2023 Fellowship

TEONA TOMASHVILI

Teona is the co-founder and project lead of ForSet - a creative enterprise that specializes in data communication - where she leads civic tech direction. Additionally, Teona builds a community of data-driven activists by organizing various hackathons. She holds a master's degree in EU and Russia Studies. AskGov.ge is a citizen-centric freedom of information (FOI) request platform that aims at incentivizing the government to release public data. The project already has one of the largest publicly available databases in Georgia and aims at providing more government data for citizens to strengthen Georgian democracy.

ASKGOV.GE - GEORGIA

NARE HAKOBYAN

Nare is a Strategic Partnerships Assistant at SocialLab. Her education and professional experience have primarily focused on tackling social issues at the intersection of technology and innovation. She holds a bachelor's degree in International Relations and Development. SocialLab combines data science and social sciences to create an open data platform that improves access to public opinion and information through social listening. The project aims to bring greater accuracy and understanding of public opinion, resulting in better insights, information, and recommendations to change makers in Armenia.

DATA FOR DEMOCACY - ARMENIA

GIORGI KVINIKADZE

Giorgi is a Data Scientist and cofounder of ThroughAI from Georgia. His work focuses on the intersection of AI and Machine Learning algorithms. He holds a master's degree in Behavioral Economics and Modern Data Analyses. War Fake News Detector aims to identify fake news by using a high-end intelligent online chatbot solution powered by AI. The chatbot is integrated into Telegram and focuses primarily on fake news spread in the Russo-Ukrainian War to help people identify false information.

WAR FAKE NEWS DETECTOR - GEORGIA

NATALYA CHERNOGUB

Natalya Chernogub is the head of the GR department at YouControl, and the head of NGO`s "Open Data Association" and "Natalka Park" NGO’s. Since 2017, she has been an expert of the Council of Europe on the development of democracy, public consultations, public participation in the planning of public spaces. RuAssets allows businesses and authorities to protect themselves from reputational risks associated with cooperation with the state-sponsor of terrorism, Russia, and journalists to prepare high-quality investigative materials on anti-corruption topics.

YC WORLD - UKRAINE

VIKTOR NESTULIA

Viktor Nestulia is is leading Open Contracting Partnership’s support to Ukraine to reconstruct and modernize the country after Russia’s illegal invasion, leveraging the transformational open contracting reforms in Ukraine since 2014 to help the country build back better. He also chairs Ukraine’s Reconstruction Integrity, Sustainability and Efficiency (RISE) Coalition, a group of 40+ organizations focusing on embedding open contracting principles and approaches into the recovery program. Viktor works closely with government, business, and civil society to develop an end-to-end Digital Reconstruction Management System and make sure that Ukraine’s reconstruction is a role model of open government and open contracting for the world.

DREAM - UKRAINE

RALUCA GINDEA

Raluca Gindea is young professional joining the Fellowship following winning the Democracy Tech Hackathon in Moldova with her team. Raluca has experience from the youth work sector as a project coordinator, leading her country on two Erasmus Plus International Exchanges. She also led Moldova-based NGOs Nirvana and LeoTeen Energy Chisinau. Her team developed the project the People’s Parliament that lists bills presently debated in the Moldovan Parliament, allowing citizens to vote on them as well. This tool will provide a way to compare the stand of the Moldovans and that of their MPs and to observe both the concordances and the discrepancies between them.

PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT - MOLDOVA

JACOB GYLDENKÆRNE

Jacob Gyldenkærne is the CEO and founder of Assembly Voting, a Danish company providing advanced voting software which documents and proves the integrity of democratic processes. Since 2001, more than 35 million voters and 35 thousand candidates have trusted Assembly Voting’s platforms to handle key democratic processes in their organizations to date, making it the single most-used online voting system in Scandinavia. In April 2021, Assembly Voting was selected by a group of dedicated experts in security, United States election legislation, and open-source software to build the next generation of mobile voting systems for use in US public elections.

FOUNDER & CEO - ASSEMBLY VOTING

MATHIAS SUNDIN

Mathias began his career as a changemaker as a Swedish Member of Parliament. In 2018, he choose not to run for reelection because he had a vision for a much bigger opportunity to have a more positive impact on the future. Mathias started dreaming of a world where optimists are seen as rational. With news media showing a fact-based view of the world. And naive pessimists don’t stand in the way of progress. Therefore he founded the non-profit Warp Institute Foundation with the mission to make the future come sooner.

CO-FOUNDER - THE WARP INSTITUTE FOUNDATION

Fadi Elsalameen

Fadi Elsalameen is a political commentator, op-ed writer, and public speaker on Arab-Israeli affairs. He is a Non-resident Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the American Security Project, a Washington, DC think tank that has been created to develop an American national security vision and strategy for the 21st century. Elsalameen was also a fellow with the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program, a nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States.

SENIOR ADJUCT FELLOW - AMERICAN SECURITY PROJECT

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

Colombe Cahen-Salvador

Colombe Cahen-Salvador is a community builder and activist. She is the co-founder and co-director of Atlas, the global grassroots movement advocating for a more democratic and equitable world counting 22,000 members in more than 130 countries. She previously co-founded pan-European political progressive party Volt Europa. Before that, she worked at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and at the Norwegian Refugee Council. She holds a law degree from Warwick Law School and a Master of Laws from Duke University School of Law.

Co-FOUNDER & CO-DIRECTOR - ATLAS

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

Tine Marie Kjærgaard Lindgreen

Tine Marie Kjærgaard Lindgreen is Principal at Seed Capital, an esteemed investment firm with a proven track record of supporting startups from seed to Series A and even beyond. Seed Capital is Denmark's largest seed-focused venture capital firm, investing only in Denmark-based companies. Prior to her role at Seed Capital, Tine Marie Kjærgaard Lindgreen garnered valuable experience across various roles within the startup and venture ecosystem. Having transitioned from Investment Banking to an operational role, she served as Head of Business Development at Ageras, a thriving fintech scaleup, followed by significant contributions to business development and investment processes at Vækstfonden.

PRINCIPAL - SEED CAPITAL

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

MAJKEN OVERGAARD

Majken Overgaard is a specialist in innovation and entrepreneurship, focusing on technology and contemporary art. She has worked both as a facilitator, manager, and curator on a broad range of projects such as research and innovation projects, exhibitions and networks. Her creative methodologies are inspired by contemporary art and science fiction. Since 2011 she has co-founded three companies; furthermore she is working as an external lecturer at the IT University of Copenhagen and Copenhagen University and has initiated many interdisciplinary for people working within technology and art. Currently, she is a partner at Korridor - a web3 collective where we focus on what expands the possibilities of culture and art online right now - from blockchains, web3 and NFT to the metaverse and immersive technologies such as AR and VR.

CO-FOUNDER - KORRIDOR

CHRISTINE HEBERT

Christine Hebert is the Co-Founder & CEO of Blue Lobster, a company that has been praised by Barack Obama as a global role model for sustainability. Blue Lobster is a digital marketplace that enables fishermen to sell directly to customers, giving a better livelihood to small-scale fishermen and fresh, local and affordable seafood to customers. Blue Lobster are cutting out the middlemen and bringing traceability back into the fishing industry.

CO-FOUNDER & CEO - BLUE LOBSTER

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

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.

IT CONSULTANT - GLADTEKNIK A/S

Ann-Christine Roope

Ann-Christine is Founder of Ethan Partners, a global executive search company focused on the digital space. Ethan Partners has supported over 250 high growth companies and placed more than 3000 high profile candidates. Clients include among others Uber, Zalando, Airbnb and Goldman Sachs. Ann-Christine has supported some of the largest VC’s and PE’s globally with talent acquisition. Ann-Christine is also Co-Founder of InTech Founders, a European growth accelerator for diverse tech startups that are looking to scale internationally and attract investors, with the aim to promote diversity and inclusion in tech. 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