Alisa Sydow, Ph.D. from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the ESCP Business School, as well as the campus head of Turin of the Jean-Baptiste Say Institute at ESCP Europe. She primarily teaches entrepreneurship, and strategic management with a focus on sustainability and impact. Alisa’s research interests are in entrepreneurship in developing economies (ie. Kenya & Uganda), entrepreneurial decision-making processes and family entrepreneurship. She is author of articles published in top-tier management journals (ie., Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice), case studies and papers presented at international conferences (ie., AOM, EGOS, & EURAM.

Moreover, Alisa is one of the founders of Nampelka – a start-up that focus on natural products such as biodynamic wine and coffee. 

In 2018 he co-founded Wonderful Education, an innovative startup that operates at the intersection of education and innovation. He co-designed and launched in 2019 Future Education Modena, the first EdTech hub in Italy, of which he is Vice Director.

He has been Chief Innovation Officer and Member of the Technical Secretariat of the Minister of Education, University and Research (MIUR) since 2014, co-coordinating in particular the policies for the digital innovation of the educational system (National Digital School Plan), the construction of a professional growth system for teachers and for the innovation of students’ skills (21st century skills).

He has worked for four governments and developed open government initiatives for the Department for Development and Economic Cohesion, the Institutional Reform Department and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was a member of the first think tank for innovation at MIUR wanted by Minister Profumo between 2012 and 2013.

Member of the Scientific Committee for the Digital Agenda of Emilia Romagna and co-founder of “A Scuola di OpenCoesione”, the first data school on the monitoring of public funds. He writes and does research on the relationship between ICTs, public engagement and organizational change.

He was Research Fellow at Oxford Internet Institute, Lecturer at City University of London from 2007 to 2011 and PostDoctoral Fellow at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Degree in Economics, Master in ICT Management and PhD in Sociology of Technologies.

I was born in Rome in 1963, I graduated in Electronic Engineering and specialized in Industrial Safety at the Faculty of Engineering of La Sapienza. I have been involved in Business Intelligence and Performance Management since 1988, working for years at international level as project manager in Space, Defence, Telco in UK, The Netherlands, Spain, Germany.

Back in Italy in 1998, I led the development of important Business Intelligence projects, first of all Customer Profiling for Telecom Italia Mobile, and then I took the responsibility of the Oracle BI & Data Warehouse Practice for Italy, making it a successful case in the Oracle international panorama.

In 2006 I became in Oracle responsible for consulting for the EMEA market of BI & Data Warehouse solutions and then, in 2009 – after the acquisition Hyperion, a well-known Enterprise Performance Management tool – I was responsible in Western Europe for the Product Line Hyperion in Consulting.

From 2010 to 2015 I was Oracle Country Leader Business Analytics for Italy.

In 2013 I started to create, together with Prof. Giuseppe Ragusa, the concept of the Master in Big Data Analytics for LUISS Business School. The master, operational since 2014, was the first Master in Italy on Data Science topics. I then spread the importance of Big Data and Analytics in various Masters within LBS (from MBA to Master in HR, Tourism, Marketing Management, Digital Export, etc.), creating a specific Master in Big Data Management for professionals. 

Since 2016 I have been working in Iconsulting, a company specialized in Big Data and Analytics, as Innovation Director and head of the Rome office.

During the last year I worked, together with Damien Lanfrey and Donatella Solda, on launching DASI. The spirit that animated us was to bring innovation in digital training and Data Science, going beyond pure technological skills.

In this way we offer students a path that makes them professionally effective and with the necessary tools to generate business and/or social impact through the design and implementation of data centric solutions.

Mr. Sertac Yeltekin is the Founder and Managing Director of Zingforce Ventures “Z-Force”, a firm specialized in venture building, advisory and social finance based in Singapore.

Mr. Yeltekin has 27 years of experience in the financial sector as a senior manager and consultant.

He is the Co-Founder of Etkiyap, the first impact investing platform in Turkey, dedicated to advocacy, training and fund-raising in Turkey and in the surrounding region. He is an investor in early stage companies in Turkey, Europe and Asia; a keynote speaker on asset management, alternative investments and impact investing globally; a contributor to numerous articles, blogs and training programs; and a moderator and commentator on TV and podcasts covering Asian and Global markets.

He has been Chief Operating Officer for Insitor Partners, a Singapore-based Venture Capital firm, active in impact investing to support social entrepreneurship in South and Southeast Asia since 2017.

Prior to Insitor, Mr. Yeltekin was Senior Vice President at Unicredit Banking Group from 2002 to 2017 in Italy with numerous C-suite and Board membership roles in asset management, banking, finance & planning and human capital management divisions.

Before joining Unicredit in 2002, Sertac Yeltekin worked as a management consultant in Turkey, Israel and Italy at Bain & Company between 1998 and 2002.

Mr. Yeltekin holds many prestigious institutional roles in business education. He is currently an Executive-in-Residence in IMD Business School, Lausanne and Singapore; a Member of the Advisory Board for Bocconi University. SDA Business School, Milano, Italy; a member of the Advisory Committee of Cottino Social Impact Campus, Torino, Italy; and a Senior Advisor for European Foundation for Management Development, Brussels, Belgium.  

After attending Robert College in Istanbul, Mr. Yeltekin graduated from Swarthmore College, PA, USA with a B.A. degree in Economics and Political Science. Sertac also holds a graduate degree from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies in International Economic Relations at its European Center, Italy. Mr. Yeltekin is fluent in Turkish, Italian and English. He has a working knowledge of German and French.

Urszula Swierczynska is philanthropy advisor with a specialization in philantropic intermediation for High Net Worth private donors. She works as concultant for family office, families foundations and privates who run philantropic activities and high social and environmental impact investments. He graduated in International Relations, she has a post-graduated Diploma in Strategic Philantropy and also a Master in Famili Office. For more than ten years she worked for international organizations (UN, Red Cross, non-profit) in the field of international cooperation. In 2015 she started a consulting company, Philanthropoid (www.philanthropoid.it), based in Milan, which has the aim of helping clients to optimize the philantropic management and maximimize social and environmental impact. She is the co-winner of the Prize Italian Research in Philanthropy (2017), she is also member of the Philanthropy Impact (UK) and of the European Research Network on Philanthropy.

Elisa Ricciuti is a passionate educator and researcher with a focus on social impact, philanthropy, social innovation and all fields where private creativity meets the public good.

After a PhD on global philanthropy for health and development at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a post-doc at the Department of Social and Political Sciences in Bocconi University, she is now Executive Director of the Cottino Social Impact Campus in Turin, the first campus in Europe fully dedicated to impact culture and education. Previously she has been leading the research area on Nonprofit Management & Philanthropy at the Centre for Research on Health and Social Care Management (CeRGAS) of SDA Bocconi School of Management for the past 3 years. She has extensive experience in teaching to undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students and research on philanthropy.

Kai Hockerts is Professor in Social Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School (CBS). Kai’s primary research focus is on social entrepreneurship and impact investing. From 2010 until 2018 he held the function of Academic Director of Responsible Management Education as part of which he has lead the CBS curriculum change initiative which has reviewed all 19 bachelor study programs with the goal of anchoring responsible management education across the curriculum.

Kai holds a PhD in Management from the University of St. Gallen (CH). Before joining CBS Kai was Adjunct Professor at INSEAD (F). His research on social entrepreneurial intentions, sustainable entrepreneurship and impact investing has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing, International Review of Entrepreneurship, Journal of Business Ethics, and Business Strategy and the Environment.

Michele Visciòla is President and founding partner of Experientia. His core activities range from leading the growth of the company to pursuing strategic conversations with the market, by helping Experientia clients to integrate UX research insights and design deployment with the business analysis and modeling. He is personally involved in projects that deals with the following topics in a variety of industries: digital transformation of services; behavioral modeling and culture evolution implied in service innovation; behavioral economics; user-centered design and policy making. His career started as research fellow at the Italian National Research Council and focused on the digitalization of services in complex systems, like process control industries and avionics, with a specialization in human error analysis and information design. He was granted an MIT Sloan School fellowship on “International Management for the Future”, during which he designed the prototype of a Human Factors data-base of aircraft accidents and incidents centred on analysis narratives. He served as researcher in Finmeccanica and as manager at Etnoteam, and has consulted for top European industries. He has more than 10 years of teaching experience between Politecnico di Milano (“Digital culture for designers”) and Bicocca University (“Evolution of User Research Methods”), has written several scientific publications, articles and books; he is a DeTao Academy’s Master in Behavioral Modeling and Design.

Director of Forwardto – Studies and skills for future scenarios (www.forwardto.it) and of the Foresight Academy of the Cottino Social Impact Campus.

Innovation expert and specialized in Futures & Foresight Science. Expert in the subject at the Department of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of Turin and collaborator in teaching at the Polytechnic of Turin.
Member of the Advisory Council of the Italian Institute for the future; founding member of the Italian Futurists Association; creator of the Personal Futures project.

Former Director of the Human + Foundation, which carries out scientific research on “people-driven innovation”.

For almost 20 years, consultant and trainer for strategic development, personal and professional growth, the application of creative skills, transformative innovation and well-being (individual and of organizations, of each sector).
In the past he founded and directed, for over 10 years, a social enterprise specializing in social innovation. Before that, journalist and author for theater, cabaret, TV, radio, magazines and the web.

Virginia Tassinari currently works as Lecturer at the Design Department of the Politecnico di Milano in Italy and at the Product Design Department of the LUCA School of Arts in Belgium. Her work situates itself on the boundary between design – mostly for social innovation – and philosophy, both in terms of design research and theory as well as through design practice. She is co-initiator of the DESIS Philosophy Talks format, member of the DESIS International Committee and set up and coordinates the LUCA School of Arts DESIS Lab.