ICC Mayors Summit

Christophe Rouillon is mayor of Coulaines in France, second Vice-President of Le Mans Métropole with responsibility for budget and European funds, Vice-President of the Association of French Mayors and has been a member of the European Committee of the Regions since 2005. In October 2019 he became president of its Socialists Group. 

He studied Public Law and Political Science at the Universities of Sorbonne and Paris Assas and holds a degree in Public Law from the University of Maine Le Mans. He also completed the Aspen programme for young politicians and postgraduate studies in European studies at the National School of Administration (ENA).  

At the age of 25, he was appointed as a consultant to the Cabinet of Justice Minister. In 2001, at the age of 34, he was elected mayor of Coulaines, and was reconfirmed in his position in the 2004, 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2020 local elections. As member of the Committee, he has been rapporteur on key dossiers, including on a "Recovery Plan for Europe in response to the COVID-19". 

Entrepreneurship is the common thread in all activities of Marja Ruigrok. Ruigrok was an entrepreneur for over 25 years and a City of Amsterdam Vice Mayor for eight years. Since January 2019, Ruigrok is Vice Mayor for Economy & Innovation, Traffic & Transport, and Culture at the municipality of Haarlemmermeer. Haarlemmermeer is one of 32 municipalities in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region and home to 150.000 inhabitants and the Schiphol international airport.  

Ruigrok is a natural connector and entrepreneurial politician who fosters collaboration between individuals and organizations. She continues to mentor and support entrepreneurs and start-ups and serves on numerous advisory boards in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region. Her motto: "If you can't divide, you can't multiply." 

Laia Bonet is the Deputy Mayor of Barcelona for the Agenda 2030, the Digital Transition, Sports, Territorial and Metropolitan Coordination, and International Relations. A lawyer by training she is a professor of Administrative Law (Pompeu Fabra University) and Communications Law (Blanquerna- Ramon Llull University). 

Prior to her current role as Deputy Mayor of Barcelona, she was Secretary of the Government of Catalonia (2007-2010), and a member of the Parliament of Catalonia (2010-2012), where she was deputy spokesperson for the Socialist Parliamentary Group.

Aino-Maija Luukkonen has been the Mayor of the City of Pori since 2004. She studied Social Sciences, Economics and Public Health and holds a licentiate’s degree in Social Sciences at Åbo Akademi University. Before her role as Mayor of Pori, she was Director of Social and Health Services in City of Lohja and Financial Manager in Pori Health Authority.  
 
During her tenure the Pori region has seen a rapid transformation in industry and manufacturing. While many old chimneys have fallen down, the region and its companies have been able to build up a new booming automation industry and robotics cluster. Accelerating digital transformation, developing education, and finding new ways to help the region’s economy flourish, are topics very close to her heart.  

Mohamed Ridouani is Mayor in the city of Leuven since January 2019 and was previously responsible for Education, Sustainability, Economy and Urban Development. He stands for positive change and aims to turn Leuven into one of the most caring, green and prosperous cities in Europe, in cooperation

with the citizens, knowledge institutions, companies and organisations. He’s the inspirer of Leuven 2030, in which more than 500 companies, organizations and citizens are united to turn Leuven into a sustainable and CO2-neutral city. He also initiated Leuven MindGate, an economic platform with 400 members that will boost Leuven as the world’s hotspot for health, technology and creativity. For this groundbreaking governance model based on innovation and inclusion, Leuven has recently been named European Capital of Innovation by the European Commission.

Vojko Obersnel became the Mayor of the City of Rijeka on March 2, 2000, and has been elected Mayor of Rijeka for five terms in a row, in 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013 and 2017. In 2017, he regained the trust of the citizens of Rijeka and is currently holding his sixth term as Mayor of Rijeka. Obersnel has been a member of the Social Democratic party since 1990, including membership in the Parliamentary Committee for Local and Regional Self-Government for several terms.

Obersnel's current term is marked by a successful use of funds from the European Union for financing large development projects in Rijeka, but also for a number of smaller projects. All of Obersnel’s terms are marked by a strong social agenda that has evolved and expanded over the years. Today, Rijeka is recording positive results in all areas, both in the economic indicators of the activities of the economic and entrepreneurial sector, as well as in tourism, the development of the University, and professional, scientific and service activities. It has become a successful, modern European city whose openness is the best guarantee of future development.

In the past 17 years, Obersnel has been actively involved in a number of organizations and associations dealing with the development of local self-government, decentralization and positioning cities as the drivers of development for entire regions. Also, Mayor Obersnel is one of the Vice-Chairs of the EU Committee of the Regions and a member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Change and Energy and the Committee on Territorial Cohesion Policy and the EU Budget. Vojko Obersnel graduated with a postgraduate study of natural sciences at the Faculty of Science in Zagreb, gaining a Master's degree in natural sciences, and then a postgraduate study of medical genetics at the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb.

Michael Koupkas is the Deputy Mayor for economics in the City of Thessaloniki, the Chief Resilient Officer and the President of the tax officers of Thessaloniki, Kilkis and Chalkidiki. He has served as an auditor in the Economic Crimes Enforcement Agency (2005-2012) while he has been the Head of the Department “Portfolio Management Deadline Customer Requirements” in COSMOTE & Group of Piraeus Bank Mellon Collection Services SA. 

Michael Koupkas holds a Ba in Business Administration from the University of Macedonia, an Msc in Tourism Management from the Hellenic Open University and an MBA from the Hellenic Open University. He fluently speaks German and English and he has a robust record in publications in the Tax Review and Labour Law Bulletin Journals.

Tjaša Ficko is a Deputy Mayor of Ljubljana since 2010 and a city councillor on the Zoran Janković List. Her fields of work are culture, tourism, international relations, corporate communication, economics and development projects. She is a member of the Commission for Mandate Questions, Elections and Appointments and the Commission for International Relations. 

Among her responsibilities is strengthening international recognisability and the reputation of the city brand. She promotes the city vision, activities and achievements at many events at home and abroad, and shares good practices in numerous renowned international conferences. In 2013 she was in charge of the City Organising Committee of the European Basketball Championship, and then of the candidacy and the implementation of the European Green Capital 2016 project, which successfully put Ljubljana on the European map as a city committed to following the green vision while actively carrying out projects for improving the quality of life. At the global conference Women Economic Forum in New Delhi she received the prestigious award Woman of the Decade as the head of the project Ljubljana, European Green Capital 2016.

Piotr Borawski is the Deputy Mayor of Gdańsk for entrepreneurship and climate protection, politician, councillor, social activist connected, among others, with the maritime economy and civic participation. A graduate of law at the University of Gdańsk and MBA studies at the Warsaw School of Economics. Previously, for 10 years professionally associated with the maritime economy. He is a member of the Civic Platform and the Young Democrats Association. Previously, for three terms he was a councillor of the City of Gdańsk. In the City Council, he chaired the strategy and budget committee. He was one of the initiators of the civic budget in Gdańsk, as well as the Gdańsk procreation support program. In 2017-2019, he was the head of the club of councillors of the Civic Platform, and in the last term, he was the leader of the Civic Coalition. He is responsible for the development of entrepreneurship, climate protection, and ICT. 

After studying law in political science and institutional communication in Nice and Aix-en-Provence in France, Magali was a parliamentary attaché to a Member of the European Parliament for 6 years in the French South-East region Euro-circumscription. At the end of the political mandate, Magali decided to return to Nice, the city where she grew up. Magali is now acting as Deputy Mayor for the City of Nice, delegate for European Institutions and City attractiveness. 

This young elected representative, barely 30 years old, is committed to make the City of Nice and the Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur an attractive area welcoming numerous talents and entrepreneurs, but also a land for young Europeans who wish to come here to live, study or work permanently.

Filipe Araújo is Porto’s Vice-Mayor and City Councillor for Innovation and Environment, Chairman of the Board of Directors of AdePorto (Porto’s Energy Agency), Chairman of the Board of Directors of Porto Digital Association (supports the Porto City Council in the development of e-government projects and online services), board member of LIPOR- Intermunicipal Waste Management of Greater Porto, Chair of Eurocities Environment Forum, Vice-Chair of Eurocities Environment Forum (2016-2018), advisory board member of Portuguese Association for the Development of Communications, advisory board member of MIL (Media Innovation Labs) of Porto University, and member of the Innovation Advisory Board, of Porto University. 

He has a degree in Electrical Engineering (Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto) and holds a M.Sc. in Telecommunications (UMIST - University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, UK). He was a guest Professor at the Faculty of Science of University of Porto, between 2007 and 2011 and a Municipal Deputy of Porto between 2005 and 2009. Other relevant executive functions include Service Manager in a telecommunication company and board member of the Youth Foundation.

Dana Eleftheriadou steers EU policy development on intelligent cities and the proximity economy, advanced technologies, artificial intelligence with the view to foster Europe’s technological and industrial leadership. She drives policy initiatives and action plans that are leveraging advanced tech to address the world’s biggest challenges and lead the green and digital transition and social welfare.

She designed and oversees the Intelligent Cities Challenge initiative, which helps over 130 EU cities to make the most of cutting-edge technologies to lead a green and digital recovery. She spearheads work on the Tech4Good initiative to promote technology-powered solutions and business models designed to advance social, environmental and economic causes, as well as on Local Green Deals that support cities deliver the European Green Deal at local level.

She has been working on the EU new Industrial Strategy, Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy, critical AI applications, digitising the European Industry. She served as the EU coordinator of the high-level group Strategic Policy Forum on Digital Entrepreneurship and steers the Member States Board on Advanced Technologies to coordinate national policies and forge the implementation of EU strategies.

She negotiated EU positions in international dialogues, as EU delegate at the G7 ICT and Industry Ministerial and at the G20 dialogue for Innovative Growth; the EU-US dialogue on eCommerce, the Trans-Atlantic business dialogue (TABD), and the OECD. She is member of the World Economic Forum Digital Leaders Group and has been co-author of the World Economic Forum Global IT Report.

Dana Eleftheriadou holds an MBA with distinction from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a MEng in Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece and a diploma in Philosophy from MIT, USA.

John Higgins is the Chair of the Global Digital Foundation and a Senior Advisor digital and AI to global communications company, Burson Cohn & Wolfe. He will become President of the BCS, the UK’s Chartered Institute of IT in March 2021, and is currently serving as Deputy President. He is chair of the advisory board of the European Commission’s Intelligent Cities Challenge and chairs the University of Warwick's European Advisory Board. He was Director General of DIGITALEUROPE, the association for the digital technology industry in Europe, until April 2017, following nine years leading its UK member association, Intellect, now TechUK. 

John was President of the European Commission’s Strategic Policy Forum (SPF) on Digital Entrepreneurship. The SPF was facilitated by DG Grow for almost three years and examined the current and future impact of new digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence on important sectors of the European economy and society such as automotive, healthcare, SMEs and social enterprise. 

The Queen appointed him a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005 for his services to the UK IT industry.