WSIS TalkX: Program and Guidelines

Mila is a global senior consultant and leader for close to 30 years. Currently, she is also Chief Weaver and member of the Advisory Board for the Planet Positive 2030 initiative, collaborating together to design a strong sustainable white paper with IEEE Chairs from around the world. She has a wealth of commercial acumen for the strategic thinking and execution of global business transformations and portfolio management of strategic change projects and programmes in various industries and sectors working with and for government, NGOs, not-for-profits, and public sectors. As an Executive Director, leading global teams and delivering multi-million dollar initiatives, Mila has an intimate knowledge and experience of leadership, management, and business issues at global, national, and local levels including the complex and systemic challenges faced within organisational and societal change.

Coupled with Mila’s quest to explore and experiment on human ecosystem collaborations, aligned with living system (nature) principles, serving life and future generations. Together with a variety of communities, groups and organisations, Mila is now actively experimenting social innovation initiatives in various sectors and industries towards prototyping and co-evolving decentralised and self-organising human and living systems, supported by participative design, prosocial collaborations, regenerative practices, and human system dynamics. In essence co-evolving with the whole evolving living system, marrying timeless wisdom and the spectrum of modern wisdom – arts, science, technology, human co-evolution and spirituality.

Josef Noll is a Professor at the University of Oslo (UiO) and Secretary-General at the Basic Internet Foundation. His focus at UiO, where he leads “Digital Health” at the Centre for Global Health, is on Societal Security, including the impact of digitisation. Coming from the Mobile Operator Telenor, where his group was responsible for the 3G (UMTS) development, he has identified the digital divide as one of the big societal challenges. Through the Foundation he promotes “Internet Lite for All”, the free access to information for everyone. The Foundation has established information spots in 8 countries, with 5 of them being in Africa. Health facility connectivity is seen as key for community involvement and digital health promotion (DHP), involving the local community with adequate digital health information and thus contributing to societal empowerment. Prof. Noll is project leader of the “Non-discriminating Access for Digital Inclusion” (DigI.BasicInternet.no) and the “Security for IoT for Smart Grids” project, as well as involved in several Digital Health projects. Besides his academic background, he has worked in SIEMENS (DE), European Space Agency (NL) and Telenor (NO).

WisdomAccelerator.org founder; Explorers.org member; UN Smart Cities Expert; TEDx Speaker; WEF Davos; Senior Advisor to the Board of Space Tech company; ECOSOC NGO Board Member; TEDx Speaker; WEF Davos; Founder of DAVO.swiss; Early in Blockchain (2013); 125 countries; 9 languages; Summited Mont Blanc solo; Practice extreme fasts for longevity (up to 50 days)

Liberato Bautista is President of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CoNGO). He is also Assistant General Secretary for United Nations and International Affairs of the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church. Bautista attended both the Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005) phases of the World Summit on Information Society.

Belgian Jan Van Mol has been called a concept king, a brand guru, a renaissance man, a pioneer in the creative industry by the international press. Jan started his own advertising agency in Brussels while still at school. MotuNuï, was seen as a combination of a creative hot shop and a high level service company, resulting in a loyal client base in markets such as FMCG, automotive, retail, fashion, food and media.

In 1997 he created Addictlab.com, a creative laboratory uniting thousands of creatives from all over the world, from different disciplines, publishing over 35 magazines or books, setting up exhibitions to accelerate their creative talent and specializing in out of the box collaborative processes and research. Addictlab has become a pioneer in collective intelligence with its own Creative Chemistry concept and tools.

The lab’s consultancy department offers innovation to governmental bodies and companies, with cultural change transformation programs and ‘fab Lab’ installations. Addictlab has set up collaborative ideation processes for companies such as Nike, Thalys, Novartis, Saint Gobain, BMW, Diesel, H&M, chocolate companies, govt bodies, cities such s Rotterdam, Kortrijk or Melbourne.

Jan, after having lived in South Africa and moved to the French border near Geneva, created a new section in 2016 called the Addictlab Academy. With a mobile bus visiting schools, a shop and concept store in Ferney Voltaire and access to the Campus Biotech in Geneva,  the Academy proposes a full list of workshops, innovative home schooling programs, STEAM curriculum and camps, and even birthday ‘labs’.  The lab visits private and public schools both in Switzerland and France. Since January 1, 2022, Addictlab has engaged in a collaboration with the University of Geneva, and has taken over the management of the SDG Fab Lab at the Campus Biotech and the SDG Solution Space.

As the United Nations created the Sustainable Development Goals, Jan developed the SDG Impact kit. Addictlab is now defined as one of the catalytic places in Geneva to accelerate thinking and acting about the SDGS. Since 2021 Jan publishes the SDGzine, in collaboration with the University of Geneva and multiple partners.

ohn C. Havens is Lead of the Sustainability Practice of the IEEE Standards Association.  Previously at IEEE SA John was Executive Director of The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems that had two primary outputs – the creation and iteration of a body of work known as Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Well-being with Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and the recommendation of ideas for Standards Projects focused on prioritizing ethical considerations in A/IS.  John was responsible for: the initial ideation, framing and execution for bringing together the more than seven hundred global thought leaders to create Ethically Aligned Design; was Founding Chair of IEEE 7000 and IEEE 7010 and helped launch more than a dozen other IEEE Standards Working Groups focused on AI, AI Ethics, AI Governance, and AI Procurement; and continues to work on staff at the IEEE Standards Association to help further design, proliferate, and standardize the concepts of human-centric, applied ethical, values-driven design for Responsible Innovation of all technologies.

Previously, John was an EVP of Social Media at PR Firm, Porter Novelli, led Business Development at BlogTalkRadio, and was a professional actor for over 15 years. John has written for Mashable and The Guardian and is author of the books, Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity To Maximize Machines and Hacking Happiness: Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking it Can Change the World.

Mei Lin Fung is Chair and co-Founder (with Vint Cerf) of the People Centered Internet.  Through People Centered Internet she works to ensure that people are at the center of the Internet as digital interdependence reshapes societies and economies.  A key focus of her work as People Centered Internet Chair is to promote resilient communities financed with digital assets, using data so that communities can connect and members can thrive.  She draws on her early training as a Financial Analyst at Intel, in Operations Research at Shell, and her extensive experience in developing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approaches, to bring systematic evidence based analysis to the complex supply and demand for information. She also worked as socio-technical lead for Federal Health Futures at DoD where she realized that the financial sustainability of Community Health Centers in the US can be greatly enhanced by applying the lessons learned within tech corporations on managing operations to improve effective delivery of desired outcomes. Through People Centered Internet she has built alliances based on people-centered ecosystems with the IEEE, World Economic Forum, World Bank, UN and others at the country and regional level.