Willemien Bax is Head of the OECD Forum, she has over 30 years of experience in working with governments, as well as non-governmental organisations and the private sector. Prior to joining the OECD, Willemien worked with the European Consumers Organisation (BEUC) where she oversaw BEUC’s public affairs and media relations strategies in a number of public policy areas ranging from transparency and governance to food, environment, health, economic and legal affairs. She managed a training programme financed by the European Commission, for all consumer organisations in the EU, as well as potential EU-candidate countries. The training focused on giving consumer organisations the tools to develop effective public affairs and communication strategies. In her capacity as European Chair of the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, she contributed to debates on major international public policy issues such as financial regulation, innovation and energy efficiency.
Veronica Nilsson was elected Acting General Secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) in May 2022 and confirmed as General Secretary by the TUAC Plenary Session in June 2023.
She started as a researcher at the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees (TCO) in 1996, before moving to TUAC in 2001 to lead a project on the OECD Guidelines for MNEs, followed by the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) in 2009. She was elected Confederal Secretary at the congress of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) in 2011 and Deputy General Secretary in 2016.
She has also served as Project Manager at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Office in Singapore (2017-19) and Head of the Global Deal Support Unit at the OECD (2019-22).
Lawrence was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada whereas a child, Lawrence’s father founded a non-profit assisted living facility for older adults. Lawrence grew up spending nights and weekends visiting the facility and was amazed by the wisdom of the residents who had so much more to give.
Before co-founding GetSetUp, Lawrence oversaw Business Development and Partnerships for IFTTT, an IoT Connectivity Platform. He also led Sight Machine’s Asian Pacific business operations and was VP of Global Partnerships at Yahoo during its early years. Lawrence is pleased to team up with his long-time friend and co-founder Neil, to create a learning platform for older adults that allows him to continue the work his father started so many years ago. Lawrence is an avid cyclist and trail runner, so it is no surprise that the two co-founders met on the trail and continue to trade ideas that power the mission of GetSetUp and enhance the lives of today’s older adults.
Michael W. Hodin, Ph.D. is CEO of the Global Coalition on Aging, Managing Partner at High Lantern Group, and a Fellow at Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College. He has spoken internationally on the topic of aging, including at G20, APEC, Davos, and the World Knowledge Forum (WKF). He is also a blogger on Medium.
From 1976-80, Mike was Legislative Assistant to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. During this period he was also a Visiting Scholar at Brookings Institution, on U.S. Foreign Economic Policy. He was a senior executive at Pfizer, Inc. for 30 years, where he created and then led its International Public Affairs and Public Policy operations and served on Management Boards for a number of its businesses.
Mike is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and from 2010-2013, was Adjunct Senior Fellow with a focus on population aging. In 2013, Mike was invited by then-Committee Chairman Bill Nelson (D-FL) to lead a Members’ Roundtable with the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. Mike was also the recipient of the 2012 Fred D. Thompson Award from the American Federation for Aging Research. He sits on the Boards of the Foreign Policy Association, Business Council for International Understanding, NYC Blood Center, American Skin Association, American Federation for Aging Research and Emigrant Savings Bank, where he is Chairman of its compensation committee. Mike was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Ageing. And he sits on the Advisory Board for the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging.
Mike holds a BA, cum laude, Cornell University, M.Sc.in International Relations from The London School of Economics and Political Science, and M.Phil and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.
Silvana is the President and Founder of Women Political Leaders (WPL), the worldwide network of women Politicians. WPL is an independent, non-partisan and not-for-profit foundation that aims to increase both the number and influence of women in political leadership. Silvana served as Vice-President of the European Parliament (2009-2011) and Member of the European Parliament (2004-2014). Before her time in politics, she founded and ran a public affairs consultancy in Brussels, which later merged with a larger US firm. She also worked as Senior Special Advisor for EY and as Senior Policy Advisor for GPLUS Europe. In addition to her work for WPL, Silvana serves on the board of the Council of Women World Leaders, the network of female Presidents and Prime Ministers. She is also a member of the European Leadership Network (ELN), a Board Director of the Social Progress Imperative and member of the Global Advisory Network of Apolitical Academy Global. Since 2016, Silvana has been representing the European Union in the Executive Committee of W20, an official engagement group of the G20. In 2018 and 2019, she was ranked as one of the 100 most influential persons in gender equality by Apolitical. Silvana is a Young Global Leader Alumni of the World Economic Forum. She lives in Brussels, Belgium with her three kids and their Irish father.
Joe leads the Evens Foundation and has been active at the top levels of EU politics in the NGO and corporate worlds for over a decade. His focus is supporting European youth as they face a mental health crisis, declining trust in democracy and the rise of authoritarianism.
Thomas Liebig is Senior Migration Specialist in the International Migration Division of the OECD in Paris, where he is in charge of the work on the integration of immigrants and their children. Among other projects, he led in-depth country studies on integration in 17 OECD countries as well as international comparative work on a broad range of topics related to migration and integration. He has also been in charge of an OECD-wide project that aims at identifying good practices for getting the most out of diversity for businesses and societies at large. Since 2018, he is member of the expert group for demographic projections of the German Federal Statistical Office and in February 2019, he was appointed member of the expert commission on integration capacity by the German federal government.
A German national, Thomas holds a doctorate and an MSc in Economics from the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). He also holds an MSc in International Affairs and, following studies at the ESADE (Barcelona, Spain), a CEMS Master in International Business Management. Prior to joining the International Migration Division in 2004, he worked for the OECD’s Economics Department in 2000 and for the Institute for Labour Economics and Labour Law at the University of St. Gallen from 2001-2004.
Esther Benjamin is CEO and Executive Director of World Education Services (WES), a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to helping international students, immigrants, and refugees achieve their educational and career goals in the U.S. and Canada.
Digital Transformation at UK Department of Health - CAPE Policy Fellow, CSaP, University of Cambridge, UK, UK Department of Health
Diane has nearly 15 years’ experience leading digital initiatives and transformation programmes in the public, private sectors, international and mission-driven organisations.
She is a Digital transformation and organisational agility expert. She is passionate about creating positive social impact through designing, implementing digital strategies, whilst developing and testing system change frameworks that foster the development of sustainable digital capability.
Diane is French and Mexican, she’s started her career as a journalist and European correspondent for the Mexican Association of Journalists. She then joined the Telecommunications industry where she led on the development of innovative digital health experiments and various multi-million pound nation-wide transformational programmes, respectively in France (SFR-Vodafone) and the UK (EE-British Telecom). She enriched her portfolio of experience by transferring her knowledge and expertise from the private sector to International Organisations (World Economic Forum) and NGOs (Ashoka Foundation, British Heart Foundation, Blockchain Climate Institute), whilst fostering public-private-academic collaborations, which she highly values and nurtures. With a similar approach to her work, drawing on academic knowledge and private sector best practices, she is now part of the Digital Strategy and Policy unit at the UK Government Department of Health, where she is responsible for advising on digital transformation and agile capability building strategies across the healthcare system.
Diane has an academic background in Law from Paris II Pantheon ASSAS, a Bachelor in Entrepreneurship (Bsc.) from the Paris Chamber of Commerce Business School, a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Paris School of Graduate Management, a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
She is currently pursuing an Executive Doctorate in Public Affairs (EDPA) with the University Paris Dauphine, and was selected in April 2022 CAPE Policy Fellow with the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Change and Configuration Manager - Infrastructure as Service©
It is an honor for me to join this most influential forum. The square changes in front of our society and in front of each of us have to be followed and treat like momentum opportunities. It is in our hands to reshape the way we address and answer the multiple level challenges we experience this very moments.
