PUBLIQ Foundation

Decentralization evangelist and blockchain pioneer. Over 18 years experience in executive positions in media communications and software development. Founder and member of the board of several companies operating across EU and Asia.

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Armenia, Publisher of Forbes Georgia, contributor to Forbes Kazakhstan, and Publisher of Cosmopolitan Armenia. Founder and investor in several ICT/hi-tech startups, consulting, publishing and media communication companies operating across CIS and North America. Worked at and partnered with Andersen Russia and CIS. Initiator and the first CEO of the Armenian Development Agency. Harvard graduate, Co-Chair of International Programming and Development of Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, representing 7000 members globally.

Entrepreneur and investor, who has founded over a dozen successful companies in Advertising, Media and Telecom operating in several countries. He has over 15 years of experience in digital media and publishing, founded companies that were the regional lead partners of Mail.ru, Google, Zed as well as were licensees of global publishing houses, including Forbes Media, Hearst Communications, Rodale, Sanoma, Time Out and others. Co-founder of the Blockchain R&D Hub, member of YPO.

Emma is a management consulting executive, author, speaker, entrepreneur, philanthropist, coach and professor. Emma brings more than 20 years of experience in leadership across business strategy, IT Architecture & Transformation, M&A, governance and compliance credentialed by global professional services and technology companies EY (Ernst & Young) , Accenture. Emma has first-hand experience in business transformation and technology solutions implementation for Fortune 500 companies. She is currently driving emerging technologies and innovation by accelerating startups and entrepreneurs go to market strategies and execution. Emma is the CEO and Co-Founder for Orion Worldwide Innovations, LLC offering IP Management & Acquisition solutions to the innovators and investors market globally. Emma operates her multimedia company Open Mind Productions, LLC. She is an adjunct professor at New York University and is also a mentor at the Singularity University.

Arman Jilavian leads Aurora Humanitarian Initiative as CEO. He is a member of the Board of Directors at RVVZ Foundation, Member of the Board of Trustees of UWC Dilijan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of MEDIACRAT. In 2011, he was named the Media Manager of Russia in the Printed Media / Magazines category. Arman Jilavian graduated from the Lomonosov Moscow State Universtiy with a PhD in philology. He has held various positions in Russia’s leading media groups (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Eurasian Media Group) and managed the Time Inc.’s business in Russia (FORTUNE and Popular Science magazines).

Dr Christian de Vartavan, fellow of both the Linnean Society and the Royal Society of Arts (UK), is a scholar with 40 scientific discoveries, published in 10 books and recorded in the university text books of five scientific disciplines or encyclopediae. Hall of fame of Egyptology for his study of the Tutankhamun plant remains and open archive in Oxford University in his lifetime. Creator of what many regard as the best classification of sciences of all time. Rare parallel career in communication, vice-president of his family technology company (cement) and now Global Ambassador of PUBLIQ, a non profit distributed blockchain media foundation. Expert at APPG-Blockchain group (House of Lords & House of Commons) of the UK parliament since 2018.

Adam is an acclaimed Silicon Valley executive and investor in several next-generation ventures and technologies such as chip design (NASDAQ (VIRL.)), organic thin-films development (acquired by AIXTRON SE (FSE: AIX; NASDAQ: AIXG)), memory IP solutions (acquired by CISCO), next-generation neural interface technology (Paradromics, state backed venture that he currently manages as the Chairman). Adam has served on numerous boards in the EDA Industry (Sequence Design) and Application SW (IconApps) companies. Currently he serves on the board of Silicon Cloud International. He has numerous inventions and 15 patents granted in the area of Micro-chip design and Memory. Moreover, he is the author and co-author of over 15 technical publications in leading trade journals. Adam holds a BA in Physics from UC Berkeley, a MS in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University, and an Executive MBA from Stanford University.

Edwin Tham is a corporate lawyer based in Moscow with over 20 years’ experience advising on mergers and acquisitions, and finance transactions, in the Russian and CIS market. He was managing partner of the Moscow office of Allen & Overy from 2011 until 2014. He is currently senior counsel at Danilov & Konradi. He has been ranked as a leading corporate and M&A lawyer in Russia by publications such as The Legal 500, Chambers Global, Chambers Europe and Kommersant. Edwin has advised on deals in the oil and gas, financial and private equity sectors. He is qualified as an English solicitor, Singaporean advocate and solicitor, and New York attorney.

Tiffany Obser has worked on building entrepreneurship ecosystems, monitored projects in technology and design throughout the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Americas. Has developed urban innovation strategies for a tabula rasa city in Saudi Arabia, worked with tech startups and acquired partnerships across two dozen countries. Having worked in urban design, research, and development capacities at OMA, Henning Larsen, and Rotor, Tiffany focused on implications of new technologies and big data in a quickly urbanizing world and became a Regional Manager with Seedstars, mentoring over 200 startups and consulting a variety of governments and institutions in MENA and CEE.

Journalist, enterprising and curious of everything. Organizer of the Blockchain Meetup and Media and Communication and author of the chapter on blockchain and journalism in the book "Blockchain: The Industrial Revolution of the Internet", the first volume written in Spanish dedicated to this technology. She is co-founder of the Spanish Blockchain Observatory, the site to promote the creation of collaboration networks for the development of this technology and its application in our society, and the platform OléChain, correspondent of CriptoNoticias in Spain and communication consultant blockchain. She has developed her professional career, among other media, in the magazine Panorama, the newspaper ABC and Telemadrid, public television in Madrid, where she was president. She has also been a professor at the Universidad Carlos III Journalism School in Madrid.

As a consultant and advisor to internationally-focused think tanks and organizations, she writes proposals, concept papers, policy reports, articles, and edits news. Previously, she taught graduate courses in International Relations courses at a diplomacy school in Geneva and, at the World Economic Forum (WEF), lead the global governance agenda for Davos and related outreach to academics, and also integrated WEF's business, disaster risk reduction and climate change agendas. Her early career experience includes directing an international NGO dedicated to making international development and IFIs more environment- and gender-friendly, and working with legislators around the world to advance disarmament at the UN in New York and Geneva. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in the Globalist, Financial Mail, Huffington Post and Harvard Program on Negotiation, among other publications, and she is working on her second novel. She holds an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School, an MA in International Relations (IR) from San Francisco State, and has completed doctoral level training in IR.

Kohei is a social media business operational expert. He worked as sales at Rakuten, the number one Japanese e-commerce giant. As country manager of S&W Media group, he managed advanced targeting and optimization techniques for local ad-network enterprises. Kohei also established his own company, Mangaconnect, which represents a business alliance and development firm building relationships between Japanese companies and foreign markets. He is a blockchain enthusiast and organises events in Japan with the purpose of democratizing the blockchain technology.

Andrew McGregor has an eclectic background in the not-for-profit and social enterprise worlds drawing from his expertise as a journalist, frequent TEDx speaker, filmmaker, inventor, writer, chessboxing champion, Highland games athlete, and entrepreneur. He has founded or co-founded several not-for-profits and social enterprise companies and has managed teams doing humanitarian programs in challenging places such as Mogadishu and Eastern DR Congo. He is the Curator of MindshareLA and has a master’s degree from the University of Southern California.

Matthias is a degreed-engineer of the polytechnic university in Munich. He has been working for IT companies in the publishing industry for 2 decades. During the print to a web conversion he became an OpenSource evangelist, with focus on the Drupal CMS. He was in the organizing team of the biggest European Drupal event in 2018 for its publishing + media track. He believes that Publishers need to join forces and share technology in collaborative environments to not let players like Google, Facebook and Twitter shape the publishing landscape.

Fábio Silva is the CEO of LatoEX the first Latin America asset tokenization and trading platform. He was the Co-Founder of StartMeUp Crowdfunding and Partner of SuperJobs Ventures. He made investments in Silicon Valley and Brazil (ROOT, Mirador and House of All) acting as a Board Member in the 3 companies. Specialist in: Startups, Fundraising, Blockchain, Strategy, Finance, Marketing and Human Resources. With over 11 years of experience in companies such as Syngenta, Philips and Whirlpool, he has teamed up with strategic projects for Latin America, US, Italy and China. Fábio holds a degree in business administration from FAAP and a postgraduate degree in Strategic Formulation and Management Processes from FGV. In 2016 he was elected by the French portal Techfoliance as one of the 30 influencers of the Fintech market in Brazil.

Takafumi Horie a.k.a. Horiemon is one of the most popular Japanese businessmen and pioneer of Japanese Internet entrepreneurship.