Milo Tesselaar is a founder, developer and strategic consultant with a focus on media and politics. Founding Partner of freims, the social innovation consultancy, Founding Partner of the podcast agency OH WOW and Co-Founder of Biorama magazine for a sustainable lifestyle. He has been an Impact Hub Vienna member from its beginnings, co-initiator of the political innovation lab Re-Think Austria (with the European Forum Alpbach) as well as co-founder and leader of the non-partisan platform Demokratie21, which initiates conversations about the future of our democracy.

Boris Jokić is the head of the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. He holds a degree in psychology from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. He holds a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. For many years he was engaged in improving the public education system in the Republic of Croatia. He became known to the general public as the leader of the Comprehensive Curricular Reform movement for elementary and secondary education, which attempted to radically reform the Croatian education system. Due to political pressures that blocked and ultimately prevented the reform, Jokić launched "Croatia can do better" – a wave of protests in which more than 50,000 people participated. 

Marton Galambos is editor-in-chief of Forbes Hungary. Previously, he worked as a journalist and editor for Origo, Figyelő and Kreatív. In 2007-2008, he spent a year in Berlin as part of the European Journalism Fellowships programme at the Freie Universität Berlin. As a student, he also studied for a year in Berlin at the Humboldt Universität and spent an academic year in the United States at McDaniel College in Maryland. 

Adela Vinczeová is a radio and TV presenter who has worked on numerous Slovak and Czech awards and shows, such as Czech & Slovak SuperStar, the Anděl music awards and the Czech Lion film awards. She invites unique personalities, experts and professionals from various fields to her Trochu inak s Adelou (A Bit Differently with Adela) talk show, broadcast by Slovak Television. Over the past two decades, she has won several Slovak TV Personality of the Year awards. She has also cooperated with the Goethe Institute Bratislava on several events and language-education projects. Adela actively supports various charitable, not-for-profit and civic society initiatives and regularly becomes the face of public campaigns. 

Yemi A. D. is a choreographer, producer and founder of two organisations – a non-profit organisation: Dance Academy Prague and an event agency: JAD Productions. He supports disadvantaged children in Indonesia, Nigeria and in the Czech Republic. Yemi A.D. holds a Henry Crown Fellowship from the Aspen Global Leadership Network. He is also an Ambassador for UN Sustainable Development Goals for the Czech Republic and serves as a Czech Goodwill Ambassador, appointed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In response to the current pandemic crisis, he launched a series of Anti-Panic Conferences in Central Europe and later the Moonshot Platform, which manages innovative ecosystems.  

Cultural creative, network weaver and permaculture designer with particular interest in social and economic aspects of permaculture, effective collaboration in groups and in virtual teams for systemic change. Born 1963 in Pula, working and living in Zagreb, Croatia. Champion of permaculture, Transition and Modern Agile principles among activists and entrepreneurs. Enabler of local, bioregional and global high-trust networks for systemic change with the motto: "towards regenerative cultures through dialogic collaboration". Currently actively contributing to European network ECOLISE and, on a local to planetary scale, to Permaculture Collaboration Laboratory (www.perma.earth), Global Regeneration CoLab (www.grc.earth) and Deep Adaptation Forum (www.deepadaptation.info).

Dr. Herta Stockbauer studied commercial sciences at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and then worked as a university assistant and lecturer at the Institute of Economics at the Alpen-Adria-University of Klagenfurt. In 1992 she joined BKS Bank and worked in the corporate customer and securities business before moving to the controlling and accounting department. In 1996 she became head of department, in 2004 she became a member of the board of directors and in 2014 she was appointed chairman of the board of directors. She is a member of the Supervisory Boards of Österreichische Post AG and Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG, and is Vice President of respACT – austrian business council for sustainable development.

Photo © Arnold Poeschl

Barbara Erős is a cultural anthropologist by profession dedicated to civil society and social innovation development for the past 25 years in Hungary, Western Balkans with some sight on Ethiopia and Vietnam. She started her career at Ashoka: Innovators for the Public that fundamentally injected her with the idea of social entrepreneurship. Following she gained experience in designing CSO tailored granting systems and in impact financing at the Foundation for Development of Democratic Rights – DemNet Hungary. In 2017 she was invited to MagNet Bank, Hungary's first and only value-oriented community bank to act as the head of Social Impact and Community Relations Department. As for her greater social role she is working on strengthening the Hungarian social entrepreneurial, start-up and civil society ecosystem.

Dušan Ondrušek is a senior trainer and consultant. In 1991, he founded Partners for Democratic Change Slovakia (PDCS), an oganisation he led for over 20 years. As a psychologist, he devoted himself to counseling, therapy, teaching as well as research into altruism and the effectiveness of various types of training. Since 1990, he has focused on training and consultancy in the field of community conflict relief, non-violent communication, organisational development, participatory education and decision-making process. He has extensive international experience in running conflict prevention and resolution programmes. As a trainer and facilitator, he has led over 2,000 trainings in forty countries. He has given lectures at several universities – Comenius University and University of Economics in Bratislava, European Peace University in StadtSchlaining and Danube University in Krems. He is the author and co-author of 16 books and many professional articles.

Petr Šmíd leads Google’s consumer marketing for Central and Eastern Europe, trying to bring the best of Google’s consumer technology to users in this region. He started in McKinsey & Company where he spent 7 years exploring banking and healthcare – with marketing at the core of his work most of the time. Having graduated from CEMS and INSEAD MBA, he’s passionate about education – leading frequent workshops for students, startups, and businesses. Petr is also active in non-profit work, primarily as the chairman of the board of Bátor Tábor foundation in Czechia, helping seriously ill children and their families. 

Petra Hubačová hosted one of the first TEDx conferences in Central Europe. She founded TechSquare in 2009 – one of the first coworking centres focusing on start-ups. She also showcased her experience in the Czech Savings Bank (a subsidiary of Erste Bank), where she set up the internal innovation incubator and also worked in the ŠKODA AUTO DigiLab. She is currently the head of the Czech branch of Premium Offices and Coworking Business Link, which belongs to Skanska. She is a member of the Board of Via Foundation and mentor of the iKid (Innovative Kid) project, as well as ambassador of the Czech brand Pura Vida.

Sandra Pázmán Tordová is a co-founder and editor-in-chief of Nota bene, a well-known Slovak street magazine as well as a project supporting homeless people needs. Sandra has vast experience in fundraising, project and PR management and advocacy. She helped develop successful projects to support homeless people social inclusion, among those Nota bene Luggage porters, employment and housing advocacy project Krištof, homeless football team attending the Homeless World Cup and annual Homeless ball. The Nota bene Luggage porters project received the SozialMarie second prize for social innovation in 2015. 

Michael Köhlmeier, born 1949 in Hard on Lake Constance, is one of the most important writers in Austria. His extensive oeuvre has been translated into numerous languages and awarded several prizes. His novels "Die Musterschüler", "Abendland", "Sunrise" and many more enjoy great popularity. His free retellings of ancient legends and stories of the Bible are legendary and were also published as audio books and broadcast on the radio station Ö1. Köhlmeier explores the mystery of fairy tales in his recently published work "Von den Märchen: Eine Lebenslange Liebe". The author has also been successful not only in the creation of radio plays and short prose texts at the beginning of his career, but also as a musician in the cabaret music duo Bilgeri & Köhlmeier. Today he lives as a freelance writer in Hohenems (Vorarlberg) and Vienna.

Photo © Reinhard Werner/Burgtheater 

János Czafrangó became an economist because he thought he could become anything out of it. In the first decades of his career, however, he was fascinated by the world of numbers: He began in tourism, from where he switched to the world of commercial banks. With twenty years of banking experience, he had the opportunity to use his expertise in the ERSTE Group to develop and finance social enterprises. What fills him with pride the most is that he was elected "Changemaker" of the Hungarian ASHOKA in 2015. Not only does he believe in lifelong learning, he also practices it: he received his last two diplomas at 60+. Since February 2019 he has been a European Financial Advisor, but he has also remained faithful to the social sector: János Czafrangó is a networker, CSR advisor and supporter of start-up-like social enterprises.

László Ágoston, sociologist within the field of Change Management, worked as market researcher and public opinion analyst, afterwards as analyst for politics. In 2010 he was co-founder of Kreater Agency for Social Innovation (Kreater Társadalmi Innovációs Ügynökség). The Association Innovative Generation !gen (Innovatív Generáció !gen Egyesület) derived from an innovation trainings programme by Kreater that helped to start dozens of social innovations or to an inexpensive fail – including SozialMarie nominees and prize winners. Simultaneously, Ágoston approaches this also out of the business sphere: he searches for opportunities for social innovations – worked as brand strategy researcher at Y&R advertising agency, afterwards as consultant for Service Design for Isobar, again at the Labstore of Y&R Group and today, is the director of Digital and Business Transformation at DDB Budapest.

Tomáš is managing partner and co-founder of the agency Dark Side. He was director of Ogilvy Interactive, the internet division of the international advertising network Ogilvy. He is chairman of the association for direct marketing, E-Commerce and mail-order sale ADMEZ. He is active member in a number of juries of experts and engaged in projects of famous brands. Tomáš is certificated coach of the International Coach Federation ICF. His hobby is to help in the non-profit sector.

A teacher and diplomat by training, Jan became the Executive Director at Open Society Foundation Bratislava, Slovakia (OSF) in June of 2015. The Foundation established in 1992 by George Soros has been one of the key elements in development of civil society in Slovakia, introducing new perspectives in the areas of humanities, political economy and minority rights. Currently the Foundation operates as an independent entity committed to the mission of its founder via its programs in public affairs and education. Previously, Jan spent ten years with the Slovak Foreign Service (1992-2002) and another ten years as spokesman and CSR coordinator at Západoslovenská energetika (2003-2014), a regional power distribution company, member of E.ON Group. He also serves as a member of Board of Trustees of another four Slovak NGOs.

Karl Amon, born 1949 in St. Pölten, Lower Austria, studied social science and economics in Vienna. He started to work for the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) in 1976, where he acceded the position of the radio director and was part of the ORF management from 2010-2017. He was pointing the way ahead for a number of new programs and was responsible for changes in the world of Austria’s broadcasting corporation. He developed the television format „Runder Tisch“ (“Round Table”) and during his time as editor-in-chief of the ORF regional broadcasting station Vienna, he re-established Radio Wien (“Radio Vienna“) and engineered the reorganization of Wien heute (“Vienna today“). From 1999-2007 he was radio editor-in-chief, responsible for Ö1, local radios, Ö3, FM4, current teletext and Ö1-Inforadio (webradio), again 2007-2010 (ORF- editor-in-chief) and 2010-2017 (ORF-radio director). He was involved in the building and renewal of the new multimedia Video-Wall based TV-Newsroom. Besides all that, he also designed and launched new broadcasting formats like “Klartext” and “Radio on Demand” on the Internet. 2015, Karl Amon initiated the “Austrian radio award” (Österreichischer Radiopreis) that ever since awards radio programs.

Prof. Dr. Iveta Radičová, PhD. is a professor of sociology at Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA) and a special advisor to the EU-Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality. She has devoted most of her professional career to social and family policies. In 1992, she founded the non-profit Social Policy Analysis Centre. In 2005, she was appointed as a director of the Institute of Sociology at the Slovak Academy of Science. As a visiting professor, Iveta Radičová has taught at universities in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, UK and USA. She was a Fellow for the Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe project at Oxford University in 2013, a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in 2015 and also a Fulbright fellow at New School for Social Research in NY, USA.

Iveta Radičová served as a Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic (SR) from 2010 to 2012. She held the roles of Deputy Chairwoman of the Parliamentary Committee on Social Affairs and Housing at the Slovak National Parliament (2006-2009), Minister for Labour and Social Affairs of the SR (2005-2006) and Minister of Defence of the SR (2011- 2012). As an expert for social policy at the European Commission, Iveta Radičová also participated in European projects focusing on the coordination of social security systems and exchanging information about Member State’s social policies (MISSOC, trESS, FRESCO). Iveta Radičová has published and edited numerous books and studies mapping the transformation of the social system in Slovakia and other post-socialist countries. She is a member of the World Leadership Alliance Club de Madrid and the Council of Women World Leaders.

Lejla Abbasová works as a TV host for major Czech TV channels since she was 18 years old and she also hosts cultural events, conferences and programmes, both in Czech and in English. At the age of 21, she became a spokesperson for the League of Ethnic Minorities and for about five years, she worked as a coordinator of their „Long distance adoption“ project of child sponsorship in Kenya. Later, Lejla founded the Asante Kenya Foundation and the project Medela which aims to help disadvantaged children around the world. Asante Kenya supported 19 projects in Kenya, from education (established schools and a boarding centre for education) to prevention of female genital mutilation. The foundation supports computer study lab e-afric@ Cyber Café classes for children from the slums. Asante Kenya financed the building of five schools. Together with the NGO Njovo, Asante Kenya founded a charity e-shop with African accessories, Imana.cz. Project Medela supports non-profit organisations and their concrete projects. It published a special photo calendar in which photographer Jan Saudek presented famous Czech women. Medela also prepared and published the book „Fairy tales from other worlds“ with fairy tales from the regions where it intervenes. Lejla was the driving force behind the documentary project „Medela“ (which means “help” in Latin) by film director Olga Sommerová (a coproduction with Czech TV). For her humanitarian activities, Lejla Abbasová was awarded a bronze medal by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2009. She worked as a spokesperson and consultant for the Minister of Human Rights in 2009-2010. Lejla is a patron of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award and many other non-profit projects.

Tímea Junghaus is an art historian and contemporary art curator. Since 2010 she is a Research Fellow of the Institute of Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She is the author and co-editor of the comprehensive publication on European Roma visual art, Meet Your Neighbours – Contemporary Roma Art from Europe (2006). She was the curator for the founding and the exhibitions of the Budapest based János Balázs Gallery (2004), the Roma component of the Hidden Holocaust-exhibition in the Budapest Kunsthalle (2004), and the First Roma Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Contemporary Art Biennale (2007). Her recent curatorial works include: Roma Body Politics I.-III. at Gallery8, Budapest (2015), Transmitting Trauma? at Aufbau Haus, Berlin (2015), Gypsy – Under Erasure at the Göteborg Biennale (2015), (Re-)Conceptualizing Roma Resistance at Hellerau Center for European Arts, Dresden (2016). She has researched and published extensively on the conjunctions of modern and contemporary art with critical theory. Junghaus is the founding director of the European Roma Cultural Foundation, an independent foundation, which established Gallery8 – Roma Contemporary Art Space. Junghaus is the curator of the Visual Art Section of RomArchive (2017) – the Digital Archive of the Roma.

Ever since he came to Vienna at the beginning of the 1990s to study Economics, Augustin (Prince) Pallikunnel has become a signpost for the joyful and respectful co-existence of different cultures. Since 1999, he has been managing the famous PROSI Supermarket in Vienna’s Kandlgasse, where food from all over the world is on offer and which brings cosmopolitanism to the neighbourhood, and a cosmetics and hair shop next-door. On top of that, he organises street parties, “Exotic Festivals”, holds international cooking courses and has recently opened the PROSI Indian Restaurant on the opposite corner. With all this, he has successfully contributed to the living together of people of diverse backgrounds: integration becomes possible when exchanges between different cultures happen on an equal footing. Pallikunnel himself grew up in Kerala in southern India. In 2011, he founded the PROSI Global Charity Foundation, which is dedicated to directly supporting and helping the socially and economically poor across the world and which implements charitable projects on several continents and in Austria.

Zsófia Mautner is a leading Hungarian foodblogger and food writer and one of the most popular food presenters in Hungary today. She also hosted a daily TV cooking show on the most watched commercial television channel. She is also famous for her spectacular career change: she became a full time culinary expert after a successful career in diplomacy in Brussels. She started her food blog Chili & Vanília documenting her passion for cooking and all things gastronomical while living in Brussels. The great success of this blog lead to her career change. To date she has written eight cookbooks. She lives in Budapest.

Pavel Kysilka is a graduate of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Economics in Prague where he also completed his postgraduate research study in 1986. From 1986 until 1990 he worked at the Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

Mr. Kysilka worked as the chief economic advisor to the Minister for Economic Policy before he acted as the Vice-Governor and Executive Governor of the Czech National Bank in the early 1990ies. He oversaw the splitting of the Czechoslovak and the implementation of the new Czech currency. From 1994 until 1998 he served as an expert to the International Monetary Fund and participated in the implementation of new national currencies in several Eastern European countries. He was also the president of the Czech Economic Society. Before joining Česká spořitelna in 2000 as Chief Economist, Mr. Kysilka worked in Erste Bank Sparkassen in Prague as Executive Director.

In 2004 the Supervisory Board of Česká spořitelna appointed him member of the Board of Directors. From 2011 on Mr. Kysikla served five years as a CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors in the Česká spořitelna. Besides his professional career he a member of the administrative Board of the international opera festival „Smetana's Litomyšl“, the „Leoš Janáček Foundation“ as well as of the Bohemian Heritage Foundation. Furhtermore he is a member of the Board of Trustees at „Dobrý anděl“ Foundation (Good angel).

Josef Hader has been one of Austria´s best known and most popular cabaret artists since his breakthrough in the 1980s. Born in Upper Austria, as an actor and screenwriter Hader is responsible for some of the most successful Austrian films, such as the movies version of Wolf Haas´ "Komm süßer Tod", "Silentium“, „Der Knochenmann“ and „Das ewige Leben“. With the latter he gave his movie debut in 2015. The the former civil servant at the Red Cross, started with the production of his first own movie called „Wilde Maus“ in autumn 2015. Hader is not only the author of the movie but also acts as the director and main actor. We are curious and looking forward to the release in April 2017! His many honors and awards could  fill a gallery, even though he resisted to accept the „Romy“ twice as „popularity is not the basis of my work"

Adam, an architect and artist, a maker and facilitator, spent the last decade creating innovative technologies and artistic projects which facilitate the creativity of others - ranging from mixed reality interfaces and DIY smarthomes to institutions and workshop methods for innovation.His (collaborative) works have been exhibited at Venice Biennale and dozens of festivals globally and published in leading magazines and blogs. In 2007, he co-founded Kitchen Budapest media lab with Peter Halacsy.

He wrote his first prezi in 2001. In his own words: "I hand-coded my first prezi in 2001, just as a personal tool to develop my ideas by seeing relations, the big picture, and then focusing the attention of the audience by creating a visual journey. I've made about 2,500 prezis by now, and after each and every one I think about how to use this language better and how to build this knowledge into the product so that we can help everyone make better prezis.In a prezi, there is always context, there are no slides hiding one idea from the other, and the visual journey is always there to help us orient ourselves in the cloud of information." (Adam Somlai-Fischer, Cofounder of Prezi)

Zbyněk Frolík is the founder and CEO of international holding LINET Group SE which produces health care furniture. A cyberneticist by university training, he was a member of the Science and Research Council of the Czech Republic’s government. In 2011 the Czech president awarded Frolík a medal of merit for his achievements in the realm of economics. In 2009, Frolík received the manager of the year-award, and he is a laureate of other prizes. He works, amongst others, at the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín, at the Czech Technical University in Prague, at the University of Economics in Prague and at the Aspern Institute. He publishes regularly in renowned Czech media. Zbyněk Frolík is the founder of the Academy for Productivity and Innovation. He holds a number of patents. He is the founder and patron of the project “Mathematics with Fun“, that searches for more efficient and more attractive ways of teaching mathematics. He is also a regular sponsor of the National Anti-Corruption Fund and supports the project “Reconstructing the State”. He is furthermore amongst the long-time promoters of a whole range of charitable projects and initiatives.

For more than ten years, Mensalia has specialized in financial market communication services; it counts amongst the market leaders in German-speaking business report consulting.

Ahmad Porkar is an entrepreneur in Vienna. Sima and Ahmad Porkar were born in Iran, have studied in England and the USA and have been living in Vienna for 30 years.

Tomas Sedlacek (born in 1975) is the Chief Macro-Economist of CSOB Bank, the largest Czech bank, lectures at Charles University, and is a member of the National Economic Council in Prague. He worked as an advisor of Vaclav Havel, the first Czech President after the fall of communism, and is a regular columnist and popular radio and TV commentator.

He has earned his PhDr. degree with honors at Charles University, one of the oldest universities in the world, where he lectures Philosophy of Economics. He was named one of the “young guns” and one of the “five hot minds in economics” by the Yale Economic Review.

In 2009 he published a book on philosophy, ethics and history of economic thought “Economics of Good and Evil”, which has unexpectedly become a national bestseller, later adopted as theatre piece which keeps selling out the National Theatre in Prague. The book has been translated and published by Oxford University Press in 2011 and other translations are on the way (German, Chinese, Polish, Italian etc.).

Edit Sasvári (1962) art historian, director of the Kassák Museum since 2010. Has degrees in Hungarian Language and Literature and History from Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, and in History of Art from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She studied museum management in the Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, Vienna. She completes her PhD in the Interdisciplinary Doctoral School of the Department of Modern History, University of Pécs, where her thesis will be examined in 2014. She has been working in the museum field since 1988. Her main areas of research are historical modernism and the avantgarde, as well as cultural political aspects of art in the 1960s.

Lajos Kassák was an internationally renowned figure of the Hungarian historic avantgarde and the foremost pioneer and advocate of socially committed art in Hungary in the first half of the twentieth century. A central feature of the Kassák tradition is that Kassák always took a clear position on social affairs, but represented creative social action independently of party politics. This aspect of his thinking is still important for socially committed artists in Hungary today. For the Kassák Museum, cooperation with the Sozialmarie could open up the interesting question of where we can draw – or find – the dividing line between socially sensitive art and similarly oriented creative civil initiatives.

András Ujlaky is an economist. He was Member of the Board of the Hungarian International Bank in London for almost twenty years. Since the year 2000, he has been an activist against the segregation of Roma children at school. He is one of the founders of the Chance for Children Foundation (CFCF), where he acts as secretary to the Board of Trustees. It is thanks to this organisation in the Hungarian village Csörög that the Supreme Court in 2008 confirmed that segregation meant discrimination. CFCF’s project School Enrolment and Community Action in Csörög won the first prize at SozialMarie 2009.

Táňa Fischerová is one of the most versatile people of public life in Czechia. She is actress, author, moderator, politician, civil rights activist and collaborates in many non-profit organisations, foundations and associations. From 2002 through 2006 she was an independent Member of Parliament, from 2002 to 2003 President of the Austro-Czech dialogue forum. For the parliamentary elections of 2010, she was at the head of the so called Key Movement (Klíčového hnutí) that still nowadays campaigns for a return of ideals, esprit and ethics into politics and real life and develops alternatives to present-day politics, economics and the role of the individual in society. The programme of this movement is based on the oeuvre of Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher and founder of Anthroposophy.

She came into contact with SozialMarie only recently. SozialMarie’s objective of looking for innovative social projects in all of Central Europe, document them, make them visible, appreciate and support them impressed her. So she decided spontaneously to become patron of one of the winning projects.

Gabriele Zuna-Kratky began her professional career as a polytechnic teacher. During her ten years at this school she studied pedagogy and sociology. She then worked at the Ministry of Education and became Head of the Austrian Phonoteque. On 1st of January 2000 she became the first female director of a technical museum. At this job, besides management and organisation, fund raising and cooperation are amongst her main responsibilities.

Susanne Schubert-Lustig is a clinical and health psychologist, mediator, work psychologist and Member of the Board of the White Ring. Counsels and coaches crime victims, conducts relief conversations with them, accompanies them to court … Beyond this she presently works on a thesis “Home Burglary – Consequences for the Concerned”.

Francis Lustig was Chairman of the Board and Director, amongst others of Kapital & Wert AG, Köck AG (Cosmos Group) and Meinl Success Finanz Inc. Is Member of the Board of several Austrian private foundations and Director of Lustig+Brey PR, Marketing & Sales Ltd since 2010.