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.

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.

Andrew Lee

Member of the Board of Directors, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, USA

Board of Directors: Harvard Honoring Nations Program, US Lacrosse, The Tewaaraton Foundation, Chickasaw Nation Community Development Endeavor. Co-author, The State of the Native Nations. Held variety of executive roles at Aetna Inc. (2005-15), including Chief of Staff to President/CEO and head of Public Policy. Formerly executive director of Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard Kennedy School (1998-2005). Peace and Social Justice Program at Ford Foundation (1996-98). AB from Hamilton College; MPP from Harvard Kennedy School. Expertise: indigenous affairs, economic development, health care, philanthropy.

Ellana Lee

Senior Vice-President and Managing Editor, Asia-Pacific; Global Head, Features, CNN International, Hong Kong SAR, China

Ellana Lee is Senior Vice President & Managing Editor, Asia Pacific, for CNN International, and Global Head of Features Content, based in the network’s Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong.
Lee is the network’s most senior executive outside of the United States. As head of the Asia Pacific region and its editorial output, she manages CNN's award-winning on-air news programming produced there, including the correspondents and newsgathering teams across eight operations, from Kabul to Seoul.
As Global Head of Features content across CNN International television and CNN Digital, she is responsible for the partnership between CNN’s international editorial and commercial teams, helping to drive the network’s business outside the United States.
CNN’s features group is an integrated, cross-platform, award-winning creative team, producing more than 1000 hours of premium original programming every year. This encompasses long-form series, documentaries and specials for TV, digital and social platforms across eight production hubs in Hong Kong, London, Abu Dhabi, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Johannesburg and Miami.
Under Lee’s management, CNN has received a variety of prestigious awards, including five award wins at the Asian Academy Creative Awards in 2018. The Royal Television Society (RTS) awarded CNN the coveted Best News Coverage International prize in 2013 for its reporting of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and this and other reporting from the region played a key role in CNN International winning the RTS News Channel of the Year in 2013 and 2012. Lee has also received numerous personal accolades, including ContentAsia’s ‘Asia Media Woman of the Year’ in 2018 for her commitment to the news media industry.
Lee was also an integral part of CNN’s coverage of the historic Inter-Korean and the Trump-Kim summits in 2019 and 2018. She has traveled to North Korea several times and in mid-2017 spearheaded an exclusive report called Secret State: Inside North Korea. The 60-minute documentary followed CNN cameras inside the secretive nation and was awarded Best Documentary Program at the Asian Academy Creative Awards in 2018.
In recognition of her leadership position, Lee was named a 'Young Global Leader' by the World Economic Forum and now sits on the board of the Young Global Leaders Foundation. She is an Asia 21 fellow, as awarded by the Asia Society, and is a graduate of Harvard's 'Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century' Executive Program. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and The Nature Conservancy’s Asia Pacific Council, and sits on the advisory board of The Murrow Centre at Tuft University.
Lee has had a longstanding and accomplished career at CNN, beginning in New York as a producer to help launch the program 'In The Money'. She subsequently worked as a business producer and a senior planning producer, coordinating major events out of the Asia Pacific region.
She holds a Master's degree in Broadcast Journalism from New York University and an undergraduate degree in History and International Relations from Georgetown University.

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.

Joo-sung Lee

President, SeAH Steel, Republic of Korea

Joosung Lee is the President & CEO of SeAH Steel Holdings and also serving as the President at SeAH Steel. SeAH Wind is currently building UK's first offshore wind monopile manufacturing facility in Teesside. Previously, he worked at Accenture and Merrill Lynch in Seoul where he was involved in numerous landmark M&A and capital markets transactions. Joosung holds a BA in Economics and East Asian Languages & Civilizations from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Columbia University. Young Global Leader Alumni, World Economic Forum (2013).

Sam Lee

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, IndeCollective, USA

Building and leading WeWork’s first central Growth Team, Sam Lee is a recognized growth leader and charged with exponentially accelerating WeWork's membership and revenue growth through data modeling and insight, product innovation, growth strategy, and sales and marketing.

Prior to joining WeWork’s Leadership Team in 2016, Sam held various strategy and general management roles in the financial services (Goldman Sachs) and consumer Internet industries (AOL). Sam is a board member, advisor, and investor in various venture-backed and non-profit organizations that span the technology, education, and healthcare industries. He is also a Limited Partner and Board Member at Redesign Health, a venture studio that partners with entrepreneurs to identify, launch, and scale new direct-to-consumer healthcare businesses that improve access and elevate patient experience.

Sam earned his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his Masters in Finance and Public Policy from Harvard University.

Julianne Lee Jihyun

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Julianne Lee & Co., Republic of Korea

Julianne Lee is publisher of ARS VITAE, a limited-edition serial publication about what it means to live well. She is also Co-Founder of Krueger & Lee, a Swiss-based non-profit organization which organizes the Science & Spirituality Forum through which she shares evidence-based perspectives on life with wisdom and joy to be "the change that one wishes to see in the world". She was formerly anchorwoman and journalist at SBS TV network, Korea, the first female journalist in Korea to become solo anchor of primetime news hour; the first female Spokesperson of Korea's National Security Council; first Presidential Spokesperson for Foreign Press; Presidential Secretary for Foreign Press Affairs. She was also host of ""Korea Now"" on Arirang TV, the English-language broadcasting channel in Korea and Senior Adviser to RBS, Korea. She is Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and also one of the Future Leaders of Korea-China-Japan by the Korea Foundation.
BA, Brown University; MA, Harvard University.

Lee Xiaodong

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Fuxi Institution, People's Republic of China

Founder and CEO of Fuxi Institution, which is focusing on Internet and Digital Economy, e.g. Internet Infrastructure, Internet Governance, Data Governance, Digital Economy and Digital Civilization.

Professor and Director, ICT Laboratory for Internet Infrastructure, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Professor and Director of Center for Internet Governance, Tsinghua University.

He is serving as Vice President of Internet Society of China, Commissioner of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC), Commissioner of Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC), Member of All-China Youth Federation.

He used to be CEO of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC, 2013-2017), Vice President of ICANN (2011-2013), Founder CEO of National Engineering Laboratory for Naming and Addressing Technologies (2013-2017), Member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) of Internet Governance Forum (IGF) of United Nations (2014-2017), Member of ICANN Security, Stability and Resiliency Review Team (SSR-RT, 2010-2012),Member of ICANN Security, Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC, 2010-2019), Member of Global Agenda/Future Council of WEF (2013-2019). He was appointed to the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG, 2014-2016), which made the transition of key global Internet functions successfully happened in 2016. He was awarded Young Global Leader in 2014, China Outstanding Youth Medal in 2009 and Ten Outstanding Youth of China Software Industry in 2008.

Michael Lefenfeld

President & Chief Executive Officer, USA

Michael Lefenfeld is President and Chief Executive Officer at Hexion Inc. and serves as a member of the Board of Managers for ASP Resins Holdings LP. Michael joined Hexion in January 2023. Prior to joining Hexion, Michael served as President and CEO of Cyanco International, where he led the world’s largest manufacturer of gold and silver extraction materials, while driving the effort to make recovery safer and more efficient. From 2007 to 2017, he was President and CEO of SiGNa Chemistry, a global chemical manufacturer of reactive metal materials serving oil & gas recovery, petrochemical refining, alternative energy and chemical processing industries. Michael also founded Alkami Consulting Group, a technology investment advisory group, and Blood Gas Diagnostics, a medical device technology growth company. With a unique combination of executive, operational and entrepreneurial experience, Michael holds more than 100 patents and patents pending that are intended to collectively address some of the world’s most pressing environmental and sustainable product-related challenges. A serial entrepreneur, he has been named a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum in 2016, while SIGNa was recognized with the EPA’s Presidential Green Chemistry Award under his leadership.

Michael earned a Master of Philosophy and Master of Science in Chemistry from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis.

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.

Courtney Leimkuhler

Founding Partner, Springbank Collective, USA

My husband Charles and I just returned from a year of amazing global travel with our two young children. Before taking a year off, I was the Chief Financial Officer of Marsh and of the Risk and Insurance Services segment of Marsh & McLennan Companies (NYSE: MMC). Before that I was the head of strategy and M&A for the New York Stock Exchange's parent company NYSE Euronext. I started my career in a variety of roles at Goldman Sachs. I went to Harvard College and Harvard Business School.

I believe strongly in access to opportunity and role models and spent many years as the vice chairman of the board of Futures and Options, a New York City-based non-profit that seeks to break the cycle of poverty by providing job skills training and paid internships to at-risk high school kids. I'm also on the board of the Agnes Irwin School which is my alma mater.

I set up a small advisory and investment business while I decide what to do next. I am very committed to putting capitalism to work on some of the most pressing issues that we are facing right now. Two areas that I have spent the most time on so far are gender parity and the climate crisis.