Who we are

The Young Global Leaders ® Community is an accelerator for a dynamic community of exceptional people with the vision, courage, and influence to drive positive change in the world.

Our growing membership of more than 1,400 members and alumni of 120 nationalities includes civic and business innovators, entrepreneurs, technology pioneers, educators, activists, artists, journalists, and more.

Aligned with the World Economic Forum’s mission, we seek to drive public-private co-operation in the global public interest. We are united by the belief that today’s pressing problems present an opportunity to build a better future across sectors and boundaries.

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Meet our members

Tanvi Ratna

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Policy 4.0. Research Foundation, India

Tanvi Ratna is a policy advisor specialising in digital currencies and emerging technologies. She has worked for leading global decision-makers and several ministries and state governments, handling policy design, execution, and liaison in live, complex policy environments. Her analysis has been featured in leading media networks such as CNBC, BBC, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, and Economic Times. She holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from Georgia Tech and a Master's in Public Policy from Georgetown University and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Dana Juffali

Member of the Board, E.A. Juffali and Brothers, Saudi Arabia

Dana Juffali is currently a Board Member at E.A. Juffali & Brothers, and Director of Business Development at Khaled Juffali Company. In addition, Dana is a Board Member of a number of philanthropic institutions, including the The Shefa Fund, and The Help Center. She previously held managerial positions at Siemens AG in Germany and Saudi Arabia in Human Resources and Supply Chain Management.

Dana holds a bachelor's degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California, and a master’s degree in business administration from Steinbeis-Hochschule-Berlin. She is fluent in English, Arabic, German, and French.

Nirvana Chaudhary

Managing Director, Chaudhary Group, Nepal

Nirvana Chaudhary, a versatile entrepreneur and philanthropist, stands as the Managing Director of CG Corp
Global, a multinational conglomerate valued at over $3 billion, with 136 companies and 76 brands in 30
countries. His entrepreneurial journey started at 19 with the founding of CG Finco.
A multifaceted personality, Nirvana is also a musician, a seasoned adventurer who has scaled Kilimanjaro and
trekked to Everest Base Camp, and a former member of Nepal's National Squash team. His engagement in
thought leadership is reflected through his podcast “Making It Bigger” and articles in notable business
magazines, coupled with frequent appearances at global leadership events.
As an author, Nirvana has penned “Araaya’s Fables,” a children's book focusing on moral values, and "Beyond
Wonder Woman," a work celebrating women's successes and advocating gender equality. In philanthropy, he
serves as the Vice Chair of the Chaudhary Foundation, contributing to disaster relief, education, and
healthcare, especially for children. His efforts have been recognized with prestigious awards like the YPO's
SEN Sustainability Award for Philanthropy and the President's Award for Social Contribution from Lions
Club International.
In the banking industry, Nirvana is the Vice Chair of Nabil Bank, Nepal, and Chairman of Union Bank, Sri
Lanka. His global business influence extends as Chairman of the ASSOCHAM Nepal Chapter, Vice
President of the Confederation of Nepalese Industries, and a member of various UN business advisory
groups. An alumnus of the Harvard Kennedy School's Global Leadership Program, Nirvana has been
honored as one of Tatler's New Faces of Asia, Asia's most influential, and a Young Global Leader by the
World Economic Forum.
Nirvana's personal life is enriched by his wife Ashrayata and their two children, Araaya and Arhaan.

Kiah Williams

Co-Founder and Managing Director, Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine - SIRUM, USA

Kiah Williams is Co-Founder and Managing Director of SIRUM, a non-profit social enterprise that drives the future of healthcare by connecting people with surplus medications. Prior to SIRUM, Williams helped create the Alliance Healthcare Initiative, a public-private partnership spearheaded by the American Heart Association and Clinton Foundation that engaged Fortune 500 companies to expand healthcare benefits for 2 million children. Her work at SIRUM has been recognized by Forbes 30-Under-30 and Marie Claire's America's 50 Most Influential Women. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University.

Kaitlyn Sadtler

Investigator; Chief of Section, Immunoengineering, National Institutes of Health, USA

Kaitlyn Sadtler is a scientist and Chief of the Section on Immuno-Engineering at the National Institutes of Health. She began her lab at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Chemical Engineering working on the molecular mechanisms of immune activation in the foreign body response with Dr Robert Langer (founder of Moderna). There, she was awarded a competitive NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship for her work on immunology and tissue engineering. She completed her PhD at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she showed a critical role for Th2-T cells in biomaterial-mediated muscle regeneration. Her research has been published in journals such as Science, Nature Methods, Nature Communications and Science Translational Medicine. She was recognized as a 2018 TED Fellow and delivered a TED talk that was listed as one of the top-viewed talks of 2018. Sadtler was selected for the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 List in Science and received the 2021 Outstanding Recent Graduate Award from Johns Hopkins University. Since starting her laboratory at the NIH, she has lent her lab's expertise to the fight against COVID-19, launching the NIH Serologic Survey, detecting 16.8 million undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infections in the US via remote blood sampling and antibody testing. This work continues as the team works to map the spread of the pandemic in the US from 2020 through 2021.

Smriti Kirubanandan

Growth and Strategic Partnership Executive, HLTH Forward, USA

Smriti has a strong background in robotics and public health and currently serves as a Director, Healthcare at TATA Consultancy Services, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, Intelligent automation, digital analytics, and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable. She is also the Head of Strategic Marketing for Healthcare and Lifesciences, North America, where she drives brand development, thought leadership, and market research. Smriti serves on the Board of the World Food Bank and as a Vice Chair for the American College of Healthcare Executives, Southern California.

An empathetic and innovative strategic policy advisor has helped organizations globally to build the capacity to empower people to engage in wellness programs and is responsible for educating small farmers in Africa to lift them out of poverty to improve food & nutrition insecurity, impacting 2 million people per year. In 2022, Smriti was appointed to serve the Los Angeles County food equity round table as a Nutrition & Policy Advisor to design and strategize programs to address food insecurity by educating and improving access and affordability to nutritious food. Smriti is also the founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- a space that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists such as Bryan Adams,Dr. Joneigh Khaldun of CVS Health, and many others to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward.

Smriti has shared her thought leadership by speaking at The Adama Carolla show, SXSW, HLTH, and other national forums. She is a health news contributor at Medcity News and is featured on Washington Post, ABC News, Huffington Post, Times of India, The Hindu, VegNews, Medium, and Yahoo News.

Smriti holds her Bachelor of Science in Robotics, Master in Engineering Management from the University of Southern California, and Masters in Public Health from the University of California,Los Angeles, Certified Raw Vegan Chef and Nutritionist, and is currently in Fellowship with the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Anne-Laure de Chammard

Member of the Group Executive Board and Executive Vice-President, Siemens Energy, Germany

Anne-Laure de Chammard is a member of the Group Executive Board of Siemens Energy. As Group EVP, she heads one of the Group's 4 global divisions, the "Transformation of Industry" global business area, supporting industries throughout their energy transition. She is also responsible transversally for the Asia Pacific and China Regions.

Siemens Energy employs around 91,000 people worldwide in more than 90 countries and generates sales of around €29 billion. The Group is listed on the DAX40 and is one of the world's leading energy technology companies and a global market leader in renewable energy. An estimated one-sixth of the world's electricity is generated using Siemens Energy technologies.

Before joining Siemens Energy, Anne-Laure de Chammard was CEO of ENGIE Energy Solutions International (€4 billion turnover, 20,000 employees, in over 20 countries, in Europe, Americas, Middle East, and Asia Pacific), in charge of decarbonization of industries and territories through energy efficiency services and low-carbon energy production.

Anne-Laure started her career in the USA, as a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
She then joined the French Ministry of Energy and Environment in 2010, where she was leading major infrastructure public private partnership projects (motorways, high-speed railways, hydroelectric dams, offshore wind farms, etc.).
In 2014, she joined Bureau Veritas Group, global leader in conformity services for Industry, Infrastructure and Commodities, as Regional Managing Director, before being promoted President and CEO of Bureau Veritas Construction.
She joined ENGIE in 2019 as Group Chief Strategy, Research & Technology and Innovation Officer to head the group’s strategy in its zero-carbon transition. She was appointed CEO of ENGIE Energy Solutions International in 2021.

Member of the French “Corps des Ponts”, Anne-Laure de Chammard holds Master's degrees of Science and Engineering from Ecole Polytechnique (X) and Ecole Nationale des Ponts & Chaussées, and a Master's degree in Public Policy from Harvard University (Kennedy School).

Anne-Laure sits in several supervisory boards in France and abroad. She was ranked 2nd top French economic leader under 40 (Figaro-Choiseul 100).

Abdigani Diriye

Head, Machine Learning, Atacana Group Inc, USA

Dr. Abdigani Diriye is a technology leader and entrepreneur who is having an impact in the AI and Fintech fields. Dr. Abdigani is Head of Machine Learning at Atacana Group Inc. and has held positions in industry and academia at Amazon, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, and Carnegie Mellon University where he led the development and deployment of machine learning-based systems and voice technologies to millions of people in the Middle East and Africa. Dr. Abdigani has commercialized various technologies and published over 50 papers and patents and holds a Ph.D. in computer science from University College London and an Executive MBA from INSEAD.

In acknowledgement to his contribution to innovation, Dr. Abdigani is a recipient of a TED Fellowship, Next Einstein Forum Fellowship, and NSF Fellowship and has been selected by MIT Technology Review, Quartz, and Institut Choiseul as one of the leading innovators and global leaders. Dr. Abdigani contributes to the research community and sits on the program committee of several Special Interest Groups and conferences including SIGIR, CHIIR, RecSys, and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

Sophia Hamblin Wang

Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, MCi Carbon, Australia

Sophia Hamblin Wang is Co-Founder and COO of MCi Carbon, a technology platform that transforms CO2 into building materials and products for advanced manufacturing. MCi Carbon recently announced more than US$10M investment from RHI Magnesita, Mizuho Bank and Itochu Corporation, alongside a $14.6M Australian Government Grant to build a Demonstration Plant. Currently in construction, the 'Myrtle' MCi Carbon Plant will lock away more than 1,000t of CO2 p/a into low carbon embodied materials.

Sophia is one of few female executives in the emerging carbon capture and utilization (CCU) industry and was recently awarded Best Clean Energy Startup at the NZTC COP26 Pitch Battle in Glasgow 2021. She was awarded The Australian National University Young Alumna of the Year 2023.

Ms Hamblin Wang is also a Co-Founding Director of the advocacy group CO2 Value Australia. A strong circular economy and diversity advocate, Hamblin Wang has been featured at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020, World Economic Forum Pioneers of Change Summit 2020 and UN Youth Climate Summit, TEDx, The New York Times and TIME Magazine.