At its core, the Global Entrepreneurship Congress is a gathering of diverse players from the global entrepreneurial ecosystem. The speaker lineup for next month’s Congress reflects this spread with a wide array of inspiring, motivating and thought-provoking speakers.
Eze Vidra is a general partner at Google Ventures, the venture capital investment arm of Google Inc. which provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to technology companies. Previously, Vidra was the European head of Google for Entrepreneurs, where he helped forge partnerships to strengthen the European startup ecosystem. He also led Campus London, a collaborative environment for startups created by Google for Entrepreneurs.
One of the most prominent voices in the world on the topic of entrepreneurship, Amy Cosper is the Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. She has been named Fast Company's "25 Smartest Women on Twitter" and as the Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, Cosper knows what it means to innovate, create and disrupt an industry—and an economy. Over the past six years, Cosper has witnessed and given voice to successes and failures in business, and in turn, has a deep understanding of the psyche of an entrepreneur, and what it takes to succeed in a meaningful, long-term way. She will be speaking on the topic of creating relevance and staying relevant.
Maria Contreras-Sweet is the 24th Administrator of the United States Small Business Administration and a member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet. Prior to holding this position, she was an entrepreneur and founded the first Latino-formed commercial bank in California in more than 35 years. As an advocate of entrepreneurship in the United States, Contreras-Sweet understands the role that the Small Business Administration can play in supporting budding entrepreneurs.
Dr Tayeb Kamali is the Vice Chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology – the United Arab Emirates’ largest higher education institution with 17 campuses throughout the UAE. His work spearheaded education, training, research and applied technology programs in the UAE and Middle East regions has opened up startup possibilities for youth in the region.
Offering insight into the role investors can play in the entrepreneurial ecosystem is Petros Kokkalis. As co-founder and impact investor of social enterprises such as Organisation Earth, an environmental NGO, and Aephoria.net, a sustainable development startup incubator, Kokkalis is a firm believer in the transformation of local communities through mass resource mobilization.
Mary Moloney is the global CEO of CoderDojo, responsible for all of the organization’s operations as well as delivering growth worldwide. CoderDojo currently operates 550 free of charge coding clubs in 56 countries around the world reaching approximately 28,000 kids and young people from the ages of 7 to 17 on a weekly basis. In 2014, Maloney was recognized as being one of the top 100 Women in STEM by Silicon Republic.
Serial entrepreneur Bob Dorf will be speaking at the Congress for the second year in a row, discussing many of the lessons featured in the book he co-authored with Steve Blank, The Startup Owner’s Manual.
While working in different sectors of the ecosystem and having individual perspectives, many of these speakers have roots in entrepreneurship and have adopted a keen entrepreneurial mindset to all aspects of their lives.
For the complete list of speakers, please visit gec.co/speakers.