Challenge Judges

Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer, the UNESCO Chair in Food, Biodiversity and Sustainability Studies is the founding Director for the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and a Professor in Geography and Environmental Studies. She has been a fellow at Balsillie School of International Affairs since 2015 when she was named as a Centre for Innovation in Governance Chair. Alison's research and teaching combine her passions for sustainable food systems and community viability through civil society engagement and innovative governance. Her publications include more than 40 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and books most recently as the lead editor for the 2020 open access book; Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons from global practice;.

Allan Lim is the Founder and CEO of Alpha Biofuels, the company pioneers sustainability and circularity in cities with sustainable biofuels made from waste and serves global logistic companies with clean burning biodiesel. He is an alumni of Nanyang University and a member of the World Cities Summit Young Leaders Program.    

Ms Brandford-Arthur has been working with IFAD for the past 16 years, and currently holds the position of Senior Partnerships Officer in the Global Engagement, Partnerships and Resource Mobilization Division. Responsible for coordinating IFAD's activities and engagement in South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC), Ms Brandford-Arthur is also in charge of the recently established China-IFAD SSTC Facility. Ms. Brandford-Arthur’s engagement in SSTC as an important development modality has seen her active participation and contribution to various international workshops and conferences, the most recent of which was the interactive dialogue on ‘Targeting Hunger: South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Transforming Agriculture’. This was convened by  H.E. Mr. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President of the 74th Session of the UN General Assembly, and discussed, inter alia, the scaling up and sharing of local solutions adopted by agriculture-dependent communities in different parts of the world.

Professor Anthony Nyong has about 30 years of experience in environmental and natural resources management, renewable energy and green growth. Positions he has held at the African Development Bank include Coordinator of the New Deal on Energy; Head of the Renewable Energy Flagship, Head of Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Unit; and Head of the Compliance and Safeguards Division. Before joining the Bank, he was a Senior Climate Change Specialist at the International Development Research Centre of Canada and a Professor of Climate Change at the University of Jos, Nigeria. He was a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and a member of the IPCC Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impact and Climate Analysis. 

Digital Inclusion Trailblazer, Leader4Good, ambitious and innovative, Batoul Husseini brings unparalleled expertise to her role as Director of Digital Government and Corporate Social Responsibility at SAP. Based in MENA, Batoul is responsible for the strategic development of SAP’s government relations activities, promoting technological transformation in the public sector and the positive role played by digital technologies in addressing economic and societal challenges around the world, as well as driving CSR initiatives on powering opportunity through digital inclusion. 

Becca Heller is the Executive Director and co-founder of IRAP. She has received numerous awards in recognition of her work with IRAP, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Charles Bronfman Prize, the American Constitutional Society David Carliner Public Interest Award, a Skadden Fellowship, a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellowship, an Echoing Green Fellowship, a Gruber Human Rights Fellowship, the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut Annual Community Service Award and a Dartmouth College Martin Luther King Jr. Emerging Leader in Social Justice Award. She was also named Foreign Policy’s Citizen Diplomat of the Year, Politico’s Women Rule Summit Ambassador, one of the Christian Science Monitor’s “30 under 30” change makers, and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Becca was a visiting clinical lecturer at Yale Law School from 2010 to 2018, and has also been honored as an Iscol Family Program for Leadership Development in Public Service Lecturer at Cornell University and as a speaker at the Chicago Ideas Week Edison Talk.

David Mikkelsen Troensegaard is an international speaker and refugee advocate. David is the Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Refugees United (REFUNITE), a tech-driven agency helping refugees reconnect with their missing family by using the mobile based search tool. Since 2008, REFUNITE has connected hundreds of family members each month, more than 1.1 million people in the last ten years. Prior to his position, David was a former member of Clinton Global Initiative and a PopTech Fellow. Among many honorary awards, David was named as Monocle Magazine’s New World Heroes and nominated Person of the Year 2009 by DAS Magazine.

As of May 2019, Dr. Erfan Ali is the Director of UN-Habitat Regional Office for Arab States. He possesses over 20 years of experience, and an extensive track record, in urban development, regional planning, urban crisis recovery and response, at both government and UN entities. Dr. Ali has many years of distinguished service at the UN and UN-Habitat. Most recently, he served as the Senior Human Settlements Officer and Deputy Regional Director of UNHabitat Regional Office for Arab States (2018-2019).

Dr. Eun-Ju Kim is currently Chief a.i. of Digital Knowledge Hub Department, Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) at ITU in July 2019, where she serves the ITU membership for capacity and digital skills development to strengthen capacities and bridge digital skills gaps, ICT data and analytics to ensure ITU’s global leadership as the main source of ICT data, creating enabling legal, policy, regulatory and market environments conducive to the development of telecommunications/ICTs, and the neutral contribution-driven ITU-D Study Groups through various platforms, services and products in close coordination and partnership with various stakeholders, which can contribute to achieving ITU Goals and the UN SDGs for a sustainable digital economy and society.

Samantha has been involved in the Health, Safety & Environment (HSE), Innovation, and Human Performance Industry for well over 20 years. Currently, she leads the Human Energy Management team, under HR Saudi Aramco, and the new Innovation Ecosystem vertical at Wa’ed (Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Center). As a dynamic leader she ‘walks the talk’ through her impressive patent and prototype portfolio established at the e-factory which is focused on human computer interfacing (IIoT/IR 4.0) resulting in 57 granted/issued patents globally. Six of her patents were licensed and commercialized with a local startup company TIMA – TEK with other licensing and commercialization projects in the pipeline. Samantha was the company representative for the World Economic Forum incubator – workplace alliance global study, and now leads the market accelerator as the MENA President for the Institute for Health & Productivity Management. Furthermore, she is the President of the Innovation Ecosystem Society and Director of the ‘Google for Entrepreneurs’ – Grind chapter for Dhahran.

Sarah Mohammad Ghaleb, Ed.D. An American-born Saudi, has been leading training, social science research/evaluation, and entrepreneurship development for over 10 years. Dr. Ghaleb has a list of professional accomplishments that reflect her commitment to the design, development, and evaluation of social programming; particularly as it relates to sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship. She began this through her work in the U.S. by statistically evaluating evidence-based programming for public charter schools in the District of Columbia through a U.S. Department of Education grant. Then, she co-designed, developed, trained, and evaluated the U.S.-Saudi Women’s Forum on Social Entrepreneurship; a comprehensive training that introduced the concept of social entrepreneurship to women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through a U.S. Department of State MEPI grant funded program. She simultaneously co-founded Naqa’a Sustainability Solutions, one of the first social enterprises in the Kingdom, to address the pressing social and environmental needs in Saudi Arabia.

Jamie has spent more than 15 years working on humanitarian and development responses to forced migration.  He currently serves as Vice President of Program Development for Relief International, where he leads the organization’s efforts to design innovative and effective humanitarian and development programs worldwide, including peace and justice programs in the world’s most fragile settings. 

Jane Meseck is Sr. Director, Tech for Social Impact, at Microsoft Philanthropies. Jane brings more than 20 years of experience in empowering communities, organizations and nonprofits to transform the world through technology. Meseck has been a fixture in nonprofit tech community focusing on scaling technology donations, digital capacity building, and resources.  In 2018, Jane received NTEN’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She also leads Microsoft Philanthropies' Humanitarian Action initiative, providing support to humanitarian organizations of all sizes to help prepare for, respond to and rebuild from humanitarian crises around the world. Included in this portfolio is Microsoft’s AI for Humanitarian Action initiative.  Jane serves on the USA for UNHCR board of directors, American Red Cross Corporate Council, Tent Alliance for Refugee Business Council, Smart Communities Coalition Advisory Committee, and Global WA board of directors.

Keefe Harrison is the founder and CEO of The Recycling Partnership, a $100M+ nonprofit dedicated to protecting the planet by fixing recycling and activating a circular economy in the US.  An international speaker, media pundit, and environmental author, Keefe is 20-year veteran of the space, dedicated to engaging companies in making measurable, lasting change in communities. Before recycling, Keefe worked on a logging crew in North Carolina, researched sea turtles in Costa Rica, and studied reindeer husbandry in Finland.

Leslie Johnston launched Laudes Foundation as its first Chief Executive Officer in January 2020, bringing over 20 years of management experience across multiple sectors. At Laudes Foundation, she is leading the development of its initial vision, strategy and operating model to deliver on its aspiration for global markets that value all people and respect nature. Previously, she headed C& A Foundation as its Executive Director, repositioning it as a global catalyst to make fashion a force for good. Leslie currently serves on the boards of Fashion for Good B.V. (NL), the European Venture Philanthropy Association (BE), COFRA Foundation (CH), GoodWeave International (US), and the Organic Cotton Accelerator (NL).

Lina Sergie Attar is a Syrian American architect and writer from Aleppo. She runs Karam Foundation, a nonprofit organization that invests in young Syrian refugees and their communities through innovative education and leadership development. She's a graduate of the University of Aleppo, Rhode Island School of Design, and MIT. Lina's work has been published internationally in the New York Times, Politico, Foreign Policy, and more. She has spoken extensively on the Syrian humanitarian crisis on major news outlets and at institutions around the world.

Lisa McAuley is the current CEO and founder of the Global Trade Professionals Alliance (GTPA), prior to this role she was the Chief Executive Officer of the Export Council of Australia (ECA) for five years and has worked in international trade for over 12 years. Lisa has driven ground-breaking research and advocacy projects around the global competitiveness of Australian SMEs and she has been pivotal in the development of GTPA, a global network for the development of international standards to drive and facilitate international trade. 

Malavika leads Engie Impact’s work out of APAC. Malavika is a well regarded sustainability professional with over 20 years of experience. Her experience includes projects in clean energy, smart cities, climate change, and sustainable agriculture. She has worked with the private sector, governments, and the development sector, lived and worked both in the West (UK, Europe, and US) and in Asia (Southeast Asia, India).Malavika developed her keen interest in climate change in the early part of her career with McKinsey and Company as a part of their Climate Change Special Initiative in London, working on carbon abatement strategy for European utilities and governments. She was involved in McKinsey’s first global greenhouse gas abatement cost curves study which was widely published and quoted. 

Marcia DeLonge is the Research Director and Senior Scientist in the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where she works primarily on agroecology, sustainable food systems, and intersections between agriculture and climate change in the context of science and US policy.  She has a Ph.D. and M.S. in environmental science from the University of Virginia, where she developed expertise in atmospheric science, hydrology, ecosystem science, and numerical modeling, as well as a B.A. in environmental science from Northwestern University.  Following her PhD, she worked as a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley.

Marco Kamiya leads global operational and normative work on urban economy and municipal finance, working with cities he supports financing methodologies related with planning, participatory approaches and infrastructure finance.   Previously, he occupied senior positions at CAF Development Bank of Latin America, the Inter-American Development Bank, and PADECO Co., Ltd in Tokyo. He studied Economics in Lima and Tokyo, and International Development at Harvard University.

Dr. Marguerite Nyhan is a tenured faculty member (US equivalent - Assistant Professor) at the National University of Ireland - University College Cork and a Visiting Scientist at Harvard University in Boston. Prior to joining University College Cork, she was a Research Scientist at United Nations Global Pulse at the United Nations in New York City. She has a background in environmental engineering, urban analytics and public health and is interested in informing the design of healthy and sustainable cities of the future. Nyhan has published research on using large ICT datasets for evaluating urban dynamics at a city-wide scale, evaluating emissions and exposures to pollution, and determining their human health impact. Her current work focuses on harnessing emerging technologies for sustainable development and humanitarian efforts.

Mariko is Co-Founder and Director of Social Innovation Japan and runs Japan's first free water refill platform, mymizu. A former journalist, she has planned, managed and delivered international, multi-stakeholder projects for government, corporations and social ventures, including as Programme Manager for a UK government campaign to facilitate innovation partnerships between the UK and Japan and as Overseas Marketing lead for Earth Company, an award-winning social enterprise. She now leverages her experience to build greater cross-sector engagement with social and environmental issues via Social Innovation Japan (SIJ), co-founded mymizu, a circular economy initiative borne out of SIJ, and is the Tokyo lead for the Circular Economy Club.

In support of SAP’s commitment to close the digital skills gap, Marita is leading the SAP Training and Development Institute and overseeing all capacity build initiatives across EMEA South. During her 13-year tenure with SAP, she has held several other leadership positions. Before being appointed as the Lead for EMEA South Digital skills, Marita led the Middle East & North Africa strategic investments, supported SAP’s China Growth plan and was the HR Business Partner Lead for SAP’s ex-Co-CEOs, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe.

Oversees the portfolio of technical cooperation projects of over USD 42 million, delivered by eight professionals at UNIDO HQs in Vienna and over 120 project personnel in geographical regions: Africa, Arab, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Served UNIDO since 2000 in different capacities, as Acting Director for Strategic Planning and Coordination Department; Chief of Europe and Central Asia Programme; Senior Researcher in Strategic Research and Economics Department and Private Sector Development Department. Before joining UNIDO, Ms. Memedovic served as a project leader at the Netherlands Economic Institute and as a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Free University Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam.

Myriam serves as Vice President for Innovation at Mercy Corps where she champions initiatives to spark, support and scale innovative solutions for social impact in fragile and frontier markets. She helps internal and external entrepreneurs leverage Mercy Corps’ global network of staff and community connections across 44 countries, and tap in to the organization’s many private and public sector relationships. Myriam also serves on Mercy Corps’ Executive Team. Previously, Myriam oversaw Mercy Corps’ Technical Support Unit whose subject-matter experts help develop partnerships and strategy, conduct cutting-edge research, cultivate organizational learning, and advise teams around the globe. In this role, she helped launch and steward the organizations’ gender integration initiative. She also lived in the Balkans and Caucasus for over a decade where she managed post-conflict development initiatives and dynamic teams. Myriam has a degree from Brown University.

Nalini Saligram, Ph.D. is founder & CEO of Arogya World (arogyaworld.org), a global health non-profit committed to helping people lead healthier lives by preventing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) through health education and lifestyle change. She is an Ashoka Fellow. Under Nalini’s leadership, Arogya World designs and implements scalable, science-based NCD prevention programs in India, taking prevention to people where they live, learn and work. The non-profit has reached more than 5 million people on diabetes prevention and having shown proof of concept is now aggressively scaling up.

Named in Time Magazine’s list of 10 Next Generation Leaders. Oscar is a Software Engineer and Founder of Chowberry Inc, a technology driven social business that helps retailers cut food waste and improves access to food and nutrition to households facing food poverty. He is a recipient of the prestigious Rolex Award for Enterprise in Applied Technology for his work on Chowberry which to date has impacted over 52,000 disadvantaged families facing hunger. He founded Africa’s first trans-disciplinary design lab at the intersection of Arts and Technology called Gallery of Code, which works to develop innovative solutions that affect society in partnership with Ars Electronica Futurelab and is a member of the Advisor Board - Digital Communities to Ars Electronica GmBH Austria.

Pamela leads the Fung Academy’s knowledge generation, application, and dissemination in support of the Fung Group’s business success and readiness for the future.  As such she directs the Academy’s research & development activities and experiments which form the base of the Group’s strategic response to key disruptions in its business operating environment, including technological change, the rise of sustainability, trade/geopolitical uncertainty and the changing nature of consumption. 

Penelope (Penny) Naas is UPS Vice-President and District Manager for International Public Affairs and Sustainability since January 2015, based in Washington DC (since May 2019) and previously in Brussels, Belgium.  Penny began her UPS career in May 2012, managing the Public Affairs team for the EMEA Region, where she enhanced governmental understanding of UPS and the issues impacting the logistics industry. In 2014, Penny was also asked to oversee sustainability in Europe, and has worked to advance internal and external appreciation of the importance of sustainability for UPS.  

Peter is President of IIRR, one of the world's largest rural development organizations. Previously, he worked for the World Bank as an Expert Advisor before which he founded and led an NGO using design solutions to improve health.  Peter holds Masters degrees from the University of Oxford and Columbia University and has received numerous recognitions for social innovation including being cited by Forbes Magazine as having one of the 10 best sustainability ideas on the planet. He is a Devex ‘40 under 40’ international development leader and was acknowledged as leading one of the most innovative social impact companies in the world by Fast Company. 

Philippe Rudaz is Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) since 2015. At the Entrepreneurship Section of UNCTAD, he contributes to the elaboration of Entrepreneurship Policies in collaboration with members states which request assistance. Before that, Philippe was a research consultant at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland where he wrote his PhD on the relationship between financial innovation and development. 

Rana Novack is a Syrian American social impact innovator, writer, TED and keynote speaker, advocate for refugees and civilians in conflict, and the solution owner of IBM’s Refugee & Migration Predictive Analytics Solution. She led the development of a first-of-a-kind, cloud-based solution leveraging machine learning and cognitive computing to enable Government agencies and humanitarian aid organizations to better manage refugee and migration crises, and is the leader of IBM's Cloud & Cognitive Software communications across North America.

Robert HAKIZA is a Congolese living in Uganda as a refugee since 2008. He holds a degree in Agriculture from the Catholic University of Bukavu (DRC). ). In 2015 he attended the International Summer School of forced migration of Oxford University, in United Kingdom. He is a Co-founder and Executive Director of the Young African Refugees for Integral Development (YARID) a refugee-led organization which empowers refugees and builds community. He is also a founding member of the Refugee-Led Organizations Network (RELON) and the Global Refugee-led Network (GRN). He is a refugee advocate and has a big experience working with urban refugees and also works to educate others about obstacles refugees face.

Rupa is an international trade specialist by profession and an entrepreneur at heart. Rupa was 17yrs when she set up her first business, creating and selling contemporary fashion made from left over inventory fabrics to university students in Mumbai, India. This early venture inspired her studies in textiles, management and international trade, culminating in over 20 years of development work on the field with the United Nations, World Trade Organization (WTO) and several governments enabling small businesses to access global markets. Rupa founded the award-winning non-profit network, SPINNA Circle that has supported and connected several hundred women artisans in textiles across Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern & Western Europe. With a long time passion for crafts and technology, she recently coined the term Shop by Impact ® and launched Inclusivetrade.com, a revolutionary e-commerce community linking products and purchases to the United Nations SDGs. Inclusivetrade.com promotes sustainability while bringing to the forefront, the many untold stories of artisans and makers from around the world.

Sanjay Sridhar is the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group’s Regional Director for South and West Asia. With 94 member cities worldwide, C40 Cities is a global network of the megacities of the world and is helping cities and its political leaders make the case for climate action through best practice learning and deep-dive technical handholding. Sanjay has more than 22 years of work experience in 3 continents (North America, Europe, and Asia) in areas of architecture, urban development and planning, heritage and conservation studies, sustainable design, urban governance, and public policy. He also has a keen interest to work at the intersection of technology, governments, business ecosystems and environmental sustainability at a global scale.

Professor Seeram Ramakrishna, FREng is the Chair of Circular Economy Taskforce at the National University of Singapore (NUS), which is ranked as the number one university in Asia and among the world’s top 20 universities.His senior academic leadership roles includes NUS University Vice-President (Research Strategy); Dean of NUS Faculty of Engineering; Director of NUS Enterprise; Director of NUS Industry Liaison Office; Founding Co-Director of NUS Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Initiative, NUSNNI; and Founding Chairman of Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, SERIS.  He co-founded a successful international organization- the Global Engineering Deans Council, GEDC.

Srdjan has an advanced degree in environmental policy, planning and regulation, and a wealth of professional experience in nature conservation and climate change. He has been a passionate environmentalist with over 15 years of relevant professional experience in leading international political processes in the domains of environmental protection and climate change in the Middle East, North Africa and South and Eastern Europe. He is experienced in management, planning, coordination and execution of activities to support national and local partners by providing policy advice and formulation. 

Tenzin Seldon is the Partner & Chief Executive of The Plant, a global home for climate solutions and innovation. She also is the founder Kinstep, a social enterprise platform that connects immigrants to safe and steady jobs. She served as Senior Advisor, Board Member of Earth's Call Foundation, in partnership with Lever for Change, which will deploy around 100 million for solutions addressing climate crisis. Tenzin graduated top of her class at Stanford University, followed by the University of Oxford, where she was the first Tibetan-American Rhodes Scholar.

Venan A. Sondo is a Sustainable Business & Management Professional with over 14 years of experience in sustainable business and climate consulting, especially with integrating ESG in traditional business environments. He holds a BSc from the Brandenburg University of Science & Technology in Germany, and an MSc (with Distinction) from the Oxford Brookes University in the UK.

Wanjiku is a seasoned professional with over 18 years experience leading the design and implementation of economic development programming in the East African region.  She has specialised in market systems approaches for sustainable and inclusive solutions to economic growth especially targeting the vulnerable and under privileged groups in society.  Wanjiku has hands on experience in local, regional and global value chains (dairy / livestock, coffee, horticulture and fruits, staples, tourism, water distribution, seed and agriculture production input supply).  More recently, Wanjiku has developed expertise in trade development focusing on export capability and sustainability focusing on gender, environment and climate change and management of environmental and social risks.

Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is the Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD). AWARD is working towards inclusive, agriculture-driven prosperity for the African continent by strengthening the production and dissemination of agricultural research and innovation that is more gender responsive. Born in Kenya, Dr. Kamau-Rutenberg holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics as well as a Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from Whitman College in Washington, U.S.A.

William Asiko joined The Rockefeller Foundation in 2019 as the Managing Director for The Africa Regional Office. In this role, William oversees all Africa regional operations for the Foundation from the Nairobi office. Many of the Foundation’s core programs, from health to food, have been instrumental in bettering the lives of communities across sub-Saharan Africa. William was previously Executive Director of Grow Africa, an innovative agricultural development partnership between the World Economic Forum, the African Union and NEPAD that works to accelerate private sector investment into African agriculture. Under his leadership, Grow Africa ran over 40 programs across 12 countries in Africa with an ambitious growth plan to take the Grow Africa model across all countries in Africa.