto City University of Arts
Visiting Professor, Kanazawa College of Art
Visiting Professor, Digital Hollywood University
Principal Investigator of JST CREST xDiversity
Osaka, Kansai, Japan Expo2025 Site Theme Producer
Board Member of VR Consortium
Board Member of Mitoh Foundation
Board Member of xDiversity
General, Intellectual Property Strategy, Cabinet Office, Expert Committee Member
Digital Reform-Related Legislation Working Group, Committee Member
Cabinet Office "Moonshot" Research and Development Program Visionary Conference Member and Moonshot Ambassador
Cabinet Secretariat's Conference on Building a Social Security System for All Generations, Committee Member
Economic and Industrial Policy New Axis at the Industrial Structure Council, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Committee Member
World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders 2022 Members
Digital Agency, Digital Day Review Committee Member
Committee Member of the Cultural Affairs Council
Pixie Dust Technologies.Inc CEO

Sahar Albazar

President of the Forum of Young MPs, Inter-Parliamentary Union, Egypt

Sahar Albazar is an Egyptian Parliament Member and Deputy Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She is also the Former President of the Young Parliamentarians, part of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). Prior, Albazar was an Impact Assessment Consultant at the World Bank for Youth Employment Project in Egypt and Social Investment Adviser at British Petroleum Egypt. She is also the Founder of Helwa Ya Balady, an NGO that focuses on developing slum areas and countering poverty in developing countries. Albazar has an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Irina Lachowski

Member of the Board, RenovaBR, Brazil

Irina Bullara is former Chief Executive Officer of RenovaBR, an initiative founded by a group of Brazilian entrepreneurs looking to empower and qualify ordinary citizens that wanted to participate in Brazilian politics. Under her leadership, RenovaBR has transformed itself into one of the main political organizations in the country. Each election thousands of Brazilians subscribe to RenovaBR’s to learn about democracy, leadership, public finance, law and marketing. It has graduated more than 3,000 participants from all parties and ideologies, with RenovaBR students being among the most promising politicians in the country. Prior to starting RenovaBR, Bullara was the woman behind the largest private educational learning system (Anglo).

Isabelle Yap

Executive Director and Vice-President, East West Banking Corporation, Philippines

Isabelle Yap is vice president, special-projects officer, and executive director at EastWest Bank. As a former consultant at McKinsey, she has experience in serving multiple clients across the Philippine region, and she was part of the Management Associate program at Singtel, one of Asia’s leading telcos. A digital native, Yap brings in new perspectives and new ways of engaging with customers. She helped spearhead the launch of Komo, a digital banking service under EastWest Bank, and serves as chair for f(dev), the digital-venture builder and innovation factory of Filinvest Development.

Boju Zhang

Secretary General, Friends of Nature, People's Republic of China

Boju Zhang is secretary general of Ginkgo Foundation, who invests in young social entrepreneurs in China, helping them achieve great personal and career breakthroughs.
He is also a board member and Former CEO of Friends of Nature (FON) , the first green NGO in China, work to ensure the rights of all people to clean air, clean water and safe food. He develops and carries out strategies for FON programs on Environmental Public Interest Litigation, Policy Advocacy, Information Disclosure and Public Participation.

In recent 8 years, Boju and FON Team have filed 50 environmental public interest lawsuits, to protect biodiversity and human health, and promote renewable energy and combat climate change. Among them, the public interest litigation case of protecting Green Peacock was elected as the top 10 biodiversity protection cases in the world at the world environmental justice conference in 2021.

In recent years, Boju has found seven non-profit organizations and social enterprises in China, such as China Zero Waste Alliance which is the nationwide action network on solid waste management, and Gaia Nature School which is the leading social enterprise on environmental education.

Boju is the board member of the Environmental Public Relations and Strategic Communications Institute of China Environment Protection Ministry. He was the youth advisor for United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP).

Boju graduated from Beijing Jiaotong University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He won the Ray Dalio Scholarship and pursued Executive Leaders in Philanthropy program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Wei Ying

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Deja Vu, People's Republic of China

Prior to Déjà Vu, Ying Wei was the head of marketing at Xianyu, China's largest C2C secondhand platform at Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), and Zhihu (Nasdaq: ZH), China's largest social network platform dedicated to questioning and answering. With rich experience in marketing practices, she has always been a super lover of secondhand goods. Ying Wei deeply believes in the power of such scalable and profitable second-hand businesses, hoping to realize a higher utilization rate of social resources through a "business-for-good" way. Recycling offers people a new way to purchase good-quality products at lower prices instead of cheap fake ones. Meanwhile, it makes a significant environmental impact in protecting our earth, especially since the fashion industry is the 2nd largest polluter in the world. In the past five years, the books and clothes recycled by Déjà Vu have achieved over 85,000 tons of carbon reduction. In the future, Déjà Vu seeks to expand its recycling categories, from books and clothes to all consumer goods, offering a new life for each pre-loved item.

Zhuang Qian

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, KnowYourself, People's Republic of China

Zhuang Qian is the founder & chief executive officer of KnowYourself. During the last 5 years, she devoted herself in promoting the awareness of mental health within the society. KnowYourself is a start-up with the mission to lead a lifestyle of mental wellness in China. It provides psycho-education and self-care tools (meditation, therapy-e-mail, cognitive behavioral theory based products, etc.) that are adaptive to the current China and Chinese culture for its users. She takes it as her responsibility to participate in the trending digital innovation for the mental health services.