Bill Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Along with co-chair Melinda Gates, he shapes and approves grantmaking strategies, advocates for the foundation’s issues, and helps set the overall direction of the organization. Bill and Melinda Gates work together to expand opportunity to the world’s most disadvantaged people by collaborating with grantees and partners. They also participate in national and international events and travel extensively to focus attention on the issues the foundation champions. Gates began his major philanthropic efforts in 1994, when he created the William H. Gates Foundation, which focused on global health. Three years later, he and Melinda created the Gates Library Foundation, which worked to bring public access computers with Internet connections to libraries in the United States. Its name changed to the Gates Learning Foundation in 1999 to reflect its focus on ensuring that low-income minority students are prepared for college and have the means to attend. In 2000, to increase efficiency and communication, the two groups merged into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 1975, Gates left Harvard University in his junior year to focus on Microsoft, the company he founded with his childhood friend Paul Allen. As chief software architect and chairman, Gates led the company to become the worldwide leader in business and personal software, services, and solutions. In July 2008, Gates transitioned into a new role as chairman of Microsoft and advisor on some key development projects. He is a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Gates grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. His father, William H. Gates Sr., is a Trustee of the foundation and a retired attorney. His late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International. The Gateses have three children.

Known for her passion for improving education and alleviating poverty, Queen Rania has championed many initiatives in Jordan and abroad to support these goals. She has worked extensively to rehabilitate Jordan’s public education sector, empower local communities and women, protect children, and drive innovation and entrepreneurship through society. She has been instrumental in forging partnerships between the private and public sectors to enrich learning opportunities for Jordan’s youth. An advocate for tolerance, Queen Rania has been an influential voice on fighting stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, and fostering greater understanding between people of different faiths. Her Majesty is a recipient of a number of prestigious awards including the Walther Rathenau Award from Germany, the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award from the USA, the Arab Knight of Giving Award from UAE, and the North South Prize from Portugal. Additionally, she has received the Vital Voices’ Global Trailblazer Award, the Foreign Press Association’s first-ever Humanitarian Award, the Andrea Bocelli Humanitarian Award, and A Heart for Children’s Golden Heart Award. Through her position on their boards, Her Majesty continues to contribute to the work of the United Nations Foundation (UNF) and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Additionally, she is UNICEF’s first Eminent Advocate for Children, as well as a member of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) board of directors.

Yosuke Matsuda was appointed President and Representative Director of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. and Square Enix Co., Ltd. in 2013. Matsuda joined the former Square Co., Ltd. as Senior Vice President in 2001 where he played a central role in the success of the merger between Square Co., Ltd. and Enix Corp. in 2003, and was appointed Senior Vice President and General Manager of accounting and finance of the newly established Square Enix Co., Ltd. In 2004, he was promoted to Director and Chief Financial Officer. During his tenure as CFO, he was responsible for finance, accounting and reporting, tax and treasury, and equity financings. He manages the global organization of Square Enix Group’s development, publishing and arcade businesses. His passion is for entertainment content, Matsuda is a dedicated gamer who devotes his non-work time to console, PC and mobile gaming.

Siyabulela "Siya" Xuza is South Africa's youngest innovator. He is an Energy Engineering Harvard University graduate with a passion for harnessing the power of the sun for clean affordable energy. A born innovator, Siyabulela Xuza began experimenting with rocket fuels in his mother's kitchen in the small South African township of Mthatha. His results – a cheaper and safer rocket fuel – won him gold at the National Science Expo and the two grand awards at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair. The NASA-affiliated Lincoln Laboratory, so impressed by Siya's achievements, named a minor planet after him. Planet 23182, found near Jupiter, is now known as Siyaxuza. In 2010, Siya received a Fellowship to the African Leadership Network, the exclusive community of the most influential leaders in Africa. In 2011, he served as the youngest member of the Africa 2.0 Energy Advisory Panel and was recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Global Shaper. Former US First Lady Michelle Obama publicly recognized Siya's work, describing him and President Barack Obama as "living proof of what the legendary President Nelson Mandela once said: Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

Diane Greene leads Google Cloud, a major Google business that is partnering with companies as they digitally transform their cultures and businesses. Diane is also a member of the Alphabet board, and Intuit’s and MIT’s boards. Diane co-founded and was CEO of VMware from 1998-2008, she took the company public and to a $2B run-rate. Before that, she co-founded and was CEO of a low-bandwidth streaming video company, VXtreme. She has held engineering and management positions at SGI, Tandem, and Sybase, ran engineering for Windsurfing International, and worked as a naval architect designing ships and large ocean structure deployment systems. Diane was the 1976 National Women's Sailing Dinghy Champion. Diane's degrees include a B.S. in mechanical engineering, an M.S. in naval architecture, and an M.S. in computer science from the University of Vermont, MIT, and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively.

Teresa Carlson leads the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Worldwide Public Sector business, which includes state, local, central and regional governments; educational institutions and Ed Techs; non-profits and non-governmental organizations (NGO); and she advises Amazon Public Policy on global policy issues. Carlson dedicates time to philanthropic and leadership roles to support the global community. This includes service on the American Red Cross Chairman’s Advisory Council, USO of Metropolitan Washington Board of Directors, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Advisory Committee, and Princeton University’s Infrastructure Board, among others. Carlson has received many honors over the years, including being named as one of Business Insider’s Most Important People in Cloud Computing, Washington Life’s Power 100 list, Washingtonian Tech Titan, and is a recipient of the 2016 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which recognizes individuals who have made it their mission to share with those less fortunate their wealth of knowledge, indomitable courage, boundless compassion.

Franco Dragone is the Founder - Artistic Director of the cultural creation company Dragone. Today one of the world’s most sought-after artistic directors, he is renowned for having invented a new genre in the 1980’s and 90’s by mixing human performance, dance, the four elements of life, technology and music. The shows Franco created during his early days forever changed the face of live entertainment in Las Vegas and, decades later, these shows still receive nightly standing ovations. Born in a small village in southern Italy, he moved to Belgium with his family at an early age. Franco went on to study drama at the Conservatory in Mons where he fell in love with commedia dell’arte and political theatre. It is at this time that Franco first created his own works, translating the sorrows and dreams of those around him into emotionally- charged, living works of art. In the 1980’s, Franco joined the nascent Cirque du Soleil and will play an instrumental role in their planetary ascent by signing their biggest successes as Creative Director. Over twelve years he would sign no less than ten shows, among which: Le Cirque Réinventé, Nouvelle Expérience, Saltimbanco, Quidam, Mystère, Alegria, “O” and La Nouba. In 2000, driven by artistic, entrepreneurial and social aspirations, Franco returned to his hometown of La Louvière and founded Dragone. La Louvière became home to world- class teams involved in the entire production process of Franco's creations. Among the Company's most significant shows over the past decade: Celine Dion A New Day; Le Rêve (Las Vegas); The House of Dancing Water and Taboo (Macau); Aida (Naples); The Han Show (Wuhan, China); Paris Merveilles (Lido, Paris) ; The Dai Show (Xishuangbanna, China) ; Philipp Kirkorov – Me (Russia) ; The Land of Legends (Antalya, Turkey) ; La Perle (Dubai).

His Excellency has more than a decade and half of building multi billion riyal high performing organizations in the private and public sector. With executive expertise in executive management, innovation and entrepreneurship. H.E. Eng. Abdullah has had multiple executive senior and board membership roles in the private sector, including but not limited to CEO of Cisco Saudi Arabia, founder of Ubieva (A social entrepreneurial incubator that launched the first ME Mobile Health app) and board seats on the industrial side . In addition to his role as the minister of communications and information technology, he's the chairman of the ICT commission, chairman of Saudi Post and Executive Chairman of the National Digitization Committee. H.E. Eng. Abdullah AlSwaha holds a Bachelor of Engineering from KFUPM as well as a degree in Computer Science from Washington and executive program credentials from Harvard.

At LinkedIn, Allen Blue is responsible for LinkedIn’s overall Product Strategy. He also sponsors LinkedIn’s Work and Education products within the Economic Graph team, including the products and platforms supporting Skillful.com (a joint effort between LinkedIn and the Markle Foundation to close the middle skills gap in the US) and TechHire). He advises several startups in Silicon Valley, most focused on improving health and education.  He sits on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Data Advisory Council, helping guide the department’s efforts to make its data broadly available to American businesses. Allen serves on the board of the Hope Street Group, a non-profit which focuses on bringing economic opportunity to Americans through a combination of policy and practice.  Allen focuses on Workforce projects at Hope Street. Before LinkedIn, Allen co-founded SocialNet.com, an online dating service, and graduated from Stanford University.

Josh has an unmatched background in thermodynamics, heat transfers, compressible fluid mechanics, power cycles, turbomachinery and nonlinear structural analysis and a history of hardware-based development. He previously led a research at Echogen Power Systems and served as lead analyst on six of the different rocket engines at private space contractor, SpaceX. He led development pioneering work on multiple-use rockets whilst at SpaceX. Josh is one of the world’s leading engineering minds of his generation and is leading the team who are building the Hyperloop One system of ultra-high speed ground based mobility from scratch. He is based between Hyperloop One’s headquarters in Los Angeles, USA and the company’s prototype test site in Nevada. He will talk to his belief that science and engineering can create new solutions for some of the world’s issues as well as talk in detail about how he and his team are tackling the creation of an entirely new mode of transport and one that will play a leading part in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He will show video content that shows how Hyperloop One has become reality at the Nevada test site and talk to the UAE’s partnership with Hyperloop One and of the company’s plans for the wider Gulf and of connecting the world. Josh received a BSME from Pennsylvania State University and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

David Kenny is the Senior Vice President, IBM Watson and Cloud Platform, spearheading the Watson technology platform development, as well as optimizing IBM’s public cloud for data and cognitive workloads. David was most recently General Manager, IBM Watson, responsible for the Watson platform, its global ecosystem of business partners and developers, and emerging solutions. Prior to joining IBM, he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Weather Company, where he oversaw the company’s portfolio of consumer and business-to-business weather brands and businesses including The Weather Channel, weather.com, wunderground.com and WSI. David was previously president of Akamai, the leading cloud platform designed to help enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences to mobile and fixed Internet users. Previously, he served as managing partner of VivaKi, the combined worldwide media and digital arm of Publicis Groupe, and he was co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Digitas Inc., a top global integrated brand agency. David currently serves on the Board of Directors of Best Buy. He is also a director of Teach for America, a nonprofit that enlists recent graduates to teach and to effect change in under-resourced and low-income communities. David received an MBA from the Harvard School of Business, and a bachelor's degree from the GM Institute (now Kettering University).

Roland Busch is Chief Technology Officer and Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG. He is responsible for the Building Technologies and Mobility divisions as well as for Corporate Technology, Corporate Development and the company’s activities in the area of Sustainability. He is also responsible for next47, a separate legal entity of Siemens that drives innovation with a focus on start-ups, and for Siemens’ regional businesses in the Middle East and the Commonwealth of Independent States.   Busch joined Siemens in 1994 as a project manager at Corporate Research and Development. In 2002, he was appointed Head of the Infotainment Solutions Division. In 2005, he moved to Shanghai, where he served as President and CEO of Siemens VDO Automotive Asia Pacific. In 2007, Busch returned to Germany to head the Mass Transit Division of the Transportation Systems Group. In 2008, he was named Head of Corporate Strategies. In 2011, he became a Member of the Managing Board as CEO of the Infrastructure & Cities Sector.   Roland Busch studied physics at Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen- Nuremberg, Germany, where he also received his doctorate, and at the University of Grenoble in France.