Innovation for Peace and Justice

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.