Executive Chairman Webit Foundation
Dr. Plamen Russev is the initiator and focal connector of one of the world’s largest impact networks and curator of the global Webit community, reaching out to over 800,000 digerati, policy makers, innovators and media. His success stories include creating the global Webit brand from scratch, supporting founders and brands in establishing and growing a successful marketing strategy, creating meaningful relations with potential partners, customers and media. Plamen supports causes which impact the achievement of the UN’ SDGs.
He is an investor, philanthropist and serial entrepreneur and proven success record in developing business ventures in multicultural and challenging business environments.
Plamen Russev is B.Sc in Marketing and Management, M.Sc in Electronic Education/Mathematics and Physics, and Ph.D in Healthcare Management.
Plamen Russev has been appointed Goodwill Ambassador for Digital Affairs of his home country – Republic of Bulgaria and a member of European Commission’ BOF.
Dr. Russev’ work and impact have been recognised and awarded by governments, associations and NGOs along with 2 honorary doctorates from Universities in Europe and South America. Plamen Russev is featured in hundreds of international and local media including The Economist, Bloomberg, CNBCe, Forbes, Venture Beat, CNN to name a few.
Dr. Russev is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Webit Foundation and host of Webit Virtual.
He is happily married to the most wonderful girl in the world and father of 2 boys.
Consultant Surgeon Barts Health London
Professor Shafi Ahmed is a multi award winning cancer surgeon working at The Royal London Hospital. He was the Associate Dean of Bart’s Medical School and an elected member of council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England where he led the international and global health programme. He is a member of the NHS assembly advising the government on the NHS Long Term Plan and was awarded the Future NHS Award by members of Parliament in 2018. He was also the Asian Star in UK Tech in 2018. He has been recently appointed as an advisor to the Abu Dhabi government for digital transformation of health and innovation. He is the Vodafone ambassador for 5G and Healthcare. He is faculty at Imperial College, Barts Medical School, Queen Mary University, Bradford University, Harvard Medical School and Singularity University where he teaches on innovation and digital transformation. He chairs the Webit Health summit in Spain. He is one of the top 20 global influencers in digital health and innovation and is a HIMSS Future50 clinical leader 2019.
former CEO of Apple and former VP and President of PepsiCo
Sculley is a recognized expert and popular speaker about high-tech tools for tackling such challenges as corporate revitalization and the high cost of health care.
Sculley was vice-president (1970–1977) and president of Pepsi-Cola (1977–1983), until he became chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc. on April 8, 1983, a position he held until leaving in 1993.
CEO Nostalab
First and foremost, John is a thinker. A thinker entrenched in the world of science, medicine and innovation. John is the founder of NOSTALAB—a digital health think tank. He is consistently ranked as a top global influencer in digital health and generally regarded as one of the top global strategic and creative thinkers. He is also one the most popular speakers around the globe, presenting his vibrant and insightful perspective on the future of health innovation.
Nosta helps define, dissect and deliberate global trends in innovation and technology. He is consistently ranked among the top names in almost every tech list and has sustained that position for several years. Beyond simply an influencer, John is also defined as “most admired” to “top disruptor” in technology, innovation, life sciences and the pharmaceutical industry. He is also a member of the Google Health Advisory Board and the WHO’ board of experts. Further, John is also a frequent and popular contributor to Fortune, Forbes, Psychology Today and Bloomberg. In 2018, he received a PhD, honoris causa from Udabol Internacional: Oficial Universidad de Aquino Bolivia and from the Latin America Foundation, University of Science and Informatics Peru and Centre for Neuroscience. He was also awarded the diploma of honour from the Bolivian government for his work in health technology in promoting innovation and engagement around the world.
He has also been recognized for his ability to translate difficult medical and scientific concepts into material that can be more easily communicated to key audiences. Additionally, John has distinguished himself as a scientific thinker. Earlier in his career, John was a research associate at Harvard Medical School and has co-authored several papers in the field of cardiovascular physiology.
John cut his teeth at the 'big' agencies including Ogilvy, where he has held a series of positions including Chief Creative Officer, Chief Strategic Officer and unit President.
Broadcast journalist and writer CNBC
Afua Adom is a Broadcast journalist and writer at CNBC. She moved to London from Glasgow at age 17 to study journalism at City University. Afua is has experience working with the BBC (Inside Out London, The Victoria Derbyshire Show, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio London), ITV (Good Morning Britain), CNBC (Sustainable Energy), ARISE News, TalkRadio (DriveTime, Weekend Breakfast), Yanga! TV (Noni), The Voice Newspaper and The Beat London 103.6FM. She is also the founder of Women in African Media, an organisation that advocates for women of colour in the media industry. She continues to host events, as well as write news and features, hair, fashion, beauty, women's interest and do celebrity interviews. Afua lives and works in London. In her spare time she likes to make up dance routines with her daughter, have manicures and read crime novels.
Executive Chairman Webit Foundation
Dr. Plamen Russev is the initiator and focal connector of one of the world’s largest impact networks and curator of the global Webit community, reaching out to over 800,000 digerati, policy makers, innovators and media. His success stories include creating the global Webit brand from scratch, supporting founders and brands in establishing and growing a successful marketing strategy, creating meaningful relations with potential partners, customers and media. Plamen supports causes which impact the achievement of the UN’ SDGs.
He is an investor, philanthropist and serial entrepreneur and proven success record in developing business ventures in multicultural and challenging business environments.
Plamen Russev is B.Sc in Marketing and Management, M.Sc in Electronic Education/Mathematics and Physics, and Ph.D in Healthcare Management.
Plamen Russev has been appointed Goodwill Ambassador for Digital Affairs of his home country – Republic of Bulgaria and a member of European Commission’ BOF.
Dr. Russev’ work and impact have been recognised and awarded by governments, associations and NGOs along with 2 honorary doctorates from Universities in Europe and South America. Plamen Russev is featured in hundreds of international and local media including The Economist, Bloomberg, CNBCe, Forbes, Venture Beat, CNN to name a few.
Dr. Russev is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Webit Foundation and host of Webit Virtual.
He is happily married to the most wonderful girl in the world and father of 2 boys.
Global Startup Advocate Amazon Web Services
Mackenzie runs the Global Startup Advocate team where he mentors hundreds of startups every year. His time is spent meeting teams of all sizes who are leveraging AWS to revolutionize every imaginable industry. Mackenzie provides feedback and technical guidance by tapping into his 10+ years helping to grow a number of unicorn startups. Prior to joining AWS, Mackenzie was the Head of Technical Operations at Betterment, a robo-advisor FinTech startup in NYC which manages over $15B in assets. He was a founding engineer and Head of Technical Operations at Oscar, a health insurance startup, helping to grow the company from 10 to over 1,000 employees. His first jump into the startup world was when Mackenzie left MTV / Viacom to join Tumblr, helping to growing the site to over 20B page views a month and becoming the 9th most trafficked website in the USA. Mackenzie is a frequent keynote speaker at tech and startup conferences worldwide. He sits on a number of startup advisory boards and has a handful of angel investments across the US.
Co-Founder and Managing Partner Earlybird Digital East Fund
Cem Sertoğlu is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor, focused on technology ventures in Emerging Europe since 2006. He is currently a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Earlybird Digital East Fund (DEF) in Istanbul. DEF’s investment highlights include UiPath, Trendyol, Peak Games, YemekSepeti, GittiGidiyor, Hazelcast, PropertyFinder, oBilet and Vivense.
Previously, Cem was the Founder & CEO of SelectMinds (now a part of Oracle) in New York, the global leader in social talent management software. Prior to founding SelectMinds in 1999, Cem worked as a Strategy Consultant in New York for six years.
Cem holds a BA in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin.
Director of Digital Investments Еvonik
Ilja is Director of digital investments at Evonik Venture Capital. Evonik is a global specialty chemicals company with businesses at the intersection of nutrition and health, both for humans and animals. His investment interest in digital business models ranges from applications of cryptoassets and quantum computing through machine learning and digital platforms. He currently lives in Frankfurt, Germany and has previously worked in the US and in Israel.
Venture Capital Investor OpenOcean
Reid has been working with start-ups for most of his life, both as a founder and an investor. Before OpenOcean, he worked for IDG Ventures USA in San Francisco, focusing on the enterprise software and video game industries. Prior to that, he was the co-founder and CEO of Negotiable Software, an enterprise software platform to negotiate legally-binding agreements. Before this, he was the founder and CEO of Verdict, an anonymous social media photo-sharing application. Reid has been at OpenOcean for two years, as a member of the investment team and helping to run UK operations.
Reid studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in Political Science, was a member of the Engineering Entrepreneurship programme, and served on the board of the Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club at the Wharton School of Business.
Pryv is a solid foundation on which you build your own digital health solution, so you can collect, store, share and rightfully use personal data. As a leukemia patient, one of the co-founders started tracking and taking notes about his medication intake. Not finding a satisfactory solution, he built his own decentralized medication tracking platform
Elemeno Health’s “personal coach” helps healthcare organizations transform their best practices into interactive training and decision support, delivered on-demand, at the point of care, engaging frontline staff to deliver consistency and improved outcomes.
Medyria is a Swiss medtech startup that engineers technologies for cardiovascular catheter navigation and sensing. They develop a unique guiding and sensing medical device based on proprietary Blood Flow Velocity Sensor technology. The TrackCath System is designed to be cost-effective and safe during EVAR procedures.
Executive Chairman Webit Foundation
Dr. Plamen Russev is the initiator and focal connector of one of the world’s largest impact networks and curator of the global Webit community, reaching out to over 800,000 digerati, policy makers, innovators and media. His success stories include creating the global Webit brand from scratch, supporting founders and brands in establishing and growing a successful marketing strategy, creating meaningful relations with potential partners, customers and media. Plamen supports causes which impact the achievement of the UN’ SDGs.
He is an investor, philanthropist and serial entrepreneur and proven success record in developing business ventures in multicultural and challenging business environments.
Plamen Russev is B.Sc in Marketing and Management, M.Sc in Electronic Education/Mathematics and Physics, and Ph.D in Healthcare Management.
Plamen Russev has been appointed Goodwill Ambassador for Digital Affairs of his home country – Republic of Bulgaria and a member of European Commission’ BOF.
Dr. Russev’ work and impact have been recognised and awarded by governments, associations and NGOs along with 2 honorary doctorates from Universities in Europe and South America. Plamen Russev is featured in hundreds of international and local media including The Economist, Bloomberg, CNBCe, Forbes, Venture Beat, CNN to name a few.
Dr. Russev is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Webit Foundation and host of Webit Virtual.
He is happily married to the most wonderful girl in the world and father of 2 boys.
Broadcast journalist and writer CNBC
Afua Adom is a Broadcast journalist and writer at CNBC. She moved to London from Glasgow at age 17 to study journalism at City University. Afua is has experience working with the BBC (Inside Out London, The Victoria Derbyshire Show, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio London), ITV (Good Morning Britain), CNBC (Sustainable Energy), ARISE News, TalkRadio (DriveTime, Weekend Breakfast), Yanga! TV (Noni), The Voice Newspaper and The Beat London 103.6FM. She is also the founder of Women in African Media, an organisation that advocates for women of colour in the media industry. She continues to host events, as well as write news and features, hair, fashion, beauty, women's interest and do celebrity interviews. Afua lives and works in London. In her spare time she likes to make up dance routines with her daughter, have manicures and read crime novels.
Health Policy Reporter, USA Tооday Co-founder Urban Health Media Project
Jayne O'Donnell is USA TODAY’s health policy reporter. She is also co-founder of the Urban Health Media Project, which trains high school students in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore to do multimedia reporting health and social issues.
Jayne has appeared on Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and C-Span and been published in Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping and Parents.
At USA TODAY – where she’s worked for more than 25 years – Jayne covered the implementation of the Affordable Care Act beginning in September 2013. Her reporting of late has focused on coronavirus, but she typically focuses on mental health, addiction, childhood trauma and patient safety.
Jayne has won several awards for her work, most notably for her 1996 articles in USA TODAY on the dangers air bags posed to children. That reporting prompted many government actions including the 'smart' air bags and warning labels in every new vehicle.
She has spoken at or moderated panels at dozens of conferences, including USA TODAY’s own healthcare events as well as those hosted by the Business Roundtable, AARP and the Leapfrog Group.
A graduate of University of Maryland’s College of Journalism, Jayne did graduate work at George Washington University’s School of Business. She lives in McLean, Va. with her husband and their teenage daughter, who is a public health and public policy major at Syracuse University.
Journalist CNN
Ryan Prior is a Cross-Platform Associate Producer based at CNN's World Headquarters in Atlanta.
He is fascinated by figures, large and small, who dedicate their lives to changing our world, profiling Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, legendary journalist Ted Koppel, and New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Land, to name a few. He is most passionate about writing on politics, foreign affairs, health, and science.
In 2019, Prior wrote about a college dropout, bedridden for 11 years, who went on to invent a new surgery and cure himself. The story received the highest engagement of any story published by CNN in 2019, and the third-highest for all online news outlets, according to Chartbeat. Prior has walked along the Berlin Wall interviewing an artist who transformed the symbol of the Iron Curtain into the world's longest art gallery. He has stood on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, where he interviewed entrepreneurs at the top 50 companies in the world with founders under 26.
In 2019 he was named a RIAS Fellow, and he is a five-time Stanford Medicine X ePatient Scholar. Prior to joining CNN, he directed, produced, and wrote a feature-length documentary called 'Forgotten Plague,' which the Huffington Post called a 'Must-See Documentary.' He has also written for the Daily Beast and USA Today.
While a student at the University of Georgia, he co-founded the Georgia Political Review and served as editor-in-chief. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UGA with degrees in English and international affairs, and was recently named to the school's 40 Under 40 list for 2018.
Reporter and Broadcast Journalist, BBC Radio 4, BBC Business online BBC
Dearbhla Gavin is a reporter and broadcast journalist across BBC Radio 4 and BBC Business online.
Before that, she worked at Bloomberg and The Business Post in Ireland and started her career as an intern at Financial Times in London. She covered technology at The Business Post and lived through Dublin becoming the Silicon Valley of Europe and the socio economic impact that continues to have.
She also spent a year working in Geneva covering events at the UN, which gave her a working knowledge of social impact in practice and concepts that are changing our world, like growing populations, the internet of things, climate change and sustainability.
She is hugely interested in how Government, businesses and citizens will work together to face these challenges.
