Our charter limits the number of business members to 500 globally. It also stipulates that at least 51% of our community members have to be scientists, so we never devolve into a business club.

The not-for-profit WORLD.MINDS FOUNDATION is based in Switzerland and regulated by Swiss law. Funding is provided by our international business community and generous individuals. WORLD.MINDS Management Ltd. is the event management company that organizes our events on an international level. The event management company is jointly owned by the WORLD.MINDS-team and Axel Springer.

WORLD.MINDS is run by an outstanding board of trustees, with strategic input from our first-class executive advisory board.

EXECUTIVE ADVISORY BOARD

EXECUTIVE
ADVISORY BOARD

Jorge Paulo Lemann
Investor and Entrepreneur, Founder of 3G Capital

General David Petraeus
Former Director of the CIA, Chairman of the KKR Global Institute

Dmytro Kuleba
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ukraine

Niall Ferguson
Historian and Author at Stanford, Harvard and Tsinghua

Neri Oxman
Legendary architect, designer and inventor, CEO of OXMAN Inc.

Fred Kempe
President and CEO of The Atlantic Council

Anne Neuberger
Lecturer at Stanford University; Former Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, The White House; Strategic Advisor at a16z

Matt Kaminski
Editor-at-Large of POLITICO

Shéhérazade Semsar-de Boisséson
Former CEO of POLITICO Europe and Executive Director of the McCourt Institute

Christian H. Kälin
Chairman of Henley & Partners, Co-Founder of Arnova Capital

Daniela Schwarzer
Board Member, Bertelsmann Foundation

Matt Ridley
Former Member of the House of Lords, Best-selling author and former Editor of “The Economist”

Peter Singer
Moral philosopher and best-selling author, Princeton and University of Melbourne

Martina Hirayama
State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation of Switzerland

Stefan Hell
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Director of the Max Planck Institute

Joseph E. Stiglitz
Nobel Prize in Economics, Former Chief Economist of the World Bank

Kishore Mahbubani
Former President of the UN Security Council

Alon Chen
President of the Weizmann Institute

Tenley E. Albright
Director of the MIT Collaborative Initiative, Board member of the Bloomberg Foundation, Olympic Gold Medalist

Uli Sigg
Former Ambassador to China, Largest private collector of contemporary Chinese Art

Kurt Wüthrich
Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Marc Walder
CEO of Ringier and Founder of digitalswitzerland

Jöel Mesot
President of ETH Zurich

Uwe Krüger
Senior Managing Partner at TEMASEK (Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund)

Thomas Schmidheiny
Founder and Chairman of Spectrum Value Management

Wojciech Szczepaniak
Chairman and Partner of Sparrowland Capital

Anna Fontcuberta i Morral
President of EPFL

Kiana Aran
Founder of Cardea Bio, Professor of Bioengineering at UC San Diego Medical School

Markus Pertl
Chairman of the Stern Stewart Institute

FOUNDATION BOARD

Ralph Büchi 
Chairman of the Advisory Board, Axel Springer

Michael Hengartner 
President, ETH Board (ETH Zurich and EPFL)

Thomas Ladner
Lawyer and Philanthropist

Schoscho Rufener
Entrepreneur Philanthropist

Alex Wassmer
Chairman, KIBAG Holdings

OUR SQUADRON

Artem Babichenko
Digital Solutions Architect

Kipper Blakeley 
Producer and Chief of Staff

Ralph Büchi
Executive Chairman

Rolf Dobelli
Founder

Mor Eini 
Vice President, Partnerships

Corinna Hoyer 
CEO

Safiye Kucukkaraka
Director, Middle East

Émilie Lüthringer 
Operations and Production

Simon Mitterreiter
Director, Operations

Aleksandra Reinert
Head of CEO Office