Community

The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a community of innovators from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Search current members and alumni by year awarded, sector or region.

Jacek Szwajcowski

Chief Executive Officer, Pelion, Poland

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pelion S.A., a company with a 34-year history of operations in the healthcare sector. Graduate of Technical University of Lodz. As a part of postgraduate education completed courses at Harvard Kennedy School, George Mason University, Said Business School – University of Oxford and Jackson Institute for Global Affairs – Yale University. Member of the Supervisory Board of several companies, including listed company Pharmena S.A.. In addition to involvement in the further development of the company, Jacek engages in the Polish Business Roundtable, an organization associating owners and key manager of the largest Polish enterprises, and companies operating in Poland, serving as a President of the association until May 2019 and currently being its Member. Initiator of the "I care for my health" Foundation, whose statutory mission is to provide financial assistance to those who cannot afford to buy essential medicines. Currently the Foundation focuses mainly at Seniors support. As a passionate of the tradition of Polish pharmacy, he initiated the opening of a private Pharmacy Museum in Lodz. Publisher of series of monographs about the most famous Polish pharmacies.

Lucian Tarnowski

Founding Curator, Civana, Spain

Lucian Tarnowski, Founding Curator, United Planet & UP.Game

The UP Game is a time traveling immersive reality to create mythologies from a thriving future. Lucian is spent 2 years designing a platform for a planetary unifying narrative to respond to the crisis of meaning and trust. This mission is to deliver on the decade of transformation and seed the vision for a Planetary Civilization in harmony with all life. Lucian believes we succeed by reverse engineering the story from the future. Lucian is a Gaian on a mission to serve the birthing of the Planetary Age.

Lucian has a decade of experience in designing and powering online communities that connect diverse stakeholders around a shared purpose. Communities support virtual and distributed teams to scale and achieve their collaboration, knowledge sharing and problem-solving goals. For 10 years he was Founder & CEO of BraveNew which enabled Fortune 1000 clients such as GE, and collaboratives such as Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Geinsinger Health to cooperate and collaborate around a shared purpose.

Lucian has been honoured as a Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum. He has been an active attendee of Davos and other World Economic Forum meetings for 14 years. He continues to research and experiment around the social science behind communities, knowledge sharing and societal transformation.

Since 2002, he has run Take Heart India, a 53-year-old no overheads charity started by his father that provides blind and handicapped people in rural India with the vocational employment skills to required to get lifelong employment.

He has spoken at gatherings such as Davos, various World Economic Forum meetings, TEDx, The China Digital Summit, Impact Summit and for companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Oracle, Pearson, IBM and PWC. He speaks to audiences around the world about communities and the convergence of talent, knowledge and capital and the impact on society.

Rodrigo Tavares

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Granito Group, Portugal

Founder and CEO of the London-based Granito Group, a company that advances the sustainable economy through strategy consulting, financial advisory, and policy & research. The Group has collaborated with multiple financial organizations (institutional investors, asset managers, family offices, regulators) in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America to enable their transition to a sustainable economy. In 2022 the Group won the “Best ESG Financial Advisory Firm” (Ethical Finance Awards) and the “Most Pioneering Thought-Leader in PE Investment & ESG Strategies 2021” (M&A Awards).

Invited Full Professor of Sustainable Finance at NOVA School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE), in Portugal.

He holds over 15 years of experience in government and international organizations working with foreign affairs and economic cooperation. In 2008-2010 he was invited by the UN Secretariat to write Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's annual reports on Africa's development. From 2011 to 2014 served as Head of the São Paulo State Government's Office of Foreign Affairs.

His academic path includes the universities of Harvard (Senior Research Fellow), Columbia (Research Fellow on a postdoc grant), Gothenburg (Ph.D.), and California, Berkeley (Visiting Research Fellow). Author of 4 books, including “Paradiplomacy: Cities and States as Global Players” (Oxford University Press).

He was nominated Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (2017), and StartUp Portugal Ambassador (2018). Columnist at Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil) and Expresso (Portugal).

Natznet Tesfay

Head, Insights and Analysis, Economic and Country Risk, S&P Global, United Kingdom

Ms. Natznet Tesfay leads the Economics and Country Risk Analysis group, which has over 150 experts around the world forecasting the economic, sovereign risk and granular country risk outlooks for 206 countries and geographies as well as comparative performance of over 80 industries and consumer markets globally. Natznet’s areas of focus include geopolitical competition, emerging market debt vulnerabilities, energy transition and global supply chain re-alignment. For over a decade, Ms. Tesfay led Africa analysis group, developing the regional risk indicator and horizon scanning infrastructure, drawing on a range of methodologies such as geospatial analysis, influence mapping and scenario modelling techniques. Natznet supports business growth in emerging markets, advising C-level executives on market entry and risk management, and governments on leveraging their natural resource potential for sustainable economic growth. She regularly speaks in major media outlets, and at high-level conferences. Previously, she had advised on the development of free trade zones, foreign policy and the mining sector in the Horn of Africa. Ms. Tesfay’s degrees include a BA in Government from Harvard University and a MSc in Urbanization and Development from the London School of Economics.

Serpil Timuray

CEO EU Cluster, Member of Group Executive Committee, Vodafone Group, United Kingdom

Serpil Timuray, Chief Executive, Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific Region, joined the Executive Committee on 1 January 2014. Serpil joined Vodafone as Chief Executive of Vodafone Turkey in January 2009 and was appointed as a Director on the Board of Vodacom Group in South Africa in September 2012. She was appointed to the Boards of Vodafone India, Vodafone Hutchison Australia, Safaricom Kenya in November 2013, Vodafone Egypt in January 2014 and Vodafone Qatar in June 2014.
Serpil was previously General Manager of Danone Turkey from 2002-2008. She began her career in 1991 in marketing at Procter & Gamble where she was later appointed to the Executive Committee of Procter & Gamble Turkey.
Serpil is currently the Chairperson of the Board of YASED (International Investors Association), Vice-Chairperson of the Board of DEIK-TIIK (Turkish-British Business Council of Foreign Economic Relations), a Board Member of TOBB-GGK (Young Entrepreneurs Council of Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges) and sits on the Board of Trustees at Koc University, Turkey.

Irene Tinagli

Member of the European Parliament, European Union, European Parliament, Belgium

Irene Tinagli is an economist, serving as an advisor for firms and governments on innovation and labor policies. From Feb 2013 to March 2018 she was a member of the Italian Parliament and of the permanent Committee on Labor and Employment. Previously she was an Academic, teaching and conducting research at the University Carlos III in Madrid. Her research focused on policies for innovation, creativity and regional development, studying and benchmarking hundreds of cities and regions worldwide. Her work on the creative potential of cities and regions has been featured in international journals such as Harvard Business Review and the Financial Times. She served as an Expert on Creativity and Innovation for the European Commission and consulted for the United Nations (UNDESA) as well as for several national and regional governments. She has been a columnist for the Italian newspaper La Stampa and is a published author. She received her PhD and Master's of Science in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Iliyana Tsanova

Chief Risk Officer, Deputy Director-General, Chief Risk Officer, DG Budget, European Commission, Belgium

Iliyana is Deputy Director-General and Chief Risk Officer at DG Budget of the European Commission. Prior to that, she was Deputy Managing Director of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), an EUR 26 billion-guarantee facility launched jointly by the European Commission and the European Investment Bank Group to boost and support investments in the European Union. She has over ten years of experience in development finance with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, UK. Iliyana has held several board positions in international infrastructure companies and investment funds. In 2013 and 2014, Iliyana was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in two consecutive caretaker governments in Bulgaria. She holds MSc in Finance from the University for National and World Economy, Bulgaria and a postgraduate diploma in Financial Management from George Washington University, USA.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

Director, France, The ONE Campaign, France

Former Minister for Women’s rights and then for Education. Director France of the One Campaign.

Hajo van Beijma

Founder, Atilax, Netherlands

Founder at Atilax: Executive Search for Tech Companies and Scale-Ups. Hajo is an entrepreneur who operates as an international leader in the field of technology and human behavior. Hajo combines commercial focus with user centered design principles growing projects and organizations from basic ideas to internationally scaled-up successful enterprises. Hajo's passion and purpose is building creative teams around new tech driven ideas with the goal of influencing people’s lives. Expertise in: Mobile tech, mobile payments, loyalty programs, content & technology, scale-ups, behavior change, international expansion, emerging markets, growth strategy, multi stakeholder partnerships & headhunting. Skills: Business development, closing deals, headhunting, pioneering, change management, leading virtual teams, strategic thinking, team-building, risk-taking, networking. Hajo is a member of the World Economic Forum group of Young Global Leaders since 2014 and has been trained at Harvard, Oxford, Singularity University, Insead, THNK and the University of Amsterdam. Hajo is the co-author of many publications on the use of mobile technologies in emerging markets and received a UN leadership award from the deputy Secretary General in 2014 for his work.

Karien van Gennip

Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Social Affairs and Employment (2022-2024), Netherlands

Minister Van Gennip serves as the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment of the Netherlands since January 2022; and also as Deputy Prime Minister since September 2023. Her portfolio includes labour market policy, purchasing power, working conditions, labour migration, civic integration, labour market discrimination, childcare and child benefit schemes, international policy and inspection.

Equitable opportunities and inclusion have been a common thread throughout her career. Until January 2022 she served as the CEO of VGZ, the second largest health care insurer in the Netherlands. She has been board member of the OranjeFonds & INSEAD. Chair of the supervisory board of children’s charity SOS Kinderdorpen Nederland. Vice-chair of the supervisory board of emergency development charity Cordaid & the International Chamber of Commerce.

Van Gennip has broad experience in politics and business. After studying applied physics at the Technical University of Delft, followed by an MBA at INSEAD, she worked at management consultancy McKinsey & Company in Amsterdam and San Francisco. In 2002 she joined the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets. She was appointed State Secretary of Economic Affairs and Minister for Foreign Trade in 2003. In 2006 she became a member of parliament for the Christian Democrats. Van Gennip joined ING in 2008 and became CEO ING France in 2015.

Van Gennip is a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands and a Knight of the Legion of Honour in France. In her spare time she is a field hockey coach and enjoys running. She is married and has four daughters.

Coen van Oostrom

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, EDGE, Netherlands

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, EDGE, one of Europe’s largest commercial property developers and a global leader in tech-enabled sustainable building design for ambitious customers worldwide. Since founding the firm in 1997, has led the growth of EDGE (formerly OVG Real Estate) to its current scope with more than a million square meters of development across the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany and United States. Recently introduced EDGE Next: a sensor and data-driven platform that can optimize any office building’s performance, making it smarter, healthier, and more sustainable.

Mabel van Oranje

Chair, Girls Not Brides, United Kingdom

Mabel van Oranje is a serial entrepreneur for social change working globally to advance equality, freedom and justice. During the last decade, she played a catalytic role in the global movement to end child marriage, including the creation and growth of three entities central to efforts to support girls’ futures: Girls Not Brides, the Girls First Fund, and VOW for Girls. Mabel is currently a board member of Fondation Chanel, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and VOW for Girls (Chair). She is also an advisor to Apolitical Academy Global, Co-Impact’s Gender Fund, Global Witness, and The Elders. Mabel is a global champion of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, and a co-founder and chair emeritus of the European Council on Foreign Relations.