Prof. Declan Kennedy is an Irish Architect, Urban Planer, Mediator, and Permaculture Designer, teaching and practicing urban design and permaculture, landscape, renewable energy and agricultural planning, coupled with holistic strategies and founding Chairman of the Global Eco-Village Network (GEN).

In his academic career he has been Professor of Urban Design and Infrastructure at the Architectural Department of the Technical University of Berlin, Germany and went on being the second Vice President for Academic Affairs at the TU Berlin. He is the Co-founder of Eco-village Lebensgarten, Steyerberg, near Hannover, Germany and worked on developing the Global Action Plan for the Earth (GAP). Prof. Kennedy’s preoccupation with permaculture, positive energies and eco-village design has led to his engagement in the Gaia University, a young university without walls, based on action-learning.

His current projects involve giving workshops all over the world, the development of the permaculture park Lebensgarten Steyerberg (PaLS) and writing a book about holistic design. Declan Kennedy is an inspiring, knowledgeable and wise man to listen and talk to and he always has a pun at hand to make you laugh.

Christine Paulus is a psychologist, coach and saxophonist. At the beginning of her career she was faced with the question whether to study music or psychology and she decided to go for the latter. Nowadays her scientific focus at PFH Private University of Applied Sciences Göttingen, Germany, is personell and business psychology. Moreover, she unites both passions for music and psychology in her work as an independent coach working with her clients.

Since her teenage years she was fascinated by the tools and techniques for professional development and personal growth. She loves bright-eyed people, who experience pleasure in doing what they do, follow their purpose, live with meaning and who are truly fulfilled and successful both at work and in life. This is exactly what she aims for when working with her clients. As a certified integral personal and business coach and as a member of the International Coach Federation she provides one-on-one coaching for personal and professional development. At the same time, she is in an exciting relationship with music and her alto saxophone.

Her musical education began when she was four years old. In recent times, while listening and playing she discovered inspiring similarities between music, business and human development. These findings are the core of her jazz metaphor which enriches her work as a coach. The integration of economic psychology and an artistic streak are at the core of her life. Paired with her cheerful, reflecting and creative nature it is easy to find oneself engaged in a deep and insightful conversation with her.

Laura Rabea Tanneberger is a screenwriter, film critic and blogger from Berlin. She completed her undergraduate studies in film and comparative literature at the Freie Universität Berlin and is currently studying and teaching at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. As a free journalist, she has written articles for online magazines like dasFilter and SisterMAG, interviewed Hollywood directors, producers and actors and is running her own blog.

Tanneberger took part in the youth ambassador program of the international campaigning and advocacy organization “ONE” (created by Bill Gates and musician Bono) that fights for a positive and inspiring representation of third world countries and for pushing the issues of foreign aid on the political agendas. A life-long feminist, she became an activist against rape and sexual assault. Her current projects include writing a TV series that tackles abuse in relationships and the creation of a collaborative website dedicated to connecting survivors around the world.

Fabian is CEO of Asgard, a family- owned Venture Capital firm based in Berlin. His passion lies in Artificial Intelligence. He has worked with, started and invested in over 30 companies such as Delivery Hero, Team Europe, Point Nine Capital, Soundbrenner, Accelerated Dynamics, Micropsi Industries or Wunsch-Brautkleid.de in the European digital ecosystem.

Additional he organizes the yearly Rise of AI conference to bring entrepreneurs, investors, media, politicians and scientists together. Furthermore he serves as coordinator for Artificial Intelligence at the German Association for Startups. He enjoys speaking about his experiences as an entrepreneur and investor. In the last years Fabian held talks on dozens of international conferences. Since 2011 he has been blogging about entrepreneurship, venture capital and the future on bootstrapping.me and favors 250,000 readers.

Fabian holds a Master degree in Strategic and International Management from the University of St. Gallen and a Bachelor degree in Business Administration from the University of Münster.

Christian Kreiß was an investment banker for seven years before becoming professor for finance at Aalen University in 2002. Today he is strongly committed to change our economic system which – in his eyes – is not only unfair but also unsustainable.

He supports a more social and sustainable financial system, pleads for more durable goods by abolishing planned obsolescence, promotes free science and higher education by removing corporate corruption of universities and is campaigning for a world without commercial advertising. He is giving many public presentations, has been often on TV and radio and published four non-mainstream books on the above mentioned subjects since 2013.

Ben Tristem is a software developer, online educator and entrepreneur. He graduated from Imperial College London in 1998 with a degree in Information Systems Engineering. Ben has studied mathematics, physics, business, marketing and software development at postgraduate level.

Before becoming aware that his insatiable addiction to learning was driving him, Ben experimented with life as a financial trader, stuntman, consultant, rock-climbing instructor, commercial helicopter pilot, television personality and more. Ben has created 14 businesses, the most recent 4 of which were successful. The successful ventures all shared the goal of helping people to embrace technology. In 2014 Ben turned his addiction to learning into a vehicle to create value for others.

Immediately he felt at home as a world-class teacher of computer game development and coding. Over the next two years Ben ran three Kickstarter projects, each of which funded more than 1000%, and build online courses with over 120,000 delighted students.

At the age of just eleven months, Bastian Krösche was diagnosed with a progressive and terminal disease. Physicians gave him a life expectancy of only two years or less. Meanwhile he outlived that expectation by more than 20 years.

He finished regular school with excellent marks, studied his dream profession at a private college in Munich and experienced many, many interesting situations – both at work and in private life. For his jobs he travels the world – always accompanied by members of his private team of personal caretakers. The only handicap he knows on a journey is the budget of his clients. As day-to-day business became too boring, the young man started studying again at the TU Ilmenau, in 2013, where he is just about to finish his bachelor degree in applied media and communication science.

Knowing that, even though he tricked death several times, life is an adventure, which will not last forever, Bastian Krösche learned to stop wasting time complaining about problems. Instead, he focuses on finding solutions for new challenges every day.

Martin Dechant is a mixed reality enthusiast, game developer and UX Designer. As a teenager, Martin already developed small games together with his friends. After having studied computer science with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Regensburg, he became an application Developer and UX Designer. So far he has worked on Natural User Interaction for desktop, VR and AR applications. Most recently he focused on how gaze based interaction can be used in games and VR.

He helped big studios like Ubisoft and Eidos to bring this technology into the latest blockbuster games. Aside from that, he also did research the benefits of gaze based interaction in combination with other technologies for mixed reality applications in Sweden. He is always curious about new fields to apply and grow his knowledge in, such as clinical psychology, and is now managing the entertainment computing research group at the University of Regensburg.

Social psychologist Sarah Rom is an advocate in the growing field of science-help, helping people understand and implement scientific findings in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics. Her mission is to transform scientific findings into actionable insights for society, and to help people live up to their fullest potential. She is currently completing her Ph.D. at the University of Cologne’s Social Cognition Center. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Cologne and the University of California, Berkeley.

In her academic research she tries to work the theoretical works of her social cognition research into meaningful implications for everyday life. Her interest in internet research and the role of social media in people’s lives has let her spent this fall interning as a UX researcher at Facebook. At Facebook, Sarah looked at how people manage privacy and audience when posting live videos.

Frank Dörner lived in Hamburg before he moved to Berlin 1987. Frank studied human medicine at the Free University of Berlin, specialised in general medicine and gained a doctorate in the field of tropical medicine.

Today he works as General Practitioner in Berlin Wedding, teaches Humanitarian Medicine in a private university and engages strongly in humanitarian situations. He started working in the field of Humanitarian Action with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 1998 and went for several years overseas to work in health projects. From 2008-2014 he was General Director of MSF Germany. His last MSF project was in Sierra Leone to coordinate the medical work on Ebola end of 2014. In 2015 he became part of “SeaWatch”, a private organisation involved in rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean.

Frank is a founding member of Sea Watch and went several times as doctor on board of the rescue ships to assist people in distress close to Libya. SeaWatch assisted and rescued over 20.000 people since 2015 and made strong demands for urgently needed increase of rescue activities public.