Speakers

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Angelika Gifford is the new Vice President for Meta in Europe, Middle East and Africa, taking over from Nicola Mendelsohn, who earlier this year became Vice President for the Global Business Group.

Angelika joined Meta in January 2020, and has represented Meta to partners, policymakers, non-profits and community organisations across 34 countries in Central Europe, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Benelux region as well as Eastern Europe and Russia. 

Angelika has over 30 years’ experience working for leading technology companies including Hewlett-Packard (HP), where she led the software and digitisation business for German-speaking countries, and Microsoft where she held a wide variety of senior management positions across the region. Angie serves as a member of the board of the German-American transatlantic association “Atlantik-Brücke” and is part of the corporate supervisory board of Thyssenkrupp.

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Abdelaziz Al Maazmi has played a necessary role in positioning and defining the role of the Establishment since 2007

Driving the Establishment’s growth, Abdelaziz has significantly contributed to Support the young entrepreneurs. Abdelaziz commitment to spearhead an entrepreneurship culture among the UAE nationals has generated tangible results.

As part of his aim to offer exclusive support to members of the Establishment, Abdelaziz facilitated key cooperation agreements with several leading private and public sector organisations.

Abdelaziz Al Maazmi became as well a part of Young Entrepreneur Competition organizer and in the Young Business Leader Awards since 2008. His responsibilities as a member to support the Young students to start their businesses and Evaluation projects and businesses who apply for the Young Business leader award among the Middle East.

He has rich experience to know how Conduct studies & researches to identify SMEs needs related to the requirements of start-ups, licensing, partnerships and establishing companies. Al Maazmi has more than 20 year experience working in several Government Entities.

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Aya is an investment professional at Delphos International - a Washington DC based investment firm that targets impact investments in emerging and frontier markets. Aya has experience in large infrastructure projects and early-stage technology companies. She is also an early-stage investor focusing on pre-seed and seed start-ups in Middle East and Africa. Aya sits on the board of several companies in the African ecosystem in the areas of financial technology, logistics, retail, and health technology. Aya is also an advisor to GIZ's SAIS investment readiness program, which targets agribusiness and technology companies in Africa. She is a rising angel investor, having been featured as a shark on the Moroccan version of Shark Tank as the youngest investor on the show.  Aya aims to empower a new generation of investors on the continent.

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The first communications innovator from the Middle East, as per Holmes report, known for transforming marcomms into revenue streams, focussing on public affairs and energy sustainability, UAE Chair of Impact2030 by UN, Chair at National Advisory Council for Comm and media at Zayed University

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Dr. Aquib Moin is the Co-founder and CEO of a UAE-based space venture "Alhazen Space", focussing on Space Domain Awareness and Space Traffic Management. He is a Space Science & Technology strategist, space project developer and an Astronomy & Space Science academician. He also holds an Associate Professor position at the UAE University. He has over 15 years of experience in designing, developing, deploying and running Astronomy & Space R&D projects and putting together innovative Space education programs. He has worked on numerous high-value Astronomy & Space Science projects at various reputed organizations and institutions.

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Ahmad Alwazzan has been a part of Tap Payments since it was founded in 2014. Initially, he acted as an advisor on risk & financial operations until officially joining the team in 2017 as the GM of Financial Services to manage the relationship with financial institutions and regulators. 5 years later, he’s the Group EVP handling the regulatory strategy across MENA. Since graduating from the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver, USA, he’s worked in global companies such as Ernst & Young in audit and assurance services as well as the National Bank of Kuwait, until realizing his passion for Fintech and joining Tap Payments. He was also a competitive tennis player until the age of 16 and even played for the national team of Kuwait in 2002.

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I bring over twenty-three years of leadership, consulting and marketing analytics experience to Epsilon. My story though, began as a banker, followed by a few years in consulting. But my love for building businesses from scratch led me - in the early 2000s – to set up Rocsearch, an Analytics firm. I then joined KPMG, and as Partner, helped build their global shared services out of India. My final stop, before joining Epsilon, was as MD of AIG where I pieced together their data analytics capabilities. I am the co-author of Riding the Indian Tiger (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), which was released in 2008 and contains business strategies for tapping into the world’s fastest-growing economy. I have lived in over fifteen countries, including Madagascar, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Italy—enhancing my ability to understand cultural nuances and lead global teams.

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Co-founder and lead instructor at The Better Traders, Inc., an international crypto education company, and owner of the popular crypto bot trading YouTube channel Moonin Papa , Aaron Dishner serves over 25,000 students across 36 countries as a world-leading bot trader and crypto day trading and swing trading expert. Combining his passion for educational excellence, stemming from a 12-year professional teaching background, with his remarkable skill set in crypto trading, Aaron’s mission is to make trading safe and accessible so anyone can learn to benefit from the greatest financial revolution of our time.

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Founder and core contributor of GTON Capital. Alex is a DeFi and SocialFi models creator with a special focus on tokenomics sustainability. Moderator and contributor to LobsterDAO🦞, the most proficient DeFi community. Over 10 years of experience in AI architecture, data science & engineering.

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Arzish Azam is an award-winning community builder who specializes in entrepreneurship, innovation travel and web3. He is the youngest global graduate from Founder Institute, the Country Manager for Startup Grind Pakistan, CEO of Ejad Labs. He runs the largest private tech exchange programs to Silicon Valley, North America and Europe, enabling hundreds of Pakistani startups / SMEs in the past 5 years. He has received various international awards and recognition for his work. He is the Founder of Future Fest, Pakistan’s largest tech festival and expo, attended by 50,000 people with 50+ foreign guests and 300+ local speakers at 4 conferences. Supported by the world’s leading companies for the first time in Pakistan including Binance, Epic Games, KuCoin, BitOasis, BSV Blockchain, PubG, Microsoft, Google Developers, Turing, and 120+ companies including Bank Islami, Lakson VC, Graana, and Imarat Group. The event reached more than 10 million people across all digital channels. He is also the founder of some of the leading annual tech conferences in the country including the Startup Grind Pakistan Conference, Pakistan Ecommerce Conference, Pakistan Developer Conference, and the international Pakistan Tech Summit (hosted in Silicon Valley, Europe and Canada). He served as the Adviser to Pakistan's Federal Minister of Science & Technology where he helped with the National Startup Policy, Pakistan Venture Capital Policy, and Electronic Voting Machine; hosted the 1st Pakistan Blockchain Summit under the Ministry's patronage, and contributed to key S&T initiatives including Industrialization of Hemp, Tech Tsunami and more. He is a strong advocate for the innovation economy enabling policy changes through meaningful engagements with relevant stakeholders at every level. He is also the brains behind Pak-US Tech Exchange, the largest independent tech exchange program connecting Pakistan and Silicon Valley. His exposure from being Pakistan's youth representative at Obama's Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016 in Stanford, Organization of Islamic Corporation's Youth Entrepreneurship Forum in Kazan, Russia, Startup Grind Global Conference in Silicon Valley, Web Summit, South by Southwest, Oslo Innovation Week, BSV Global Blockchain Convention etc. brings the gamut of relevant experiences and rich understanding of the field. He uses this to empower the youth of his nation with similar worthy global exposures, network, and experiences.

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Anita Kalergis a.k.a. KryptoGranny will energize the audience on her positive approach on every subject and person she introduces.
She has unique skills to explain even complex subjects in simple and interesting manner. Anita has decades-long experience being on stages in front of big and small audiences. She feels home on stage and makes the audience to feel the same way.
She is a multilingual expert on building professional networks and has an unbeatable track record on opening new markets for businesses. Anita learnt her communications and presentation skills working as a travel guide 20+ years ago in Spain and Greece.

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Anoop P Ambika is a serial entrepreneur, organiser and a technology enthusiast. He presently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Kerala Startup Mission. Anoop conceptualised and co-founded, Kreara Solutions one of the first data analytics companies in India in 2004 quickly gained traction in clinical trials and predictive analytics and managed the company for 12 years. Kreara was acquired in December 2015 and later rebranded as Cognub Decision Solutions A graduate in Computer Science and Engineering from TKM College of Engineering, University of Kerala, Anoop worked with multi-nationals like GE, NEC, Lucent and Nortel in various managerial capacities before starting Kreara. When working with GE, he was also instrumental with the ISO and Six Sigma quality initiatives that were being undertaken by the company in the late 90’s. He underwent his management education in F W Olin Graduate School of Management at Wellesley, Massachusetts. He is also a post graduate in Computational Biology & Bioinformatics from University of Kerala.

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A passionate learner, renowned public speaker and an avid digital transformation expert, Dr. Amit Andre is the CEO of The DataTech Labs. His expertise also lies in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. His keen initiatives towards improving organizational growth, profit-hiking strategies and keeping pace with technological advancements, marks him as a leading CEO. Learning and teaching being his passion, Dr. Amit is a hardcore learner and trainer with a strong belief in knowledge sharing. His high-profile technological qualifications, complex real-time problem solving methodologies, and outcome-oriented approach makes him stand-apart. Dr. Amit’s illuminating vision, like that of a true leader, towards business goals, is inspirational. With more than 15 years of rich experience, along with his customer driven approach, and the “learn and improve” strategy, he is definitely an influential leader, who is always aspiring to get the best technological solutions for resolving business challenges.A data science and AI expert, acknowledged with best innovation award 2017 for efficiently developing leadership summit with world’s thinker 50 speakers, beating 1400 participants from 104 organizations from 21 countries.

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Developer of ML features for Sony Playstation 5, The interviewer of hundreds of data science students for MNCs to hire, one of the best known data science trainers in the world.

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Alex Baghdijan is Partner and Co-Founder at the full-service marketing and content creation agency, Funday. He leads Funday’s web3 division and advises some of the largest web3 brands, from crypto exchanges to blockchain foundations to cutting-edge consumer applications. Through Funday, Alex launched Moonboots, a newsletter for those new to crypto, as well as gmgn supply co., a DAO focused on launching 100 community-based CPG brands. Prior to Funday, Alex held senior roles at IBM Watson Financial Services and AyasdiAI, where he developed a range of Artificial Intelligence solutions for the financial services space.

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Abdelaziz AL Maazmi has played a necessary role in positioning and defining the role of the Establishment since 2007

Driving the Establishment’s growth, Abdelaziz has significantly contributed to Support the young entrepreneurs. Abdelaziz commitment to spearhead an entrepreneurship culture among the UAE nationals has generated tangible results.

As part of his aim to offer exclusive support to members of the Establishment, Abdelaziz facilitated key cooperation agreements with several leading private and public sector organisations.

Abdelaziz Al Maazmi became as well a part of Young Entrepreneur Competition organizer and in the Young Business Leader Awards since 2008. His responsibilities as a member to support the Young students to start their businesses and Evaluation projects and businesses who apply for the Young Business leader award among the Middle East.

He has rich experience to know how Conduct studies & researches to identify SMEs needs related to the requirements of start-ups, licensing, partnerships and establishing companies.

Al Maazmi has more than 20 year experience working in several Government Entities.

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Ms. Akvile Giniotiene is Head of Cyber and New Technologies Unit at the United Nations Counter Terrorism Centre, Office of Counter-Terrorism. She leads Global Counter-Terrorism Programme on Cybersecurity and New Technologies, which supports Member States, international and regional organisations and United Nations entities in building knowledge and raising awareness of terrorist use of new technologies and enhancing their technical capacities to prevent and counter this phenomenon through policy responses, cyber resilience and criminal justice response.
Prior to joining the United Nations, she had served for 25 years in different capacities for the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, including as the Deputy Director of the State Security Department, Deputy Chair of National Security Authority, and in private sector, where sh has been an active participant of international cybersecurity dialogue and capacity building initiatives and assisted governments in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America in the development of national cybersecurity strategies and critical information infrastructure protection frameworks.

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 Ahmed Abdelaal is chief executive officer of Mashreq Bank Group, a leading financial institution in the United Arab Emirates with an expanding footprint across the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the US. With more than 25 years’ experience in banking, Mr Abdelaal was previously group head of corporate and investment banking at Mashreq Bank. He has also served in senior roles across international and regional banks, including Arab Bank, ABN AMRO Bank and American Express. Most recently he spent ten years at HSBC Middle East, where he was regional head of corporate clients coverage and head of commercial banking UAE.

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Amnah Ajmal is the Executive Vice President, Market Development, EEMEA for Mastercard. In this role, she is responsible for acceptance, acquiring, merchants, digital partnerships, fintech’s, strategy and M&A for the region. Prior to this role she led the North America product organization, based out of the US, responsible for the development and management of consumer and small business payment solutions, including credit, debit, prepaid, small business and acceptance solutions, with a focus on creating sustainable competitive differentiation for Mastercard and its customers.Amnah joined Mastercard in 2015 as Head of Products for Middle East & Africa where she focused on driving innovation across consumer and commercial payments based on technology, partnerships and delivering digitally integrated consumer experiences.Prior to joining Mastercard she was heading the consumer bank franchise for Standard Chartered Malaysia responsible for end-end P&L. She was also responsible for retail banking strategy for Indonesia, Malaysia & Taiwan in a global role based out of Singapore. Prior to Standard Chartered, Amnah worked at Citigroup in UAE, Egypt, UK and Poland. She held a number of positions at Citigroup including Asset Business Head for Poland responsible for full range of consumer asset products, innovation and distribution including credit cards, co brands, personal loans and mortgages.She was honored to be listed as the top 100 women in Fintech, across the globe, for 2019 by Lattice80 and recognized as the top 25 women leaders in financial technology by the Financial Technology Report US for 2019 & 2020. She was recently recognized as the top 100 women in fintech, across the globe, for 2021 by IBM & Fintech magazine. She also holds the honor of being in America’s top 10 women in Fintech by the Fintech Magazine for 2020.She holds a master’s degree from London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE).

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Andrew Rippon is the Smart City Director at the Royal Commission for AlUla in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His role is to support of AlUla’s ambitious cultural tourism, sustainability and economic diversification agenda with Smart policies, processes and technologies. He is also driving the Smart and Sustainable mobility conversion of all the Commission’s vehicles and the mobility as a service strategy.   Previously Andrew consulted the European Commission as Governance and Design Authority on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure and for four years he was principal Consultant on Smart Cities in Dubai. There he wrote important sections of the Smart City strategies of the governments of Dubai and Saudi Arabia, including the Smart City Technology Blueprints in both countries and the Smart District Guidelines in Dubai.   Andrew’s background has always been in digital transformation initiatives since starting work on internet projects in the early 1990s. Later working with internet services for telecoms Vodafone Global, STC, Zain and Etisalat, including collaborating on the early Smart City strategy at the latter in 2014.

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Akshata is an Associate Partner at KARM Legal and has experience in the UAE and India. Prior to joining KARM Legal, She was working with the leading law firms in India and UAE. She has advised high net individuals and corporates on Banking, Mergers and Acquisitions, Corporate Debt Restructuring, and Corporate Governance related issues. At KARM, she leads the FinTech, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Open Banking and Emerging Tech practice.She has advised multiple clients on Security Token Offerings and Initial Coin Offerings; fundraising through seed and crowdfunding; setting up of crypto-currency exchanges and, deployment of public and enterprise blockchains. Additionally, she has also advised clients on artificial intelligence in the financial sector; and digital wallets and payments solutions.

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Ayman Alashkar is a real estate economist and AI strategist, with +20years' experience as real estate asset manager, investor, developer and banker.   He is the Founder and CEO of overwrite.ai, the AI writing assistant for real estate agents.   Prior to beginning his entrepreneurial journey, Ayman was Head of Real Estate for Emirates NBD's Private Bank, where he was responsible for $2.2 Billion in UHNWI customer Assets Under Advisory. Before this, Ayman was a MENA Director of Real Estate Advisory at Global consultancy Colliers International.   Ayman has transacted and financed over US$1.5 Billion in real estate and FX investments.

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Al Anoud Al Hashmi is an Emirati (UAE National) Thought Leader and serial entrepreneur with a digital transformation futuristic focus. Over the past 15 years she held an array of strategic leadership positions that drastically contributed to Dubai’s and the UAE government and private sector. She built her extensive leadership portfolio and experience through various roles in institutions affiliated with technology and media in the UAE and globally.  

At SDG Global Alanoud works collaboratively with experts from the region and the world, delivering information, a better understanding of the sustainability ecosystem and solutions/innovations that are verified to work effectively in the region. SDG Global ensure partners ROI, enhance their overall project deliverables, opportunities, and impact.

SDG Global is a delivery focused organization, based in the United Arab Emirates. Founded 2022 by experts in the sustainability ecosystem from research to delivery. SDG Global core strength is the deep understanding of the region’s ambition and unique characteristics combined with crucial experience of sustainability management. The SDG Global team provide to the market needs of solutions and innovations that caters to the region’s requirements.  She also holds the role of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Futurist Company, an SME she founded in 2020 to contribute to the UAE advancement as a hub of latest technologies and disrupt its applications in human life including Energy, Water and Food Nexus.  

Alanoud is a Young Arab Leaders member (YAL), Consultant and Advisor to several corporations and entities. She holds a Global MBA from University of Manchester, and ‘Digital Transformation’ certificate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Sloan School of Management.  

Top 10 women revamping the future 2021 by CIO Magazine

Judge Sustainable Awards 2022 – Dubai

Judge MENA Effie’s – Dubai 2021

Speaker at local and international events

Extraordinary women mentorship project by Bentley MENA  

Al Hashmi is a renowned speaker on sectors digital transformation at top events including Expo 2020, World Chambers Conference and many other universities and events. She is an active mentor of leadership and entrepreneurship, dedicating time and effort to young women to realize their potential while also providing them with hands-on experience to achieve their career aspirations.

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Bornyakov was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation in October of 2019 and has been boosting the growth of Ukraine’s IT industry and working on creating a legal framework for crypto companies to officially conduct their businesses in Ukraine.

He has more than ten years of experience in IT management. Bornyakov founded and was managing a number of successful companies and startup incubators, including the American video monetization platform Adtelligent and the outsource company Intersog, which was in the TOP-5 App Developers in Chicago according to Clutch and in the TOP-10 of the best employers in Odessa.

In 2015, he became the Best CEO/COO — IT BIZ AWARDS 2015, and in 2016 he was ranked among 25 trailblazing business leaders in Ukraine. He has an MBA (University of New Brunswick) and an MPA (Columbia University) degrees.

The Deputy Minister works directly with launching government projects for IT business development in Ukraine — Diia City, E-residency, Fund of Funds, e-commerce, development of AI mechanisms.

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