Steven van Groningen is former president and CEO of Raiffeisen Bank Romania from 2002 to 2022 and a former Olympian rower. From 1994 to 2001 he has worked for ABN AMRO Bank N.V.

Apart from his banking and sports background, Steven is also the Vice-President of the Romanian Banking Association as well as President for the Foreign Investors Council and Founding Member/Member of the Board at Aspen Institute Romania.

In the past he has been part of United Way of Romania as President and Member of the Board for Friends of the National Museum of Art of Romania.

Ed Weenk, MSc, PDEng, holds a degree in Business Studies with specialization in logistics and technological innovation from the Erasmus University / Rotterdam School of Management (Netherlands) and a professional doctorate PDEng degree in Supply Chain Management from the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands). He has extensive experience in managing international supply chain projects, having worked for several years for the logistics operator DHL, among others a multiyear stay in Barcelona, Spain.

Since 2004 Ed works as an independent consultant and trainer with focus on projects and teaching in Operations & Supply Chain Management, Strategy, Project Management and Intra-/ Entrepreneurship and Leadership. As part of his training and teaching activities, he runs a number of different business simulations (“serious games”).

Furthermore, Ed collaborates as Senior Lecturer with various Universities and Business Schools, among which are the Maastricht School of Management (Netherlands), Centrum Graduate School of Business (Peru), Antwerp Management School (Belgium), EADA Business School Barcelona (Spain) and Tec de Monterrey (Mexico).

He is the author of the book “The Perfect Pass: what the manager can learn from the football trainer“, published in Dutch, Spanish and English. His second book, called “Mastering the Supply Chain. Principles, practice and real-life applications” was published in March 2019.

Magda Ropotan is an established Innovation Coach and Consultant in Romania, a practitioner of
Design Thinking, Service Design, Foresight, Trend & Future Driven Innovation, and Art of Hosting
methodologies. She is an alumnae of Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, Institute for the Future – Palo Alto, California and is one of the few Master-Facilitators of FORTH Innovation Methodology in the world.

Magda co-founded Design Thinking Society, a boutique consultancy for design driven innovation, and FutureStation, a consultancy business that supports organizations in exploring trends and future scenarios. Besides her consultancy work, she is a board member at Innovation Labs Romania and Antreprenoria, and a lecturer for Innovation at The Entrepreneurship Academy. Once a year, she is curating and organizing the largest conference exclusively dedicated to Design Thinking in Romania: Design Thinking Forum.

Before moving into consulting, Magda a had a successful career in Honeywell, Genpact and IKEA, both in Romania and abroad.

Andreas Antonopoulos is the Rector of the University of New York in Prague (UNYP), a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at BISM and a Partner at Venture Growth Partners (www.vgpartners.io), an investment vehicle focusing on early stage ventures. Andreas teaches Entrepreneurship related subjects in several MBA Programs around the world and regularly gives related seminars, interviews and speeches on this topic.

He has nearly 30 years of experience with an academic, entrepreneurial, investment and corporate background blend. In 2001 he was a Co-Founder of Working Knowledge, a telecoms advisory firm in London which he exited in 2007 and he also co-founded Viva Credit, a fintech micro-lending market leader in Romania which has now expanded to two more EU countries. Andreas has also been an angel investor in a dozen other failed, alive or thriving ventures in the CEE and beyond and is a mentor in a few select accelerators such as Wayra and Startup Yard.

Before his current roles, Andreas has held senior executive appointments in Academia at Central European University  as well as a variety of senior and middle management appointments in leading telecom sector companies such as RHK, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks and British Telecom. Andreas has worked and/or lived in Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Philippines, Romania, Singapore, Spain, the UK and the US, and speaks 6 languages. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from University College London, UK and an MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.  Andreas brings substantial international and multi-cultural experience and insight to BISM.

Mircea spent 20 years in management positions. Having a Finance background, he started his career in Aluminum industry as Finance Manager, then he developed his career in FMCG, working as Industrial Controller for InBev Romania and after that as Financial Controller, SAP Project Manager and CFO for Coca-Cola Romania & Moldova. Starting in 2009 he worked in Transportation & Logistics, becoming CEO of a Private Equity owned company. Later he worked in Turnaround management as Chief Restructuring Officer. Since 2015 he is an executive search & leadership consultant, working on over 100 top management and non-executive director assignments for leading companies in Romania. He also executed a number on international assignments in Investment/Real Estate.

Working in different business environments, from multinational companies to private equity and consulting, Mircea used his experience to generate his own entrepreneurial projects, developing start-up projects in various industries, from hospitality to agriculture, energy, CSR and international forwarding industries.

He has built in-depth expertise in strategy, business transformation, leadership development and cultural change.