Scholars

Abdul Sammad was born in Multan, Pakistan. He has completed his Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgy & Materials Engineering from Institute of Advanced Materials, BZU, Multan, Pakistan. He has 5 years of experience in oil and gas sector, and community service projects with nonprofit organizations. Passionate about social change, he volunteered as a “Rahbar Mentor” for 4 months in underprivileged areas of Karachi for 4 months. He took on the responsibility to sow the seeds of positivity and inspire youth about the importance of education and creating one’s own destiny without fear. Abdul is also involved with Citizen Foundation as “Baghban Ambassador” to raise funds to support and provide quality education in underprivileged areas of Karachi. He was also part of “Amal Academy”, an education startup funded by Stanford University, which provided him with vocational skills. It was a 3-month fellowship in which he invested 150 hours to develop business skills such as communication, leadership, problem solving and teamwork, etc. Professionally, Abdul works for TUV Rheinland Arabia LLC as a test engineer. Previously, he had also spent two years working for Bureau Veritas Pakistan, a global company that provides a range of sustainability services and solutions. He is interested in bringing about social change in the areas of health, education and sustainable development for the people of Pakistan in line with the UN 2030 agenda.

Ako Eyo Oku is a young leader with extensive experience in broadcast media and public service. Ako has worked for the Nigerian Television Authority for nine years, where she has served three different regions and over 200 Nigerian communities with enlightening, educational, and entertaining TV programs. Ako is committed to community development and advocacy for social change. She has been an active leader in several organizations, including the Child Rights Club, Rotaract Club, MDGs/SDGs Mass Awareness Group, Strategy and Innovation for Development Initiative, and the Young African Leadership Initiative. She founded the Global Learning Community Program, a community of practice that encourages worldwide learning at the local level via MOOCs and GLAMs. In 2019, Ako participated in the US government-sponsored Mandela Washington Fellowship, where she received training on Leadership in Public Management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ako is a Commonwealth+ Open Source Leader, a World Pulse Ambassador, and an African Changemaker. Ako belongs to Chatham House, TED, Creative Commons, and Wikimedia communities.

Alexander Gunkel is a serial entrepreneur using space technology for social and environmental good. Alexander’s company Space4Good leverages satellite earth observation, geographic information systems, and artificial intelligence to provide geospatial analytics to global impact initiatives for data-driven decision making and increased transparency. The company is active in nature conservation, agriculture, smart cities, disaster relief, and peace and justice. Space4Good provides its insights to clients such as The Red Cross, The World Bank Group, The Carter Center, and The European Commission. Additionally, Alexander co-founded Skytree, which invented a CO2 recycling process to reduce global CO2 emissions, as well as RoadEO which is developing a global road quality monitoring and prediction platform to improve road safety and comfort. He is actively mentoring “Tech4Good” entrepreneurs in university-related incubators as well as accelerators, including in Startupbootcamp and Google LaunchPad. Before starting his entrepreneurial career, Alexander studied mechanical engineering and business administration and worked as a Project Manager at the European Space Agency. He is a Young Transatlantic Innovation Leaders Initiative Fellow of the German Marshall Fund and believes in the power of social entrepreneurship to drive positive societal and economic change.

Alison B. Omiste is a Systems Engineer and lawyer, both with mention of excellence. She has studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Hradec Králové University, Czech Republic, and Advanced Studies in Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at Washington College of Law. She is an activist for human rights, gender equality, and freedom. She is a former IACHR intern and lover of technology, particularly its use to build a fairer, more transparent, and equitable society. Alison has been a trainer and speaker in various academic and technological spaces and is the Co-Founder and current National Director of “Mujeres TICs Bolivia” (Women ICTs Bolivia), an organization that seeks to reduce the digital gender gap. Her organization has trained more than 500 women from peri-urban and rural areas of Bolivia on issues of technologies and digital inclusion and has impacted more than 2,000 people with different digital inclusion programs and workshops in STEM areas. She works in constant contributions and investigations presented as amicus curiae before the IACHR and has participated as a team coach and judge in international Human Rights competitions. She is the Vice-curator of the Global Shapers hub and a member of the Ladies of Liberty Alliance and Students of Liberty. Alison is also a Fellow of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and of the Ban Ki-Moon Center for Global Citizen. She is a CISCO instructor with experience as a mentor in digital education.

Chris Julias has three years of experience in the non-profit sector and earned a Master of Engineering degree in Electronic and Computerized Systems from the University of Antananarivo as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Anglophone Studies. Currently, working as a data science content engineer at SmartPredict, she has been entrusted the mission of creating the landing page content and webinars for SmartPredict Version 1.0 – the eponymous automated AI platform. Apart from that, she contributed to the launching of SmartPredict Beta that reached fifty permanent users. As the role is by nature multidisciplinary, she frequents different stakeholders on a daily basis which enables strong communication skills as one of her main assets. This strength has been inherited from her previous experience as a business analyst and machine learning engineer at the Strategy and Innovation Pole of the eTech Research Lab, during which she developed the architecture of an ontological chatbot with a team of DSML engineers. Chris has always been entrusted with leadership roles in which she has demonstrated a unique systemic empathic approach with transversal management and succeeded to federate her team to achieve their business goals. Being in charge of designing tech-commercial video tutorials as well as blogs about data science, she is proficient with Balsamiq, Adobe Audition, Active Presenter and PicsArt. Her interests include Artificial Intelligence in all its aspects and how it could benefit human beings. One value dear to her heart is also the promotion of girls’ inclusion in the field of technology conveyed through her integration of Ikala STEM.

Elina Valeeva has nine years of experience as an executive business consultant and is the founder and CEO of Meditivity, as well as an ambassador of Women in Tech in Russia. Meditivity is the positive behavior change app for people who want to achieve goals and live a mindful life. As a start-up founder and the leader of the Russian Women in Tech community, Elina is responsible for team management, communicating, and implementing the vision and overall direction of these organizations. Within one year under Elina’s leadership, Women in Tech Russia grew to include more than 2000 members and organized a series of events with an audience of more than 15 000 participants. In 2020, Elina got accepted to the StartUp Chile accelerator. In 2019, she was selected at the Young Transatlantic Innovation Leaders Initiative Fellowship, funded by the U.S. Department of State and the German Marshall Fund. Before Meditivity, Elina started Brainfest, an intellectual entertainment company, which, in two years, grew to include 14 cities and 25 000 participants.

Emmanuel Bama is an IT Network System Engineer and Network Cybersecurity Analyst with seven years of experience in the fields of telecom networks, open technologies, and geographic information systems. Emmanuel holds a degree in Systems and Telecoms Network Design Engineering. As a student engineer in computer science, Emmanuel, along with three of his classmates, started Openstreetmap Cote D’Ivoire: a digital and collaborative mapping initiative to map all of Cote D’Ivoire’s regions in an effort to save lives and promote open technologies. Three years later, as a Volontariat International de la Francophonie (VIF), he contributed to supporting Openstreetmap’s collaborative free mapping project in French-speaking West African countries. Emmanuel is at the very core of numerous innovative initiatives, and has been part of the driving force behind projects focusing on innovative information and communication technologies, such as Openstreetmap Cote D’Ivoire, Billet Express, Data Transport, Watrifeed, and Opendigitech. Emmanuel is very interested in information and communication technologies (ICT) to transform problems into innovative solutions or services.

Faisal Ghani earned a Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical Engineering from NED University in 2021 with distinction. Faisal is a two-time national-level participant in wilderness Leadership BootCamp training by “Youth Impact” and “MillionSmiles” foundations. He is a member of “Aspire Leader” an initiative by Harvard University and serves as a delegate for the year 2022 at Asia Youth International MUN. He worked as an executive engineer in the steel industrial sector for the last year, with the responsibility of ensuring the production quality of finished goods. Using the Kaizen approach, he designed a project which improved the yield of the production plant. During his fellowship with “Amal Academy,” he organized a fundraising campaign for “Edhi Foundation.” His recent experience was working as a member of the organizing committees for executing national level youth leadership boot camp “Compass’23,” the theme of the conference is to develop social leadership skills among the youth of Pakistan. To flourish purposeful and character-based young change-makers across Pakistan, who work for the issues in their communities. He also serves as a “Volunteer for Humanity” with the MillionSmiles foundation to work for people affected by natural disasters. Successfully executed the project “Aman ke Rahi” (Peace followers) to recognize violence, intolerance, and extremism among students, and how to tackle the conflict situation. He’s interested in providing quality education to underprivileged students, spreading awareness for UN SDGs in Pakistan, and research and innovation in higher education, learning, and development in the corporate sector.