4th speaker announcement
Be hold — our fourth speaker announcement!
Georgia Ritter
Head of Marketing & Community at Giant Ventures
Georgia Ritter is the Head of Marketing & Community at Giant Ventures, a multi-stage fund investing in purpose-driven founders solving the world’s biggest challenges, from climate to health. She is also the creator and host of the Out of Hours Podcast, listed in Esquire's best podcasts, where she explores the power of side projects - interviewing guests on how curiosity and experimentation shaped their life purpose.
Mikko Koskinen
Sereal entrepreneur
Mikko Koskinen is a multifaceted entrepreneur whose career has pivoted from hardware engineering, stand-up comedy, online media, distillation, and carbon removal in Iceland. He currently develops a carbon removal & biodiversity startup while temporarily filling in CMO role at Kyrö Distillery. In his free time, he free dives, wild swims, runs, and hikes in nature and enjoys good food and drinks.
Timo Weiland
Founder / Investor / Advisor
Timo Weiland is an award-winning Creative Director, serial entrepreneur and DJ based in New York City. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska and raised between Florida and New York. After graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, he worked for several years as an investment banking analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. covering Media & Technology before launching his first startup. Since 2010, Timo has successfully built a namesake lifestyle brand, as well as businesses across food & beverage, design, media, B2B intelligence, real estate, technology, and venture capital.
The Timo Weiland brand, co-founded in 2010 with Alan Eckstein and Donna Kang, won the prestigious Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation award, Forbes 30 Under 30 List for Design, as well as the Council of Fashion Designers of America x Cadillac Retail Innovation grant. Recent projects include co-founding The Lead ( the-lead.co ), creative direction for GAP’s Banana Republic, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG Worldwide), and one of the world’s largest direct-to-consumer optical brands, Zenni. He works between his creative offices in Brooklyn, retail operation with Groupe on the Bowery, (https://www.groupe.nyc/), recording studio in Flatiron, and venture capital offices in Lower Manhattan. Timo has been recently profiled in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Vogue, WWD, Forbes, and Fast Company.
Rafa Barroso
Investor / GP at Alpha Impact 8
Rafa Barroso is a Mexican-born, NYC-based Entrepreneur, Mentor, Advisor and Investor. Rafa started his career as a software engineer in Mexico and continued his professional development in the United States as a startup founder. First, as the technical founder and former CTO of Parlevel, a Series A retail / payments technology company exited in 2022 and later as co-founder of Phantom Labs, an AI foundry that provides technology and implementation of data solutions. Posteriorly, he worked as Solutions Architect at Google and as a Google for Startups mentor (20%) supporting accelerators and advising up and coming companies on technology, strategy and cloud related topics.
He manages his own syndicate and has an Angel Investor portfolio of 30+ companies. He is a Limited Partner, operator and advisor at several underrepresented-founders-focused venture funds in the USA, LatAm and Asia and a General Partner at Alpha Impact 8 Ventures. Rafa is also an ecosystem builder and has been the head of community for immigrant and latino founder organizations like FirstGeneration and ColectivoNYC.
Arna Harðardóttir
CEO at Helix
Arna is a biomedical engineer passionate about driving change in the healthcare system with innovative tech solutions addressing the most pressing problems in healthcare today: limited resources, both financially and of medical experts in the field. Arna leads the health tech company Helix, a company inhabiting deep knowledge of the sector, building on decades of revolutionary health tech innovations. Arna is a strong advocate for bringing together companies working within the field of health innovation, for a more focused approach to solving the complex challenges facing the healthcare industry today.
Katrín Jakobsdóttir
Former Prime Minister of Iceland & presidential candidate
Katrín served as Iceland's Prime Minister from 2017 to 2024 and Leader of the Left-Green Movement from 2013 to 2024, spearheading a coalition government with a broad political spectrum. As an advocate of gender equality, environmental sustainability and the wellbeing economy, she actively worked to position Iceland as a leader in these areas on the global stage.
Currently, Katrín is running for the presidency of Iceland. Katrín holds an MA in literature and a BA in Icelandic and French, and prior to her political career, she worked as an educator and language adviser. She is married to Gunnar Sigvaldason with whom she has three sons.
Kjartan Ólafsson
CEO of Transition Labs
Kjartan leads the charge at Transition Labs by partnering with the highest impact climate projects from around the world, providing assistance to founders in rolling out and scaling up their climate solutions. Kjartan is an entrepreneur with deep startup experience in Iceland and in New York. Previously Kjartan led digital transformation initiatives for leading media companies in music, publishing, and television in the U.S., built his own startups and pursued a career in venture capital. Kjartan studied philosophy and logic in Iceland and in Italy, and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Niall McDonagh
Director at Google Cloud responsible for Public Sector EMEA
Niall McDonagh is the Director at Google Cloud responsible for Public Sector across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Previously, Niall worked at Microsoft and Accenture. Niall is a graduate of the Neoma Business School in France and has a MSc (Accounting) from University College Dublin. Niall's interest and expertise is in the digital transformation of public services.