Who we are

The Young Global Leaders ® Community is an accelerator for a dynamic community of exceptional people with the vision, courage, and influence to drive positive change in the world.

Our growing membership of more than 1,400 members and alumni of 120 nationalities includes civic and business innovators, entrepreneurs, technology pioneers, educators, activists, artists, journalists, and more.

Aligned with the World Economic Forum’s mission, we seek to drive public-private co-operation in the global public interest. We are united by the belief that today’s pressing problems present an opportunity to build a better future across sectors and boundaries.

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Meet our members

Laura Gersch

Member of the Board of Management; Chief Financial Officer, Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG, Germany

Laura is CFO of Allianz Versicherungs-AG, the market leader of the German P/C insurance market serving more than 10 million customers. She is a strong advocate of the societal role of (life) insurance striving to contribute to the reduction of the gender pension gap in Germany by advocating financial literacy for women. She is a purpose-driven leader, who played an instrumental role in developing the purpose for Allianz Group while she was running the Group CEO Office of Oliver Bäte. Before joining Allianz, she worked for McKinsey & Company. She holds a double degree in International Business from European School of Business in Reutlingen, Germany and from Northeastern University in Boston, USA.

Veronica Ruiz del Vizo

Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Working on Solutions, USA

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WOS. Veronica Ruiz del Vizo has led the communication strategist of global brands, advised Venezuelan foundations, celebrities and democratic organizations on digital strategy. She is also the Co-Founder and Director of Bootcamp Vero, Team Remoto, Amarillo and Dar Learning reaching more than 20,000 online students around the world only during the first year of the pandemic.

Roselyne Chambrier

Chief Executive Officer, Arise Integrated Industrial Platforms (Arise IIP), Côte d'Ivoire

Roselyne Chambrier is an entrepreneurial, result-driven leader, with an extensive track record in West and Central Africa spanning finance and infrastructure sectors.

Connecting the dots between governments and institutional investors to vet new partnerships and licensing opportunities in large-scale projects, she aims to set new benchmarks building and managing a solid industrial and logistics portfolio, contributing to local economic empowerment, creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs and attracting FDIs.
She was previously Managing Director of the Industrial Bulk Multipurpose Terminal of San Pedro.

She firmly believes that global challenges can be addressed from Africa and is a founding member of A new ROAD (Round-Table on African Debts) the first think tank dedicated to African public debts and financing of economies, calling for the establishment of a Responsibility Pact from governments, large private companies and financial institutions.

She has a passion for education and is the Founder of Sename Foundation, a philanthopic organization. Her vision is to create a transformative path through educative curricula and trainings to empower girls and underserved communities to become thriving success stories of their own.

Adebola Williams

Chairman AW Network and Co-Founder, RED for Africa, Nigeria

Adebola Williams is a pioneer at the intersection of media, democracy and social change. He is co-founder and chief executive officer of RED, which owns Africa’s largest portfolio of youth media brands that engages millions of youths on the continent, including Red Media Africa, StateCraft, the Future Awards Africa, and YNaija.com. Williams co-founded EnoughisEnough (EiE) in 2010, one of Nigeria’s foremost civic participation groups and a voice for young people on politics. He was chairman of the board until resigning to take the lead on the communication and rebranding of the current Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari In 2014. Williams led the team that shaped the national discourse and optimized media engagement to change longstanding perceptions. He did the same in Ghana in 2016, helping the opposition candidate win the presidency on his third attempt. He and is team have recently concluded the Macky Sall campaign with a big win in February 2019.Williams consults in other regions in the continent. 

Tiffany Xingyu Wang

Chief Trust and Marketing Officer, OpenWeb, USA

Tiffany Xingyu Wang is an award-winning founder, operator and investor who focuses on building an ethical web3. She leads the way in defining and elevating the industry of digital safety. Identifying the urgent need for industry collaboration on safety initiatives as the social web evolves into the metaverse, Tiffany co-founded Oasis Consortium, a non-profit organization that launched the first comprehensive User Safety Standards for web3.0. She is also currently the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Spectrum Labs, a contextual AI platform created to build a safer internet. Spectrum Labs protects billions of users from harassment, toxicity, and abuse in online communities. As a keynote speaker and expert at the intersection of AI and Trust & Safety, she has been featured and published in TIME, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, Protocol, Digiday, VentureBeat and more. She also sits on the Digital Safety Coalition committee at the World Economic Forum, hosts the Brand Safety Exchange podcast, a destination for digital user safety thought leaders, and created the first-of-its-kind course on Trust and Safety partnering with Linkedin Learning. Tiffany is also an advisor and investor in blockchain and quantum computing companies. She is also a venture partner at Tribe, a Singapore government-backed blockchain accelerator. She holds two USPTO patents in machine learning applications on marketing. Her previous roles span tech and global investing.

Ibram X Kendi

Director of the Center for Antiracist Research, Boston University, USA

Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial justice contributor. Kendi is the 2020-2021 Frances B. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. He is the author of many books including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, making him the youngest ever winner of that award. He also authored three #1 New York Times bestsellers, How to Be an Antiracist; Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored with Jason Reynolds; and Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. His newest books are Be Antiracist: A Journal for Awareness, Reflection, and Action; and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, co-edited with Keisha Blain. In 2020, Time magazine named Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Lea Wermelin

Member of Parliament, Parliament of Denmark (Folketinget), Denmark

Lea Wermelin currently holds the position as Minister for the Environment in The Social Democratic government of Denmark. She is a member of the Danish Parliament and former Chairman for The Parliament's Fiscal Affairs Committee as well as former co-chair for the Environment and Food Committee and the Climate, Energy & Utilities committee. Since she was elected to parliament at the age of 30, she has represented her home region, Bornholm, and their key interests in green energy and circular economy. For more than a decade she has been actively engaged in politics and was in 2020 elected to be one out of the 40 most promising young leaders under 40 in Europe.

Mykhailo Fedorov

Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation, Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Ukraine

Mykhailo Federov is Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. The youngest minister in the history of Ukrainian politics, Fedorov, at the age of 30, managed to succeed both with opening his own businesses as well as with leading the country's digital revolution. His most important project as minister is the "State in a Smartphone" which aims, by 2024, to have 100% of all government services available online, with 20% of services provided automatically without the intervention of an official and one online form to receive a package of services.

Elham Al Qasim

Chief Executive Officer, Digital14, United Arab Emirates

Elham Al Qasim serves as Digital14’s Chief Executive Officer, steering the organisation’s strategic direction, and leading over 1,000 staff in their purpose-driven work to deliver trust in digital so that clients can innovate and fulfil their potential. Prior to joining Digital14, Elham enjoyed a global career with executive roles in investment and asset management. More recently, Elham served as CEO of Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) and Executive Director of the Ghadan 21 programme at the Abu Dhabi Executive Office where she led the strategic planning for the government’s three-year, AED 50 billion investment programme aimed at accelerating Abu Dhabi’s economy. Prior to this, Elham was a Director of Mubadala Investment Company, focusing on Mubadala’s Technology and Industry portfolio. Her responsibilities included building investment/entry strategy, business development, value creation, and post-acquisition asset management in sectors including Metals & Mining, Semiconductors, and Technology. During this time, Elham also served on the executive leadership team of Emirates Global Aluminium and delivered a two year post merger integration program. Elham has served on a number of boards and is currently a Board Member of Amanat Holdings, AlAin Farms, and the Khalifa Fund, a government-owned SME Fund. Elham’s international career includes JPMorgan Investment Bank, where she was part of the Global Diversified Industrials Team based in London handling M&A transactions in chemicals, metals and mining, and infrastructure. Elham holds an MSc from the School of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Business from the American University in Dubai. In April 2010, Elham became the first Arab woman to ski to the North Pole.