Our BOLD Judges
Discover our BOLD jury board! Market leaders, innovators and change-makers around the 4 corners of the globe joined us in the judging process of the boldest projects.
MAURIZIO ROSSI
Chairperson of BOLD Awards, curiosity driven dreamer and always a keen observer, Maurizio father of four likes to discover and understand differences of people’s lifestyles and their cultures. He’s fascinated how technologies
impact our day life and what about their influence in the society and cultures, thanks to his dynamic
personality he has developed an important network of international connections.
CHAIRPERSON
EPI LUDVIK
Epi is the Founder & CEO of Crowdsourcing Week. In 2008, he created Ludvik + Partners – one of New York’s hottest boutique virtual ad agencies built on a 100% crowdsourcing model. Epi Ludvik is one of the pioneers in the crowdsourcing ad space, an industry expert and thought leader in entertainment advertising – including public relations, event production, experiential marketing, consumer advertising and digital marketing.
CO-CHAIRPERSON
MOOJAN ASGHARI
Born in Iran and based in Paris, Moojan is a passionate entrepreneur and an advocate for women’s rights and is a true believer in entrepreneurs. She has started a few companies and has ran several startup programs in various industries , from Iot to AI and in different places from France, to the US, and Taiwan. She is the co-founder of Women in AI, which is a global non profit organisation for the mission to close the gender gap in AI.
Artificial Intelligence
CHRISTIAN COTICHINI
With over 20 years of experience leading startup and high growth technology companies, Christian Cotichini is an active angel investor and mentor to startup entrepreneurs.
In 2013, Christian joined HeroX as co-founder and CEO. He is also a partner in TenX Ventures, focused on angel/seed financing, hands-on entrepreneurship, mentoring, M&A, and anti-consulting to startups and emerging disruptive companies.
Crowdsourcing
JOSE LUIS CORDEIRO
José Luis is a world citizen in our small planet in a big unknown universe. He was born in Latin America, from European parents, was educated in Europe and North America, and has worked extensively in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. He has studied, visited and worked in over 130 countries in 5 continents.
ROBOTICS
MARC KUCHNER
Astrophysicist Marc Kuchner is known for work on images and imaging of disks and exoplanets. Together with Wesley Traub, he invented the band-limited coronagraph, a design to be used on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). He is also known for his novel supercomputer models of planet-disk interactions and for developing the ideas of ocean planets, Carbon planets, and Helium planets. Kuchner currently serves as the principal investigator of the popular citizen science website, DiskDetective.org.
SPACE FRONTIER
LAURA CHITE
Laura has over 20 years of working experience in the IT industry ranging from Human Resource to Public Relations, Events Management to Sales and Marketing. She’s a proven asset, more especially in this era of digital transformation that is now everywhere on the agendas of corporate boards that have risen to the top of CEOs’ strategic plans.
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FinTech
ADRIAN STAN
Adrian Stan has a background in quantum physics, astrophysics, and nonlinear dynamics and obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics and Natural Sciences from University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He joined Philip Morris International R&D as a Senior Scientist in Systems Toxicology in 2019. Right now he is involved in the transparency and verification aspects of R&D (the intervals.science platform), is responsible for the crowdsourcing activities launched through the sbv IMPROVER platform.
SCIENCE
ANA XAVIER
Ana Xavier has more than 15 years’ experience in venture capital as portfolio manager and in analysing
investment opportunities. Prior to joining Portugal Ventures, Ana held the position of financial manager
at several SMEs in the textile and clothing sector. Ana is currently part of Portugal Ventures’
Engineering & Manufacturing Division, and focuses mainly of deal flow generation of investment
opportunities infor areas such as agri-tech, clean-tech, smart manufacturing and smart materials. She
represents Portugal Ventures on the Board of several portfolio companies.
MARCO SAVINI
Marco Savini (Rome, 1974) is the founder and CEO of BigRock. With a past spent as Military Pilot, Savini is one of the Computer Graphics pioneers in Italy. Many books on Maya Software have his name in the credits and in the earliest 2000 he collaborated with prestigious studios making visual effects for videoclips and advertising. After a short experience for tutoring as Adobe Guru, Savini founded his first school and CG production, Dark Side Academy in Verona, from which he settled in 2005 to raise BigRock: the final expression of his vision about a futuristic school, with a dreaming soul and American mindset.
AR/VR
RICARDO MARVĀO
Co-founder and Board Member of Beta-i, a portuguese non-profit association that since 2010 has focused its energies on fostering and elaborating entrepreneurial ecosystems, increasing innovation and entrepreneurship in Portugal. Lisbon Challenge Coordinator, international startup acceleration program for growth & international stage tech startups. Co-founder & CEO of Evolve Space Solutions (Germany and Portugal) since 2004, developing software products for the Aerospace Industry, with clients like ESA, Thales, Astrium, Inmarsat, Eumetsat, Airbus, Embraer (acquired by Novabase (NBA) in 2011, Euronext company since 2000, Portugal’s Nr.1 IT company specialized in the Telecommunications sector, with over 2000 employees, offices in Portugal, Spain, Germany, the Middle East, Mozambique Angola, South Africa and Ghana).
OPEN INNOVATION
ROB ISRACH
As CMO for Tipalti, Rob Israch brings over 15 years of expertise to the company, and a modern approach to running marketing, with a heavy orientation around data analytics, technology, and content marketing. Prior to Tipalti, Rob served as VP Global Marketing Programs at NetSuite where he led global branding, international marketing, and demand generation, helping guide the company through 10X+ revenue growth, from a private company through IPO to cloud market leader. Rob also has held management positions at Intuit and GE.
MArketplaces
MELISSA CHAN
Melissa Chan is the APAC Managing Director of McCann Worldgroup’s Production division –
CRAFT Worldwide
Equipped with over 15 years of industry experience, Melissa has spent the last 10 years in Production-led agencies in the region. She has worked with leading brands to introduce new ways of
work, develop effective campaigns and deliver efficient content. Her experience over a diverse portfolio of clients enables her to share hands-on knowledge and solutions from different sectors and
channels.
Melissa is a Marketing & Management Graduate and Mass Communications Diploma Holder