European Young Leaders (#EYL40)

Xavier is an engineer in computer science who is passionate about the digital renaissance. In 1999, while still at secondary school, he founded Tribal, a site that gathered student content from around Belgium for publication in a magazine that was distributed to 30,000 students nationwide. Ten years later, he co-founded Storify, a social media curation platform that enables users to create stories or timelines using content from social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Storify is now used by top brands, organisations and publishers around the world, including CNN, the New York Times, the United Nations and the White House. More recently, he co-founded OpenCollective, a company that enables groups to collect and spend money transparently without having to create a new bank account.

Sebastien de Halleux is a Founder and General Partner at Graph Ventures, an early stage angel fund with a portfolio of over 180 start-ups, including Blue Apron, Ipsy, Envoy and Figure. Prior to this, Sebastien served as the COO of Saildrone, a company which revolutionaised data collection at sea through the use of wind and solar powered ocean drones. He is also the co-founder and former COO of Playfish, which was one of the largest and fastest growing social gaming companies with over 300mn players before it was acquired by video game giant Electronic Arts in 2009. Sebastien also helped launched Glu Mobile, an early pioneer in mobile games. He is the recipient of the 2012 EA Emerging Leaders Award, the 2011 Tech 100 Award, the 2010 TechFellow Award and the 2003 Booz Allen Professional Excellence Award, and has served on the boards of Saildrone, Samasource, Vittana, UWC-USA, the Solar Fuel Institute and Trusted Family.

Leendert is Global Head of the Political and Social Practice of TNS, one of the world’s largest market research companies. From 2002 to 2007 he was Joint Managing Director of TNS Opinion, a co-ordination centre for multi-country studies based in Brussels. Leendert is a member of ESOMAR, a worldwide market, social and opinion research association. Over the last 15 years he has been in charge of the coordination of survey research in countries around the world for an important number of international institutions such as the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the European Parliament and the World Bank. He studied Political Science at Belgium’s Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) and also at Institut d’Etudes politiques / Sciences Po Paris.

Audrey is a Belgian businesswoman with a wealth of experience in advising corporate, government and philanthropic clients on a range of development and social impact topics. As an Associate Partner at Dalberg Advisors, she works with clients to improve education, employment and health outcomes worldwide through the development, implementation and impact evaluation of inclusive development strategies. Audrey currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors at bpost, leading the Belgian postal operator’s transition from a mail to parcel network. She is the Chair of the Board at Be education, an organisation that supports the improvement of education in Belgium. Audrey is also the Co-Founder and former operational director of Spectralys Biotech, a start-up that provides a unique protein analysis technology for the biopharmaceutical industry. She was previously the president of Groupe Vendredi, a think tank focused on societal issues in Belgium, and head of philanthropy at Telos Impact, a venture philanthropy firm.

Nicknamed ‘the philosopher of tech’, Laurent Hublet is a Belgian entrepreneur, who champions investment in human capital and skills as a means to strengthen the social pact between the public and the government. He is currently serving as the Brussels Minister for the Economy and Employment in the capital’s regional government. He co-founded BeCentral, Europe’s largest tech campus for reskilling and upskilling, and launched the We Are Founders programme to help non-entrepreneurs start businesses. An angel investor in over 15 digital start-ups, Laurent also co-directs an executive programme at the Solvay Brussels School on responsible management. He has advised the Belgian federal government on digital strategy and served in the cabinet of the deputy prime minister, championing digital inclusion and investment in human capital to strengthen the social pact.

Amélie Matton is the current Senior Advisor to the Board, and until recently CEO, of Ecosteryl, a world-leading medical waste management service based in Mons, Belgium. An experienced leader with a demonstrated history in the environmental services industry, Matton also has a strong background in the financial, operations and international trade sectors. At the head of a company, in a once male-dominated industry, now operating in more than 65 countries, this environmental engineer is passionate about women not having to make concessions in order to become leaders in business. Among her accolades, Matton is a member of Belgium’s 40 under 40, was nominated at the Manager of the Year 2023 edition and was part of the first Belgian list of Inspiring Women in Tech.