Marietje Schaake

Non-resident Fellow,
Stanford University
Cyber Policy Center
and Institute for Human-Centered AI

Marietje Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN’s High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009 - 2019, she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. Marietje was recently named Chair of the Working Group 4 on internal risk management and governance of general-purpose artificial intelligence (GPAI) providers tasked to draft an EU Code of Practice on GPAI. She is presently advising ICFG as a Senior Fellow for its work on emerging technology governance and is the author of “The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley”.

Ian Goldin

Professor of Globalisation
and Development,
Oxford University, and
Founding Director,
Oxford Martin School

Ian is the Oxford University Professor of Globalisation and Development and the founding Director of the Oxford Martin School, the world’s leading centre for interdisciplinary research into critical global challenges. Ian holds extensive experience amongst international organisations, having served previously in multiple roles at the World Bank, UN, IMF, OECD and the European Union (EU). From 1995-2000, he was economic advisor to President Nelson Mandela and Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Ian has written and presented three BBC series. The most recent of Ian’s 25 books is The Shortest History of Migration and Age of the City. His previous books include:

• Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World

• Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years

• Age of Discovery: Navigating the Storms of our Second Renaissance

• The Butterfly Defect: How globalisation creates systemic risks and what to do about them

• The Pursuit of Development

He has been knighted by the French government for services to development and is founding chair of the core-econ.org charity and a founding trustee of the International Center for Future Generations. See iangoldin.org for further details.

Kim Stanley Robinson (Video Message)

Acclaimed sci-fi novelist

Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. He is the author of about twenty books, including the international bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140, and The Ministry for the Future. He was part of the US National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and 2016, and a featured speaker at COP-26 in Glasgow, as a guest of the UK government and the UN. His work has been translated into 29 languages, and won awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016, asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson”.

Iverna McGowan

Tech and Human Rights Advisor, OHCHR

Iverna is currently serving as Tech & Human Rights Advisor to the UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, where she leads a body of work to ensure that legislation on technology in different jurisdictions around the world respects people’s rights. She is widely recognized in the human rights advocacy field, having been listed by EU Insider (2024) and Politico (2017) as one of the most influential people in EU tech law and policy.  Iverna has extensive leadership experience in civil society organizations including the Centre for Democracy and Technology’s Europe Office where she served as Secretary General, and Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office where she served as the Executive Director and Advocacy Director for Europe.

Iverna is a frequent commentator on human rights, EU foreign policy, and gender equality, and has contributed to pieces by Euronews, CNN, BBC, RTE and Reuters. You can find her on X and LinkedIn.

Eva Maydell

Member of
European Parliament

Eva Maydell is a Member of the European Parliament and sits within the largest EU political group, the European People’s Party. Recently re-elected for a third term, she is a member of the Parliament’s Industry Committee, Economic Affairs Committee, and Deputy Spokesperson for her political group on industry related matters.

Maydell was one of the lead negotiators on the EU’s Chips Act and Artificial Intelligence Act. Her policy priorities include innovation and the use of new technologies to support European competitiveness and fostering cooperation among global likeminded partners in the tech and democracy space. She is also Vice President of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the United States.

Maydell is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, a Board Member for the World Economic Forum’s Digital Europe program, and a member of the WEF Global Future Council of Europe. She is also the co-founder of the Council on the Future, partnered with the Munich Security Conference.

Maydell has been awarded the European Parliament's MEP of the Year Award twice. She has been included in FT's own 'New Europe 100' ranking of CEE's emerging change-makers and European Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. Maydell has also been featured in POLITICO’s 40 most influential MEPs, “POLITICO 28” the list of people who shape Europe, and POLITICO’s 2018 Women who shape Brussels.

Prof Antoine Magnan

Head of Pulmonology at the Foch Hospital in Paris and former advisor to the French Minister of Health

Prof Antoine Magnan leads the pulmonology department at the Foch Hospital in Paris. His main field of activity is bronchial diseases and allergies, where he investigates T-cell activation in asthma and lung transplant recipients, in both humans and murine models. In 2020, he started a research program for personalised medicine in respiratory diseases, including lung transplant, severe asthma, cancer, cystic fibrosis and immunodeficiency-related lung diseases.

Prof Magnan served as the principal investigator in the COLT (COhort in Lung Transplantation) program involving 11 French lung transplantation centres. He was formerly the advisor to the French Minister of Health in 2022.

Jonas Parello-Plesner

Alliance of Democracies Foundation

Jonas Parello-Plesner is Executive Director of the Copenhagen-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation founded by former NATO-Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussens. The Foundation seeks to advance democracy and strengthen the alliance between the world’s democracies, including at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, the foundation’s annual event bringing together world-class speakers. He is also a non-resident senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund. 

Jonas was a seasoned diplomat with long-standing experience working with power centres in Washington, Brussels and Beijing. He regularly writes op-eds and commentaries for leading media outlets, both within Denmark and internationally. He recently published the book “The Battle for Taiwan” based on two-months of extensive interviews with stakeholders from politics, economics and technology. 

Jonas is a graduate from école nationale d’administration (ENA) in Paris and holds master degrees from the London School of Economics and Copenhagen University.

James Kanter

Founding Editor, EU Scream

James Kanter is the founding editor of the EU Scream politics podcast and a former correspondent for The New York Times, based in Paris and Brussels. James began his career at The Cambodia Daily newspaper in Phnom Penh, and is a recipient of a Reporting Europe prize for his coverage of energy and climate. He holds degrees from Columbia University, City University of London, and Yale Law School.