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.

Nikolina Angelkova

Chairwoman, Center for Empowerment of Women in Politics, Bulgaria

2003, Master's and Diploma (Hons) in Law, University of National and World Economy, Sofia; 2010, graduate, Harvard Business School, Boston; finance management; certificates in regional policy and management of the European Union structural funds and European policy. Formerly: lawyer; CEO, international companies in the real estate and infrastructure sectors; at the National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria, the European Commission and the European Parliament; Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Public Works; Adviser to the Minister of Regional Development and Public Works; Member of the Managing Board, National Road Infrastructure Agency; Adviser to the President of the Republic, in charge of European regional cooperation, transport and environment, as well as other international and European issues. Former Co-Chair and Founder, Bulgarian-Romanian Committee for inland waterway transport and connectivity of the common BG-RO Danube region. Chairwoman, non-profit foundation Friends of Sport, dealing with the integration of disabled children through sport. 2014, Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communication. In 2019 became political coordinator for Sofia district in our PP Gerb, responsible for all the political and election campaigns.in May 2018 was awarded by the Italian President with Stella d’Italia medal-the highest award for foreigners. Minister of tourism 2014-2020; Member of Parliament (2017 - 2022)

Steve Arora

Reinsurance Executive, Switzerland

Degree in Economics, Muhlenberg College; GE Capital Financial Management Program (FMP); Swiss Re Group Management Development Program; STARS Symposium for Leaders of the Next Generation. Diverse track record of experiences; has held roles in various financial services industries, geographic locations, and with various functional responsibilities. Has lived in the US, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Japan and Saudi Arabia. Currently, Member, Reinsurance Executive Committee, Swiss Re; Division Head, Casualty Reinsurance. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum (2015).

Lera Auerbach

Artist, Austria

Lera Auerbach's work transcends the 20th-century focus on specialization. A renaissance artist for modern times, she allows her artistic impulse to guide the genre of expression; whatever the medium - art, literature, or music - all of her work is interconnected as part of a cohesive and comprehensive artistic worldview.
Auerbach's large scale works have been produced in major theaters on every continent, including the Hamburg State Opera, Vienna's Theater an der Wien, New York's Lincoln Center, the National Ballet of Canada, the National Ballet of China, the Royal Danish Theater, the Nuremberg State Theater, the Finnish National Theater, Moscow's Stanislavsky Theater, the Nederlands Dans Theater, and the San Francisco Ballet.
Auerbach has been drawing and painting all her life as part of her creative process. In 2009, after a devastating fire destroyed her studio in New York, she began sculpting prolifically. Her paintings and photographs have been included in several exhibitions and, in 2013, she had her first solo photography show in Norway. Her creations are in private collections, have sold at auctions, been reproduced in magazines, and used on the covers of CDs and books. She has published three books of poetry in Russian, and her first book in English, "Excess of Being", was published in 2015.
Auerbach was born in Chelyabinsk at the gateway of Siberia. She received parallel graduate and post-graduate degrees from the Juilliard School and the Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media. Her awards include the Hindemith Prize, two Golden Masks, the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, the German Radio Prize, and the ECHO Classic Award.

Gwenaelle Avice-Huet

Executive Vice President Europe Operations, Schneider Electric, France

Gwenaelle Avice Huet joined Schneider Electric in March 2021 as Senior Vice-President in charge of Corporate Strategy. She worked for the past 11 years at ENGIE in various positions, her last one being Executive Vice President of ENGIE in charge of the Global Renewables Business Line, and President and CEO, ENGIE North America. Gwenaëlle began her career with the French government joining various ministerial offices as an advisor to the Secretary of State for European Affairs, and later to the Minister of Energy. She holds a Bachelors degree from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de cachan, an agrégation in Chemical Physics, and an Engineer Degree at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees

Dilek Ayhan

Special Adviser, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway

CEO of The Conduit Oslo. Former Special Adviser to the President/Management of BI Norwegian Business School (Jan 2018 - Jan 2023). Former State Secretary, Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries (Oct 2013- Jan 2018). As State Secretary she was responsible for international/bilateral relations and trade policy, export financing, industrial research and innovation, the maritime industries including shipping and the travel and tourism industry. She was responsible for the following policy papers:

Industry White Paper (chapters covering RD&I, competence),
Ocean Strategy,
Maritime Strategy,
Bioeconomy Strategy,
The National Entrepreneurship Plan,
Tourism White Paper
and the Export Strategy.

Entrepreneur. Has served on the board of several organizations working with diversity management and intercultural communication.

Dawood Azami

Editor, Multimedia (News and Current Affairs), BBC World Service, United Kingdom

Dr Dawood Azami is an award winning senior journalist and academic with a quarter century of working experience. As a Multi-Media Editor in the BBC World Service (London), he leads a team of journalists in covering international news and current affairs.
Dawood is also an Associate Fellow at The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London, contributing to research and analysis of geopolitical and international security and development issues.
He also served as the BBC World Service Bureau Chief and Editor in Kabul, Afghanistan (2010-2011) where he was responsible for the editorial management of the Bureau and leading a large team of journalists and supporting staff.
He was a Visiting Lecturer/Scholar at the University of Westminster (London) and The Ohio State University (USA) teaching on both BA (Globalization, Power and International Governance) & MA modules (International Politics of Resources) as well as Culture and Politics in the greater Middle East.
Dawood obtained his Ph.D. in the field of Politics and International Relations/Security. His PhD looked at conflict and state (un)building and investigated the impact of drugs on the strength, motivation and ideology of insurgent groups in four countries – Afghanistan (Taliban), Colombia (FARC), Turkey (PKK) and Sri Lanka (LTTE).
He also holds three Master's in various fields including Politics, International Relations, International Security, Science, Law and Diplomacy.
He has won several national and international awards and prizes. In 2009, he won the BBC’s “Global Reith Award for Outstanding Contribution”, the biggest and lifetime achievement award in the BBC. He was selected as a Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum, Geneva, in 2011. In 2012, he was selected as a Young Leader in Europe under the first pan- European programme of leadership called ’40 under 40’. In 2015, he was given "Journalist of the Mediterranean (Giornalisti del Mediterraneo)" Award in Italy.
He has visited more than 30 countries and participated as a speaker in more than a hundred international conferences/seminars on a wide range of topics including politics, security, international relations, media and governance.
He is also a member of a number of international academic and professional initiatives.
Dawood speaks five languages (Pashto, Dari/Persian, Urdu/Hindi, and English) and has a working knowledge of Arabic and Turkish. He paints and practices calligraphy and writes poems and short stories in three languages.

Gina Badenoch

Founder, Capaxia UK, United Kingdom

Gina Badenoch, Founder, Capaxia/OQS
Young Global Leader, United Kingdom
Social entrepreneur and photographer

Gina’s Dream is to reduce inequality, enabling social and economic mobility by building a more inclusive society.
Creating experiences that change mindsets where the greatest prejudices exist between talent, potential and companies.
She has been working with Global organizations to promote a work-inclusive environment that increases inclusive leadership and diversity as an asset.

In 2006, founded Ojos que Sienten, 13 years ago she saw potential where others saw limitation by teaching photography to blind people, offering a tool that allows them to connect with the visual world.
In 2012, founded Capaxia, taking learnings from working with blind people developed a highly successful new approach to lower the impact of our bias designing an inclusive, empathetic and human centered recruitment and development of talent model called: First I hear you then I see you, based on implementing blind interviews, back-to-back, by which recruiting officers can go beyond their own unconscious biases and identify the true potential of future employees for a better match to job roles, better development of their talent and potential within organizations and ultimately promotion to roles that are satisfying to them and benefit their employers. Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum. Ashoka Fellow. World Economic Forum. Ashoka Fellow. Awarded by the Queen of Great Britain a British Empire Medal (BEM) among other recongnisions.

Guillaume Barazzone

Partner, LL.M., Jacquemoud Stanislas Attorneys at Law, Switzerland

LLM, Columbia Law School. 2008, joined the Swiss Bar. Attorney-at-Law, Mergers and Acquisitions, Banking and Finance, Lenz & Staehelin, Schellenberg Wittmer. Mayor of Geneva and Member of the Swiss Parliament (member, Economic Affairs and Taxation Parliamentary Committee). Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum (2015).

Jean-Jacques Barbéris

Member of the Executive Committee; Co-Head, Institutional Clients Coverage, Amundi Asset Management, France

Jean-Jacques Barbéris is a former economic adviser to the president of the French Republic. He is currently responsible for the global development of the institutional business at Amundi, a European leader in asset management. He is also chairman of En Temps Réel, a think tank dedicated to social sciences and the future development of the European Union.

Pablo Alberto Barrera Lopez

Chief Executive Officer, Haugaland Kraft, Norway

A passionate multicultural young business leader, Pablo Barrera is determined to transform how large companies act as corporate citizens. Barrera promotes sustainability as an untapped potential rather than a threat and establishes collaborative efforts with other companies to solve some of the key challenges the world faces. Barrera explores new ways to feed a growing population and he works for one of the world's largest crop nutrition companies. Through many years of volunteer work, Barrera has focused on establishing arenas where teenagers and young adults can nurture their talents and develop into responsible forces for good in their societies, regardless of their background.

Katinka Barysch

Chief Human Right Officer, Allianz, Germany

Katinka is an economist, political analyst and consultant. Katinka started out at the Economist Group and then, for over a decade, she helped to build a highly successful policy think-tank in London, the CER. In 2018 she moved into the private sector, to take various leading roles at Allianz group. Katinka has been a successful writer and media commentator and an advisor to several governments, the European Commission, numerous banks and business federations. She was also Strategic Adviser to the Munich Security Conference; David Rockefeller Fellow at the Trilateral Commission; a WEF Young Global Leader and a Fellow at Chatham House. She studied at the London School of Economics and LMU Munich.

Andrew Bastawrous

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Peek Vision, United Kingdom

Dr Andrew Bastawrous is Co-Founder & CEO of Peek Vision, a social impact organization which uses smartphone technology to radically increase access eye care in some of the most challenging places in the world. Andrew is an Ophthalmologist (Eye Surgeon), and Associate Professor in International Eye Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine where he teaches on public health for eye health and leads a research portfolio.

Andrew has worked and undertaken research in over twenty countries including two years living in Kenya where he was leading a major eye disease study and the development and testing of Peek. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles focusing on international eye health and mobile technology in healthcare and has co-authored four book chapters.

Andrew was made a TED Fellow in 2014 and his TED talk has been viewed over one million times. Since then, Peek has run one of the top-ten all-time Indiegogo crowd-funding campaigns in the health sector, for Peek Retina, a smartphone ophthalmoscope.
Peek’s vision check app, Peek Acuity, launched on Google Play store in 2016 and is a certified medical device in use in over 150 countries. Peek's end-to-end services now incorporate their apps and hardware and have been used to transform eye health in Kenya, Botswana and India with new programmes with partners now running in Pakistan and Zimbabwe with plans to expand in to several new countries in 2020.

In 2018, Andrew was invited to address the Commonwealth Service in the presence of the British Royal Family, Prime Minister, and a global live TV and radio audience.

Andrew is working with major banks, eye health organisations and funders to develop innovative financing models for eye health with a $1Bn Vision Catalyst Fund, the subject of his 2018 TED Talk.