Evan Mawarire is a civil rights activist, pastor, and leader of the #ThisFlag movement in Zimbabwe.

Mawarire first gained considerable attention on social media following a video he posted in April 2016 that expressed his frustration with the state of the nation and Robert Mugabe’s government. In the video he encourages peaceful protest and urges people to refuse to pay bribes and stand up for their rights. In July 2016, the #ThisFlag campaign resulted in a mass movement of Zimbabweans shutting down the capital in a series of protests against corruption, poverty, and abuse of office by the Mugabe regime. Mawarire was charged with inciting public violence and “attempting to overthrow the government.” The court later threw out the charges and released him. Mawarire played a leading role in the peaceful protests which brought down Robert Mugabe in December 2017.

Global Head of Customer & Market Development, 3D Printing Business – https://develop3dlive.com/videos/j-scott-schiller-hp-3d-printing

(Joseph) Scott Schiller is the Global Head of Customer and Market Development for HP Inc.’s 3D Printing business unit. His position has accountability for vertical market development, strategic customer engagement as well as strategic partnerships and alliances across HP’s 3D printing initiatives.

Since joining the 3D printing organization in 2014, Scott served as Business Director for the launch of Multi Jet Fusion™. Prior to that he spent eight years as part of the team that built a new business in HP focused on mass customization solutions for high volume print manufacturing. This business continues today as HP’s PageWide Press division.

Prior to joining HP, Scott had a variety of entrepreneurial and product development roles with companies such as Honeywell International Inc., Microsoft Corp. as well as leading several smaller businesses in Seattle.

Scott holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and a master’s of business administration in Technology Marketing from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, Seattle.

As the Interim CEO of SqwidNet, Phathizwe Malinga will now also be responsible for building an IoT connectivity business in South Africa in partnership with International IoT giant Sigfox.

In addition to his new role, he will continue overlooking the development of the strategy and Connected Devices Solutions divisions for SqwidNet, a fully owned subsidiary of Dark Fibre Africa. The role of leading the SqwidNet comes naturally to Malinga as he has been in various leadership roles over the years.

He is no stranger to the role of a strategist, as he consulted with both Max Healthcare and Life Healthcare Group in his previous position with the organisation. He has been involved in the information technology and telecommunication industry for over two decades, having held senior management level positions.

Before joining SqwidNet, Malinga was the Head of Application Strategy at Life Healthcare Group, and he was in charge of the IT Application strategy and Software Development for the group. Phathizwe completed his Executive MBA from the Graduate School of Business, Cape Town and he is also a Guest Lecturer with the university as well.

Tanya Knowles is the Managing Executive of Fractal Solutions, a Division of Strate (Pty) Ltd. Fractal Solutions is tasks with the research and development of disruptive technologies, including blockchain / distributed ledger technology. Strate is South Africa’s authorised Central Securities Depository providing electronic settlement of securities concluded on various stock exchange in the country. Tanya is Chair of the South African Financial Markets Blockchain Consortium representing close to 50 of the country’s largest financial institutions. She is currently completing her certification in blockchain technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and holds a BA, PDM and MBA all from the University of the Witwatersrand. Having presented across four continents, Tanya is a well renowned speaker and thought leader in her area of expertise. In her private capacity, Tanya is involved in a number of women’s leadership and mentoring initiatives aimed at professional business women.

Known as the ‘Master of Influence’ by his clients, Gilan Gork is an internationally renowned Mentalist, Corporate Speaker, Trainer and Entertainer.

In 2016 Gilan founded the Influence Institute, where he and his team believe that everyone has ideas, products or services that deserve attention.

“We want to empower people with the ability to get the buy-in, agreement or support they need from others, so they can reach their highest success”, says Gilan.

Gilan has presented for Fortune500 companies in almost 30 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia and America, and is the author of the bestselling book “Persuasion Games”. With two decades’ experience as a professional mentalist, Gilan creates unique learning experiences that help you unleash your influence.

He teaches how to apply a working knowledge of influence and persuasion to real-life practical situations, to be able to lead, sell, negotiate, market and inspire on a new level.

As part of Gilan’s distinctive presentation style, he interactively demonstrates a remarkable ability to decode and influence people’s thoughts. He demonstrates how through psychology you can rapidly increase your levels of trust, credibility and influence with others.

Want to work with Gilan and the Influence Institute? Drop us a mail at manager@gilangork.com.

For more information about Gilan and how he uses his experience as a Mentalist to help others learn how to positively influence outcomes visit www.gilangork.com.

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As a mentalist, I am passionate about using influence to not only entertain, but educate my clients on how they can unlock their potential and achieve their objectives faster and more effectively. The techniques I use are as accessible to anyone as the ability to breathe, all you need to do is learn how to apply them.

Nnamdi is passionate about the power of technology and innovation to change the lives of Africans. He is the International Remittance Lead for Standard Bank Group and the author of two books on African innovation -Disrupting Africa: The Rise and Rise of African InnovationandTaking On Silicon Valley: How Africa’s Innovators will change its future, both books showing how African technology and digital payments can propel Africa as a technology powerhouse on the global stage.

His many travels and business experience across the continent have greatly contributed to his huge optimism for Africa and its bright future. He features frequently as a presenter and chairperson across various conferences in Africa, contributes regularly to media houses on the subject of innovation

He has been named amongst the”100 most influential names in Africa’s telecoms, media and ICT industry”by the AfricaCom100 Research Board and more recently, been named as one of the “Top 100 Most Influential People of African Descent”, a MIPAD initiative, as part of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent.

Monique Giggy runs SU Ventures where she works closely with impact-focused startups that are solving world problems with technology. She and her team create programs and provide key resources that truly accelerate breakthroughs through curated networking, experience based coaching and a solid focus on metrics.

She is a seasoned value creator with proven success building/exiting companies, driving turnarounds, and leading high performing global teams. Prior to SU she conceived and helped build the world’s most popular and successful mobile golf application- Swing by Swing Golf which she sold in 2014. After the sell of her company she participated in the 2014 Global Solutions Program where she fell in love with SU.

Monique has served as an advisor and entrepreneurship coach, Venture Partner, CMO, and has started and invested in several companies.

John Sanei (Sah-nay) is an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, best-selling author and global speaker who talks about the future with a unique twist. By combining human psychology, future studies and business strategy, he guides audiences and leaders into an exponentially different future with excitement and optimism.

In What’s Your Moonshot? (his first book) he inspires the reader to ask bigger, bolder and more courageous questions about the future. In MAGNETiiZE – his second book, he invites the reader to focus on elegant, conscious and deliberate questions about the future.

John is also proudly the first African faculty member of the prestigious Singularity University in San Francisco and The Duke Corporation.

Mic believes that the future will be abundant as the power and potential of exponential technologies increase and their price gradually drop to zero, ultimately democratising numerous industries and improving the lives of all.

As co-founder of Mann Made – an award-winning experiential brand agency that has worked with top global and local Fortune 500 companies – Mic Mann has 19 years of experience in the media, marketing and eventing industry. Mic is a prolific speaker and strategist on exponential technologies, the future of work and the changing role of professionals.

After completing the Singularity University Executive Programme in 2015, he realised that in order to #futureproofAfrica we need to embrace exponential technologies. He subsequently brought the SingularityU South Africa Summit – the first of its kind on the continent – to South Africa. Mic’s passions are entrepreneurship and break-through technologies. He is also involved in the local start-up and maker community.

During the founding of the Thiel Fellowship in 2010, Danielle Strachman joined to lead the design and operations. She is the visionary behind the Thiel Summit series that has been attended by around 2 000 young entrepreneurs. Previous to her work with Peter Thiel, Danielle founded and directed Innovations Academy in San Diego, a K-8 charter school serving 350 students, with a focus on student-led, project-based learning and other alternative programmes.

Danielle is passionate about disrupting education and has worked with home schoolers, co-founded the Innovations Academy and 1517 Fund. The latter supports young entrepreneurs and technology start-ups with grant, pre-seed, and seed funding. 1517 Fund understands that not everyone is suited for higher education, hence it focuses on makers, hackers and scientists, who are interested in working outside tracked institutions. It motivates people to work on their passions, learn by doing and create new technologies.

Nastassia Arendse is the host of the Classic Business Breakfast on Classic FM, which is South Africa’s first morning business show that focuses on breaking business news, expert analysis and investment insight.

Nastassia has been working in broadcasting for eight years and has worked in television and radio. As a television anchor, she presented Closing Bell East Africa and Open Exchange on CNBC Africa.

As an experienced reporter, she covered global commodity markets for Mineweb, where she wrote articles that track changes and trends worldwide in the commodity space. The beat focused on how prospects for the global economy, interest rates and currencies influence investor decisions in relation to gold, precious metals, fixed income and equities.

In 2015, she hosted a show called Africa’s visionaries for SkyTV, which aired in the United Kingdom. She has interviewed a range of business leaders, including Barclays CEO Maria Ramos, Bidvest founder Brian Joffe, Comair CEO Erik Venter and former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano among others.

Nastassia has a passion for technology and innovative. She represents a new breed of journalists that have managed to break the professional mould and explore different avenues in the media and public sphere.

As Deloitte Africa’s Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, Valter Adão oversees Deloitte’s Digital and Innovation portfolios. He leads a diverse team of specialists, who create a leading digital ecosystem to assist organisations in understanding and undergoing Digital Transformation, whilst uplifting their digital experiences and becoming digital at the core, in order to remain viable and competitive in a world of ever-changing digital technologies.

Valter is a corporate entrepreneur with extensive experience in building new businesses across a variety of industries. He works mostly with blue-chip clients assisting them in re-imagining their businesses or identifying high value, innovative business opportunities and rapidly commercialising them into sustainable businesses.

Valter was previously the leader and founding director of Monitor Deloitte, following Deloitte’s acquisition of the Monitor group. He is also a member of Deloitte’s Global Innovation Executive Committee.

Alex Gladstein is Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. He has also served as Vice President of Strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum since its inception in 2009. In his work, Alex has connected hundreds of dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, technologists, journalists, philanthropists, policymakers and artists to promote free and open societies. Alex’s writing and views on human rights and technology have appeared in media outlets across the world, including: The Atlantic, BBC, CNN, Fast Company, The Guardian, Monocle, NowThis, NPR, Quartz, TIME, WIRED, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal. He has spoken at universities ranging from MIT to Stanford, presented at the European Parliament and participated in Singularity University events from Berlin to Johannesburg. He has also spoken at a range of blockchain events about why bitcoin matters for freedom.

Adam Pantanowitz is a fanatical technologist, who was inspired to learn by growing up in the age of the world wide web. Since studying biomedical and electrical engineering, he has worked in the field of biotech and software. Adam is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and is chartered internationally as an engineer. He is part of the first group of faculty for Singularity University South Africa, with a focus on biotechnology.

Adam has lectured Engineering and Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand since 2009. In academia, Adam’s innovations have resulted in a number of patents, academic papers and the creation of the media interest piece “Brainternet”, with its world-first, portable brain-internet livestream. Some of his other projects, on which he has worked alongside colleagues, include an eye-controlled wheelchair, a non-cognitive brain transmission channel that uses light and a thought-controlled robotic arm with a light-to-brain on/off switch. Their other innovations include a hands-free controlled surgery interaction system, a CPR monitoring system, a computer-based sign language interpreter and an innovative eye-controlled cursor.

He enjoys solving seemingly unsolvable problems and co-founded businesses AURA, Tariffic, Lawbuntu, among others. He also acted as CTO of VATIT, the world’s largest VAT reclaim business from 2015 until 2017.

Adam speaks around the world on the future of technology with a focus on tech-human convergence and also does motivational speaking.

Dr Taddy Blecher is CEO of the Maharishi Institute and the Imvula Empowerment Trust, CEO of the Community and Individual Development Association and former Chairperson of the South African National Government task team on entrepreneurship, education and job creation. He is a pioneer of the free tertiary education movement in South Africa and has helped establish six free-access institutions of higher learning.

Taddy co-founded the Branson School of Entrepreneurship with Sir Richard Branson and has raised over R500 million in cash, property and equity to support free access to post-secondary school education. As a result, over 17 000 unemployed South Africans have been educated, found employment and transitioned from living in poverty to the middle class. These formerly unemployed youth now have combined salaries in excess of R1 billion per annum and expected lifetime earnings of R27.2 billion. Over 600 000 young school-going South Africans have been reached with his one-week education and life-skills training courses.

Taddy was chosen as one of 21 Icons in South Africa, is a 2002 World Economic Forum “Global Leader of Tomorrow”​ award recipient, a 2005 World Economic Forum “Young Global Leader of the World”, a Skoll Global Social Entrepreneur, who has won a $1 million prize for his work and has been honoured with two honorary doctorates. In 2009, author Tom Peters named Taddy one of his top five most influential entrepreneurs in the world over the last 30 years. Over 50 published books have profiled his work, including three recent books by Sir Richard Branson.

As a qualified actuary and management consultant, Taddy is passionate about the approach of Consciousness-Based Education, a system of education that develops the full potential of each student. This has led the Maharishi Institute to win the first prize in a global competition to find the most promising and innovative education initiative in the world.

Richard Browning is the Founder of the pioneering aeronautical innovation company called Gravity. Since its launch in March 2017, Gravity has invented, built and patented an Iron Man like flight system.

The dream was to reimagine an entirely new form of authentic human flight that leans on an elegant collaboration of the mind and body that is augmented by cutting-edge technology. Gravity has to date been experienced by over a billion people globally with video views running at more than 60 million within the first week of launch. In the first year Gravity executed 46 flight events across 16 countries including at four TED talks.

Richard and his team are delivering on the vision to build Gravity into a world-class aeronautical engineering business, that can challenge perceived boundaries in human aviation, and inspire a generation to dare ask ‘what if?’.

As Director of International Summits, Bohdanna Kesala’s work is to bring influencers together to cross-pollinate regional, national and global ideas that will grow into tech and social change for the betterment of all.

After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington, Bohdanna worked at Northwestern University as their Special Events Coordinator. There she met and worked with politicians, Supreme Court justices and the brightest academic minds, while witnessing the power of knowledge and change.

From there, she moved to San Francisco and received a Post Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting from California College of Arts and an MFA in Painting from San Francisco State University. For the next decade Bohdanna concentrated on her art career. She exhibited her work in the United States and Europe, while also teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. Bohdanna’s paintings focused on beauty and history and how they can bring people together visually.

Merging her creativity and passion to bring people together in collaboration, Bohdanna began working for The Thiel Foundation as their Event Curator, managing all aspects of their events from high-level design to curating speakers and building partnerships between other organisations. Some highlights include: managing all events for CNBC Transforming Tomorrow: a documentary focused on the Thiel Fellowship, working with Wired.com to produce events for ‘Teen Technorati’, a web series on The Thiel Fellowship, and producing events for Breakout Labs Unboxing: a showcase of BOL’s grantees. Bohdanna was also one of the architects of The Thiel Foundation Summit, a bi-annual assembly of young entrepreneurs and visionaries from around the world.

Working directly with entrepreneurs inspired Bohdanna to open 10 Forward Events, a full-service, event-curation firm specialising in producing innovative and one-of-a-kind events for the science and tech industry, start-ups, entrepreneurs and VC firms. This endeavour ultimately brought her to Singularity University.

Rob Nail is the CEO and Associate founder of Singularity University. He brings a unique entrepreneurial and globally-focused approach to growing a non-traditional university as a platform to create a future of abundance, where exponential technologies empower us to solve global grand challenges.

Prior to Singularity University, he co-founded Velocity11 in 1999, which built automation equipment and robotics for cancer research and pharmaceutical development. After being acquired by Agilent Technologies in 2007, he traded the role of CEO to become General Manager in an attempt to be a catalyst for change at a big company. He gave that up in 2009 to go surfing and eventually find his true calling and biggest challenge yet with Singularity University. He is a director at Harman (HAR) and Light&Motion, as well as a co-founder and Director of Alite Designs. Rob is an active angel investor and advisor. He holds degrees in Mechanical, Materials Science and Manufacturing Engineering from the University of California, Davis and Stanford University.

Jeffrey Rogers is a facilitator, speaker and programme designer, who creates interactive educational experiences driven by storytelling, engagement and play. He’s an academically trained social scientist (University of California, Berkeley and the University of Texas-Austin) with a knack for future-thinking and a deep belief in the transformative potential of exponential technologies as tools to de-risk experimentation, accelerate learning and create change.

Jeffrey speaks frequently across the world on exponential thinking and leads workshops on creative problem-solving and storytelling. He’s connected dots, ideas and people as a moderator recently for the Singularity University Executive Programme and Exponential Tech and Strategy programmes for Oracle, Google, Roche, NBC, Aegon among other global brands.

Prior to joining Singularity University, Jeffrey spent a decade building learning and development solutions across sectors and designing and delivering award-winning educational and training programmes. He currently serves as Singularity University’s Director of Faculty and Facilitator Development. Jeffrey works closely with the faculty to help individuals discover their unique strengths as communicators and teachers, and to co-create rave-worthy, learner-centred experiences online and at Singularity University.

As co-founder and CEO of Mann Made – an award-winning, experiential brand agency for top local and global Fortune 500 companies – Shayne Mann has 17 years’ of experience in the media, marketing and eventing industries. Over the decades he has successfully driven Mann Made to become a 65-employee strong company that specialises in activations, events, media products and productions, as well as mobile and telecoms.

Shayne is a SingularityU alumnus and was also the co-CEO of SingularityU South Africa. He epitomises exponential leadership and is passionate about how exponential and disruptive technologies can drive change to positively impact South Africa and the continent.

Shayne is passionate about the drivers of entrepreneurship and is involved in the local start-up and maker communities. He has partnered with the Maharishi University of Management, Taddy Blecher and The Ubuntu Foundation. In partnership with an international private equity investor, he has invested in a variety of industries including property, medicine, music, media, and tech, alongside his brother Mic. His personal passions include cycling, meditation and leading a healthy lifestyle and creating a positive impact in the country through all he does.

Nathana O’Brien Sharma is the Program Director for Faculty Affairs at Singularity University. She’s also faculty in Law, Policy, Ethics and Blockchain, where she writes and speaks on the impact of accelerating technologies and the future of law and governance to audiences of technologists and business leaders. Nathana is a principal at Crypto-Lotus, a cryptocurrency hedge fund and is an Advisory Board Member for the Creative Destruction Labs in Toronto, the leading academic startup accelerator in North America which supports companies in specialized technology tracks including machine learning and quantum machine learning.

Nathana is an International Association of Privacy Professionals certified privacy expert in both the US and the EU and advises companies on navigating complex cross-border privacy issues, particularly in connection with the use of emerging technologies. Nathana was previously a technology transactions associate at Gunderson Dettmer, where she advised high growth VC backed startups and venture funds on a range of technology and business issues. Nathana is a JD/MBA graduate of the Yale Law School and Yale School of Management.

Nathana was a lead researcher at MetaMed, a VC backed medical research start up and has a background in the lab in immunology and neuroscience. She is also a graduate of Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program.