Speakers

The profession of Björn Preuß lies in the field of corporate finance and data science. He works as an Executive Advisor and Senior Data Scientist in 2021.AI. 

Björn holds a lecturing and research position at the Copenhagen Business School as well as Lunds University and European University Flensburg, building on an academic background in Finance and Economics. In this respect, Björn does research in the field of corporate finance and machine learning/NLP. That is, when he doesn't sail: Björn is a passionate sailor and won national-, european- and world championships

Learn more about Björn here: linkedin.com/in/bpreuss

Caspar Engelshardt-Sabinsky is heading up the privacy organization in Nuuday, the largest telco service provider in Denmark. He has more than 20 years of experience in IT Strategy and Architecture. He combines a deep understanding of the technical aspects of privacy with a strong sense of data ethics and a firm belief in business value and meaningfulness as a driver for privacy improvements.

Find Caspar at linkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sabinsky

Dan Rose Johansen is the co-founder of Paperflow (formerly known as Bilagscan). He used to lead the product department, and later, he became the CEO of Paperflow. He has previously worked as a programmer and CMO in Billys Regnskabsprogram (Billy's Billing).

Dan is an active columnist and eager to debate AI in practise. Learn more about Dan and his work here:  https://www.danrose.ai/

With a mission to exploit the potential in Machine Learning to solve real-life problems, Daniel Safai co-founded Datamaga.
Datamaga specialises in text and time series analyses and have solved critical problems for some of the biggest companies in Denmark - both public and private. Most recently, Datamaga launched a market leading app for automatic anonymisation of personal data.    

Find Daniel at LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/daniel-safai

Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad leads the development of better, more ethical digital policies and standards at the Norwegian Consumer Council. He is a TED speaker and attracts World Media Attention, when he leads the launch of new critical reports on personal data abuse in e.g. internet-connected toys or fitness trackers.

Learn more about Finn here: linkedin.com/in/finnmyrstad 

Francesco Lapenta is the Founding Director of the John Cabot University Institute of Future and Innovation Studies. Currently, he is also a Mozilla-Ford Research Fellow and the Technical Editor of the I.E.E.E. P7006 standard on Personal Data Artificial Intelligence Agents. His research focuses on emerging technologies, innovation, technologies' governance, and standardization processes, ethics and impact assessment, and future scenario analysis.

Learn more about Francesco here: linkedin.com/in/francesco-lapenta

Gry Hasselbalch is a member of the European Commission's high level group on AI and ethics developing ethics and policy guidelines for AI in Europe. She is also the co-chair of the P7006 standard within the IEEE's Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in AI and Autonomous Systems.  Moreover, she is the co-founder of DataEthics.eu and co-author of DataEthics - the New Competitive Advantage.

Learn more about Gry here: linkedin.com/in/gryhasselbalch 

Hans Ravnkjær Larsen is the head of Conferences at Dansk IT. His specialities are empathy, honesty, and curiosity - brought to you by an innovative mind.

Lean more about Hans here: linkedin.com/in/hansravnkjaerlarsen

Inese Podgaiska is the Secretary General of the Association of Nordic Engineers, which represents more than 500,000 engineers in the Nordic Region.

Inese is a former Latvian diplomat with 19 years of experience in stakeholder management, negotiation, advocacy, and communication. She advocates for the role of engineers in advancing responsible AI and in achieving sustainable development goals.

For more information on the work of the Association, please visit this site: https://nordicengineers.org/

Learn more about Inese and connect with her at LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/inesepod21 

Jamie Barnard is the Marketing and Media Lawyer at Unilever and the chair of WFA’s Data Ethics Board. He is a specialist in data ethics, ad-tech, ad law, social media markting, music rights and much more.

Learn more about Jamie here: linkedin.com/in/barnardjamie

As the Chief Innovation Officer of SAP EMEA North, Jesper Schleimann is responsible for driving and scaling purposeful Innovation across the region through strategic programs which span across business and market units.

Jesper has a background of business development and sales positions in companies like CSC and SAS Institute before joining SAP in 2010, where he has held different managerial positions over the years. In his role as the Chief Innovation Officer, Jesper’s mission is to help customers unlock their business potential by simplifying their digital transformation enabled by the SAP Intelligent Enterprise Platform. By helping clients navigate the journey to the digital economy and bridging the gap from their existing landscapes to their desired strategy he seeks to add a business value focus to the digital discussion and strengthen the alignment with the overall strategy of the enterprise.

Jesper has a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Copenhagen as well as an Executive MBA from Copenhagen Business School.

Learn more about Jesper here: linkedin.com/in/jschleimann

An experienced Meteorologist, Julia Sommer has been working for years with weather data of all kinds and various usages. She is the Product Owner of Open (and free) data that DMI provides to all.

Kenneth Herschel is the CEO of Viggo, which is the first Scandinavian ride-hailing service to run 100% on zero-emission cars, and a first-mover in tackling ride-hailing from both a legal, environmental and a customer-centric perspective.

Learn more about Kenneth here:linkedin.com/in/kennethherschel  

Marija Puselja has a degree in Journalism and Public Relations. She has been involved in various media projects that often closely thematized the issues and challenges of ethical reporting in media, self-regulation, and the responsibilities of journalism. She also worked at European Economic and Social Committee in IT and communications. 

However, with years of experience in creative media, she mostly finds her inspiration in the strength of visual delivery of information through photography, as much as she admires the creativity of witty and intelligent writing and finally, a well-executed layout and design. She know works at Nextcloud, where she has gotten more involved in privacy and data ownership ethics, using her past experiences to contribute in the areas of PR, design and communication. 

Nextcloud provides storage for your data and a way to share documents and collaborate in a document at the same time just as in Google Docs. But this is secure, under your full control and developed in an open, transparent and trustworthy way. A competitive advantage? 

Find Marija at LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marija-puselja  

Meeri is the CEO and Co-Founder of Saidot, a start-up with a mission for enabling responsible AI ecosystems. Moreover, she was the chair of ethics working group in Finland’s national AI program that submitted its final report in March 2019. In this role she initiated a national AI ethics challenge and engaged more than 70 organizations commit to ethical use of AI and define ethics principles. Meeri is also the Chair of IEEE’s initiative for the creation of AI ethics certificates in ECPAIS program (Ethics Certification Program for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems). In addition, Meeri is an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University since 2019 with a focus on projects related to building citizen trust through AI transparency & open informing.

Prior to starting her own company Meeri was leading AI strategy and GDPR implementation in OP Financial Group, the largest financial services company in Finland. Meeri has a long background in analytics and AI consulting with Accenture Analytics. During her Accenture years she has been working in driving data and analytics strategies and large AI implementation programs in media, telecommunications, high-tech and retail industries. Meeri started her career as data scientist in telecommunications after completing her M.Sc.(Econ.) in Helsinki School of Economics.

Meeri is an active advocate of responsible and human-centric AI. She’s an experienced public speaker regularly speaking in international conferences and seminars on AI opportunities and AI ethics.

Learn more about and connect with Meeri at Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/meerihaataja 

Michael Birkebæk Jensen is the NewTech Lead at KPMG Denmark. In his work, he envisions, sells and delivers projects and services within e.g. Robotics Process Automation, Virtual Agents, Bots, AI, IoT, Blockchain, Operating models and Business/Technology Strategy, and do so across industries and across Denmark, the Nordics and Europe.

In his free time, he leverages his insights in technology and business to do good for the rest of society. Furthermore, he is engaged in a number of projects. Examples of these are management of a digital democracy project and For Good Advice NGO, which helps smaller NGOs and Social Businesses.

Michael has a master in strategy and organizational dynamics, the elite CEMS Master in International Management with focus on advanced corporate strategy; and Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program where he learned about the technologies that will impact our society over the next 50 years and how to harvest their immense potential and manage the changes they bring with them.

Find Michael at LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michael-birkebæk

Morten Thaarup heads the Department of Free (Open) Data, Risk and Quality Management at DMI, The National Weather Agency of Denmark. Before, he worked in the Danish Ministry of Taxation and Deloitte after his education as Cand.scient.adm.

Pernille Tranberg teach and advise on data ethics, data understanding, data democracy and digital selfdefense. Read She is the co-founder of the European think-do-tank Dataethics.eu, where she also blog.

Learn more about Pernille here: linkedin.com/in/pernilletranberg

Piek Visser-Knijff is an independent data ethicist, a philosopher and the founder of Filosofie in actie. She facilitates the process of composing an ethical vision on the use of data at private and public organizations and guides the implementation of data ethics. She trains data protection officers and privacy officers in (the implementation of) data ethics and creates awareness programs on ethics for data professionals. As a writer she’s involved with Dataethics.eu, writing analytical pieces. She’s member of the Jury of the Dutch Privacy Awards. 

Learn more about Piek here: linkedin.com/in/piek-visser-knijff

Sasmita is an assistant professor / adjunct at the Section of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen. She has a Master’s degree on ageing and her PhD is about predicting clinical outcomes in old age. In her previous work as a medical doctor, she traveled to rural areas to organize health education, medical consultations, and surgeries in impoverished areas. Currently she is working on developing a system to predict older persons at risk of declining health to help municipalities optimize their prevention strategies, on top of coordinating the CHALLENGE platform ‘Harnessing the Power of Big Data to Address the Societal Challenge of Aging’. Besides research, she also organizes interdisciplinary workshops, seminars, and PhD courses.

Sharmila Chockalingam is a technology leader with more than 15 years of experience in Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Product Management and Product Marketing. She is passionate about technology that improves people's lives and aims to educate and raise awareness around innovative technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. At Unity, she leverages her unique technical and business background to help her team build disruptive products and successfully bring them to market.

Prior to Unity, Sharmila spent nearly 13 years at Intel, where she served in roles that supported development of tools for IoT Segments, Machine Learning, Performance Libraries and Processor Design. Here you can see samples of her work on Parallel Programming and Intel® Threading Building Blocks for Heterogeneous Computing.

Sharmila holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering at UT Austin.

Learn more about Sharmila here: linkedin.com/in/sharmila-chockalingam 

Stephen Alstrup is the CEO and co-founder of SupWiz, which delivers an omni-channel AI software platform for customer service and support including chatbots, virtual agents, ticket routing, and analytics. Moreover, he is a professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen. He has lead several Big Data innovation/research projects with many PhD's and Postdocs, working with colleagues around the world from the leading universities, including Princeton. Furthermore, Stephen is the co-founder of the It-University of Copenhagen. He is also the co-founder of Octoshape. Octoshape software have been downloaded by more than 100 million people.  In addition, Stephen is an active member of the Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD) Board and the vice chair of the National Digital Advisor board.

Learn more about Stephen here: linkedin.com/in/stephenalstrup

Thomas Nørmark is known as the robot whisperer and father of avatars. In his role as Global Head of AI & Robotics at Itelligence, Thomas is one of the most experienced profiles in the space of artificial intelligence. Thomas has been involved in a wide number of AI projects all over the world, which gives him the ability to talk out of real experience instead of theory. Over the past years Thomas has had a deep focus on the ethical aspects of working with AI and Big data - especially when the projects involve children.

Learn more about Thomas here:  linkedin.com/in/thomasnoermark

Thomas Berlin Hovmand is the director of the Department of Children and Culture in Gladsaxe Municipality.

Learn more about Thomas here: linkedin.com/in/tbh

Vera Heitmann brings over 20 years of experience working in public affairs and strategic communication. A political scientist by trade, she advised members of the German Parliament for 15 years. Before joining IKEA Germany in 2013, she ran the Berlin office of a political consultancy. Today, at IKEA Retail (Ingka Group), she is the global lead for the Public Affairs team on the growth agenda, with a strong focus on digitalization. 

Learn more about Vera here: linkedin.com/in/vera-heitmann