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.

Michal Krupinski

Senior Advisor, Warburg Pincus LLC, Switzerland

Until November 2019 Michal Krupinski served as Chief Executive Officer of Bank Pekao, 2nd largest universal bank and a leading corporate and investment bank in Poland. Prior to joining the Bank, held number of senior managerial roles in leading financial institutions. Most recently, as Chief Executive Officer, PZU Group, the region’s largest financial group, repositioned the firm for growth and strengthened its presence in banking. Previously, from 2011, was Head of Global Banking and Markets for Central and Eastern Europe at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, responsible for M&A projects, financing and capital advisory. Also has broad-based public sector experience. 2008-11, Alternate Executive Director of the Board of Directors, World Bank Group, Washington. Prior to this, served as Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Treasury. Graduate, Warsaw School of Economics, KU Leuven; MBA, Columbia University. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum (2012).

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. Co-Head of the Bank of England’s Climate Hub, setting the strategy for ensuring the UK economy and financial system are resilient to the risks from climate change and managing the implications for the macroeconomy and financial stability. Previously a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the London School of Economics working with Lord Nicholas Stern, leading policy work for the G7, G20, COP and Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action on the intersections of climate change, international finance and economic development. Also served as Chief Economist and Director of Research of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum and as Senior Economic Adviser to the ICAEW and Managing Economist of the Centre for Economics and Business Research. University of Oxford BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and an MSc in Economics for Development. Selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2022.

Stéphanie Lacour

Professor, Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

PhD in Electrical Engineering, INSA de Lyon, France; completed postdoctoral research, Princeton University, USA, and the University of Cambridge, UK. Currently, Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology, School of Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Research focuses on the materials, technology and integration of soft bioelectronic interfaces including artificial skin and ultra-compliant neural electrodes for therapeutic neuroprosthetics. Founding Member, EPFL Centre for Neuroprosthetics. Recipient: MIT TR35 (2006); University Research Fellowship, Royal Society (UK); European Research Council ERC Starting and Proof-of-Concept Grants; SNSF-ERC Consolidator Grant.

Hilal Ahmed Lashuel

Associate Professor of Life Sciences, Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

1994, BSc in Chemistry, City Univ., NY; 1999, PhD, Texas A&M Univ. and Scripps Research Institute. Formerly: Research Fellow, Picower Institute for Medical Research, NY; 2001-04, Research Fellow, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital; 2005, Asst Professor, Neurosciences, Brain Mind Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Currently: Assoc. Professor of Life Sciences; Director, Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Neuroproteomics, Brain Mind Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Lecturer. Author of +80 research publications; holds three patents. Academic Editor, PLoS ONE. Assoc. Editor, Frontiers of Molecular Neuroscience and ChemBiochem. Adviser to universities on biomedical research and higher education. Founding Member and Secretary-General, Society for the Advancement of Science and Technology in the Arab World.

Hilal Ahmed Lashuel was born in Taiz, Republic of Yemen. He received his BSc degree in chemistry from the City University of New York in 1994 and completed his doctoral studies in biological chemistry at Texas A&M University and the Scripps Research Institute in 2000. In 2001, he moved to Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women's Hospital as a research fellow and was later promoted to Instructor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. In 2005, Lashuel moved Switzerland to join the Brain Mind Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, where he is now Associate Professor of Life Sciences and Director of the Laboratory of Molecular and Chemical Biology of Neurodegeneration. His research has resulted in the identification of potential therapeutic targets and new hypotheses concerning the mechanisms of pathogenesis in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and related disorders. Lashuel is a co-founder and Secretary-General of the Society for the Advancement of Science and Technology in the Arab World (SASTA).

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.

Olivia Leland

Founder and Chief Executive, Co-Impact, United Kingdom

Olivia Leland brings more than 20 years of experience in philanthropy, government, and the nonprofit sector to her role as founder and CEO of Co-Impact. Co-Impact brings together philanthropists, foundations and other funders to support systems change efforts in low- and middle-income countries around the world, in the areas of education, health, and economic opportunity, and with a particular focus on gender equity and inclusion. Olivia worked with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett as the founding director of the Giving Pledge, an effort to help address society's most pressing problems by encouraging philanthropy globally. In this role, she was responsible for building out the concept from inception, as well as overseeing the strategy and implementation for this effort which now has more than 200 families committed from around the world. Previously, she led a cross-foundation strategy effort at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and served as associate director for financial and private sector development at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. She has consulted on microfinance and private sector development, and was a strategy consultant at Monitor Group where she focused on branding, market research and venture philanthropy. She sits on the board of the Full Frame Initiative, a nonprofit organization that works to break cycles of poverty and violence through systems change. In 2014 Olivia was recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. Olivia received her AB in Social Studies from Harvard University and MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She lives with her husband and three children in London, UK, and holds dual US/French nationality.

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.