Career: CEO and Founding Member of Grameen Creative Lab
Interests: Social Business, Politics, Dance
Hometowns: Frankfurt, Germany

Saskia Bruysten is CEO and Strategic Director of The Grameen Creative Lab GmbH (GCL). She was one of the founding members of the GCL, along with Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. Previously she worked at The Boston Consulting Group as a senior consultant (Munich and New York). She completed her Bachelor and MBA at the European Business School (ebs), and went on to graduate with a distinction, MSc in Theory and History of International Relations from the London School of Economics. Saskia comes from a German / Canadian background, and has studied in the USA and Argentina.

The Grameen Creative Lab (GCL) was founded at the end of 2008 by Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. Its goal is to fight poverty through the spread of the model of social business. A social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company aimed at achieving a social goal. As such, it exists only for the purpose of solving a social problem, such as hunger, disease, etc. It addresses this issue very much like a conventional business would. However, the social business can make money, but investors don’t take money out of it. Profits get reinvested to further the social goal. The GCL undertakes two main activities; 1. Creating awareness to social business through events; 2. Providing consulting services to companies, entrepreneurs and organizations interested in founding a social business.

The GCL has consulted or is in the process of consulting and partnering with the following companies, universities, governments and organisations: BASF, Otto Group, SAP, adidas Group; EBS University, Kyushu University, McGill University, Istituto Europeo di Design, Finance University of Moscow; Government of Caldas, Colombia, Government of Albania, City of Wiesbaden; World Economic Forum, Clinton Global Initiative, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, Sing for Hope, Erste Stiftung. Additionally, the Grameen Creative Lab has initiated the setup of social business funds in Mumbai and Haiti.

More:
www.grameencreativelab.com
GCL Facebook
GCL on Twitter
GCL on Vimeo

Twitter: @saskiabruysten

Wikipedia: Social Business
Wikipedia: Muhammad Yunus
Yunus Center
Grameen Bank

Other articles/links/videos:
TruthDive.com: Mohammad Yunus and Social Business. Poor people are more socially conscious and honest.
Fora.tv: Muhammad Yunus – The Social Business Model
YouTube: Microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus speaks at the University of Virginia
Book by Muhammad Yunus: Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs
Book by Muhammad Yunus: Creating a world without poverty

Short intro to Grameen Creative Lab:

Career: Founder and CEO Cognitive Match, Serial Entrepreneur, Experimental Psychologist
Interests: Martial Arts, Sculpture, Travel
Hometown: * Nairobi, Kenia; raised in Vienna, Austria; London, UK

Alex Kelleher is Founder and CEO of Cognitive Match, which creates world class targeting software, using techniques from psychology, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Alex was previously Founder and CEO of Vivid Edge, a leading London-based web design agency with clients ranging from Shell and Unilever to Lastminute.com and BuildOnline.  Vivid Edge was sold in 2000 to Framfab (now LBI).  Alex then became Co-Founder and Commercial Director of Touch Clarity, a personalisation and reporting/analytics provider to the top UK banks, global car companies and technology providers including Microsoft. Touch Clarity was sold in 2007 to Omniture (now Adobe). Alex is a graduate of Oxford University in Experimental Psychology.

Cognitive Match creates software that increases response and revenue online. The solution uses a combination of math and psychology to match individuals with content. Founded by Alex Kelleher (previously co-founder of Touch Clarity, acquired by Omniture), the company boasts an Advisory Panel including Esther Dyson (Board Director, WPP) and Anthony Rhind (CEO, Havas Digital) – and an Academic Panel of leading professors in machine learning.

More:
www.cognitivematch.com

Alex on
Blog: Alex Kelleher
Twitter @alexkelleher
LinkedIn

Other articles/links/videos:
Younoodle: Profile – Alex Kelleher
DCPTV: DLD women 2010 / Interview (2010/06)

Short intro to Cognitive Match:

Career: Journalist and Editor TechCrunch Europe / TechHub London
Interests: Technology, Family
Hometown: London, UK

TechHub is the physical hub for the technology start-up community. It’s launching first in London in the Shoreditch/Old St area and will consist of desk spaces, co-working space, meeting rooms and an event space. It will will be swiftly followed by others around the world. While it will be a place for tech entrepreneurs to touch down, work, plug their laptops in and use the fast wifi, what really differentiates it is the mostly product-oriented tech community. TechHub will be helping to facilitate networking, collaboration, knowledge-sharing via events, introductions and the website – plus that delightful ‘just bumped into someone’ factor.

Mike Butcher pitching TechCrunch:

TechCrunch was founded in 2005, as a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, TechCrunch profiles existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space. TechCrunch has now grown into a network of technology focused sites offering a wide range of content and new media. TechCrunch Europe is part of the TechCrunch Network, which includes country-specific blogs for France and Japan.

Mike Butcher is currently Editor of TechCrunch Europe. In addition he is involved in a project to bring European technology entrepreneurs and investors together in a club environment called TechHub (@TechHub), in London initially. A long time journalist, Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine.
Since 1996 he has launched or re-launched numerous media web sites and in 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club.
In August 2008 TechCrunch Europe was awarded the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. In 2009 it was named as one of the Top 10 blogs out of the UK. Also in 2009 he was named one of the Top 10 bloggers on Twitter in the UK. In October 2009 he was named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. In April 2010 he was named as one of Britain’s Top 100 “digital power-brokers” by Wired UK magazine. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. Mike’s personal blog is mbites, while he Twitters as @mikebutcher.

More:

Mike on
Mike’s Blog: http://mbites.com
Mike on Twitter: mikebutcher
Mike on LinkedIn

www.eu.techcrunch.com

www.techcrunch.com
www.facebook.com/techcrunch
Techcrunch on Wikipedia

www.techhub.com

Career: Co-Founder of BurdaStyle, Inc.
Interests: Art, Food, Travel, People, Sewing, Technology
Hometowns: Brooklyn, New York, USA;  Cairo, Egypt

Nora Abousteit is Co-Founder and CEO of BurdaStyle, an open source sewing community. She started her career in media at Hubert Burda Media in the staff of Hubert Burda, where she was part of the first two DLD conference teams in 2005 and 2006, organized several World Economic Forum related events, as well as corporate PR and networking activities. Before that, Nora worked in Business Development and Corporate Marketing in Cairo, Egypt, where she also received a degree in Middle East Studies and Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Nora currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

BurdaStyle.com is an online social community for sewing-lovers to sharpen their craft. This open-source site allows users to download copyright-free patterns, create and share their own looks, and seek advice from members around the world.

More:
www.burdastyle.com
Twitter: burdastyle
Flickr: burdastyle

Nora on
LinkedIn
XING
Twitter: @nooraa

Other articles/links/videos:
FastCompany: Nora Abousteit on Her Close-Knit Virtual Sewing Circle BurdaStyle.com

Short intro to BurdaStyle: