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Zoë Baird

Former Senior Counsel to Secretary Gina Raimondo

U.S. Department of Commerce

Zoë Baird was Senior Counselor for Technology and Economic Growth to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
Zoë Baird is Senior Counselor for Technology and Economic Growth to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
In this role, Baird focuses on advancing U.S. competitiveness in key technologies and ensuring the economic benefits are broadly shared by innovative businesses and a well-trained workforce. Prior to Commerce, Baird served over 20 years as CEO and President of the Markle Foundation, where she also served on the Board of Directors.
Previously, she held positions at Aetna Life & Casualty Company as Senior Vice President & General Counsel, where she founded Lawyers for Children America, which recruits and trains lawyers in private practice and corporate legal departments to represent abused children.
Throughout her career, Baird has also worked at General Electric as Counselor and Staff Executive, O’Melveny & Myers as Partner, and as Associate Counsel to President Jimmy Carter and has served on several government advisory boards. Baird clerked for Judge Albert C. Wollenberg and worked as Attorney-Advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel. A graduate of University of California Berkeley, Baird earned a J.D. from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.

Meet the 2025 speakers

Mystery Speaker

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The mystery speaker is a regular of the Genval Forum

Marili Männik

Executive Director ad interim
eu-LISA
Speaker's profile
Marili Männik became eu-LISA’s Deputy Executive Director on 16 August 2024. She has also been appointed Executive Director ad interim by the Agency’s Management Board, a function she will hold until the recently selected Executive Director will take up his duties.

Tom Garnett

CEO & Co-founder
Refute
Speaker's profile
Tom co-founded Refute to address the next critical threat to governments and commercial organisations: disinformation.

Sebastian von Ribbentrop

Founding Partner
JOIN Capital
Speaker's profile
Sebastian von Ribbentrop is a Founding Partner at Join Capital, bringing over 25 years of experience in private equity, real estate, and venture capital.

Denys Gurak

Co-founder & COO\CIO
MITS Capital
Speaker's profile
Serial entrepreneur with a proven track record in securing investments and extensive experience managing the international business of a defense conglomerate (UDI) with a turnover of $1B.

Klaus Welle

Chairman of the Academic Council
Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies
Speaker's profile
Klaus Welle chairs the Martens Centre’s Academic Council since April 2023. In May 2025, he was appointed Special Advisor to the Commissioner for Defence and Space.

Benjamin Cistecky

Managing Partner
Certitude Holdings (Temasek)
Speaker's profile
Ben Cistecky is Managing Partner of Certitude Holdings, a Temasek platform focused on innovations in mission-critical applications.

Micolaj Firlej

Co-founder and General Partner
Expeditions Fund
Speaker's profile
Over the last decade, Mikolaj has worked on autonomous weapon systems and the application of AI in defence and intelligence sectors.

Isabelle Roccia

Managing Director
IAPP Europe
Speaker's profile
As Managing Director, Europe, Isabelle Roccia leads the IAPP’s Brussels office and engages with senior industry leaders, policymakers, regulators and civil society, keeping IAPP members informed and apprised of local developments in privacy, AI governance and digital responsibility.

Sebastian Hallensleben

Chief Trust Officer
Resaro
Speaker's profile
Dr Sebastian Hallensleben is the Chair of CEN-CENELEC JTC 21 where European AI standards to underpin EU regulation are being developed, and co-chairs the AI risk and accountability work at OECD.

Ingrid Romijn

CEO & Co-founder
Q*Bird
Speaker's profile
Ingrid Romijn is the CEO of Q*Bird, a Delft-based leader in quantum-secure communications, building ultra-secure networks that safeguard critical infrastructure today and prepare organisations for the quantum internet of tomorrow.

Clayton Williams

Managing Director
In-Q-Tel
Speaker's profile
Clayton Williams is the Managing Director of In-Q-Tel, where he manages In-Q-Tel’s relationship with the UK government and is responsible for identifying, investing, and guiding In-Q-Tel’s portfolio of deep tech start-up technology across Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

Theo Francken

Minister of Defense and Foreign Trade
Government of Belgium
Speaker's profile
Theo Francken has been serving as the Minister of Defence and Foreign Trade in the Bart De Wever government since February 2025.

Marta Kindrys

Director of the IT Industry Development and Advocacy Center
IT Ukraine Association
Speaker's profile
She is a lawyer with nine years of experience, representing the Association’s interests before government authorities.

Tommaso Cecchi

VP Sales, Europe
DDN
Speaker's profile
Background in Physics (Astronomy, Plasma Physics), I spent an equal amount of time working at a Supercomputing Centre and at a Technology Company for overall a quarter of a century.

Hanna Myshko

Regional Director for Ukraine, Moldova, and the Gulf States
StrategEast
Speaker's profile
Hanna Myshko is Regional Director for Ukraine, Moldova, and the Gulf States at StrategEast, and building partnerships with the U.S. and Europe.

Zoe Stanley-Lockman

Officer, Innovation and Technology Adoption Section Defence Industry, Innovation and Armaments Division
NATO
Speaker's profile
Zoe Stanley-Lockman works in the Innovation Directorate of the NATO Defence Industry, Innovation and Armaments Division, where she spurs rapid adoption of technologies in defence and innovation cooperation with Ukraine.

Seth Dobrin

CEO & Co-founder
ARYA Labs
Speaker's profile
Dr. Seth Dobrin is the CEO and Co-founder of ARYA Labs, building deterministic, physics-encoded world foundation models.

Ebba Kraemer

Co-founder
Scaleout
Speaker's profile
Ebba Kraemer is a co-founder of Scaleout and a privacy-preserving AI evangelist.

Dan Nechita

Managing Director
Vanguard Europe
Speaker's profile
Dan is the Managing Director of Vanguard Europe, a mission-driven consultancy in Brussels focused on AI, emerging technologies, and defense, and the EU Director of the Transatlantic Policy Network.

Grégory Mounier

Head
Europol Innovation Lab
Speaker's profile
Gregory (PhD) is the Head of the Europol Innovation Lab whose mission is to help the European law enforcement community to make the most of emerging technologies by developing innovative solutions to improve the ways in which they investigate, track and disrupt terrorist and criminal organizations.

Andrii Yermolenko

Chief Business Development Officer
Buntar Aerospace
Speaker's profile
Andrii is Chief Business Development Officer at Buntar Aerospace, and Chief Consultant in OpsVentures.

Lord Liam Booth-Smith

Head of EMEA Public Policy
Anthropic
Speaker's profile
Liam Booth-Smith is Anthropic’s Head of EMEA Public Policy. He is also a member of the House of Lords.

Suzy Wild

Head of External Affairs EU
Anthropic
Speaker's profile
Suzy Wild leads Anthropic’s External Affairs in the EU. She has worked in European politics for nearly 20 years, including as an adviser to MEPs on justice and home affairs, security, digital policy, and transatlantic relations.

Max Konstantinovsky

CEO and Co-Founder
Organized Matter
Speaker's profile
Max Konstantinovsky is the CEO and Co-Founder of Organized Matter. A three-time founder, he specializes in technology commercialization for climate tech and robotics.

Oleksandr Danyliuk

President
Destinus
Speaker's profile
Oleksandr Danyliuk is a Ukrainian economist and senior executive with broad leadership experience in government, finance, and technology.

Benjamin Clayton

Head of Industrial Strategy
UK Ministry of Defence
Speaker's profile
Benjamin is the UK Government’s Co-Chair on negotiations with the European Union with regards to Security for Action Europe.

Graham Webber

Defence Counsellor
UK Joint Delegation to NATO
Speaker's profile
Graham Webber is the Defence Counsellor in the UK’s Joint Delegation to NATO. Previously, he was Head of the Security Policy Department in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, leading for the FCDO on deterrence and strategic stability.

Daniel Miller

Director, NLP+LLMs
BigBear.ai
Speaker's profile
Dr. Dan Taninecz Miller directs natural language and large language model development at Bigbear.ai.

Tímea Lapsánszki

Senior Consultant
Logos Public Affairs
Speaker's profile
Tímea Lapsánszki is a senior consultant at Logos Public Affairs, where she advises clients on European foreign affairs, defence, and security policy.

Oleksandr Arapov

Chief Product Officer
Swarmer
Speaker's profile
Oleksandr Arapov — CPO of Swarmer with over 10 years of experience in product management.

Vsevolod Chentsov

Ambassador
Embassy of Ukraine to the EU
Speaker's profile
Vsevolod Chentsov, Head of the Mission of Ukraine to the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community, was appointed Kyiv’s top diplomat in Brussels in August 2021.
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