Judges 2021

Chairman and co-founder of Wise

Wise is a global technology company that’s building the best way to move money around the world. Taavet acted as CEO of Wise until 2017, and since then has stepped into the role of Chairman overseeing the business’ bigger picture direction and supporting the product teams. Prior to starting Wise, Taavet was Skype’s director of strategy, starting as its first-ever employee.

One of the World Economic Forum's Tech Pioneers, Taavet has acted as adviser to the former Prime Minister of Estonia on the digital agenda. He’s also a mentor for the next generation of talent and an active angel investor; his investments include Tweetdeck, Mendeley, OMGPOP, Property Partner, Sunrise, Improbable and Cleo.

Founder and CEO of BorrowMyDoggy

Rikke Rosenlund is the Founder & CEO of BorrowMyDoggy, which launched at the end of 2012. BorrowMyDoggy connects dog owners with local dog lovers for walks, sitting, and holiday care. Prior to BorrowMyDoggy, Rikke worked across different industries including set-up an automobile company in Central America, and spent 7 years working in Financial Services in London. She was born in Denmark, has lived across the world and holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Director of STATION F, co-founder of StarHer and Tech.eu

Roxanne Varza is Director of STATION F, the biggest startup campus in the world with more than 1.000 startups, located in Paris. Before joining STATION F, she led Microsoft Ventures Paris and TechCrunch France. She also worked for several London-based startups and cofounded StarHer, Tech.eu and Failcon France.

Prior to her current role, Roxanne was the lead for Microsoft’s start-up activities in France, running both Bizspark and Microsoft Ventures programs for 3 years. She was also Editor of TechCrunch France from 2010-2011 and has written for several publications including Business Insider and The Telegraph. In April 2013, Business Insider listed her as one of the top 30 women under 30 in tech. She has also been listed in additional rankings by Business Insider, Vanity Fair and Le Figaro, The Evening Standard and more.

Roxanne has also worked for the French government’s foreign direct investment agency helping fast-growing startups develop their activities in France. Roxanne has spoken, moderated, mentored and judged numerous startup events and programs throughout Europe and also helps European startups with content and communications. Roxanne is trilingual and holds degrees from UCLA, Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics. She is also an epilepsy advocate.

Member of the European Parliament

Ondřej studied international trade, international politics and diplomacy at the University of Economics in Prague and later completed an international program in public administration, regional development and EU programmes at the prestigious school for civil servants, the École nationale d'administration (ENA), in Strasbourg and Paris.

His career to date has been dedicated to public service, primarily in various roles within the Czech civil service, but also in European public administration, where he worked in the European Parliament. Specifically, he has worked at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Office of the Government, the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Ottawa, the Czech Ministry of Defence and the European Parliament.

In 2019 he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament by the people of the Czech Republic. He is Chairman of the European Parliament's working group on access to finance for SMEs and a board member of SME Connect. His legislative work in the Parliament focuses primarily on EU economic and monetary policy such as SME funding, digital finance, funding the recovery from the pandemic, tourism, transport as well as the use and development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.