Democratising Transformation – FINANCING INFRASTRUCTURE TRANSITIONS

Bernadette Zimmermann is the Content Manager of the Alpbach Seminars at the European Forum Alpbach. She works with a wide range of people from various (scientific) fields and organisations to organise different interactive seminars. In addition to university degrees in theatre, film and media studies, as well as business law, she has attended training courses in the systemic field.

Indy Johar is an architect, co-founder of 00 (project00.cc) and most recently Dark Matter, Studio Master at AA.

Indy, on behalf of 00, has co-founded multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham, along with working with large global multinationals & institutions to support their transition to a positive Systems Economy. He has also co-led research projects such as The Compendium for the Civic Economy, whilst supporting several 00 explorations/experiments including the wikihouse.cc, opendesk.cc. Indy is a non executive director of WikiHouse Foundation & RIBA Trustee and Advisor to Mayor of London on Good Growth.

Most recently he has founded Dark Matter – a field laboratory focused on radically redesigning the bureaucratic & institutional infrastructure of our cities, regions and towns for a more democratic, distributed great transition.

Dark Matter work with institutions around the world, from UNDP (Global), McConnell (Canada), TFL, GLA (London) to Bloxhub (Copenhagen)

He has taught, lecturedat various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; Architectural Association, University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School.

Hoa-Binh Adjemian is the Deputy Head of the Thematic Unit (an Economy that works for people, green, digital and connected) that coordinates policies and programmes in the sector of economy, education and infrastructure. He was previously the Head of Cooperation for the EU Delegation to Armenia, and Head of Infrastructure Section in Benin. Binh also has an extensive experience in public private partnerships in Asia. He has graduated from Harvard Kennedy School of Government, l’Ecole Polythechnique and l’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées. He is married with three kids.

Winfried Kneip is head of the program Love Politics in Germany. Besides, he works as a consultant and project developer in the fields of democracy, culture and education since the beginning of 2021. He is board member of the PWC Foundation and responsible for the topics of democracy and youth on the board of the European Forum Alpbach.

Elahe is a designer at the EU Policy lab where she helps scientists and policy makers tackle complex systemic issues with design tools and methods. Her work spans from problem framing and landscape mapping to designing processes and inventing new tools for creative collaboration and collective sense making.

Prior to joining the EU commission Elahe was the creative lead at Almacube, the Open Innovation centre of the University of Bologna where she designed and led international programs to bring together the academia and the industry in multidisciplinary and cross generational teams to collaborate and develop new solutions for the most pressing societal challenges. She was also design educator and design thinking coach for SUGAR global Network and Design Factory Global Network and led a challenge based innovation program in collaboration with CERN IdeaSquare for two years.

Before moving to Bologna Elahe worked in Milan as a service designer and digital strategists for global brands in various sectors from pharma to food, automotive and entertainment. Her interest is in Design in all its forms and functions. She is passionate about foresight and future thinking and how design as a visual, tangible, optimistic and proactive practice can give form to the future.

Maciek Jastrzebiec-Pyszynski works in the EU Policy Lab within the Joint Research Centre (European Commission). His background is in political science (Ph.D) and economics. In 2019 he innocently landed in the world of design and foresight. Since then Maciek has undertaken various projects like landing the Doughnut approach within the Commission, supporting departments in using visual tools or applying distributed ethnographic approach to sense making.

He had previously worked in various Commission departments including on public opinion surveys (Eurobarometer), media analysis and development aid. He tested gamification while working for the Greens in the European Parliament.

His main interest is Europe and its global role in shaping the socio-economic transition to sustainability. His recent research focused on whether the management of raw materials used in green transformation could be a case for global commons, inspired by the European integration experience.