world-bank
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Georg Caspary
Georg Caspary is the founder and CEO of HarvestAi, a Potsdam-based deeptech company that uses machine learning and computer vision to forecast harvest dates and yields in commercial greenhouses growing tomatoes, peppers and strawberries. A former World Bank economist and fundraising lead with degrees from Oxford, the LSE, Sciences-Po Paris and MIT, he spent two decades on environmental and agricultural finance across more than 20 countries before turning his attention to the unglamorous but high-stakes problem of knowing exactly how many tomatoes a greenhouse will produce, and when. HarvestAi has raised over $3 million, won first prize in Food/Agritech at Slush, and runs pilots in Germany, the Netherlands and Canada.
Wyly Wade
Wyly Wade is the CEO of Biometrica Systems (also operating as Safience), a Las Vegas and Virginia-based company that links physical and digital information to help prevent crime, identify threats, and recover victims. A self-taught coder who published his first video game at age ten and fixed a bug in Lotus Notes 4 while barely out of his teens, Wade has spent more than two decades at the intersection of biometrics, cybersecurity, and public policy. He helped build biometric standards for the U.S. passport, advised the ICAO on e-passports, and was part of the founding core team behind India's Aadhaar, the largest biometric identity program on Earth. Today he is pushing Biometrica toward a privacy-first, biometric-free model of threat and victim detection.
Debbie Wei Mullin
Debbie Wei Mullin is the founder and CEO of Copper Cow Coffee, a Los Angeles based Vietnamese coffee company she launched in 2016 out of her sister's garage. A UC Berkeley economist and MIT-trained urban planner who once managed supply chains at the World Bank, she turned her mother's Vietnamese heritage into a single-serve pour-over inspired by the traditional phin filter. The company has sold more than 20 million coffees, reached over 3,000 retail doors including Target, Whole Foods and Costco, and pays its Vietnamese farmers roughly twice the market rate. She pitched on Shark Tank Season 12 in 2021.
Larry Summers
Lawrence Henry Summers is one of the most influential and combative American economists of his generation. He was the 71st U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, chief economist of the World Bank, the 27th president of Harvard University, and director of the National Economic Council under President Obama. A John Bates Clark Medal winner who earned tenure at Harvard at 28, he became famous for the 'secular stagnation' thesis and for loudly warning, against the consensus, that the 2021 stimulus would ignite inflation. In late 2025 and early 2026, the release of his email correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein triggered a rapid unwinding of his public roles.
Martin Wolf
Martin Wolf is the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, where his columns have shaped the thinking of policymakers, central bankers, and investors for nearly four decades. A former World Bank economist who never finished a PhD, he became, in Lawrence Summers' words, 'the world's preeminent financial journalist.' Once a forceful champion of globalization and free markets, he reversed course after the 2008 crash and now argues that capitalism must be fixed to save democracy itself.
Hazim Mohamad
Hazim Mohamad is the Co-Founder and CEO of CoffeeSpace, a San Francisco-based AI-powered cofounder matching platform that functions like Tinder for entrepreneurs. After spending four years managing a $40 billion portfolio at the World Bank, he traded financial risk for startup risk - building a mobile-first platform that has amassed 25,000+ users and 2M+ swipes by connecting founders, early hires, and collaborators across the global startup ecosystem. CoffeeSpace raised $1M in pre-seed funding and was featured at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024.
Asif Jafri
Asif Jafri is the Founder and CEO of Kistpay, a Shariah-compliant smartphone and laptop financing platform bridging the digital divide across Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Thailand, Africa, and the UAE. With 27+ years of combined corporate and entrepreneurial experience spanning banking, telecoms, and consumer goods, he has built Kistpay into a globally recognized venture - winning the IsDB Pitch Competition 2024, earning GSMA Top 10 finalist status, and speaking alongside world leaders at the World Bank Global Digital Summit. His mission: connect the next billion people to the internet through affordable device financing, with a particular focus on women's economic empowerment.