Theme: Taming Waves

The topic for this year’s event is ‘Taming Waves’, as we believe that despite the hardships and obstacles we face every single day, there are ways for us to ‘tame’ them instead of giving up.

Piraeus Port Authority
Akti Miaouli 10
Piraeus, Attiki
Greece

Batala

The Batalá is an international music group moving in rhythm samba reggae. Their music was born in Salvador de Bahia, located in northeast Brazil. It has its roots in traditional african percussion and is accented with a heavy dose of Brazilian samba so framing each carnival event in Brazil. They play this music with 4 types of drums, creating a strong and dynamic sound that stirs the senses. Strong rythm in conjunction with dynamic dance and the riot of colors in costumes create an unforgettable audiovisual experience that few will forget.

Lie

Lie consists of George Garvin (Vocals-Guitar), John Fogg(Bass) and George Kay(Drums), a rock trio which was formed in 2009, and have performed several times in festivals and several different mainstream venues such as Stavros tou Notou and Six d.o.g.s. In the first of April they released their first album, titled “Back to Basics”. The album consists of 10 tracks, which the band spent 6 years of challenging work to produce.

Alex Glod

Alex Glod is a Storyteller and co-founder of Stai Să-ți Povestesc, a Storytelling training company and community of practice based in Bucharest, Romania. He is the author of Be Who? Be Me! and How To Be AWESOME: The Life Manifesto and has travelled all across Europe to harvest stories and ideas worth implementing back home. He advocates for the power of personal stories, more effective methods of education, leadership and marketing through storytelling and a much more positive vision regarding Romania’s future development.

Alexandros Nikou

Alexandros Nikou is the Designer – Founder of Beetroot. He studied Graphic Arts and Advertising in Thesssaloniki. In 2000, along with Vaggelis Liakos and Giannis Charalambopoulos he founded the Beetroot Design Group. The Beetroot Design Group consists of a team, which mainly operates in the field of creative designing. Their project list, includes clients from a variety of different countries, and they have taken the initiative to engage several projects, which have several goals, from aiming to raise social awareness, to supporting people and organizations. They have won several honors and awards for their work, including 4 Hellenic Awards of Graphic Arts and Illustration (ΕΒΓΕ-Eλληνικά βραβεία Γραφιστικής και Εικονογράφησης) in 2006,2008, 2010 and 2012, the award of «Design Agency of the year» at the Εuropean Design Awards in 2008, and in 2011 the Red Dot Design Agency Award as the finest agency at visual communication in the world. http://beetroot.gr/

Christos Chatziioannou

Christos Chatziioanou is a journalist. He studied Media in the Kapodistrian University of Athens, and ΜΑ International Relations and Contemporary Political Theory in the University of Westminster of London. After returning to Greece he worked at Pegasus Publications. Since 2011, he works at 24MEDIA Publishing Group, the largest online publisher in Greece. He is the Editor of Oneman.gr and assists in the publications of other websites of the Group. Other than journalism, his passions are writing, traveling and cooking.

Danae Mpezantakou

Danae Bezantakou is the Managing Director of ‘Navigator Shipping Consultants LTD.’, of Greek Food Obsessions and President of the mentoring network ‘IforU’ which aims at guiding young women entrepreneurs. Danae represented Greece in the IVLP program in the March of 2011, which consisted of 100 women from 92 countries. In 2014 she was chosen to represent Greece in the European Program «40 European Young Leaders under 40». For the years 2015-2020 she has been chosen by the World Economic Forum as a ‘Young Global Leader’. She also has a 6 year old daughter.

Ioustinos Sarris

He is Co-founder, Product Manager and Business Developer in The City Game, a game that crowdsources and gamifies good deeds in the real world. The City Game is part of the Rockstart Smart Energy accelerator in Amsterdam and part of the gi-cluster of Corallia. Prior to that he was the CEO of the previous incarnation of The City Game, which was part of the amazing Startup Chile family. He was responsible for the game design and all business operations. He has also served as the CTO of BetTrade Ltd, an innovative betting company. For the past 7 years he has been dedicated his time in working on interesting projects and initiatives that he and his team take. Finally he was chosen as “Time Person of the Year” in 2006.

Katerina Giannouli

Katerina studied Psychology in England. The last four yearsis living in Athens and she is in the second year of the higher professional dance school Aktina.

Kostas Danis

Dr Kostas Danis is a medical epidemiologist and completed his PhD in public health at the University of Athens and is a member of the humanitarian organization of edecins Sans Frontieres. He trained in Greece, Ireland and the UK. Kostas has worked for several years in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and Central America with the humanitarian medical organization Medecins Sans Frontieres and WHO. He has taught in many courses of field epidemiology worldwide. He currently works as the scientific coordinator of the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET) in Paris.

Manolis Chlouverakis

Manolis Chlouverakis is the president of KEMEL (Center of Volunteer Managers of Greece). He studied Electrician-Engineer at NTUA (National Technical University of Athens) and Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business. For 25 years he worked at JOHNSON & JOHNSON, beginning his career at a JOHNSON & JOHNSON Hellas factory in 1979. From 1989 to 1998 he had the position of Chief Executive at JOHNSON & JOHNSON Hellas, while from 1998 to 2003 he worked in Europe and the USA in several executive positions.

Nikos Kakavoulis

Nikos Kakavoulis is a graduate of Athens Medical School and holds an MBA in Media and Marketing from Columbia Business School. He is an internet entrepreneur with many years of experience in publishing and media. Today he is the chief executive of The Greek Fund, a digital media company focused on tourism and lifestyle media. Before that he was the founder and CEO of Daily Secret, publisher of daily email newsletters about city life in 20 countries. Daily Secret was the first Greek startup to complete 3 rounds of fundraising in the US market. He was worked in senior positions for major media brands like Hearst’s Esquire and Rodale’s Men’s Health. He has deep understanding and experience in digital media – content strategy – brand localization and audience growth as well as in market strategy for the US and Canada and emerging markets. In his last position at Daily Secret he was responsible for product and expansion strategy in more than 27 local markets and 1 million of subscribers.

Petros Kokalis

As co-founder and impact investor of social enterprises such as organization Earth, an environmental NGO, and Aephoria, a sustainable development startup incubator, Petros Kokkalis is a firm believer of the transformation of local communities through mass resource mobilization. He currently serves as Vice President of the Kokkalis Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is the promotion of a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Southeastern Europe. He also serves as the President of Athens Information Technology, a non-profit technology academic and research institution, and he is on the board of Athens Tech, a private technology, innovation and entrepreneurship college. He frequently serves as judge to Greek and international business and startup competitions, mentors young entrepreneurs and also serves on the Endeavor senior advisor network.

Sakis Tanimanidis

Sakis is a 34 year old producer, director and host of the TV-Show ‘World Party’. He studied Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and is a holder of an MBA with specialization in Business of the Babson College in the USA. Sakis is involved in the Catering industry, as he owns such shops in Thessaloniki. He loves smiling and making others smile aswell.

Stavros Tsobanidis

Stavros Tsobanidis is a graduate of the department of Banking and Financial Management of the University of Piraeus.At the age of 21 he has made his first professional steps in several different branches, and is the organizer of several remarkable events and competitions (StartupBus,GetCruiseINN Startup Weekend), aiming to strengthen the young entrepreneurship. Currently, he is preparing his own firm which promotes the usage of a brand new raw material, aiming to tackle social and environmental issues. Stavros believes in the transmission of ideas and the value of the human factor. His talk in the conference aims to motivate the audience to take the decisive step to move from theory to practice and inspire.

Tasos Veliadis

Tasos has the position of Partner & Business Unit Director at the Department of Social & Content at Socialab, has cooperated with more than 60 global brands and is teaching Media Marketing at ALBA Graduate Business School. In 2008 he entered the field of Digital Marketing. Since then he was won more than 20 awards for campaigns which he coordinated with his colleagues.