European Impact Summit 2020

As Executive Director of the World Food Programme, which earned the Nobel Peace Prize this year for its efforts to combat hunger and improve conditions for peace, David Beasley continues his life’s work bridging political, religious and ethnic boundaries to champion economic development and education. At WFP, Mr. Beasley is putting to use four decades of leadership and communications skills to mobilise more financial support and public awareness for the global fight against hunger. Under Mr Beasley’s leadership, WFP has mobilised the resources required to respond to an expanding caseload of people who require food assistance due to the impact of conflict, displacement, climate shocks and socio-economic downturns. In 2020, the agency aims to reach around 100 million people. Mr Beasley is also driving greater focus and attention to WFP’s work beyond emergency food assistance, highlighting the fact that longer term development can bring peace and stability to troubled regions.

Chopra is the founder of the Chopra Foundation, a nonprofit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day whole-health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Dr. Chopra is a clinical professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of more than ninety books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His ninetieth book and national bestseller, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential (Harmony Books), unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. Time magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.”

Hennessy is the James F. and Mary Lynn Gibbons Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering, and the Shriram Family Director of Stanford’s Knight-Hennessy Scholars, the largest fully endowed graduate-level scholarship program in the world. He is Chairman of Alphabet and serves as a trustee of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Formerly the tenth president of Stanford, he is also a computer scientist who co-founded MIPS Computer Systems and Atheros Communications. He and Dave Patterson were awarded the ACM A.M. Turing Prize for 2017.

Bobby Sager is an American photographer, writer, activist, and entrepreneur. He was a driving force behind the spectacular growth of Gordon Brothers Group, a global financial services business with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. One of Gordon Brothers’ acquisitions was Polaroid. Bobby served as the Chairman of the Board during its incredible resurgence.

Bobby was a founding Chairman for the YPO Peace Action Network and the moderator of the American Arab Action Forum. Bobby was also the first ever recipient of the YPO Global Humanitarian Award and YPO’s most prestigious Hickok Award for distinguished service.

In 2000, Bobby, along with his wife, Elaine, and kids, Tess and Shane, founded the Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow. They have established their own special brand of hands-on, eyeball-to-eyeball philanthropy by actually living in the communities they are trying to help. Initiatives include fostering entrepreneurship in Rwanda with microlending banks and a groundbreaking program that teaches Western science to Tibetan monks and nuns in India, Nepal and Bhutan. Bobby’s philanthropy served as the inspiration for the NBC 8-part primetime television drama The Philanthropist.

Bobby is the author of “Power of the Invisible Sun” (Chronicle Books, 2009), a book about the power of hope, thankfulness and his unique approach to making a difference. In his new book, “Invisible Sun” (Rizzoli, 2019) Bobby has refined his ideas and added new images from places that were okay a decade ago but now most certainly are not. But the underlying theme remains the same: the power of hope and gratitude as seen through the eyes of some of the world’s most vulnerable children.

Yuan founded Zoom in 2011 to deliver happiness and bring teams together in a frictionless video environment. Zoom’s video-first unified communications platform continues to dramatically transform the way leading global enterprises communicate. Under Yuan’s leadership, Zoom was one of the highest-performing tech IPOs of 2019. Prior to founding Zoom, Yuan was corporate vice president of engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco’s collaboration software development. Yuan was one of the founding engineers and vice president of engineering at Webex. Yuan has been named one of the Most Powerful People in Enterprise Tech by Business Insider. In 2018, he was named the #1 CEO of a large U.S. company by Glassdoor and EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Northern California (software category). In 2019, he was added to the Bloomberg 50 as a leader who changed the game in global business.