Matte Jockas is the Founder of Wilmat Development Foundation (WDF), an organisation that empowers women and youth through skills development, advocacy, and sustainable livelihood programmes. WDF operates the Wilmat Skilling Facility in Eastern Uganda, where vocational training enables individuals in landslide-prone communities to use sustainable agriculture to gain employment or launch enterprises.

Recognising that sustainable change happens only when communities own their development process, WDF shifted from traditional training programmes to locally led community learning circles. In these self-help groups, participants co-design courses based on the needs they identify. To date, the project has engaged 15,200 women and youth in its programming and distributed 14,632 seed packs of resilient crops.

Shivad Singh is the CEO of Head Start, an organisation that provides accessible and affordable education to learners in developing countries. It offers 10 primary and supplementary learning solutions, covering early childhood through secondary school. Its content catalogue includes exclusive licenses to over 30,000 videos, activities, PDFs, and games that can be used across multiple school years.

Head Start Education launched its digital platform with MTN, the largest telecommunications company in Africa, and peaked at over 250,000 paid subscribers. It is also the main education provider for Vodacom e-Learning, delivering content to more than 300,000 learners. Through a partnership with School in a Box, the project has provided content to over 80 school centers, reaching more than 5,000 learners.
 

Dinesh Jayabalan was the Organising Chairperson of the 2024 International Youth Day Summit (IYDS), an event that focused global attention on the priorities and potential of youth. The summit brought together young talent and multinational corporations operating in Asia for sessions on leadership, personal branding, and professional development jointly organised by two big companies in Malaysia.

More than 100 early-career professionals attended the IYDS, selected from over 10 companies, under the theme “Youth Today, Leaders Tomorrow.” External thought leaders were also invited to speak on succeeding in the corporate world.

Ognen Jakasanovski is a CDMO Partnerships Senior Manager at Sandoz, where he works to enable access to high-quality off-patent medicines for patients around the world. In his current role, he drives excellence in collaborations with Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) partners at Sandoz Global Development.

Previously, Ognen contributed to the technical development of several drug products in the Sandoz development pipeline in his role as Senior Scientist Pharmaceutical Development. He also played a key role in establishing the Global Development Culture Ambassadors program, a network of around 30 Sandoz employees who serve as cultural role models, provide regular feedback to leadership, and drive culture initiatives. In addition to his work at Sandoz, he has delivered soft skills training to students across Europe through several non-profit organisations and managed a pool of approximately 50 trainers in his past engagement as Training Coordinator at the European Pharmaceutical Students’ Association.

Royford Mutegi is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Vermi-Farm Initiative, a project that helps smallholder farmers build climate-resilient incomes. The initiative achieves this through three primary innovations: a community-owned greenhouse (Vermi-Farm DigiShamba), a community banking model, and an AI-powered platform that enables individuals without smartphones or internet access to manage payments, savings, loans, and insurance (Vermi-Farm Yetu). The project has also recycled over 86 tonnes of food waste from urban markets into organic fertilizers.

The Vermi-Farm Initiative has engaged 6,247 farmers, primarily women, with participants increasing their crop yield by up to 70%. Over 2,500 farmers now access a digital payments platform, along with savings, microloans, and insurance services. Additionally, 86 tonnes of food waste from urban markets have been recycled.

Bianca Reche is part of the working team behind the Women in Deep Tech, an initiative led by Hello Tomorrow that highlights women working in science, technology, and entrepreneurship. The initiative achieves this by hosting dedicated events at the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit. Last year, it hosted a matchmaking session to pair experienced mentors with women entrepreneurs and a panel discussion that connected women entrepreneurs with investors, corporate leaders, and media.

Following this programming, Hello Tomorrow saw significant results in their Global Challenge competition: 53% of applicants had at least one woman co-founder, 61% of finalists were women-led teams, and 45% of track winners across 11 thematic categories were women-led.

Josselin Alejandra Hernández Altamirano is the founder of BioConcienciArte, an initiative that promotes environmental education through the integration of science and art. Through her leadership, approximately 5,000 people, including many Indigenous community members, have participated in projects, talks, and workshops. Participants in her initiatives report a greater appreciation for local biodiversity, increased motivation among girls, boys, and young people to pursue STEM careers, and stronger community engagement in conservation.

She is a Biotechnology Engineer and Environmental Education Analyst with the Provincial Government of Pastaza, as well as a researcher in the "Biomolecule Discovery" group at Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam. She leads the project Venom and Biodiversity: Revealing the Secrets of the Amazonian Snakes and has published scientific articles on snake venoms. A member of the Llanganates-Sangay Connectivity Corridor Research Network, the Women Innovation Lab, and Fundación Waska Amazonía, Josselin integrates biotechnology, education, and scientific research to advance biodiversity conservation in the Amazon.