Zoe Belouka

Zoe Lefaki – Belouka was Managing Director of Beluga Associates, a leading PR company in Greece, which she co-established with Fortune in 1997. Zoe, collaborated with Advocate / Burson – Marsteller as a Senior Consultant in Brand PR from September 2010. She has a wide experience in advertising and Public Relations and is a member of the Hellenic Association of Communication Agencies.

In the past, Zoe has held the position of Director of the Public Relations department of Bold – Ogilvy & Mather. She is a Business Administration Graduate and has excellent personal relations and connections to the media, business and cultural world in Greece.

George Mavrotas

George Mavrotas was born in 4 April 1967 in Athens. He started his athletic career as a swimmer in 1978 and in 1980 he turned to water-polo. His first international appearance was in 1984, in the Olympic Games of Los Angeles. Since then, he has competed with the Greek national water-polo team in all major events including: five Olympic Games (1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000), four World Championships, eight European Championships and five World Cups. He was captain of the national team in 1995-2000 and he finished his career with 511 international competitions, which is a national record for team sports. His major athletic achievements include the 2nd place in the World Cup in 1997, the 6th place in the Olympic Games of Atlanta, the 4th place in the European Championships in 1999. With his club (Vouliagmeni Nautical Club) he won the European Cup of Cup winners in 1997. In 1999 he participated in the world selection team.

After his athletic career, in the period 2003-2010 he was member of the National Council for Combating Doping, (Hellenic Anti-Doping Organization).

Concurrently with his athletic career, he attended the courses in the School of Chemical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens. He received his PhD diploma in 2000 with expertise in Operational Research. From 2003 he is teaching in the School of Chemical Engineering in the National Technical University of Athens (he is currently assistant professor).

In 2010 he wrote a novel with title “Theorem of seven” including many autobiographical issues notes from his athletic and academic career.

He is married and he has two sons.

Helena Chari

TNS ICAP, Managing Director

Helena Chari has been Managing Director of TNS ICAP since the company’s beginning in 2002. Helena’s extensive experience in Marketing, in Market Research and in Advertising have helped TNS ICAP grow into one of the largest and most successful agencies in the Greek market in just a few years. Helena has also worked for P&G and McCann-Erickson.
Helena holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a minor in Genetics from the University of California Davis, and received her MBA from Boston University (Brussels).

Thodoris Georgakopoulos

Writer

Thodoris has worked on print and online media for more than a decade. Throughout this time he has developed a fascination with technology that borders on fanboyism. These days his main focus as Chief Internet Officer at IMAKO MEDIA SA, a leading media company in Greece, is to figure out how all these exciting new ways of consuming media will shape a market in turmoil.
In the past Thodoris has written a novel for young adults, has translated literature (including a book based on a popular Twitter feed), and has written professionally about books and gadgets. He still writes for lifestyle magazines and on the web, dabbles in painting and photography, and operates a small network of niche-targeted blogs. His latest book features long form non-fiction stories published in Esquire magazine during the past eight years.

Dimitris Achliopitas

Mathematician

Dimitris joined the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the University of Athens as a Professor of Algorithm Design in 2010. From 1998 to 2005 he was with Microsoft Research in Redmond and since 2005 with the Department of Computer Science of UC Santa Cruz. In theory, his expertise lies in the interaction between randomness and computation and his work on that topic has appeared in journals including Nature, Science, and the Annals of Mathematics. For this work he has received an NSF CAREER award, a Sloan Fellowship, and the prestigious IDEAS grant from the European Research Council. In practice, he likes to think about scalability questions and holds 18 US Patents ranging from load balancing and cache optimization to web search personalization. He actively consults with a number of Bay Area companies. In his free he time enjoys overworking.

Kyriakos Pierrakakis

Political Economy and Innovation

Kyriakos Pierrakakis is a Doctoral Candidate at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and is also a graduate of MIT (Master’s in Technology Policy – Engineering Systems Division), of Harvard University (Master in Public Policy – John F. Kennedy School of Government) and of the Athens University of Economics and Business (B.Sc. in Informatics). Kyriakos is also a former Chairman of the Institute for Youth of the Greek Ministry of Education, where he focused a lot on the development of a startup ecosystem in Greece and on building bridges between Greek innovators and the Silicon Valley community. He has also worked as a researcher at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), in advisory boards of startups, in a prominent US Think Tank and in Political Campaigns. Kyriakos was a speaker at TEDxAthens 2010 and has been a participant at TEDGlobal.

Panagiotis Pitsiniagas

Panagiotis was studying at the School of Applied Mathematics and Physics at the National Technical University, which he quit to deal with trade. He is a quadriplegic after an accident at the age of 21 and by chance he discovered that he enjoys showing people that disability does not destroy your life, it simply changes it. Since then he is giving speeches to children and adults, changing the stereotypes about disability. He is one of the administrators of the www.disabled.gr, the most successful site of its category, while in his non-free time he works at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

“You have a brain, the most complex tool in the world, use it to change it.”

Konstantinos I. Doukas

Konstantinos I. Doukas was born in Athens in 1964. In 1987 he graduated from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens and in 1988 was awarded his Master of Arts from the department of Communication and IT in Education of the University of Columbia in New York. He has worked during his PhD studies in MIT as a scientific associate of Project Athena and, since then, has been actively involved in the use of New Technologies in Education.
He has been working since 1993 in Doukas School, currently holding the positions of CEO and Director of Studies in Senior High School.
He was also the President and CEO in the “Information Society S.A.” between 2004-2010.
Having always a great passion for sports, he has played Handball in a Division A1 team and also for the Greek National handball team. He still continues his sporting activities from which he derives the positive energy needed to be most effective in his professional and personal goals.

Thodoris Chiotis

Thodoris is a writer and educator. He holds degrees in Classics and Modern Languages from the universities of London and Oxford. He is working as an IB instructor, a researcher for the Centre of Greek Language in Thessaloniki while concurrently researching and developing model material for the teaching of digital literature in the classroom for Oxford University Press. In the past, he was appointed co-ordinator for the digitisation and digital enhancement of literature textbooks for Greek state schools. Thodoris has also worked as a researcher in New Media Textuality for the Greek Open University where he developed and authored interactive educational material for the teaching of literature in open and distance learning contexts. Thodoris has taught literature and language courses at the University of Oxford. His academic work on modernist, postmodernist and digital literature has been published in a wide variety of academic journals and edited volumes. He is contributing editor to a number of literary journals in Greece, UK and Australia. Thodoris is passionate about TED and the cornucopia of ideas TED represents.