2022 Fellowship
The Fellows
YEVHEN POPOV
Yevhen is the CEO of Politscanner, a mobile application that helps you to quickly and easily get information about the politicians' activities, biography, electoral program, and tax statement. With the help of face recognition technology, we are able to provide citizens all details about politicians and what they stand for. Yevhen holds a Ph.D. in Political Science with research on Ukrainian think tanks and brings professional experience from his work on election campaigns and democracy at both the national and the EU level.
POLITSCANNER - UKRAINE
TAMARA TACHYNSKA
Tamara is the Chief Marketing Officer for Qela App. Qela App is an adaptive tool for designing and conducting political or social campaigns, movements, and advocacy to increase their efficacy. We created Qela App for change-makers who want to know and communicate with their supporters better, to engage them daily, and to spread ideas through the actions of more and more followers. Our mission is to help democratic organizations engage people and empower them to go for sustainable changes.
QELA APP -UKRAINE
VOLODYMYR TARNAY
Market Research Tool is an instrument that compares the price per item for goods and helps governmental entities and municipalities to perform better procurement by identifying suppliers with the lowest prices on the procurement market in Ukraine & Moldova. The tool increases the transparency of public spending & accountability of procuring entities, provides new opportunities for businesses, empowers state auditors, activists, and journalists with a tool to detect corruption and inefficiency, and helps to save taxpayers' money.
MARKET RESEARCH TOOL - UKRAINE
GIORGI KAKHIANI
Giorgi is the co-founder of Nowrepost, an app allowing organizations, that fight for democracy, arm their followers with right data & information. Spreading micro-truths within trusted followers to be then circulated within their network of people. Giorgi has witnessed first-hand how anti-democratic forces exploit social media, fake news & massive propaganda to influence people's attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. To counter that Giorgi has created a human-centric digital communication mechanism. Giorgi holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a major in marketing. He has previous experience with entrepreneurship from founding two start-up companies and has a background in digital product and project management.
NOW REPOST - GIORGIA
KETEVAN BOSIKASHVILI
Ketevan is the CEO of Supernova. At Supernova they help media researchers and analysts to detect disinformation in real time using the biggest database hub. We detect suspicious relationships between specific people, political parties or companies in order to protect us agains fake news or against pro Russian activities. Ketevan graduated from Georgian Technical University's computer science faculty and she has worked for among others National Bank of Georgia. Ketevan has worked on lots of innovatied products like mobile transfer, and TI Bot.
SUPERNOVA - GEORGIA
IRAKLI KAVTARADZE
Irakli heads a team of social scientists working on data visualisation and data analysis primarily on social issues. At Z-Axis we strive to bring positive social change in the society by analysing and visualising data from social media websites. We are trying to communicate important information that might be effective in everyday problem solving. we bring our academic knowledge into our work to guide our research and findings. Irakli is born and raised in Georgia, Tbilisi. He studied psychology at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. And attained a master’s degree in social psychology at Ilia State University.
Z-AXIS - GEORGIA
DAVID ARAGORT
David Aragort is a digital rights advocate from Caracas, Venezuela. He works as a researcher on issues related to freedom of expression and access to information on the Internet and as a digital security trainer for journalists, activists, human rights defenders and other at-risk communities in Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia and Brazil. David wants to create a decentralized database in which citizens can send potential fake news, disinformation or misinformation to be verified, published or disproved by different fact-checking organizations during events of public interest such as elections or demonstrations.
FACT-ING DATABASE - VENEZUELA
LUIS FORNEZ
Candydato is the easy way to fundraise and crowdfund a political campaign in Latin America. Access your neighborhood, county, or country’s voting rolls and reach them all via SMS, email, social media and IVR. Candydato aims to disrupt democracy the democratic way, from the ground up, by leveling the playing field, allowing non-traditional as well as established candidates to get their message out, and voters to support those that truly speak to them.
CANDYDATO - VENEZUELA
The Speakers
Daniel Dudas-Schwarz
Daniel is a driven innovator with 20+ years of experience working with communication, media and technology. His main expertise is understanding the intersect of human psychology and behavior, innovation and technology, customer needs and market trends. Through his work and personal experience within the field of healthcare, Daniel has spent the past 10 years focusing on preventative health, enabling solutions within Digital Health and AI. In Daniel’s opinion healthcare should be a human right and he strongly advocates for the democratization of the healthcare industry. Besides running his startup focusing on stress management and burnout prevention in the workplace, he spends part of his time consulting innovation projects, facilitates leadership training and business coaching, and mentors deep tech startups focusing on social impact.
Founder & CEO - Liv
Leopoldo Lopez
Leopoldo López is a Freedom Activist from Venezuela. He was a political prisoner from 2014 to 2020 after being sentenced for leading non-violent street protests and civil resistance. After spending seven years in confinement, he managed to escape the autocratic regime of Nicolas Maduro in 2020. In 2009, he founded the political party and freedom movement called Voluntad Popular and became its national coordinator. Leopoldo López is the co-founder of the World Liberty Congress, an organization that seeks to serve as the counterweight against the global autocratic alliance by connecting non-violent, pro-democracy activists from across the globe. Presently, Leopoldo López is a visiting fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C and has also been a lecturer in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in Stanford University.
Venezuelan Opposition Activist
Wu Min Hsuan
Min Hsuan Wu, also known as “Ttcat,” is the co-founder and CEO of Doublethink Lab, a Taiwan based organization that operates at the intersection of the Internet, public discourse, civil society, and democratic governance. Doublethink Lab is researching modern threats to democracy and devising strategies to counter them. He is focused on mapping China’s online information operation mechanisms and facilitating the global CSO network to combat digital authoritarianism.
CO-FOUNDER & CEO - DOUBLETHINK LAB
Ann-Christine Roope
Ann-Christine is Founder of Ethan Partners, a global executive search company focusing on high growth Internet companies. Ethan Partners has supported over 150 successful Internet companies and placed more than 3000 high profile candidates. Clients include among others Uber, Houzz, Naspers, Zomato, Ringier, Deliveroo, and Goldman Sachs. Before this Ann-Christine was Director of International Recruiting at Groupon as they entered +50 countries globally. Ann-Christine has also supported some of the largest VC’s and PE’s globally with talent acquisition. She holds a Master in Marketing and Business Communication from Copenhagen Business School.
FOUNDER - ETHAN PARTNERS
Joo Runge
Joo Runge is co-founder & partner in InTech Founders, a European growth accelerator for diverse scale-ups. Joo Runge has a background as an M&A and finance lawyer from well-known law firms but has since 2013 worked as a board member. In 2016, Joo Runge founded Black Panther Consulting, a company working with growth, funding and debt finance to startups and funds benefiting from Joo Runge’s huge network of startups, experts and investors in Europe. In addition to her law degree, she holds the executive degree HD 1 from Copenhagen Business School. Today, she holds various board positions in TimeLog, Fundmarket.dk and Women in Tech and is the founder of Women in Tech Switzerland. Joo holds a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School and Master of Laws from the University of Copenhagen.
CO-FOUNDER & PARTNER - INTECH FOUNDERS
Jørn Larsen
Jørn Larsen is founder and CEO of Trifork, a Danish publicly traded company providing software solutions to government and financial services providers. Trifork is creator of the long-running GOTO Conferences and co-creator of QCon. Jørn believes that we can change the world with software by thinking smarter solutions that make life better and easier for everyone. He graduated from the University of Aalborg, DK in 1994. Since 1997, Jørn is involved in program committees for software development conferences all over the world including QCon London, GOTO Conferences and many more.
FOUNDER & CEO - TRIFORK
Stine Mølgaard Sørensen
Stine is an experienced entrepreneur and board member skilled in Strategic Affairs, Investor Relations, and Public Speaking. She founded her first company in 2013 and has been working with new technology and digital transformation for more than 13 years, both in a corporate global role and founding several tech startups where she led one to a successful Silicon Valley exit. Later, she co-founded Radiobotics, a health tech startup, bringing AI technology to hospitals. Today, she is a Partner at Alliance VC, sits on numerous boards, and further, she serves on the Innovation Fund Denmark's investment panel. Finally, she is a best-selling author with her book “F*ck It, Ship It,” about experimenting with new technology.
Partner - Alliance VC
ERDEM OVACIK
Erdem Ovacik is the Co-founder and CEO of Donkey Republic. In the past decade Erdem has been working on bike-sharing, on direct democracy initiatives, on social impact bonds, on crowd sourcing and crowd funding platforms. He has a background in engineering and public policy. A graduate of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. Erdem grew up in Turkey, has lived in USA, UK and for the last 10+ yrs in Denmark. I am passionate about changing the way society makes collective decisions. Erdem believes the way most governments work today does not match our collective capacity for problem solving and preference aggregation. He believes that we need to use disruptive technology to bridge the decision-making divide between the powerful few and the majority.
CO-FOUNDER & CEO - DONKEY REPUBLIC
Barbara Taudorf Andersen
Barbara Taudorf Andersen has a background as senior executive from Financial, Payments and has worked in Government sector. She has been responsible for national id and payment schemes in Denmark and Norway, that have been the backbone for making the two countries some of the world’s most digital societies. Barbara has worked in both the Ministry of Finance, Prime Minister’s Office, been part of the executive management team in the Nordic payments and fintech company, Nets, as well as the management group in a Danish retail bank, Nykredit. Barbara believes in the power of collaboration and complementary competencies to execute across the various dimensions of any given business case.
FOUNDER - SCALABILITY CPH
The Mentors
Mik Strøyberg
Mik Strøyberg is the Founder and CEO of Good Monday. Mik has scaled and built the commercial business in Europe and the US. His 18+ years of proven success in strategic sales, marketing, and structuring businesses have lead him to a successful career in the startup world. He draws inspiration from working on innovative customer strategies and creating thriving strategic partnerships and monetization with different companies.
FOUNDER & CEO - GOOD MONDAY
Jonas Wilstrup
Jonas holds an MSc in Economics from University of Copenhagen and has 11+ years’ experience in Strategy, Finance, and Public Affairs. Previously he served as the CFO for Wonderful Copenhagen and chairman of BestCities Global Alliance. At Abzu, he manages finances, investor relations, and solutions strategies. Jonas is a major Trekkie and loves most things sci-fi.
COO & CFO - ABZU
Keith Fransson
Keith manages a family office investment company together with being in partner at Stella Capital. He has an aggregate of 25 years of professional experience at a senior level - as manager, owner or management consultant. The common denominators are driving change in organisations ranging from start-ups to large cos. His experience has been acquired from work in several industries with various kinds of ownership. Lastly, he has a profound interest in societal and political processes, stemming from a deep-rooted interest in creating a viable society.
PARTNER - STELLA CAPITAL
Torsten Kolind
Torsten is the Co-Founder & CEO of Underground Ventures, as well as an investor, advisor and board member in multiple startups and funds, with particular focus on women's health and geothermal energy. A bioinformatics engineer by training, Torsten co-founded YouNoodle in San Francisco, a technology platform to eliminate biases when sourcing and evaluating startups. He has judged startup programs at Stanford University, MIT, and Imperial College, and has written opinion pieces for the Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur Magazine.
CO-FOUNDER & CEO - UNDERGROUND VENTURES
Alexander Aghassipour
Alexander is the co-founder of Zendesk. Zendesk builds software for better customer relationships and was founded in Copenhagen in 2007. The company went public on NYSE in 2014. Prior to founding Zendesk, he consulted with global corporations about design, global strategy, and recruiting. Alexander also co-founded Araneum, the largest Danish-owned digital media agency.
Co-Founder - Zendesk
Sahra-Josephine Hjorth
Sahra-Josephine is an expert on converging technologies and how these are applied in learning contexts to design personalized and adaptive learning experiences that empower end-users to improve their lives. She is the co-founder and CEO of CanopyLAB. CanopyLAB was recently nominated in Future Unicorn Awards and they just completed a ($3M) capital funding round.
CO-FOUNDER & CEO – CANOPYLAB
Democracy Tech Entrepreneur Fellows at CDS
We invited the eight Democracy Tech Entrepreneur Fellows from Ukraine, Georgia and Venezuela to Copenhagen to present their solutions to problems facing democracies at the 2022 Copenhagen Democracy Summit.
The Fellows
- Tamara Tachynska, Qela App (Ukraine)
- Yevhen Popov, Politscanner (Ukraine)
- Luis Fornez, Candydato (Venezuela)
- Volodymyr Tarnay, Market Research Tool (Ukraine)
- Irakli Kavtaradze, Z.axis (Georgia)
- David Aragort, Fact-ing (Venezuela)
- Giorgi Kakhiani, Now Repost (Georgia)
- Ketevan Bosikashvili, Supernova (Georgia)
Watch the inspiring Democracy Tech Entrepreneur Fellowship presentations here.
Selected Fellow Elevator Pitch
During the application process Fellows are required to submit a 1 min video elevator pitch talking about their Democracy Tech innovation. For every cohort we highlight one Fellow who created an outstanding elevator pitch. Below is David Aragort presenting his project idea.