Changemaker Conference 2022

Changemaker Highlights.mp4

Conference Highlights

Changemaker Conference Opening Ceremony.mp4

Opening Ceremony

Changemaker Conference - Day 1 Closing.mp4

Day 1 Closing

Changemaker Conference Day 2 Opening.mp4

Day 2 Opening

Changemaker Conference Action Planning Session.mp4

Action Planning

Changemaker Conference Closing Ceremony.mp4

Closing Ceremony

Our Special Guests

Dr. James Beaty

Dr. James Beaty is the Chief Operating Officer of Norwegian Energy Solutions and Services (NESS). NESS is a renewable energy producer and developer of utility solar projects in the United States focused on aggregate net metering projects.

In prior experience, James served as Program Manager for Advanced Health Technologies at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory where he led a world class team of engineers and scientists to develop, integrate, and test leading edge health technologies.

James led research initiatives as a Principal Investigator and Research Scientist for a number of programs funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the United States Department of Defense (DoD), and the United States Intelligence community.

Fabian Gagliano

Fabian is an awarded sports psychologist, basketball coach, and former educator that has been working in countries such as Germany, Finland, the USA, Spain, and Ireland. He brings a new perspective to his work with athletes, coaches, and other performers helping them to achieve their goals during competition, moments of crisis, and guide them to achieve general well-being; be these amateurs, professionals, Olympic athletes, elite performers, and from other areas such as the corporate world. Find out more at www.fgpsychology.com.


He has used tools such as mindful performance enhancement techniques extensively to help athletes and musicians to achieve better performance and a more balanced life.


Fabian is also the founder of the Basketball Performance Lab. This was born of the necessity of giving young athletes a place in which they can learn to prepare themselves not just from a competitive point of view but also from a psychological one; teaching them abilities to cope with stress, anxiety, low motivation, low self-esteem, etc, and with challenging situations in and out of competitive settings.

Jonathan Gao

Jonathan is the co-founder of Makers for Change (M4C), an organization that is increasing equitable access to advanced technologies, supporting community engagement in Makerspaces, and inspiring Makers to become change-makers. After collaborating with fellow students to print and donate PPE for over a year and half, he discovered that there is tremendous benefit to establishing a student-run network united by a passion for STEM technology and community service.


Since then, he has then gone on to develop M4C's ongoing 3D Printed Toys program, which has been instrumental for students from New York to California when it comes to working on designing, customizing, and donating toys.


Jonathan is a Yalow Honors Scholar at CUNY Hunter College in New York, NY. He is currently studying biochemistry, music, and English, and would love to see 3D printing play an even bigger role in medicine and bioengineering.


Jeremy Gilley

After a successful career acting in film and television, Jeremy began making films in 1995 and in 1999 founded the non-profit organisation Peace One Day to document his efforts to establish the first ever annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence with a fixed date.

In September 2001, as a result of Jeremy’s efforts, a General Assembly resolution was unanimously adopted by UN member states, establishing 21 September as an annual day of global ceasefire and non- violence on the UN International Day of Peace – Peace Day. To prove the day can work, Jeremy and Peace One Day Ambassador Jude Law travelled to Afghanistan to spearhead a campaign that, over the years, has resulted in 4.5 million children being vaccinated against polio in hitherto unreachable areas, as a result of Peace Day agreements in the region. Peace One Day’s objective is to institutionalise Peace Day making it a day that is self-sustaining, an annual day of global unity, a day of intercultural cooperation on a scale that humanity has never known. In 2016 it is estimated that 2.2 billion people were exposed to the Peace Day message, 940 million were fully aware of the day, resulting in around 16 million behaving more peacefully (McKinsey & Co). Jeremy has spoken at a number of high-profile conferences including giving the closing speech at the TED Global 2011 conference in Edinburgh and speaking at the 2012 3rd annual One Young World Summit in Pittsburgh, USA. Jeremy is the author of a children’s book The Making Of World Peace Day, illustrated by Pulitzer Prize-winner Karen Blessen, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group. In 2019, Jeremy produced the Peace One Day 20th Anniversary Celebration at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, featuring special guests such as, Jude Law, Sting, Mark Rylance, Emeli Sande and many more. In 2020, Jeremy became an Alumni of the Institute of Real Growth and joined as an Advisor to Football for Peace Social Justice Pillar. On the 21st of September 2020, Peace One Day responded creatively to the COVID-19 pandemic with a Live Global Digital experience. Jeremy and Jude Law produced 12 hours of dynamic online content with influential panel discussions, special interviews, live moments from every continent, Words of Peace from leading actors, and music from international artists. In 2021, Gilley directed and produced in association with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Anti-Racism Live on 21 March, the International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination. He also produced and directed Climate Action Live on 21 June and Peace Day Live on 21 September.

Ruchi Goyal

Ruchi Goyal, Hotel management graduate, is an international speaker, mentor, advisor and advocate on disabilities as well as early intervention. She has been spreading awareness pro bono through talks and seminars on how deaf can talk and supports parents of hearing impaired and with delayed speech. Her work is actively shared on social media through “Impaired but Empowered”. Ruchi has closely worked with ministry of education for Children with special needs, Indonesia, universities and other educational institutions in Germany as well. She has been featured in international magazines besides winning a spot as ‘Women Achiever’ in the Indian magazine Femina and has also lately featured on German TV. She mentors mothers across the globe to help them deal with their children with disabilities. As a mentor she believes in sharing knowledge by building forums and raising awareness through conversations. She is now also the brand ambassador of the hearing aid company “Phonak” where she shares her experiences of bringing up a deaf child and integrating her into normal life through speech therapy. Lately she along with her hearing impaired daughter Prisha co-founded a public speaking forum “Voce Mea” at the Frankfurt International School.

Adam Hoerdt

A retired educator, Adam has turned personal tragedy into a very powerful life mission. While riding over 10,000 km on his bicycle this year, Adam invites you to share in his journey as he strives to improve (and even save) the lives of young people worldwide. This mission includes taking action in the face of devastating adversity by bringing families together who have been impacted by sudden cardiac arrest.

Learn how Adam has turned his loss into raising awareness, building community and funding research for one of the deadliest inherited cardiac diseases known. Find out more and join Adam and his family at Ride Across Canada for ARVC.

We are all faced with personal challenges and we all have it in us to turn those challenges into experiences that will not only transform ourselves but could, in fact, change the world.

Shelly Kelly

Shelly Kelly is the Chief Sales Officer and a member of the Management Team at ESG Screen17, a sustainable fintech data solutions provider. She is responsible for leading the sales strategy, client development and servicing. Prior to joining ESG Screen17, Shelly headed GreenTec Capital Partners’ Consulting unit, a firm focused on scaling sustainable African start-ups in order to further develop the African start-up ecosystem together with international funding partners.

Shelly has more than 25 years of experience across a variety of disciplines including account and sales management, program and process management, and organizational transformation including culture and employee engagement. Prior to her focus on sustainability, she built a career within the financial industry working for Pequot Capital, Nomura, UBS and Northern Trust and 10 years with Deutsche Bank/DWS. She has lived in Chicago, New York, London, Hong Kong and Frankfurt. She serves on the FIS Board of Trustees as Vice-Chair and is a member of the Sustainability Council.

Peter Nitschke

Dr. Peter Nitschke is the Director for Community Partnerships at the Plastic Bank, engaging communities to create value out of plastic. He lived for 20 years in the Philippines where he pioneered the now thriving Plastic Bank branch. He was involved in the leadership of several NGOs and academic institutions before returning to Germany in 2018.

Peter gained his experience in Urban Transformation by relocating for 8 years in an urban poor community, living with the people, learning their culture and language, and mobilizing their capacity for transformation and upliftment.

Plastic Bank: We Stop Ocean Plastic.

The ocean cannot wait. Now is the time for us to gather to become the people the world needs to create a regenerative society that stop ocean plastic by creating treasure from trash.

Andreas Renner

Andreas Renner is a serial social entrepreneur driven by the vision to unleash the power of entrepreneurial spirit to positively change the world. He recently co-founded the internet search engine Gexsi (www.gexsi.com). Gexsi is like Google, but embedded in a charitable environment. Its mission: To take the search revenues generated through an ever growing community of users to empower inspiring changemakers around the globe.

Jasper Schlump

Jasper is a serial entrepreneur and an experienced passionate fundraising professional with 10+ years experience in income generation. He founded the international children's NGO Football Beyond Borders, an education and social inclusion charity using the power of football to change the lives of young people and the German based NGO 10drei. e.V. The vision of 10drei is a society in which the values contained in German Constitution (Grundgesetz) are the basis of everyday decision-making. Currently, 10drei e.V. implements innovative projects at all types of schools in Germany.


In his daily live, he is working for Capacura, the leading early stage impact investor Capacura helping to bring more transparency, speed and capital into the sectors of education, health and environment.


Kavita Tanna and Steve Sostak

As international leaders in reimagining schools as community centers of sustainable development, equity, and well-being, we use the Global Impact School model and transformative learning goals to guide and co-create future-focused, student-centered learning environments.

Bert van Son

Bert believes that having fun without destroying the earth and its resources is possible. Together with his team, Bert transformed MUD Jeans into an exemplary circular fashion company, introducing the pioneering Lease a jeans model in 2013 and consistently putting the circular economy principles into practice.


Let's all go circular? There is one tiny challenge here. In order to make the circular economy an attractive proposition in fashion, recycled cotton would have to be cheaper than newly produced cotton, and not the other way around. However, this is not the case or rather, not yet. We take on the challenge. We want to be the pioneering brand showing the world that we can create a circular denim brand anyhow.

Why jeans? Well, jeans are one of the most polluting items in fashion. Using 7.000 litres of water and nasty chemicals. With over 200.000 million jeans being sold yearly, the impact of recycling jeans and using organic cotton can be huge.

Douglas Walker, PhD

As a Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Walker has focused his career upon innovative ways to spread mental health and wellness programming outside traditional health care models. In response to Hurricane Katrina in September of 2005, Dr. Walker designed Project Fleur-de-lis, New Orleans’s largest school-based mental health program devoted to students struggling emotionally and academically in the years following the storm. Now with over 65 participating schools, the program focuses on suicide prevention and the treatment of psychological trauma caused by community violence. In cooperation with Guyana’s Ministry of Health, Dr. Walker launched the first nationwide implementation of a trauma-focused, evidence-based treatment program for young adults exposed to violence. He has also created innovative psychoeducational programs and products including How’s Your 5?® And The Coping Cube®.

Between seeing clients, Dr. Walker can be found tinkering at his “workbench”, building opportunities for individuals and communities to improve and maintain their mental health and wellness. More about Dr. Walker’s professional workbench can be found here.