Panelists

Geraldine de Bastion

Co-Founder & CEO, Konnektiv

Geraldine co-founded Konnektiv in 2013 with René Schodder and Melanie Stilz and together with René Schodder leads the company as CEO. Geraldine is head of the consultancy department which offers different knowledge services such as expert research and analyses, project design and implementation, and strategic consultation.

In addition, Geraldine is a popular moderator and public speaker at events around digital transformation, sustainability, and innovation. She hosts events such as re:publica, Start Up Energy Transition (SET) Tech Festival, and NZZ X.Days. Furthermore, Geraldine has given keynote talks for TedX events, Federal Ministry events like the Civic Innovation Platform Award, and startup events including the Nürnberg Digital Festival.

Her work over the last 18 years has focused on digital transformation and international cooperation, innovation, and human rights. Geraldine has a background in political sciences and is bilingual (en/de) with an intercultural background. She has experience working with activists, governments, startups, and NGOs across the world.

Geraldine is also the founder of the Global Innovation Gathering (GIG), a network of grassroots innovators, social entrepreneurs, founders, and managers of makerspaces, hackerspaces, and innovation hubs. In 2018, she authored and moderated the ARTE documentary “Digital Africa” which captures many of the innovator’s activities in the GIG network.

Since 2012, she has been part of the curatorial team for the re:publica, Europe’s largest conference on the topic of the internet and society, and regularly organizes and curates events in the field of politics and digitization. In 2018, she organized the first re:publica in Accra, Ghana with over 2000 participants and over 260 speakers from across Africa.

Geraldine has been a member of the BMBF Zukunftskreis since 2019. Furthermore, she has been named by the City of Berlin as a member of the City Lab Advisory Board and a member of the Smart City Strategy Advisory Board. Geraldine is part of the Development Service and Humanitarian Aid Committee (AEDHH) for Brot für die Welt.

Stefan Schnorr

State Secretary, Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport

Since December 2021, Stefan Schnorr has been a permanent state secretary at the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport. He is responsible for the Central Services, Budget and Shareholdings, Digital and Data Policy, Digital Connectivity as well as Aviation directorates-general.
Stefan Schnorr is a legal professional. He began his career as an administrative judge in Rhineland-Palatinate. From 1994 to 2001, he worked for the Ministry of Justice of Rhineland-Palatinate, serving as Head of Public Relations and Press Officer. In 2001, he moved to Berlin, joining the Representation of Rhineland-Palatinate to the Federal Government and the European Union to become Deputy Director for Federal Affairs. As of 2009, he worked as the Head of Representation of Lower Saxony to the Federal Government in Berlin.
In 2010, he became Director for Information Society and Media at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Technology, where he later served as Director for Budget, Staff, Organization and Information Technology and IT Commissioner. He was appointed Director-General for Political Staff and Policy Planning in 2011 before being appointed Director-General for IT, Communication and Postal Policies in 2013. In 2014, he became Director for Crafts, Commercial Law and Business Promotion, Education Policy and Liberal Professions at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, where he also served as Director-General for Digital and Innovation Policy from 2015 to 2021.

Professor Mary Aiken

Professor of Cyberpsychology and Chair of the Department of Cyberpsychology, Capitol Technology University

Dr Mary Aiken is Professor of Cyberpsychology and Chair of the Department of Cyberpsychology at Washington D.C.’s premier STEM University, Capitol Technology University. She is a Professor of Forensic Cyberpsychology in the Department of Law & Criminology, University of East London (UEL) and an Adjunct Professor at the Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin Ireland. Prof. Dr. Aiken is a Member of the INTERPOL Global Cybercrime Expert Group and an Academic Advisor to Europol's European Cyber Crime Centre (EC3). She is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Medicine, International Affiliate Member of the American Psychological Association (APA), Global Fellow at the Wilson Center and Fellow of the Society for Chartered IT Professionals. Her research interests include Safety Tech, Online Harms, AI, Fintech, HealthTech, human factors in cybersecurity, organized cybercrime, online behavioural profiling, Internet psychology & youth protection online. She has advised at international and European level in policy debates at the intersection of technology and human behaviour and has published and spoken worldwide on this topic. Prof. Dr Aiken is currently co-lead on one of the largest EU Horizon2020 cybercrime research projects to date, investigating human and technical drivers of cybercrime, she recently co-authored a Europol position paper on the social impact of cybercrime titled "The Cyber Blue Line."
Prof. Dr Aiken has advised on the Irish Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill (2022) and has testified in Irish Government hearings (Oireachtas Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media), highlighting the requirement to develop an online safety technology sector in Ireland to support forthcoming legislation. She has advised on the UK Online Safety Bill (2021), and has acted as expert advisor on numerous UK Gov (DCMS) Safety Tech initiatives including the first scientific Analysis of UK Safety Tech sector (2020); the Online Safety Data Initiative (2021); the Safety Tech Challenge Fund (2021); and the Trust, Safety and the Digital Economy Ipsos MORI report (2021). She was Principal Investigator on the research report that provided evidence of an emerging billion dollar US Safety Tech market (Jan, 2022), and was invited to brief the White House on findings (February, 2022). She has spoken on online safety technologies at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (November, 2020); UK Safety Tech Expo 2021 (March, 2021); the UK G7 Safety Tech Summit (November, 2021); the UK Future Tech Forum (November, 2021); the European Parliament Risk and Capability Seminar (December, 2021); the INTERPOL 'Human & Technical Drivers of Cybercrime Expert Workshop (April, 2022); the Europol Cybercrime Conference the Hague ( Oct, 2022); the CBS Primetime TV special 'A Nation Divided' (October, 2022) and has delivered an opening keynote focusing on online safety technologies in the "Rethinking the Global Cyber Order" session at the recent Global Cybersecurity Forum Riyadh (Nov, 2022).

Daniel Okubo

Deputy Director for Online Harms, DCMS UK

Daniel Okubo is the Deputy Director for Online Harms at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS). He has previously been the Deputy Director for Digital Technical Standards and Internet Governance at DCMS, Deputy Director for Financial Stability at HM Treasury, and Executive Director at UK Government Investments.

Dominik Zimmermann

Member of the board, Condat AG

Dominik Zimmermann is Managing Director at Condat AG and responsible for the product development of Condat’s AI-based content discovery platform “Smart Media Engine”.
Prior to that he has worked for Condat as a software developer, consultant and account manager focussing on content management, metadata and artificial intelligence including semantic technologies. Dominik holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from Technical University Berlin.

Emily Slifer

Director of Policy, THORN

Emily Slifer is the Director of Policy at Thorn, a non-profit organization that builds technology to defend children from online child sexual abuse. Prior to joining Thorn she worked for the UK Home Office in the British Embassy Washington. During this time she covered a wide portfolio that include child sexual abuse and exploitation, extradition, immigration, and science & technology. She has also worked in the European Parliament for the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), the European Parliament Liaison Office in Washington, DC, and Centro UNESCO di Firenze. She has a MA in European Union Policy Studies.

Josephine Ballon

Head of Legal, HateAid gGmbH

Josephine Ballon is a lawyer and since 2019 Head of Legal at HateAid, where she advocates to improve the legal framework and access to justice for those affected from digital violence who are left largely unprotected against violations of their rights. Ms. Ballon was invited as an expert several times, e.g. to the Legal Affairs and Digital Agenda Committee of the German Federal Parliament and the European Parliament to testify on legislative proposals of law enforcement against online hate crimes, gender-based online violence and platform regulation.

Franka Weckner

Y7

Franka Weckner is a law student at the University of Heidelberg. Currently she is involved in the Youth7 Engagement Group Process under the German G7 Presidency and serves as a Track Sherpa for the Working Group "Global Health & Solidarity". The Youth7 is the official G7 Youth Engagement Group. As a former German Youth Delegate to the UN General Assembly and European Youth Envoy to the ITU, she is passionate about youth participation, digital transformation and the protection of human rights online.

Jillian C. York

Director for International Freedom of Expression, EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation

Jillian C. York is a writer and activist whose work examines the impact of technology on our societal and cultural values. Based in Berlin, she is the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a fellow at the Center for Internet & Human Rights at the European University Viadrina, a visiting professor at the College of Europe Natolin, and the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism (Verso 2021).

Jillian is a frequent public speaker, and her writing has been published by the Motherboard, Buzzfeed, Al Jazeera, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Quartz, The Washington Post, and Die Zeit, among others. Jillian currently serves on the IFEX Council, the Advisory Council of the Open Tech Fund, the Advisory Board of SMEX, and the International Advisory Board of the International Free Expression Project.

Sebastian Hallensleben

VDE Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies

Dr Sebastian Hallensleben is the Chair of CEN-CENELEC JTC 21 where European AI standards to underpin EU regulation are being developed, and Chair of the Trusted Information working group in the EU StandICT programme. He co-chairs the AI risk management work at OECD and has roles in AI committees at the Council of Europe and UNESCO. Sebastian Hallensleben heads Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence at VDE Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies where he is responsible for new product and service development as well as for giving advice and developing frameworks for the German parliament and federal ministries as well as the European Commission. He focuses in particular on AI ethics, on handling the impact of generative AI, building privacy-preserving trust infrastructures as well as characterizing AI quality.
Earlier, Sebastian Hallensleben worked on dialog facilitation between academia, industry and policymaking (e.g. in the context of federal research foresight) and in international infrastructure project development for waste, energy and drinking water. He holds a PhD in physics and began his professional life in IT development and solutions architecture in the financial and telecoms sectors.

Prof. Andreas Kaminski

Professor für Wissenschafts- und Technikphilosophie, TU Darmstadt

I am professor for philosophy of science and technology, which is one of my main fields of work. Here I am mainly interested in the role of technology in the sciences, especially against the background of computational methods (simulation and machine learning). A second important focus is the philosophy of trust and testimony (What characterizes trust as a form of relationship?), where I also work on issues of deception and disinformation.

Georg Ziegler

Director Brand, Content & Tourism, HolidayCheck

Georg Ziegler, Director Brand, Content & Tourism, is responsible for all content teams, Marketing, Brand&PR and touristic suppliers at HolidayCheck.
Furthermore he acts as the spokesperson of the company’s initiative against fake reviews and leads the internal fraud & investigation task force.
He joined the team in 2008 as expert for TV hoteltests. Before his current position, he initiated and successfully developed the B2B & partnerships branch at HolidayCheck.
Originally his professional background relates to the hospitality industry, where he completed a kitchen chef education and worked in several roles in Switzerland following academic studies in “International Hotel & Tourism Management” in Valais.
In 2016 he joined the board and from 2017 acted as president of the German “Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association” HSMA Deutschland e.V. with over 1500 associated members until July 2022.

Dalia Hashim

Program Lead for the AI and Media Integrity program

Dalia is the Program Lead for the AI and Media Integrity program. Dalia leads the AI and local news stream of work and supports the ongoing AI and synthetic media program. Working with social media, tech and news companies, think tanks and NGOs to understand how AI policies and interventions can help minimize the harmful impact of AI in their industries and address critical challenges to the quality of public discourse. She hopes to merge her experience in policy, research and community development in her work at PAI.

Dalia holds a Master’s of Public Policy from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of International Relations and Public Policy and a BA in International Relations and Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto.

Sabrina Spieleder

European External Action Service