Meet the Speakers of Digital Euro Summit 2021 | #DES21

1998: A-level, Gutenberg Grammar School in Mainz, 1990 – 1994: Studies in Economic Sciences at University Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne), 1995 – 1997: Master of Public Administration at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1997 – 2001: Ph.D. in Finance at University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business, 2001 – 2004: Employee, Product Development, Goldman Sachs International, London, 2004 – 2011: Employee and since 2007 Head of Share Transactions Division Germany/Austria, Goldman Sachs International, Frankfurt/Main, 2011 – 2014: Head of Share Derivatives Division Europe, Middle East and Africa, Goldman Sachs International, London, 2014 – 2018: Co-Chairman of the Executive Board, Goldman Sachs AG & Head of the Frankfurt Branch of Goldman Sachs International

Since 2018: State Secretary, German Federal Ministry of Finance

Joseph Lubin is a co-founder of Ethereum and founder and CEO of ConsenSys, one of the world's leading blockchain technology companies.

In 2014, Joseph co-founded the Ethereum Project and founded ConsenSys to focus on building infrastructure, developer tools, and decentralized applications on the Ethereum platform. Prior to working on Ethereum, Lubin’s career focused on the intersection of cryptography, engineering, and finance, including his role as VP of Technology in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs.
Joseph graduated cum laude with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton.

Sheila Warren is Deputy Head of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Head of Data, Blockchain, and Digital Assets, and a Member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum. Her pioneering policy work is helping shape the data and technology spaces to be more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable. Ms. Warren began her career as a Wall Street attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore before turning to philanthropy and civic technology. She was a senior executive and General Counsel at TechSoup, and she also designed and launched NGOsource, a groundbreaking service focused on international grantmaking. Ms. Warren currently serves on the boards of the ACLU of Northern California, the Equal Justice Society, and TechSoup, and on advisory boards for the World Bank, the OECD, and others. She is also co-host of the popular show Money Reimagined on the CoinDesk network. She is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Ralf Wintergerst is Chairman of the Management Board of Giesecke+Devrient (G+D). In addition to his duties as Group CEO, he is responsible for the Central Services departments of Information Systems, Corporate Security, Compliance Management and Auditing, Corporate Communications, Corporate Strategy, Corporate Development, Mergers & Acquisitions, Legal Services and Corporate Governance.

In addition, he holds various positions related to IT security issues, including as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Alliance for Cyber Security initiated by the BSI (German Federal Office for Information Security) and member of the Executive Committee of Germany's digital association, Bitkom.

Christian Catalini is a co-creator of Diem (formerly Libra), and the Chief Economist of the Diem Association. Christian is the founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, and a Research Associate at MIT. While a Professor at MIT, Christian designed the MIT Digital Currency Research Study. In 2018, Christian was appointed as a Faculty Research Fellow in the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Christian's research focuses on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, and he previously worked on the economics of equity crowdfunding and startup growth, and the economics of scientific collaboration. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto (Rotman School of Management), and MSc (summa cum laude) in Economics and Management of New Technologies from Bocconi University, Milan. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, WIRED, NPR, Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, VICE news and the Washington Post among others. Christian has presented his work at a variety of institutions including Harvard University, MIT, Yale University, London Business School, New York University, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, the Federal Reserve Bank, the US Treasury, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the World Bank, the IMF, the White House OSTP, and a number of central banks and regulators.

Jürgen Schaaf has been Advisor to the Senior Management of Market Infrastructure and Payments at the European Central Bank since November 2019. He is currently focusing on central bank digital currencies and retail payments strategies.

Before that, he was Counsellor to the Executive Board of the ECB (Dec 2012 - October 2019) and Secretary of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) Project Team Dec 2012 – Dec 2013). Before he joined the ECB, he was Personal Adviser to the Governor of Banque centrale du Luxembourg. In previous occupations he worked ECB watcher at Börsen-Zeitung, a German financial daily, and as Senior Economist at Deutsche Bank. He studied economics in Marburg and Canterbury/Kent (United Kingdom) and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Phillips University Marburg.    

Jens Hachmeister is the Head of Issuer Services and New Digital Markets at Deutsche Börse AG and a member of the Clearstream Management Board. After completing a banking apprenticeship and a degree in business administration, he began his career as a management consultant at KPMG before joining Xetra Market Development at Deutsche Börse AG in June 2000. As Head of Operations and Infrastructure Development in the Xetra division, Jens was part of the Management Committee Xetra until January 2009. From mid-April 2010 to December 2015, he was the Chief HR Officer of Deutsche Börse AG and in mid-August 2015, he assumed the newly created role of Chief of Staff to the Group’s CEO. As of April 2018, Jens created the New Digital Markets Area as one of the key pillars of Deutsche Börse’s DLT and blockchain strategy before taking on additional responsibility as Clearstream’s Head of Issuer Services in February 2020.

Katharina Gehra belongs to the „Top 40 under 40“ - a ranking by the German business magazine Capital. Furthermore, Katharina Gehra has been nominated as expert on the subject of blockchain for parliamentary hearings at the German Bundestag.

Katharina Gehra is the Co-Founder of Immutable Insight, an innovative German start-up that delivers 100% reliable insights on blockchain in real time for traders and investors and a new era of advanced compliance. She is also a supervisory board member at the Fürstlich Castell'sche Bank. She uses her entrepreneurial passion as an active early stage investor. Previously she has been the CEO of Interritus Limited and a supervisory board member at Kommunalkredit Austria AG. Before her career in the private equity industry, she worked as a Project Leader at The Boston Consulting Group and Commerzbank AG. She holds a MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Stani Kulechov is the Founder and CEO of Aave, an open source and non-custodial liquidity market protocol to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets. Stani was studying law at the University of Helsinki when he first got into Ethereum and he started exploring how it could impact the traditional financial system. In 2017, Stani released ETHLend, one of the first DeFi DApps ever. Since then, he has made it his mission to create tools for an open, transparent, and equitable financial ecosystem through Aave Protocol. 

A lawyer, advisor, scholar and university assistant professor focusing on legal and regulatory issues related to technology, fintech and in particular blockchain and its developments. Agata is a UK qualified solicitor and I spent several years practicing law in the London financial sector, in a leading law firm and in an investment bank. Currently, she is an assistant professor at the Warsaw University of Technology and a guest professor at a number of other universities in Europe. She is a member of the advisory council at Blockchain for Europe and a member of an expert panel at the EU Blockchain Observatory & Forum.

Prof. Thomas Kropf is president of the corporate sector for research and advance engineering at Robert Bosch GmbH since July 2018.

After pursuing an academic career in computer science at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and a stint in Silicon Valley at Synopsys Inc., he joined Bosch in 1999. Thomas Kropf held different positions in microelectronics development, driver assistance and automated driving. At Bosch Car Multimedia he was heading the business unit for car infotainment. Before joining corporate research, he was responsible for automotive systems engineering across all mobility divisions and for shaping the overall mobility technology strategy, reporting directly to the Bosch board of management. Prof. Kropf is also adjunct professor for computer science at the University of Tuebingen, Germany.

Raphael Auer previously spent three years in MED's Monetary Policy unit. Prior to that, he worked for 10 years at the Swiss National Bank, including as Deputy Head and Economic Advisor of the International Trade and Capital Flows division. During 2009-10, he was Globalization and Governance Fellow at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and visiting fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He holds a PhD in economics from MIT and serves as president of the Central Bank Research Association. His current policy work focuses on issues related to cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and CBDC. On these topics, he contributes to BIS policy publications and management speeches, as well as to various international forums, including the G20-CPMI Cross-Border Payments Taskforce. He has published extensively in the field of international economics, monetary policy and digital currencies.

Dante Disparte is the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy for Circle, a leading digital financial services firm building the most trusted treasury and payments infrastructure for the internet, including the fastest growing dollar digital currency, USDC. Prior to joining Circle, Dante served as a founding executive of the Diem Association, leading public policy, communications, membership, and social impact.

Dante comes to Circle with two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, business leader and global risk expert, most recently as founder and CEO of Risk Cooperative, a strategic risk advisory and insurance brokerage based in Washington, D.C. Dante also serves as an appointee on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Advisory Council, the United States’ federal emergency response agency. He is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Digital Currency Governance Consortium, helping drive global standards and regulatory harmonization for digital currencies.

Dante is a frequent speaker and commentator on business and political issues shaping the world. His views on risk, economic competitiveness and security issues are regularly featured in leading media and publications, such as Harvard Business Review, BBC, Forbes, and Diplomatic Courier, where Dante serves on the editorial advisory board. Dante is a graduate of Harvard Business School and holds an MSc. in Risk Management from the NYU Stern School of Business and a B.A. in International and Intercultural Studies from Goucher College. He is the co-author of “Global Risk Agility and Decision Making” (Macmillan, 2016) and was recognized as one of the 40 leaders under 40 by the Washington Business Journal and in the inaugural Powermeter 100 list.

Rune Christensen is the Cofounder of the MakerDAO project, and was CEO of the Maker Foundation until its wind down in 2021, when the Maker project fully decentralized. He was passionate about Bitcoin and blockchain since the very beginning of the technology, and got into stablecoins searching for a way to make blockchain more relevant to the real world. 

Stefan Hoops is Head of the Corporate Bank.
Stefan joined DB in Fixed Income Sales in 2003. He moved to Credit Trading in New York in 2008, and took on various leadership roles within Global Markets in the United States and Germany in the following years, including Global Head of Institutional Sales. 

In October 2018 he was named Head of Global Transaction Banking. Since July 2019, Stefan heads DB’s Corporate Bank, which encompasses all of DB’s corporate and commercial client activities.

Stefan Hoops holds a Master of Science in Business Administration and a PhD in Economics from University of Bayreuth.

Cuy Sheffield is the Head of Crypto at Visa, leading the global crypto product team within the fintech product organization. Cuy is a fellow at the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute, a co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cryptocurrencies and a member of the advisory group for the Digital Dollar Project. Before Visa, Cuy worked on business development and partnerships for TrialPay, a fintech startup that Visa acquired in 2015.

Prior to Parity, Björn gained extensive expertise in the fields of industrial automation and digitization. Currently serving as Chief Commercial Officer, Björn is driving the company's commercialization, partnership, and product efforts. He holds an MSc. in Mechanical Engineering and Business Administration from RWTH Aachen University and studied at the University of California Santa Barbara as well as Hong Kong University of Science and Technology among others.

Carolynn Look is an economy reporter for Bloomberg News in Frankfurt, where her coverage focuses on the euro-area economy and the European Central Bank. She has written extensively about central banks' digital currency plans and how they might affect the future of money. Since joining Bloomberg in 2015, she has also covered areas including industry, bond & equity markets, and Chinese consumer companies during a temporary placement in Beijing. She studied Chinese and Development Studies at SOAS in London and at Beijing Normal University.

Sonja is an economist and digital expert at the Monetary and Capital Markets and IT Departments. In this role, she provides policy recommendations and technical advice to member countries on fintech, private and central bank digital currencies, and national digital strategies. Sonja also works across departments on macro-economic surveillance missions, including several assignments in the Asia Pacific region, research projects, and internal and external capacity building efforts. Most recently, Sonja has worked on the Financial Stability Board roadmap to enhance cross-border payments. As one of the founding Advisory Board members, she helped guide development, operations, and governance of the IMF Innovation Lab. Sonja holds an MSc from Georgetown University and an MA from Bonn University.

& many more