Program 2022

Miriam Meckel is founding publisher and Chief Executive Officer of ada. Since 2005 Miriam has held a professorship in communication management at the University of St. Gallen, and was editor in chief and publisher of WirtschaftsWoche. She served one legislative period as government spokesperson and State Secretary for Media and International Affairs under the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, and she also worked as a consultant for the Brunswick Group for many years. During her time as a journalist and scientist she received the Cicero Speakers Prize in the science category, published numerous books, and was accepted engagements as a guest professor at Harvard University, Singapore Management University and the University of Vienna.

Léa Steinacker is founder and Chief Innovation Officer of ada. Prior to 2018 she worked for Wirtschaftswoche, most recently as Chief Innovation Officer. In 2018 the american magazine Forbes named her one of the “Top 30 Under 30” managers in Europe’s media landscape, the same year she was one of the “Top 30 Under 30” journalists named by Medium Magazin. Raised in Germany, Australia and Wales, she studied at Princeton, Harvard and the American University in Cairo before writing her doctor’s thesis on the social impact of artificial intelligence systems at the University of St. Gallen.

Verena Pausder is one of the best known faces of the startup scene in this country. She is an entrepreneur, digital education expert, author and founder of Fox & Sheep and the HABA Digitalwerkstätten.

In her eyes, giving children equal access to digital education is one of the core prerequisites for the future viability of our country. To this end, she founded Digitale Bildung für Alle e.V. in 2017. During the Corona period, she put homeschooling-corona.com online and initiated the country’s largest education hackathon #wirfürschule. For this, she was honored by Handelsblatt and BCG as Vordenkerin 2020. In 2022, she launched the site edu-cloud.org to give schools and parents transparency and guidance about digital education offerings.

Her book “Das Neue Land” is a Spiegel bestseller and was awarded the special prize “Unternehmerbuch des Jahres” by the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2020.

In her podcast “FAST & CURIOUS” she talks with her co-host Lea-Sophie Cramer about current trends and developments in the startup scene.

She is on the advisory board of DELIUS and Röhlig Logistics, a university councillor at CODE University in Berlin, and founder of the #stayonboard initiative. In 2016, she was named a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum. In 2018, she was included in Forbes Europe’s Top 50 Women In Tech list. Born in Hamburg in 1979, she lives in Berlin with her husband and children.

Kimo Quaintance is ada’s Director of Community. He first worked with ada as an external consultant in 2019, and joined the team full-time in 2021. He has spent the past 10 years consulting on collective learning and technological change to clients such as Facebook, Microsoft, General Motors, Lufthansa, Siemens, the United States Army, and the Royal Opera House in London. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of St Andrews in Scotland and has developed curriculum and lectured at the University of Denver, the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in Munich (Universität der Bundeswehr München), and the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Marina Löwe is ada´s Head of Learning & Development. She joins us in our belief that growth rarely happens alone, and shares our passion to inspire the connections that will drive future change. Marina is an experienced change expert with a proven track record in creating personal and business transformations. She accompanies executives and teams in the development of mindful digital high-performance cultures for sustainable business. Marina has been working as an internal and external consultant, facilitator and trainer in international companies ranging from DAX corporations to startups since 2002. She is an industrial and organizational psychologist, multi-certified trainer, mediator, Co-active and Berkeley Executive Coach.

With an eye for design, as well as a peace of mind cultivated over many years, Kai’s expertise as a teacher is rooted in meditation, creativity, and life itself.

Between time spent sitting at his laptop and time spent sitting on a meditation cushion, he has come to understand all weathers of the human mind over the past 20 years, and he’s now on hand to accompany you on your Headspace journey. In a talented career, Kai has worked internationally as a freelance graphic designer, serving customers in both the corporate and publishing worlds. In that career, he knew the stresses of work and deadlines. He understood the spaciousness of mind that creativity requires.

What he didn’t know was how to look after his mind, especially when, around 2010, a series of challenges led to depression and burnout. That was when he began to explore meditation, inspired by a lecture on MSBR (Meditation-Based Stress Reduction). Kai put down a lifelong resistance to incense sticks and the idea of gurus, and he instead opened his mind to the possibilities of meditation and mindfulness. He devoured literature on the topic, educated himself through lectures, and attended silent retreats. In 2016, he completed his MBSR teacher training with a desire to deepen and share his practice.

Today, his knowledge, insight, and guidance has helped an untold number of people — in the private sector, universities, and finance — to feel happier and healthier within themselves.

As the German voice in the Headspace app, Kai now lends his experience to people all over the world, helping them to calm their minds, understand their emotions, manage stress/anxiety, and sleep better. As he says, he’s here “to provide more peace of mind and more space in the heart.”

Shermin is the author of the best selling book “Token Economy“, the founder of Token Kitchen and BlockchainHub Berlin. In the past she was the director of the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics which she also co-founded and a curator of the infamous project TheDAO back in 2016. She is currently setting up a data driven farm in Portugal with her Partner where they investigate how to tokenize agricultural assets and sustainable ecosystem services such as soil quality or CO2 capture with the support of hardware wallets and sensor technology. Shermin studied Information Systems Management at the Vienna University of Economics and film-making in Madrid. Under her alter ego KAMIKAT.SE she has also created a series of audio visual works. She is Austrian, with Iranian roots, and now lives in Portugal where she works on the intersection of technology, agriculture, art & social science.

Her biggest strength is to make complex issues easily understandable to a wide audience without losing the depth or scope of the issues she writes or talks about. Shermin has a long track record of public speaking about Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, the Web3 and the future of technologies in general – from prestigious community conferences such as TedX, The Next Web or Re:publica, to private events for companies and institutions such as Vodafone, Audi, IMF and the Wordbank. She has a multidisciplinary perspective of how Web3 will impact different areas of society. She
believes that the Web3 and it’s tokenized applications can shift the dynamics of our socio-economic systems. Her focus is to make technology accessible to a non-tech audience so that all those who use technology can also take part in the decision-making process of the technology they use.

tante is a sociotechnologist, writer and tech de-evangelist. Drawing from a long history of working in tech he uses his experiences to explain, contextualize and criticize a lot of the technologies being presented as the “future”. His writing appeared in SPIEGEL, ZEIT, Süddeutsche, VICE, Jacobin and other publications. His current focus is to work on the paradigm shift in tech from innovation to care, maintenance and stewardship.

Donya-Florence Amer was born on 6 June 1972.

After a banking apprenticeship, she completed the studies of business administration with a focus on finance and HR at the University of Cologne and the University of Berkeley. She is also an alumna of the Singularity University in Palo Alto. Amer started her career in 1999 at IBM and over the next 17 years took on various national and international leadership positions, including in the areas of digital transformation and business analytics. In 2017, she joined Bosch and worked there for 5 years – first as Executive Vice President and member of the CIO Management Board, and later as co-founder and CEO of Bosch Climate Solutions. Amer has lived and worked in different countries and cultures, including the UK, USA and China. She is a member of the Hansgrohe Innovation Board.

Donya-Florence Amer was appointed to the Executive Board of Hapag-Lloyd AG as of 11 November 2021, and she is Chief Information Officer (CIO) since 1 February 2022. From 1 May 2022 she was additionally appointed Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO).

Micaela Mantegna is a lawyer and activist specialized in video games policy, XR and artificial
intelligence ethics.

Currently a TED Fellow, and an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, her research
focuses on metaverse ethics and governance; generative artificial intelligence, creativity and
copyright.

Known as the “Abogamer”, she is a seasoned public speaker, having presented talks and lectures
for governments, organizations and universities in over 27 countries, at conferences like TED,
Game Developers Conference (GDC), GamesBeat, RightsCon, Internet Freedom Festival, More
Than Just a Game, amongst others.

As a diversity advocate, she is the founder of Women In Games Argentina (WIGAr), a non-profit
working towards a more inclusive gaming industry; and a Women in Games International (WIGJ)
Ambassador, having been distinguished as their 2021 “Outstanding Individual Ambassador of
the Year” award, and being named as one of GameIndustry’s 2021 “Gamechangers”.

She holds a Masters on Intellectual Property from the World Intellectual Property Organization/
San Andres University, with a dissertation on Generative AI and copyright. Also, she is the AI
Governance and Ethics professor at the Center for Technology and Society (CETyS), and the
recipient of the 2017 Google Policy Fellowship for her research on algorithmic governance.
Due to her intersectional expertise on AI ethics, Internet governance and innovation, she was
invited by the Argentinian government to collaborate in Argentina’s National AI Plan, drafting
the AI ethics and regulation chapter.

Her first book “ARTficial: creativity, artificial intelligence and copyright” is currently on press,
forthcoming July 2022.

Karl combines pre-digital experience at FMCG companies, such as P&G and Coca-Cola with digital experience through leading positions at eBay, Google and several start-ups. Ten years ago he founded the Reinvention Consultancy Gedankenfabrik. Karl is the author of “The Educated Decision-Maker”, TEDx speaker and the founder of the “1000Vordenker” network. He regularly travels to China, Israel and the USA, to analyze innovations, emerging technologies and consumer behavior that could impact the future of intelligent transformation. His mantra: Lifelong learning is the key to reinvention.

Flavio works at Clearstream (part of Deutsche Börse) where looks at the application of new technologies (such as blockchain) for capital markets infrastructure. Prior to this, Flavio worked for a number of tech firms such as Intel and HTC, as well as co-founding a startup.

Katrin researches, writes, and consults at the intersection of technology, feminism, and climate justice. She currently works with The Green Web Foundation on making the Internet fossil-free by 2030. Previously, Katrin co-founded and co-led MOTIF Institute for Digital Culture, a think tank working towards justice in the digital age. Katrin is the co-initiator of the participatory art project Feminist Futures, holds an MSc in Data and Society of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and was placed on Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30 list.

Cassandra Myers (they/she) is a queer, trans, crip, mad, South Asian-Italian poet, performer, educator, and social worker from Toronto, Ontario. A National Poetry Slam Champion, Cassandra has performed poetry across the United States and Canada. A recent winner of the ARC Poetry Magazine Poem of the Year Award, and longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, Cassandra’s first book of poems is set to be released with Write Bloody Publishing in 2022.

Viola Li is a Vienna based artist with a focus on fashion & lifestyle illustration.

With an East-Asian background, Viola bridges her Chinese and Austrian cultural heritages for her inspiration. In her work, she aims to capture a unique way of likeness by conveying an emotion through her lines to the audience. Her constant source of inspiration are found in her surroundings which have aided her artistic journey.

Viola has a background in Fashion Design and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from LCF, the University of the Arts London. With art and fashion being interrelated, her background has allowed her to explore and become fascinated by the illustration of fashion and lifestyle from a feminine and enchanted perspective.

In January 2022, she released her first NFT collection ‘A Female Eye’, consisting of 370 generated images, available on OpenSea. This was to celebrate and encourage more women in the NFT space. Combining existing elements from her previous work with crypto art has allowed her to explore the reflection and energy between reality and this liminal world. Alongside her first NFT collection, she has created a 1/1 NFT collection and is serving as an artist for WiseWorld, a non-profit NFT project with focus on supporting the SDG13 of the United Nations’ climate actions.

Manuel Rossner (* 1989) lives and works in Berlin. He studied art at the University of Art and Design Offenbach, the École des Arts-Décoratifs Paris and the Tongji College for Design and Innovation Shanghai.

Since 2012, Rossner has been designing digital spaces and virtual worlds in which he investigates the effects of technological developments on society and art. He builds interactive architecture with digital materials that are spatial interventions and virtual extensions.

From June to November 2021 Rossner participates in the group show “Out of Space” at Hamburger Kunsthalle. The exhibition focuses on the notion of space in the work of artists such as Dan Graham,
Gordon Matta-Clark and Charlotte Posenenske. Rossner created the site specific virtual reality installation “How Did We Get Here?” for the exhibition. The artwork will become the first NFT (Non
Fungible Token) in the permanent collection of the museum.

For the Grand Palais Éphemère in Paris Rossner created the artwork “Where to Go from Here?”. It’s shown where multiple world exhibitions took place and where the Eiffel Tower, one of the most
recognizable steel structures in the world, was built from 1887 to 1889.

Rossner’s site-specific augmented reality experience questions the future of technology. Its sleek aesthetic, the “signature of the present” (Byung Chul-Han), represents the digital age in which speed, flexibility and gamification are idealized.

Rossner uses digital exhibition rooms as so-called ‘gyms’ in which he trains artificial intelligence. In his solo exhibition, “There’s No Feeling, Where There’s No Pain” (2019) at the Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig, the AI learned to walk and follow a ball. His 2020 exhibition, “Surprisingly This Rather Works” in the KÖNIG GALERIE shows objects which form an AI training course. The digital visitor can then experience the course through an avatar. Rossner transforms the brutalist Church of St. Agnes into a gaming environment inspired by the 1990s game show “American Gladiators” and gyms that companies like OpenAI in San Francisco use for cutting-edge research in the field of artificial intelligence. He explores the question of what life will look like in the future with artificial intelligence.

Further solo and group exhibitions: “Perception is Reality” at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2017), “Ultralight Beam” at the 1822-Forum Frankfurt (2017), “Artificial Paradise?” at KM – Künstlerhaus
Graz (2018), “Virtual Natives – Sculpture” at Roehrs & Boetsch in Zurich, “Analog Digital”, Safiental Biennale (2020).

Fernanda Parente is a curator, lecturer and co-founder of studio for digitality Rosy DX. Her work gravitates around ideas at the intersection of art, culture & technology. She is interested in the power of immersive content and in innovative ways of artistic production and audience engagement. Fernanda has previously curated for re:publica, Future Affairs, Martin Roth Symposium, Goethe Institute, 48hrs Neukölln among others. Since 2018, she has been lecturing on topics such as Extended Realities and Speculative Futures at universities such as Hochschule für Medien, Kommunikation und Wirtschaft (Berlin-DE), Institut HyperWerk (Basel-CH) and Universität für angewandte Kunst (Vienna-AT). In 2019, she co-founded the studio for digitality Rosy DX, which operates in Berlin and Düsseldorf.

Daniel Rettig is a German journalist, book author and presenter. From May 2019 until June 2021, he was the Chief Editor of ada. Previously, he led the Management & Success department of the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche for three years. In his work, he likes to focus on the intersection between economics, psychology and innovation.

Dr. Stephan Holzer is co-founder and CEO of VERITIC, an award winning NFT infrastructure provider based in Switzerland. Stephan also founded Patron of Art, a high-end NFT platform for cultural institutions. Previously he was Blockchain Expert for Europe at McKinsey, Lecturer and Researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, and Head of Ecosystem at Private Bank Vontobel.

Stephan has more than 12 years of experience in Blockchain technology and holds a Ph.D. in Distributed Computing from ETH Zurich. He is a frequent key-note speaker across the globe including at the Blockchain Hub Davos during World Economic Forum (WEF) 2022. For his scientific contributions he received international awards and in 2016 was elected to the Academy of Science and Literature Mainz, Germany as junior member – only 3 German Computer Scientists received this honor so far.

Christopher is Director of Zortify Labs, where he co-leads research and development for next-generation experiential artificial intelligence. Within this role, he draws from an interdisciplinary background in human-computer interaction, psychology, data visualization, and cultural informatics. In addition to his work at Zortify, Christopher is a TEDx speaker and visual artist. He holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Luxembourg, a master’s degree (ALM Digital Media & Instructional Design) from Harvard University, and a second master’s degree (MTS Religion, Literature & Culture), also from Harvard University.

Hannah is a computational scientist and the Head of Psychology at Zortify, a deep tech start-up that focuses on intelligent human decision making using natural language processing, a subfield of artificial intelligence. She recently finished her PhD in computational neuroscience at the RWTH Aachen, worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and holds two MSc degrees in psychology and clinical linguistics. In her work, she focuses on the intersection of scientific research, product development, artificial intelligence and psychology.

CoFounder at Unit Network, DLT Talents and Balanced Being Network; governor at H.E.R. Dao. Author of the book “Beautiful Brains change tomorrow… today”. Previously, worked at McKinsey&Co. Holds an MBA from INSEAD Business School and is certified mindfulness trainer.

Rachael is a highly experienced behavioural scientist and internationally recognised subject matter expert in coaching. She is the scientific lead for technology-forward service evolutions within Headspace. She has deep expertise in technology-delivered health coaching interventions and workplace-related behaviour change.

Prior to her current role, Rachael led the Health Coaching team at Headspace and supported business operations in preparing to scale a coaching service in North America. Before joining Headspace, Rachael was an academic at the Institute of Management Studies (IMS) at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she led the MSc in Occupational Psychology and PGCert in Coaching programmes. She also has extensive commercial experience as a business consultant with clients from industries across the private, public, and charity sectors. Rachael is a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the Centre for Evidence Based Management.

Specialities: coaching psychology, digital health, employee wellbeing and performance, talent development, psychometric assessment, leadership development, career management and organisational behaviour.

Skills include: design and delivery of coaching interventions, coaching supervision, research design, delivery of commercial projects and relationship management.

As a futures researcher, Monika Bielskyte has been on a decade-long nomadic journey engaging with future emergence in 90+ countries. As a futurist, Monika consults at the future intersection of technology, culture & politics. As a world designer, she explores the bleeding edges of Science Fiction universes, having been commissioned by major film productions and studios.

Monika’s past clients include Universal, Google, Nike, DreamWorks, World Economic Forum, BBC, Microsoft, Mexico City, McKinsey, Anonymous Content, Reliance JIO, Telefonica, MTN, Huawei, TATA, among others.

Monika is currently developing @protopiafutures, a platform for research & creative collaborations challenging & offering alternatives to dystopian/utopian stereotypes. Protopia prototypes visions of radically hopeful & inclusive futures shaped by the urgent need for expanded futures literacy, & to combat the rise of disinformation in the coming age of the increasingly immersive media.

Constanze Osei is an accomplished expert in the field of Technology, Digital Policy and Social Impact Partnerships. She heads the Society & Innovation Policy team at Meta for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In this role, she oversees the socio-political dialogue and strategic projects around new technologies such as AR/VR and AI. Previously, she worked as the Head of Division for Economic and Innovation Policy at the digital association Bitkom, in the German Bundestag and at SAP AG.

At Meta, Constanze Osei is part of the Women@EMEA Leadership Team. She is involved both inside and outside the company in various initiatives against discrimination, racism and for inclusion. She’s part of the 2Hearts Management team, Germany’s largest initiative promoting more diversity in technology and VC.

John Michael Schert is an artist, advisor and producer working in multiple sectors. He began his career as a ballet dancer with American Ballet Theatre and Alonzo King LINES Ballet. In 2004 he co-founded Trey McIntyre Project, concurrently serving as the company’s Executive Director and a dancer. During this time, he gained a unique insight into the process and product of art-making and realized the ability to translate the creative process across disciplines and domains. 2013-2017 he served as the inaugural Visiting Artist and Social Entrepreneur at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Schert is the founding principal of JMS & Company, an executive producer of Boise’s B Corp Treefort Music Fest, and is the founder of the American Ballet Theatre Leadership Lab. He was a 2019 USA Eisenhower Fellowship and holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

A graduate of The Juilliard School, Brett has performed works by acclaimed choreographers Lar Lubovitch, Ohad Naharin, Cystal Pite, Robert Battle, Medhi Walerski, Eliot Feld, Jose Limon & Sharon Eyal.

Brett begin his professional career in Boise, Idaho as a founding member of the celebrated Trey McIntyre Project. With TMP he toured to 18 nations, serving as a United States Cultural Ambassador. He has danced with Ballet British Columbia, Aszure Barton & Artists, LED, Ballet Idaho and Adam Weinert. Perry was a 2010 recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Dance and is the inaugural 2020 Alexa Rose Foundation Fellow.

When he is not in the studio or onstage Brett is cultivating the land at Meadowlark Farm in Nampa, Idaho under the tutelage of food activist, Janie Burns.

Bertolt Meyer is a DJ, producer, and avowed modular enthusiast, who was born without his lower left arm. Instead of allowing this to hinder his creative pursuits, he hacked a prosthetic to create something truly special.

Having found his original prosthetic hand impractical for controlling his modular setup, Meyer began researching the possibilities of improving his creative experience by essentially shortening the signal flow between mind and action. The result is what he refers to as his ‘Syn-limb’ – a hacked prosthetic built with the help of Christian Zollner at KOMA Elektronik and his husband Daniel Theiler, which allows Meyer to control some parameters of his modular setup with muscular signals sent directly from his mind.

Bertolt Meyer is also a professor at the Institute of Psychology at the Chemnitz University of Technology.

Christian “Mio” Loclair, creative director at Waltz Binaire, is a new media artist, computer scientist and choreographer from Berlin, Germany.

He explores the friction of nature colliding with data and digital procedures. Using cutting edge technology and artificial intelligences in interactive installations, audio visual experiences,
visual narratives and dance performances, he continuously explores the harmony and tension of the encounter of humans and machines. Mio is publishing his work on digital installations, unexpected galleries and theatre stages around the world for commercial and independent projects.

Furthermore
Mio spoke about the philosophy of his work at the Palais De Nationes (United Nations ), MIT ( Centre Pompidou Paris) and Frauenkirche (Dresden), among others. His work has been featured by companies such as Google, IBM, Mercedes Benz, BMW and VW and presented at museum s such as Ars Electronica, Today Art Museum Beijing and Centre Pompidou.

Proven track record from strategy to business design and digital product creation to execution in startups and corporate environments.

• Associated Partner, Head of immersive Experiences MHP
  Strategy, Business Development, Project delivery & execution
• Vice President VR/AR Technologies, Mackevision GmbH
  Strategy, Business Development, Project delivery & execution
• Head of Business Development & Consulting, Wiredminds AG
  Business Consulting, Business Development, Product Management
• Co-Founder / Managing Director, Steuerberater.net
  Strategy, Business Development, Product & Operations
  Acquired by anwalt.de Services AG, Nürnberg, Germany

Marc is a Venture Capitalist with more than 15 years of international experience, and a strong network within the start-up and VC ecosystem. Before he joined Henkel as Head of Henkel dx Ventures in April 2022, he took on an active role in the world economy at brands like Sony where he filled several positions in Business/Corporate Development, Strategy and Venture Capital. He worked for CVCs and Financial VCs with a focus on Platforms, Gaming, Industry 4.0, Synthetic Reality, Mobility, HealthTech, AdTech and Social Commerce. Marc is a professional in Blockchain, Web 3.0 and Metaverse. He is a strong believer in future business models enabled by the new technologies driving Synthetic Reality forward.

Yacout El Glaoui-Madrisotti, Chief Marketing Officer for Parfums Givenchy since March 1st , 2020 has been managing the whole marketing development and communication team (PR and Digital). Since December 2nd , 2020 she’s been as well in charge of the Architecture and Visual Merchandising Departments.

A graduate from EM Lyon Business School, Yacout started her career in L’Oreal in 2000 holding marketing development positions in Beauty in Biotherm, and then Lancôme as Group Manager Skincare. As of 2007, she became France General Manager Shu Uemura before going back to Lancôme as VP Global marketing Make Up in 2010. In 2013 she joined Burberry as Global Marketing and Retail VP in order to develop the Beauty new category, where she created their make-up and skin care ranges, before taking over a Global Marketing responsibility on Ready-To-Wear business. Since January 2018, she was International Marketing Director at Piaget within Richemont Group.

The SPD politician from northern Germany has been the Federal Chancellor of Germany since December 2021, leading the country’s first “traffic light” coalition in Federal Government (the nickname is based on the parties’ colours). Olaf Scholz already knew the government district in Berlin well, having previously served as Federal Minister of Finance (2018-2021), Federal Minister for Labour and Social Affairs (2009-2011), and as a Member of the German Bundestag. He was also Hamburg’s First Mayor from 2011 until 2018. Olaf Scholz studied law and worked as a lawyer until 1998.