European Young Leaders (#EYL40)

A Polish aerospace engineer with a passion for disruptive technologies, Paweł Radziszewski is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Nevomo, a deep-technology company that is developing the next generation of high-speed and freight railways. Radziszewski is responsible for the product, technical and intellectual property strategy, and system-level project supervision. Committed to the sustainable development of the mobility industry, Nemovo is the first company in the world to propose the phased implementation of hyperloop-inspired solutions for railways. Having led the development of Nemovo’s MagRail system that enables magnetic levitation vehicles propelled by a linear motor to operate on existing railroads, Radziszewski plans to take the technology further by developing hyperloop subsystems for the future market and applying the technology to other areas of the industry. He has won several international technology competitions, including the SAE Aerodesign West and Shell Eco-marathon, and is a two-time finalist of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition.

Nina Rawal is a Partner and Co-Head at Trill Impact Ventures, Europe’s leading impact investing house. Prior to her current role, she founded Emerging Health Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on affordable medicine and medical products. She was also the head of life science at the Swedish Industrial Development Fund, a €500mn venture capital fund, where she was responsible for international business development in early life science companies. Rawal has also previously served as the head of strategy and ventures at Baxter Group, formerly Gambro, a leading global medical technology company. She also sits on the boards of MedCap AB and Stockholms Sjukhem, a non-profit hospital. In recognition of her work, Rawal has been recognised among the Women’s Forum Rising Talents.

Kosovo-based Erblin Ribari is Chief Financial Officer at dua.com, an app that seeks to transform the dating industry, providing a lifestyle platform that focuses on establishing meaningful connections through shared culture and origins. Starting out as a dating app for Albanians, dua.com has gone global, with more than 5mn registered users and a market cap of over $50mn. Its ambitions go far higher: dua.com aims to cut global loneliness by half over the next 10 years. The 2008 financial crisis sparked Ribari’s commitment to making change, driving him to take leadership roles in multimillion-dollar projects across tech, finance and government furthering economic development and global connectivity.

Mate is a Croatian innovator, entrepreneur, and founder of the car company Rimac Automobili. He started off at the age of 19 in a borrowed garage, tinkering, dreaming, and already thinking several years ahead of the traditional car industry. Soon enough, he built a global name for himself, crafting battery tech for the likes of Aston Martin and Renault. He also created the world’s first electric ‘supercar’, the Rimac Concept One. In 2012, he set out to prove that electric cars could be faster than conventional fuel. His dream became reality, as Mate’s ‘Green Monster’ electric car won a Guinness World Record for the fastest ¼ mile. He’s received widespread recognition and support for his projects, including USD 90 mi investment from Hyundai and Kia.

Dominik has held various management roles at Lanxess, a leading global specialty chemicals group, throughout his career. Prior to his current role in rubber additives, Dominik has worked in mergers and acquisitions, colorants and rubber chemicals, which included a four-year assignment in Southeast Asia. His political record includes activities at both the regional and national levels for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), as well as for the Young Union of Germany and the Economic Council of the CDU.

Daan is a Dutch artist and innovator; he’s a creative thinker who explores the relations between people, technology and space through social designs. Having been inspired by natural phenomena like light-emitting fireflies and jellyfish from an early age, Daan’s long-standing fascination with nature and technology is reflected in designs that include his Smart Highway project (roads which charge from sunlight and glow at night) and Waterlicht (a virtual flood). His Smog Free Project has seen the creation of the largest outdoor air purifier in the world, transforming smog into jewellery, and the Smog Free Bike which cleans the surrounding air with every pedal. In 2007, he founded Studio Roosegaarde, a internationally renowned social design lab where he works with his team of designers and engineers to craft a better future. Together, they develop ‘Landscapes of the Future’ by building smart sustainable prototypes for the cities of tomorrow.

A serial entrepreneur, Lara is the Founder and CEO of Levia.ai, a unique virtual vender which creates highly-personalised, one-to-one shopping experiences through the use of AI technologies. She is also the Founder of Selectionnist, a mobile app which seeks to bridge the gap between offline content and the online experience by allowing users to find any item featured in French fashion magazines. Working with top magazines in France, including Elle and Marie Claire, Selectionnist has become a high-performance analytics tool for brands, retailers, advertisers and publishers. Her first entrepreneurial venture was Dealissime, a website that provides buyer groups with daily offers related to products and services for women, which was acquired by LivingSocial, a part of the Amazon group. Lara is also a member of the French Digital Council and part of the French Movement for a Benevolent Economy (MEB).

From her base in Latvia, wearing many hats, Marija Ručevska has been a driving force behind the Baltic tech scene for a decade. She is the General Partner at the Outlast Fund, launched in 2024 to back pre-seed and seed stage startups in the Baltic and Nordic region, to support bold founders with the grit and vision to build ventures that outlast the rest. Ručevska is also partner and co-founder of Helve, which she helped set up in 2016 to bring startup-style innovation to the wider corporate and public sectors. She continues as Member of the Board at TechChill, one of northern Europe’s biggest annual tech conferences, drawing over 300 startups and 250 plus investors.

Sara is an engineer at S.A. de Electronica Submarina (SAES), a company specialised in submarine electronics and acoustics. Prior to this, she was a Member of the Murcian regional Parliament where she served as First Secretary of the Defense Committee as well as a Member of the Science and Innovation and Equality Committees. She has been a Member of the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party since she was 16. She studied communications engineering and has worked in the defence policy sector. She stands for male-female parity in Spain’s politics and for the presence of members of parliament of all ages.

An Estonian designer and innovator, Marko is passionate about the open sharing of knowledge and its capabilities to shape the future. Having most recently founded Grantful, he helped launched a global online hackathon series, Hack the Crisis and The Global Hack, to address challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Marko delivered a TED talk on how the initiative could create solutions for the post-pandemic world. He is the Co-Founder and former CEO of Guaana, an online platform that connects scientists and researchers to break down barriers between disciplines. Marko is a Member of Accelerate Estonia’s Advisory Board, the Estonian Founders Society and the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs’ mental health think tank. He has worked closely with research organisations and government institutions, including CERN, the European Space Agency, Dubai Future Foundation and the European Commission, to empower researchers and innovators. Marko previously worked as a creative and art director at branding and service design companies.

An engineer and social entrepreneur from Portugal, Tiago Sá is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wisecrop, a web-based operating system on a mission to support the productivity, sustainability and efficiency of farm management through the use of technology. Wisecrop provides farmers and other agricultural professionals with integrated, real-time data related to the weather, irrigation, soil nutrition and fertilisation, crop health, as well as field and labour operations and costs, in order to maximise field profitability and reduce the negative environmental impacts of agricultural practices. Recognising the challenges of digitalising a sector that is traditionally slow to adopt change, Sá combines environmental and business incentives to unlock disruptive tech solutions, while also ensuring that Wisecrop features a simple and user-friendly interface. Since its inception over seven years ago, Sá has overseen the company’s growth to assist over 60k hectares of more than 250 different varieties of crops, with plans to push for the modernisation of the agri-food industry across Europe.

Riccardo is a renowned Italian scientist and entrepreneur specialised in numerical modelling of complex systems such as financial markets and computational genomics. In 2015, Riccardo and his lab presented an algorithm to predict traits such as height, eye colour, and even facial structure based on reading a person’s genome via a tiny blood sample. Today, he’s attempting to solve drug design at the genomic scale with his company, Orionis Biosciences. Riccardo is also deeply involved in education for entrepreneurs. He founded the Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation, a non-profit charity supporting young researchers around the globe to get involved in material science.

Shazia founded Ieat Foods, the first British ready meals brand offering halal dishes that are prepared in accordance with Islamic law. Her business aims to give Muslims in the UK more choice about their food and is already seeing great success; Ieat products can now be found in over 300 of UK’s leading supermarket locations. Shazia previously worked as a Business Development Manager for entrepreneur and businessman Peter Jones.

A German technology expert, Gundbert’s personal mission is to make technology work for the purpose of democratic defence and security institutions. He co-founded Helsing, a security and artificial intelligence company that specialises in real-time information processing software, with the aim of strengthening Europe’s liberal democracies by providing the clearest image possible of an operating environment. Assisting democratic governments in becoming technology makers not takers, Helsing has quickly become one of the fastest growing tech companies in Europe. A self-described ‘transatlanticist’, Gundbert is also a Member of Atlantik-Brücke, a non-profit association which aims to deepen transatlantic cooperation. Gundbert previously served as a commissioner at the German Federal Ministry of Defence, in which role he contributed to the design of the Cyber and Information Domain Command, a new military service related to the information domain.

Johannes Schildt  is a Swedish serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder of KRY/LIVI, which he plans to develop into the world’s leading healthcare provider by combining medical expertise with state-of-the-art technology. Currently available in Sweden, Norway, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the business has pioneered the digital healthcare model by enabling people to see a medical doctor or a psychologist via remote video connection, thereby replacing the need for in-person consultations. To date, the app has delivered over two million appointments and is set to launch in more markets this year. Long part of Europe’s start-up scene, Schildt has also founded a number of other initiatives, including Tieday Group and Wowallets.