Susan MacDougall is a social anthropologist, leadership advisor, and partner at Cultivating Leadership, where she works with senior leaders and organisations navigating complexity, transformation, and uncertainty.

Susan is passionately curious about human capacities to solve problems, manage discomfort, and adapt to change. Her research has explored complaints, friendship, gender, and trust, in the workplace and outside. In her teaching and facilitation, she supports people to integrate all facets of their experience in confronting the constant upheaval of our tumultuous present.

She has taught and held fellowships at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, and combines academic depth with practical leadership experience to help organisations develop more adaptive, reflective, and human-centred approaches to leadership in times of technological and societal transformation.

Adrian Locher is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder of Merantix, a leading European AI venture studio and investment platform focused on building and scaling artificial intelligence companies. He has founded and supported numerous technology ventures, with a particular emphasis on translating cutting-edge AI research into real-world applications. 

He works at the intersection of entrepreneurship, venture building, and artificial intelligence, bringing together researchers, founders, and investors to develop AI-driven solutions across industries such as healthcare, biotechnology, and enterprise technology. Through Merantix, he is actively shaping Europe’s AI ecosystem and fostering the commercialization of emerging technologies.

Suzanne Dvořák, attorney-at-law, is Director of the Law and Economics Foundation St. Gallen, the organisation behind the Alps Forum. With over 15 years of executive experience across the private and public sectors, she knows the world of analytical decision-making first-hand. Her passion for ancient languages and philosophy led her into a four-year training at the Hatha Yoga Academy in Lucerne — including Sanskrit — and to her certification as a yoga, meditation and breathwork teacher (EYU/BDY). As founder of AESTION, she today accompanies executives in their leadership development.

Her work is marked by the ability to connect worlds that usually remain apart: the scientific and the intuitive, the emotional and the analytical, the ancient and the contemporary, the visionary and the grounded. She translates timeless insights into clear, practical pathways for leadership in the 21st century — and it is precisely this synthesis she brings to the session «Breathing before Decision-Making».

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Sybille Krämer was Professor of Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin) until her retirement in 2018 and is currently a Guest Professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She has held visiting professorships at universities in Tokyo, Yale, Santa Barbara, Santiago de Chile, Vienna, Lucerne, and Zurich. She has received an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and has been awarded numerous fellowships in Germany and abroad.

She has served as a member of the German Science Council, the Scientific Panel of the European Research Council in Brussels, and the Senate of the German Research Foundation (DFG). She was also a Permanent Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Her research focuses on epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mediality, digitization, and artificial intelligence.