Meet the industry leaders shaping the content of TNW Conference 2024

For us, June doesn’t simply bring the much-anticipated beginning of summer. It also brings Europe’s leading (and most intimate) tech event. Yes, we’re talking about TNW Conference 2024 — and you’re all invited! We really want to see you there so use the code TNWXMEDIA to get 30% off all passes.

Whether you’re already a loyal fan or you want to experience the magic for the first time, you can expect nothing less than the very heart of tech.

As usual we’re bringing together the entire ecosystem: from startups and investors, to C-level executives, industry leaders, and policymakers.

With the mission to uncover what the future of tech looks like, we’re crafting up two days full of inspirational talks, networking, learning opportunities, and the festival vibes our conference is known for. Who says you can’t do business while enjoying every minute of it?

To help you explore what matters to your business the most and stay ahead of the curve, this year we’ll focus on seven overarching themes:

RenAIssance: The AI-Powered Rebirth
TNT: Igniting Tomorrow’s Techscape
Sustainable Futures: People, Planet, Product
Finance Disrupted: Shaking the Foundations of Finance
Pixels & Profit: Crafting Pixels, Maximising Profits
Innovate: Sink or Swim?
Venture: Show me the Money

Our superhero advisory board

To delve deep into these themes and make sure you get the most out of our TNW stages, we’ve assembled the first-ever TNW Advisory Board — made up of founders, investors, and corporates. These 11 industry leaders will help us shape our conference content with their unique background and their insights on what’s happening in tech in 2024.

So let’s meet them!

Andy Lürling

Tech entrepreneur-turned-investor, Andy is a founding partner at LUMO Labs — an impact-driven multi-stage (pre-seed through series A) VC fund in the Netherlands.

He’s also a strategy team member of the Dutch AI Coalition and an active ecosystem partner of the Dutch startup ecosystem, which he believes embodies “creativity, innovation, pragmatism, and a strong tendency towards international trade.” As an initiator and thought leader of next-gen tech, he’s facilitated numerous Horizon Europe programmes.

In Q2 2024, Andy will announce his successor fund, a multi-stage impact-driven fund of €100mn, with the purpose to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of individuals, and to relieve the strain on (public) healthcare, social welfare, and the planet.

“I have attended TNW on multiple occasions, serving as both a panellist and moderator,” Andy says.

“TNW has consistently stood out to me as one of the premier and high-quality conferences in Europe. I am delighted to play a part in maintaining, and ideally enhancing, the conference’s quality. I am confident that I can bring value through insights into the technologies and markets in which I am actively engaged, along with leveraging my extensive network.”

Andy champions: RenAIssance, TNT, Venture

Madeline Lawrence

The 26-year-old is our GenZ voice. Philly-born and Barcelona-raised, Madeline is a cutting edge voice in European venture. She shed her legal robes to pursue entrepreneurship and she built a first-check VC fund for young founders at the age of 20. Now, she’s a partner at Peak.

She invests horizontally from consumer to bottom-up, long-tail B2B, to the founders she’d tell her mom about. Madeline is all about tech’s potential to solve problems with a human face and she’s known for her satirical critiques calling for a better industry. In April she pulled a prank and announced she was quitting her job to become a founder. This way she captured loads of insights from VCs reaching out to her.

Madeline champions: Sustainable Futures, Innovate, Venture

Christina Caljé

Born and raised in NY, Christina is a former Goldman Sachs Executive Director. She’s an active figure in the Dutch ecosystem and in 2016 she co-founded video marketing technology startup Autheos and scaled it right here at TNW’s HQ in Amsterdam.

Following the acquisition of her company in 2021, she expanded her focus into angel investing to address negative funding dynamics in the European startup ecosystem. She’s also a board member of accelerator programmes, VC funds, startups, and government entities. Her impact has been recognised with multiple awards, including InspiringFifty, EUTop50, Women in AI, and Women in Tech.

Christina champions: RenAIssance, Future of Finance, Innovate, Venture, Pixels & Profit

Who says you can’t do business while enjoying the sun?

Rana Gujral

Rana is an entrepreneur and CEO at Behavioral Signals, a Cognitive AI company developing essential building blocks of AGI with its acoustics-based deep learning technology.

With a strong background in business, finance, and engineering, Rana founded machine learning SaaS startup TiZE and held the role of CEO until its acquisition in 2016. Before TiZE, Rana led the turnaround of Cricut Inc. from bankruptcy to profitability and its eventual IPO. He’s also an investor and advisor to startups.

Not surprisingly, Rana has been recognised as among the “Top 40 Voice AI Influencers to Follow” by SoundHound and the “Top 10 Entrepreneurs to Follow” by Huffington Post, among others.

He’s a contributing columnist at TechCrunch and Forbes and often leads keynote speeches at industry events — including TNW. Last year at our conference, Rana has a conversation with Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands and a NATO representative, which led to the creation of NATO’s €1bn Innovation Fund.

Rana champions: RenAIssance, TNT, Innovate, Venture

Lieke Luttmer

As Chief Customer & Commerce Officer Lieke aims to transform Nationale-Nederlanden (NN Group) into a digital leader with customer centricity and data at its core. Previously, she held digital leadership roles at Intergamma, ING, and Ahold, while her overall work has been focusing on customers, innovation, tech, user experience, ecommerce, and the power of data and AI.

Throughout her career, Lieke has been creating winning teams where people can shine and be themselves, and she loves working in agile and data-driven environments to enable quick learning and faster growth. She has a background in strategic consulting and holds an INSEAD MBA.

Lieke champions: RenAIssance, Future of Finance, Innovate, Venture

Chris Duffey

Chris is the Head of AI Innovation & Strategy at Adobe. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) Board of Industry Leaders.

Overall, Chris is a leading strategic futurist and expert on growth opportunities for brands, organisations, and society using technology and creativity. Chris is also a best-selling author of the award-winning book Superhuman Innovation, the world’s first book co-authored by AI about AI. He has also written the book Decoding the Metaverse: Expand Your Business Using Web3.

His interests cover multiple fields of the tech industry, such as the metaverse, Web3, blockchain, NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, crypto, AR/VR, 3D, Generative AI, automation, spatial computing, virtual worlds, multiplayer gaming, and computational creativity.

Meanwhile, his work has been featured in over 100 media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and The Economist, and he has been profiled by Google, McKinsey, and Wharton.

Chris champions: RenAIssance, TNT, Pixels & Profit, Innovate, Venture

Femke Anna van Zanten

With over 20 years of experience in corporate organisations, Femke Anna brings her expertises to TNW as Group Director of Meta in EMEA. Before joining Meta, she worked at Booz & Company, where she led strategic change programmes in digital transformation for consumer industries.

She also served as Director of Marketing for EMEA at Tommy Hilfiger. Throughout her career, she’s held various marketing and commerce positions for global brands like Coca-Cola and Heineken.

Her background is a testament to marketing, innovation, and commitment to making a positive impact. Her focus has been business development and change — and making the impossible possible.

Femke Anna has a deep passion for the performing arts, and as a professional actress and dancer herself, she has been chairing the Advisory Committee of the Performing Arts Fund in the Netherlands. She also advocates for Diversity beyond Gender: Age, Culture, Health.

“Tech companies are at the forefront of unprecedented times, in terms of environmental, social and governance challenges. Corporates and startups are in this together,” she says. “TNW Conference is the pivotal platform to build for outcomes in a new world, addressing the most pressing issues and gamechanging developments in technology.”

Femke Anna champions: RenAIssance, Innovate, Pixels & Profit

Jamie Crummie

Jamie is the co-founder of Too Good To Go, the world’s largest marketplace for surplus food, enabling consumers to buy unsold food from restaurants and retailers so that it doesn’t go to waste.

Too Good to Go is currently active in 17 countries and the app counts over 80 million registered users and 140,000 food businesses. Together they have rescued over 270 million meals of food!

Jamie was named an Obama Leader in 2023, Sustainability Entrepreneur of the Year at the GB Entrepreneur Awards 2022, a Trailblazing Activist in Forbes’ 50 Next Class of 2021, One Young World’s Entrepreneur of the Year in August 2020, and one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Europe in 2019.

Before pursuing the mission of fighting food waste, Jamie trained as a lawyer, holding a LLB in Law from Leeds University and master’s in Human Rights Law from Queen’s Mary.

Jamie champions: Sustainable Futures, Innovate

NASA engineer Nagin Cox during her keynote speech at TNW Conference 2023.

Janekke Niessen

Janneke is founding partner at CapitalT, a (pre) seed fund investing in climate tech and the future of work. She’s also an angel investor. A serial entrepreneur, Janneke founded two tech companies Improve Digital and DQ&A.

She’s on the board of several organisations, including FutureNL, and the government has asked her for advice on the crossroads of technology, investing, talent, and diversity. She speaks regularly at events, appears in podcasts, and writes a column for Harper’s Bazaar.

Janekke champions: Sustainable Futures & Innovate

Kiko León

Kiko is Chief Innovation, Data, and Information Officer for Decathlon in Spain, generating digital innovation and focusing on sportstech, retailtech, and B2C ecosystems with the goal of helping more people enjoy sports their own way.

His areas of responsibility also include Customer Growth and Digital Analytics for Spain and a corporate role as Business Representative for the company’s Global Membership Program. Previously, he was CIO for Spain and oversaw IT Operations for Southern Europe at the French Group from 2012 to 2016.

Meanwhile, Kiko is VP of the CIO Executive Council in Spain and has been a lecturer on Innovation in the Sports Industry at NYU and Tec Monterrey. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the UAH and has an MBA in Digital Economy from the UMP — and additional degrees from MIT Sloan and IDEO University.

Kiko champions: RenAIssance, Pixels & Profit, Innovate, Venture

Marc Wessenlink

Marc is co-founder and Chief Entrepreneur at Venturerock, where he’s reinventing venture capital. Venturock is an all-in-one, one-click venture building and investing platform on a mission to bridge the gap between startups and VCs.

A serial entrepreneur, he’s founded 12 companies in total. Four of them have failed (about which he’s very open), some have been acquired, and some, such as Just Eat Takeaway, have IPO’d. Marc has used the learnings and has a proven track record of founding and scaling early-stage companies across a variety of sectors, from FMCG and healthcare to ecommerce and HR.

As a founding partner at Startupbootcamp, he has accelerated 700+ startups and spent years identifying flaws in the seed investment landscape. Marc doesn’t like to consider himself an investor, but more an entrepreneur who invests.

Marc champions: Future of Finance, Innovate, Venture

See you at TNW Conference 2024!