Speaker

• 
  Mallence Bart-Williams
  

  Mallence Bart-Williams

  Mallence Bart-Williams was born in Cologne, Germany to a Sierra Leonean writer and filmmaker and a German fashion designer. She pursued her studies in economics and finance in Paris, Singapore, and Great Britain. Today she lives across the globe, produces an all-natural cosmetics line in Hong Kong, and is the founder and creative director of the Freetown-based creative collective FOLORUNSHO, a ‘SHARITY’ that she initiated with street kids in Sierra Leone.

  Due to her German-Sierra Leonean roots she perceives herself as a product of and bridge connecting two vastly different worlds. Her diverse background enables her to see creative solutions to common problems. Within their three years of operation, her collective has taken homeless children off the streets and into school, developed a sneaker and clothing collection, published a book and documentary of their story, and has held fine art exhibitions. Through her work with FOLORUNSHO she connects cultural contrast, enabling people to share ideas, take action, and get results.

   

• 
  David Hermlin
  

  David Hermlin

  David Hermlin was born on 21st August 2000 in Berlin Germany. At the age of three years, David began developing interest in playing the drums, so he began teaching himself how to play the drums going around drumming everywhere and on anything typically as a three year old would do. David kept growing day by day in his talent being natured by his mother and father and performing to multitudes of people both in Germany and other countries including Italy, Switzerland and the USA.

  As the years passed by, David began developing interest in dance. At the age of nine years, he caught the eye of the makers of Friedrichstadtpalast – Berlin. Due to his exceptional performance, David found himself the soloist of all the performances which included singing, dancing and acting. He still does this to date.

  Having a Kenyan mother, Joyce Hermlin, David has been spending much of his time in Kenya – owing to the fact that they own a home in the Thumaita village of Kirinyaga District that is on the slopes of Mt. Kenya. In time he grew interest in singing something about his maternal homeland. "Perfect Paradise" is the first song that he has worked on with Dr. Eddie, a well-knwon producer and song writer. It is about the way he would love to see the country be like in contrary to what he sees and that is people living in poverty and only a few of them living in paradise which makes it an imperfect paradise.

  David is dreaming of becoming an international performer and is working hard to make his dream come true.

  Facebook: David Hermlin | Website: www.davidhermlin.com

• 
  Ola Orekunrin
  

  Ola Orekunrin

  Dr Ola Orekunrin is the Managing Director of Flying Doctors Nigeria Ltd, West Africa’s first Air Ambulance Service. She graduated from the University Of York, one of the youngest doctor’s in the UK and has worked in the NHS for nearly ten years . She has a specialist interest in trauma and pre-hospital care, buttressed by her private work at motor-racing circuits across the country. She has published her own book along with several articles in high-profile medical journals and has sat on various influential boards at the British Medical Association. In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious MEXT Japanese Government Scholarship and produced ground-breaking research in the field of regenerative medicine through her work with induced pluripotent stem cells. She also is a member of the American Academy of Aesthetic Surgeons and holds their board certification.

  Twitter: @NaijaFlyingDr | Website: www.flyingdoctorsnigeria.com

   

• 
  Taiye Selasi
  

  Taiye Selasi

  Taiye Selasi is a writer and photographer of Nigerian and Ghanaian descent, born in London and raised in Boston, now living in Rome and Berlin. In 2005 she published the much-discussed essay „Bye-Bye, Babar (Or: What Is an Afropolitan?),“ offering an alternative vision of African identity for a transnational generation. Her first novel "Ghana Must Go" was published in 2013 and was elected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. It has been sold in 22 countries as of 2014.

  Twitter: @taiyeselasi

• 
  Gavin Yamey
  

  Gavin Yamey

  Gavin Yamey is a physician and medical journal editor with training in public health who leads the Evidence to Policy initiative (E2Pi) in the Global Health Group at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is also an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the UCSF School of Medicine.  His policy research focuses on achieving large-scale change in global health, particularly related to infectious diseases of poverty and to reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health. He teaches masters courses in global health policy at UCSF and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr Yamey has been an External Advisor to the World Health Organization and to TDR, the Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. He is a member of the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health, chaired by Lawrence Summers and co-chaired by Dean Jamison, which recently published the Global Health 2035 report, and he chairs  the Economics and Finance Working Group of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery.

  Twitter: @GYameynbsp] | Website: www.globalhealth.duke.edu