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.

Atika Rehman

Deputy Editor, The Third Pole, United Kingdom

Atika Rehman is a journalist with over a decade of experience working as a reporter and editor in Pakistan. She is now based in the UK, where she is the foreign correspondent for Dawn, a widely respected English daily in Pakistan. Atika covers a breadth of local and international stories. She reports on Pakistani politics and the sizeable British Pakistani community in the UK and covers major developing stories such as Brexit, the elections and landmark court cases. Previously, she was the Managing Editor of Dawn.com, Pakistan's highest traffic English news site which has a digital audience of 90 million a month. Currently, Atika is also the Deputy Editor at The Third Pole, a digital publication which covers Asia's water crisis and its effects on migration, food security and livelihoods. Her work has earned both national and international recognition. Atika is a 2019 Acumen Fellow.

Carol Reiley

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Reiley Consulting, USA

An entrepreneur and an active advocate for diversity/bias in AI, Carol E. Reiley has touched many applications of AI/robotics: healthcare (Intuitive Surgical), space (Lockheed Martin), self-driving cars, etc. She co-founded and was president of the leading start-up drive.ai where she led partnerships with Lyft and Grab and raised over $77 million. She founded Tinkerbelle Labs, specializing in low-cost healthcare. She was an instructor at Johns Hopkins and led a robot outreach event for low-income students. She's written a top selling children's book, is a brand ambassador for Guerlain and was selected by Forbes and MIT Tech Review as one of the top women in AI.

Rahul Rekhi

Counselor for International Affairs, U.S. Department of the Treasury, USA

Rahul is Counselor for International Affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department, where he advises on a range of international financial and economic issues, including the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, G7 and G20, trade and investment, sustainability, and international financial regulation.

Before joining the Biden administration, Rahul was a Managing Director at Lazard in New York where he advised businesses, investors, and governments on a range of financial and strategic matters, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, capital markets, and related issues. His transaction experience spanned the intersection of healthcare, technology, and consumer/retail as well as that of markets and public policy. Rahul founded and led the firm's special opportunities unit and advised on transactions representing over $200 billion in deal value.

Rahul also directed the Next Bretton Woods Group at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a global convening forum for rising leaders in economic and financial policy across the G20 economies. Previously, he served as a staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers at the Obama White House, a consultant for the World Bank, and an advisor to England’s Chief Medical Officer.

Rahul has been named a Truman Scholar, Forbes 30 under 30, Economic Club of New York Fellow, Atlantik-Brücke Young Leader, French-American Foundation Young Leader, BMW Foundation Responsible Leader, Council on Foreign Relations Corporate Leader, and one of Business Insider’s “top dealmakers in digital health,” and he has authored a range of articles, policy briefs, and book chapters on economic issues. He has also served on the board of the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy and the Lazard Foundation, and was an outside economic advisor for the Biden-Harris presidential campaign.

Rahul received graduate degrees from Oxford and the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar, and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Rice University with degrees in engineering and economics.

Viridiana Rios

Founding Director, México ¿cómo vamos?, Mexico

Viridiana Rios is an expert in Mexico’s sub-national economy, citizen security and rule of law. Her career has taken her from positions as a public officer and applied researcher, to entrepreneur and journalist. She has served as an adviser to Mexico’s Minister of Finance and to the Mexican President’s spokeswoman. She was awarded the 2014 American Political Science Award to the best doctoral dissertation written in the last two years. She also received Harvard’s Merit Fellowship for Outstanding Research in 2011, was selected as one of the top-12 young experts by NBER’s Working Group of the Economics of Crime in 2012 and profiled at Harvard Gazette as one of the 15 Harvard’s stellar graduates of 2013.

Paul Rivera

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Kalibrr Technology Ventures, Philippines

Paul Rivera is the co-founder and chairman of Kalibrr, a careers platform for over 7 million young professionals in the Philippines and Indonesia. Paul is the co-founder and Managing Director of Remedy/Healthspan, a fast growing medical and clinic business in the Philippines. Paul is a graduate of UC Berkeley and is an Endeavor Entrepreneur.

Kishin R K

Chief Executive Officer, RB Capital Limited, Singapore

Founded in 2006 by Kishin RK, RB Capital is a privately held real estate group with over USD $5billion in assets. RB Capital is focused on the acquisition and development of hospitality, commercial, and healthcare properties across Asia Pacific. Its portfolio in Singapore includes the RB Capital Building Raffles Place, 25 North Bridge Building and Cuppage Terrace. In Kuala Lumpur, RB Capital owns the HSBC Building in Bukit Bintang.

Kishin launched RB Capital Hotels in 2010, which holds a bold presence in the hospitality sector following the opening of Holiday Inn Express Clarke Quay, Holiday Inn Little India and Intercontinental Singapore Robertson Quay. Today, RB Capital Hotels is one of Singapore’s largest hotel owners with over 1200 keys.

In 2013 , RB Capital expanded with the launch of RB Capital Healthcare, providing innovative and strategic real estate solutions to the healthcare industry, most recently launching Farrer Square Medical Centre.

In the same year, RB Capital acquired Robertson Quay- an extensive and heartfelt 5-year regeneration project along the Singapore River.The project has since transformed Robertson Quay into one of the most trendy neighbourhoods in Singapore. It is anchored by Intercontinental Singapore Robertson Quay which adjoins The Quayside, a lifestyle retail and dining destination along the historic Singapore River.

In 2019, Kishin founded Tiffinlabs with the focus on converting underutilised real estate into delivery enabled kitchens combined with a brand development platform to create digital first restaurants built for global scale. Tiffinlabs has expanded to the USA, EU from its home base of Singapore to bring delivery first restaurant brands to consumers around the world through its committed global network of over 1,000 cloud kitchens.

Kishin is a member of Young President’s Organization (YPO) and sits on the Board of Singapore River One and Raffles Place Alliance which are private - public partnerships, charged with rejuvenating strategic locations across Singapore. He also sits on the board of Weybourne Holdings as a non-executive director, the holding company of Dyson.

Gregory Rockson

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, mPharma, Ghana

Gregory Rockson is the co-founder and CEO of mPharma, a technology-driven, vendor-managed inventory and retail
pharmacy operator with operations across eight countries in Africa. An alumni of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community and tech pioneer, he was a PPIA Fellow in Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and a Rotary Scholar at University of Copenhagen.

Alexander Rodnyansky

Economic Advisor to the President, Office of the President of Ukraine, Ukraine

Alexander Rodnyansky is a presidential advisor, a supervisory board member and chairman of the strategy and transformation committee of Ukraine's largest commercial bank (Oschadbank). He was the youngest ever chief economic adviser to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, and an associate professor of economics at the University of Cambridge (on public service leave since 2020). Rodnyansky is a research affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a member of the Centre for Macroeconomics and a frequent referee for top economics journals, the recipient of multiple honours and awards, including the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance Fellowship, Princeton’s Fellowship of Woodrow Wilson Scholars, Princeton’s highest teaching citation (the Graduate School Teaching Award), Princeton's Towbes Prize for Outstanding Teaching, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Macro Financial Modeling Research Grant. Rodnyansky earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University, and an M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

James Rogers

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Apeel, USA

James Rogers, is preoccupied with tipping civilization into an era that will allow us to regard the ‘plastic age’ the same way we regard the ‘stone age’. After receiving his PhD from UCSB in Materials, James founded Apeel with two graduate school friends. Apeel uses materials found in nature to create an invisible ‘peel’ on the outside of fruits and vegetables that allows them to live 2-3x longer. James’ time building Apeel led him to think of technology as a catalyst for system change. He is obsessed with expanding our concept of community beyond the people that we can keep track of on our own mental ledger.

Michele Romanow

Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Clearco, Canada

Michele Romanow is a serial entrepreneur who started six companies before her 35th birthday. A “Dragon” on CBC’s hit show Dragons’ Den (Canada’s Shark Tank), Michele is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Clearco (formerly Clearbanc). Clearco has invested more than $5B+ into 10000+ companies making them the biggest ecommerce investor in the world. She previously co-founded SnapSaves, acquired by American tech giant Groupon, and Buytopia.ca, which acquired ten competitors, including Shop.ca and WagJag.

A prolific investor, Michele was recently named Fortune’s 40 under 40, a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women, Canada’s Angel Investor of the Year and winner of RBC’s Women of Influence, Innovation Award.

Michele co-founded the Canadian Entrepreneurship Initiative with Richard Branson to encourage more women entrepreneurs. Michele has worked driving new digital solutions to many of the world’s leading brands, including P&G, Netflix, Starbucks, and Cirque du Soleil. In addition, she’s advised Fortune 100s and governments on innovation, AI, blockchain and the new economy.

During her Civil Engineering undergrad at Queen’s University, Michele founded The Tea Room, the first zero-consumer-waste coffee shop. At Queen’s, she was given the Queen’s Tricolour — the highest honor awarded by the university — and, after completing her Queen’s MBA, she founded Evandale Caviar, a vertically integrated commercial fishery.

Michele is a director for Vail Resorts (NYSE: MTN), BBTV and Queen’s School of Business. Previously she was a director for Freshii, Whistler Blackcomb, SHAD International and League of Innovators.

Thomas Roulet

Professor of Leadership, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Thomas Roulet is Chair of Organisational Sociology and Leadership, at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of King's College Cambridge where he co-founded the King's Entrepreneurship Lab, a venture incubator. His work revolves around stigma and contestation, mental health and the future of work and has been published in premiere research outlets, the Harvard Business Review, and the MIT Sloan Management Review. His latest book, "The Power of Being Divisive" (Stanford Press, 2020) was labelled by the Financial Times as “a fascinating study of the social-media fuelled and fast-changing landscape of public opinion, and the possible ways in which that might be beneficial”. He has been regularly covered in the Financial Times, the Economist, the Telegraph and Le Monde, among others. He has received multiple awards including the Pilkington Prize of Teaching Excellence, was made a Mid-Career Fellow of the British Academy, named one of the 40 Best Business School Professors Under 40 (Poets&Quants) and is on the Thinkers50 Radar.

Olga Rudenko

Editor-in-Chief, The Kyiv Independent, Ukraine

Olga Rudenko is a Ukrainian journalist who worked for Kyiv Post before leaving to assist in the establishment of the Kyiv Independent in 2021, where she is the Editor-in-Chief. In 2022, Rudenko was featured on the front cover of Time magazine's May double issue, as one of its “Next Generation Leaders.”