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.

Umit Kumcuoglu

Chief Executive Officer, Nyssa Finansal Danismanlik Ltd., Türkiye

Umit Kumcuoglu is the Chief Executive Officer of Kare Investments, a fund management company of the family office of Suna and Inan Kirac who are among the leading investors in Turkey. Formerly, he was an investment banker for Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan in New York, London and Istanbul. Kumcuoglu holds Bachelor degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Master's in Human Rights Law from Istanbul Bilgi University. He is currently working towards a PhD in political science at Istanbul Bilgi University. Kumcuoglu has been active in Turkish economic and financial affairs for over 15 years as researcher and writer, with a particular focus on contemporary Turkish politics and comparative Western and Islamic political philosophy.

Maja Kuzmanovic

President, FoAM, Belgium

Maja is a generalist - experience designer, artist, futurist and process facilitator, with a fondness for contemplation and futurecrafting. She is the founder and president of FoAM, a laboratory for speculative culture at the interstices between art, science, nature and everyday life.

Maja leads transdisciplinary teams in prototyping possible futures as creative experiments. She co-creates multisensory experiences, facilitates participatory processes, writes, speaks and cooks worldwide. Maja's academic background is in design futures and interactive media. In recent years, her embodied experience of living with uncertainty became the backbone of her creative practice.

Danae Kyriakopoulou

Co-Head, Climate Hub, Bank of England, United Kingdom

Economist focusing on climate change, the macroeconomy and the financial system. Working towards shaping & delivering the Bank of England’s strategy on climate change, in line with our mission to promote the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability.

Tamás Landesz

Director, Administration and Finance, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), France

Dr Tamás Landesz is Director, Administration and Finance at the World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) based in Lyon. Prior, Landesz held senior management functions in international organizations and advised governments, including the Office of the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, European Defence Agency, and United Nations system organizations. He has been posted in complex post-conflict hot spots across four continents. Landesz started his career as a management consultant, providing strategic advise to companies expanding to Eastern Europe, during the transition from centrally planned to market economies. He is a Member of Prof. Michael Porter`s Harvard Business School network, lecturing on the microeconomics of competitiveness. Landesz holds a PhD from Paris, an MPA from Harvard University, an MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and an MBA from Vienna. His research interest focuses on the future of leadership, and his PhD dissertation dealt with Authentic Leadership and Machiavellianism in Young Global Leaders.

Tristan Lecomte

Chief Executive Officer, Pur Projet, France

Tristan Lecomte is the Founder of Pur Projet, specialized in developing agroforestry insetting projects including offsetting the socio-environmental footprint of a product or company within its own supply chain and core business via agroforestry and agro-ecological practices. Tristan is the author of various books and the director of several films on sustainability. Tristan is also the Co-Founder of the International Platform for Insetting, a multi-stakeholders platform of companies and NGOs engaged in the promotion of Insetting via a certification standard and a blockchain registry.

James R. Lee

Chairman and Managing Partner, Lee & Partners, Denmark

Graduate, US Army and Navy Academy; Fellow, Wharton School. Founder, Lee & Partners. Trade & Investment Adviser, Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chairman: Six Days of Peace, Israel/Palestine; Samsung Design & Innovation, Denmark; Accura Law Firm Asia Advisory, Denmark. Member, Board: Wharton CEO Global Advisory; Wharton Future of Advertising; Wharton MENA; Mercy Corps Asia Advisory. Exec. Adviser: KPMG M3 Global China Practice; Li & Fung; Zodiac Aerospace; Prizeo.com, US/UK. Affiliated with: Danish Foreign Policy Soc.; Pres. William Jefferson Clinton Fndn; Millennium Network. Founding Curator, Copenhagen Chapter, Global Shapers Community.

Guillaume Lefevre

Head of Brokers Channel & Customers Commercial Insurance, Zurich Insurance Group, Italy

Guillaume has more than 15 years in the insurance industry, supporting clients around the world and working across different areas of the value chain: Insurance, Broking: Retail, Wholesale and Reinsurance. He has joined Zurich in 2018 to help shape its profound transformation as a customer centric and digitally integrated organization and is now responsible for our Commercial Insurance Distribution & Customers out of Milan Italy.

Moritz Lehmkuhl

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, ClimatePartner, Germany

Moritz Lehmkuhl is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ClimatePartner, an international consulting and service company in the voluntary climate protection market. Founded in 2006, the vision behind ClimatePartner is to change industries by integrating climate protection and sustainability into their core services and products and thereby make it a unique added value. ClimatePartner has today offices in 12 countries and a wonderful team of more than 650 people support the vision.

Catherine Lenson

Investor | Board Director | Executive Coach, United Kingdom

Catherine is an investor, board director and executive coach. She is based in London and works globally.

She is an experienced international C-suite executive with a strong track record in the People, DE&I and ESG fields.

She invests in exceptional early-stage tech companies across the UK, US and Israel, and brings in-depth previous board experience as both an executive and non-executive director.

She writes and speaks on topics including the future of work, corporate culture and purpose, diversity and inclusion, and work/life integration.

As part of her coaching practice, she is the first UK-based facilitator to be certified in the Fair Play method.

Tim Levene

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Augmentum Fintech PLC, United Kingdom

Studied Russian, University of Manchester. Formerly with Bain & Company, Moscow, Boston, Sydney and London. An experienced entrepreneur, Tim co- founded juice bar business Crussh and being a founding employee of Flutter.com, the latter of which became one of the highest profile digital businesses in the UK after it merged with Betfair.com in 2001 Tim is CEO and Founder of the UK’s only publicly listed, fintech-focused investment company Augmentum Fintech. After launching the first iteration of the fund in 2010 with the backing of RIT and Lord Rothschild, Tim and Co-Founder Richard Matthews launched Augmentum Fintech plc on the main market of the London Stock Exchange in 2018.
Tim has sat and currently sits on multiple fintech boards including Interactive Investor, Tide, Zopa, Farewill, iwoca and Monese and is highly active in cross-industry initiatives working to boost the UK fintech sector, including the UK FinTech Strategy Group. In 2022, Tim was elected in the City of London as an Alderman in the Ward of Bridge.

Mariah Levin

Executive Director, beVisioneers: The Mercedes Benz Fellowship, Switzerland

Mariah has over a decade of generating positive impact at the nexus of public and private sectors, focusing on social and economic inclusion, the environment, and education. She is currently advising social sector start-ups to drive greener and more equitable opportunities for future generations, and her clients include the LEGO Foundation, .

Wei Li

Global Chief Investment Strategist, BlackRock, United Kingdom

Wei Li, Managing Director, is Global Chief Investment Strategist for BlackRock. She leads the Investment Strategy team within the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII), responsible for developing thought leadership on tactical asset allocation and delivering actionable views across asset classes.