SPEAKERS

 
 
 

Keynote Speakers

 
 
 
 

Cornel Amariei

Cornel Amariei is a renowned Romanian inventor, speaker and entrepreneur known for creating  .lumen – a startup that builds glasses which empower the blind to live a better life.

Cornel was born in a family where his parents and sister lived with disabilities, severely limiting their mobility.

Previously, Cornel was known for operating as Head of Innovation in a large Automotive company. For his work, he became the first Romanian inducted into Forbes 30U30 Europe, the Global Business Hall of Fame and JCI's Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World. Awards previously won by personalities such as Elvis Presley, Levi Strauss, and John F. Kennedy

Mali M. Baum

CEO & Founder at WLOUNGE one of the biggest and most influential tech networks in Germany, and founder and Founder of MAGDA GROUP.

Mali has 20 years of experience in founding companies, and plays an instrumental role in creating the Tech ecosystem in Germany, Europe and beyond (Israel, US and Asia).

Mali pushes for more women in influential positions in corporations, investment and startups. She is a key player in opening doors for female investors/founders, having built a Female Angel Accelerator to encourage more women to enter into this field.

As an X5 serial entrepreneur she started her own first-business in 2007. Since January 2020 she is an advisor and jury member of the EU Innovation Council, EIC accelerator and the EIC fund, involved in the EIC Green-Deal. She is an ambassador for the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises for StartUp AsiaBerlin (SUAB) and Asia-Pacific Week Berlin (APW).

Mali lectures at several universities on entrepreneurship, founding companies, diversity and international business, and is a regular speaker at industry conferences, a mentor and jury member of startup competitions.

 

Maja Feldt

Maja Feldt, Managing Director a member of the Executive Board at CUB, responsible for Quality Management, Academic and Student Services (CPO and VP), draws on more than 20 years of experience in academic services, process, performance and quality management at both private and public universities in Italy. Most recently, she held the position of Director of Education and Student Services at the University of Verona. She completed a master's program in Sweden and an executive master’s degree in Management of University and Research by the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy. She has worked for the Accreditation Council in Italy as a system accreditation expert for 10 years and is a board member of the national University Management & Administration Network in Italy. Given her extensive academic experience in different countries, Maja Feldt is particularly keen on working in an international and intercultural environment and on contributing to the development and innovation of the University within the ecosystem.

 
 

Workshop Hosts

 
 

Fabio H. Mathias

Fabio works as a Managing Partner at  Mathias Consulting & Investments and  as a Associate Partner, HCM Group. He did his Bachelors and MBA from Concordia University in the US. He has more than 20 years experience in Management positions in financing, M&A and private equity.

A strong networker and fundraiser for innovative start-ups from Seed to Series A rounds, he has had over 200 successful projects and transactions

Fabio is also a lecturer at Constructor University and University of Europe for Applied Sciences (UE) and a Serial guest speaker on topics such as entrepreneurship, private equity, M&A and financing.
Moreover, he is a Former Jury-member of “GründerGeist” in Hamburg.

 
 

Dr. Björn Bronger

Björn has been advising entrepreneurs for many years, among others, in his function as Advisor in the context of the Social Innovation Tournament (SIT) of the EIB Institute and the Young Entrepreneur Summit (YES). In this context, he regularly gives speeches and workshops, and participate to startup competitions and in panel discussions. He works as Counsel responsible for finance operations at the European Investment Bank (EIB), the biggest multilateral financial institution in the world and one of the world’s main financers of climate action. With its long-term venture debt products, support to microfinance institutions, and loans to SMEs via intermediated financing, the EIB Group is a strong supporter of entrepreneurs.
With Björn’s academic background in law and in international relations, he has a profound understanding of the interconnected and rapidly changing multilateral environment.

 
 

Olivia Falkenstein

Olivia Falkenstein is a sustainability strategist and consultant. She supports leaders to develop, pursue, and communicate their sustainability strategies. As a certified sustainability consultant and a member of the IFRS Sustainability Alliance, she focuses on the connection between purpose and profit. Leading projects for global and SME tech and professional services firms, she gained expertise in identifying business challenges and opportunities, and how companies can have a positive impact. Her career led her from SAP marketing roles to leading a B2B marketing agency. Recently, she worked in cybersecurity marketing and sustainability consulting. In 2022, she co-founded Dunn & Falkenstein Consulting.

She graduated with a BA in International Economics at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Romania. In addition, she has an FSA (Fundamentals of Sustainability Accounting) credential and attended courses in CRM, PR, sales and marketing, and cybersecurity. Olivia was born in Romania and lives in Heidelberg, Germany.
Olivia´s motto is “do good and talk about it”.

 
 

Sonja Mattfeld

Sonja Mattfeld is currently a research associate at the Chair for Global Markets and Firms at the international Constructor University in Bremen, where she is also pursuing her PhD in International Business. Sonja holds a degree in International Cultural and Business Studies and has more than fifteen years of management and worldwide sales experience in several medium-sized companies. Furthermore, she was managing partner and CFO in an international consulting firm for more than six years where she built up the internal processes and structures and managed clients, colleagues and projects. She spent a large part of her career in East Africa, particularly in Kenya, where she is also invested in a food start-up and works with various entrepreneurs. Most recently Sonja managed the start-up program at Jacobs University and supported dozens of students and faculty with individual mentoring, established connections with relevant contacts of her network and organised and conducted various workshops. Sonja is very well linked in the regional Start-Up ecosystem in Bremen and East Africa and looks forward to supporting the JSC teams in 2023 and of course get to know the participants and their business models.

 
 

Michael Potts

Michael, now retired and living in Provence, is an active startup mentor,  with a sustainability bias. Working at Ford on electric vehicles 25 years ago he was responsible for predicting who were the potential customers and what did they want? He left Ford to run a small business supplying the North American motor industry with recyclable chemicals and spent may interesting hours to finally persuade Harley Davidson they need to adopt a more ‘Toyota’ approach! More recently he has been an active mentor in startup accelerators around Boston annually supporting the Clean Tech Open. Electric bikes, sustainability software and building social media communities have been a few recent projects.

Former Keynote Speakers

 
 

Céline Flores Willers

LinkedIn Top Voice & Founder of The People Branding Company

Céline is one of the most well-known business influencers on LinkedIn. She started to feed her personal profile with self-created content focusing on the latest innovations, startups and tech-trends. Since then, her LinkedIn experienced dramatic growth in followers and now compromises a large community of 70.000 professionals with a weekly reach of more than 250.000 people.

LinkedIn recognized her work by awarding Céline twice in a row as “LinkedIn Top Voice” 2019 and 2020. She now founded her own company „The People Branding Company“ to help multinational brands and professionals harness the power of personal branding in order to drive influence and reach.

 
 

JT Rehill

Head of SEV Academics

I have been called an entrepreneur, but mostly I am a professional learner who has sought to forge my own path and found my passion in the world of education. Over the past 12 years or so, I have worked as an English teacher, instructional coach, consultant, trainer, professor, and school administrator.

I reside in Istanbul and am working towards earning my Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Educational Leadership. Most importantly, I am the proud father of two bicultural children who teach me new things about life every day.

 
 

Former Workshop Speakers

 
 

René Borgwald

Certified Tax Advisor at KPMG, Germany and University Lecturer

René is specialized in providing tax advice to national and international clients doing business in Germany. René also focuses on the preparation of tax returns, legal remedies, and tax audits.

 
 

Johannes Grabowski

Bosch Group

Dipl.-Ing. MBE Johannes Grabowski PMP is working for the Bosch Group since 2005 in various positions. After years in engineering he switched to innovation, was active in spin-offs in Silicon Valley, pushed robotics projects as entrepreneur, and build up an accelerator which won the Corporate Startup Award for Best Entrepreneurship in 2017. 

Furthermore, he taught business modelling at the ESB university in Reutlingen in 2017/8. Since 2018 he is working for Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH to build up a global startup partnership program for the Bosch group.

 
 

Carina Hinrichsen

Assistant manager at KPMG, Bremen, Germany

Carina is specialized in providing tax advice to national and international clients doing business in Germany. She is also an expert in individual tax matters, tax audits, as well as tax returns and legal remedies.

 
 

Imke Leith

Founder and Director of KELE-Coaching 

Creative Communications Trainer, Inspiring Speaker and Motivational Coach & Trainer. She is passionate about motivating start-ups and businesses to shine and network successfully, which she considers the key to success. 

Networking works according to the principle "Give & Take" and Jacobs Startup Competition 2020 will be her "Give". Born into a family business, bred and fed business acumen.

 
 

Tina Ruseva

Founder of Mentessa 

Tina is a founder and managing director of the software company Mentessa, startup expert and coach. For 10 years now she has built the Munich startup scene as a tech founder, innovation manager at Allianz and Fraunhofer, and Head of Startup Programs at WERK1.

 
 

André Wollin

Founder of M01N Startup Camp & Startup Taxi

André loves radical changes and crises. Without money and experience in the event business he created the biggest startup event in northern Germany together with friends. Thousands of founders investors and executives joined M01N Startup Camp in Germany Singapore and Vietnam.

Besides that, he holds thrilling entrepreneur talks in his Startup Taxi with 500.000+ views on YouTube Instagram & TikTok. Find out more about his ventures on www.andrewollin.com