Cristina Riesen is a seasoned entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the fields of strategic communications, innovation, technology and education. In recent years, Cristina was General Manager EMEA at Evernote, managed the launch of the Swiss Edtech Collider at EPFL, worked with the Strategic Development team at ETH and founded Educreators Foundation, an impact network supporting systemic change in education. Her current activities range from being an edtech expert to the European Commission to advisory and board functions for edtech start-ups and scale-ups. Since 2019, she is on the steering board of DigiEduHack, an EIT initiative under the European Commission's Digital Education Action Plan, led by EIT Climate-KIC and coordinated by Aalto University. Cristina was named Digital Shaper by the leading Swiss economic magazine Bilanz in 2019 and 2020.

Vincenzo Ribi is a senior consultant with Bernet Relations, a Zurich and Berne based communications agency. He holds a master degree in history and anthropology. Vincenzo has a background in higher education policy and politics. He sat a on the board of the Swiss Student Union (VSS-UNES) and worked in the national Bologna reform coordinating unit and as deputy head of international relations with the Swiss universities’ rectors conference swissuniversities.

Olivier Tschopp has been Director of the new Swiss national agency, Movetia - Exchange and Mobility, since January 2017. He obtained a master’s degree of arts at the Universities of Lausanne and Neuchâtel in 1992. Before joining Movetia, Olivier held positions as a teacher and a school director, responsible for the upper secondary and tertiary educational level (professional and vocational education and training - head of the unit training) and Secretary General within the department for education of the canton of Jura (Switzerland). During his term he contributed directly to develop an exchange and mobility office. His professional choices are closely linked to "change management", thus starting or setting up new structures or project organisations.

Martina Hirayama is Head of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) at Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. Martina studied Chemistry at the ETH Zurich, the University of Fribourg and Imperial College London, graduating from ETH Zurich with a doctorate in technical sciences (Dr. sc. Techn). She went on to do postgraduate studies in Business Economics at the ETH Zurich. She then worked in the ETH Zurich’s Department of Materials, becoming head of the Polymer Chemistry Group in 2001. During this time, Ms Hirayama co-founded a start-up in new coating technologies, and was CEO of the company until 2008.
She also lectured at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur ZHW (now ZHAW) and developed the ZHAW’s Institute of Materials and Process Engineering. From 2011 to 2018 she was Director of the ZHAW School of Engineering, a member of the university’s executive board and from 2014 head of International Affairs. Martina Hirayama was president of the board of the Federal Institute of Metrology METAS, vice president of the Innovation Promotion Agency Innosuisse board, and from 2016 to 2018 a member of the Swiss National Science Foundation board. 

Yves Flückiger is the Rector of the University of Geneva. In February 2020, the plenary assembly of the swissuniversities elected Yves Flückiger, as President. He will hold this office from February 2020 to January 2023 in parallel with his activity as head of the University of Geneva. Yves holds a degree in Economics and Sociology, as well as a doctorate in Political Economy from the University of Geneva. He has served as a research fellow at Harvard and Oxford, has been a visiting professor at the universities in Fribourg and Lausanne, and a senior lecturer at Australia's Deakin University. He joined the Faculty at the University of Geneva in 1992, directing the University Employment Observatory and the Leading House center of excellence in Education Economics. He has directed numerous projects supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation on themes related to migrations, wage discrimination, sexual segregation, new forms of employment, and child poverty. As head of the University Employment Observatory of the University of Geneva, he has also conducted multiple research mandates funded by public and private organizations. He was a member of the Competition Commission from 1996 to 2007, Vice-President of the same Commission from 2003 to 2007 and scientific advisor to the Swiss National Science Foundation from 1998 to 2008. From July 2007 to July 2015, he held the position of Vice-Rector of the University of Geneva in charge of finance, international relations, the strategic plan and the agreement of objectives concluded with the State Council.

Sijbolt Noorda is president emeritus of Universiteit van Amsterdam and a former president of the Dutch Association of Research Universities VSNU. He has been a Board member of the European University Association as well as Chair of ACA and the Magna Charta Observatory Council.

His main present functions and positions are:

- Vice-Chair Board of Governors International Baccalaureate (since 2016)

- President of the Board at Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam (music hall of the twentieth century, since 2014)

- Editor-in-chief at Th&ma (Journal for Higher Education and Management in Flanders and The Netherlands, since 2013).

He received his formal education in The Netherlands (Groningen, Amsterdam, Utrecht) and USA (New York City). Dr Noorda writes and lectures on teaching and learning in Higher Education, about ideals and practices of internationalization, on open science, core values and governance issues in HEIs. He regularly reviews and gives advice to individual universities and national systems in the European Higher Education Area. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of Universität Tübingen, of Amsterdam University College, of the Berlin University Alliance and of ITMO University, St Petersburg.

Edwin van Rest is co-founder and CEO of Studyportals – the global marketplace for higher education. He is a grateful beneficiary of and a true believer in international education. As part of his engineering studies, Edwin spent time in Japan, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands, where he learnt firsthand how international education enriches lives and can connect our world. Through Studyportals he wants to simulate and help students to make an informed choice and broaden their horizon, while making our world a more equal and more tolerant place.

Piet Van Hove is Vice President-elect of the European Association for International Education (EAIE), 2020-2022. He has been Director of the International Relations Office of the University of Antwerp since 2005, where he previously studied Law. He is the former chairman of Flanders Knowledge Area, and also a non-executive board member of www.apopo.org, training rats to detect landmines and diseases in vulnerable societies. He has been active in internationalisation since 1995 and today manages a team of 18 staff members, dealing with university wide policy formulation and execution in the area of mobility, international cooperation and networking.

Eva Haug is Coordinator Internationalisation & COIL and senior lecturer of Intercultural Competence at the Faculty of Business and Economics in the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She's also Member of the EAIE Expert Community Internationalisation at Home, and the coordinator of the COIL Working Group in the Erasmus+ South African/European project iKUDU.

As coordinator, she's specialised in internationalising the curriculum. As COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) coordinator, she provides entire cohorts the possibility of experiencing international teamwork by pairing Amsterdam students with students from around the globe. She's presented about COIL at conferences around the world, as well as the EAIE Conference, and is regularly invited by universities to train staff in intercultural and online collaboration.

Marina Casals' international experience has taken her to work at Tampere University in Finland and Al Akhawayn University (Morocco). In 2005, she moved to the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain), where she is Director of International Relations, heading both the strategic and the managerial part of international relations. She has served in the leadership of the EAIE in various positions from 2007 to 2018 and served as a member of the Management Board of the Center for Higher Education Internationalisation from 2016 to 2020. She is an EAIE Trainer and presents at several conferences internationally. She was the creator and coordinator of the “SUCTI Project”, an Erasmus + Strategic Partnership project, which was awarded the EAIE President’s Award in 2019 and a Good Practice mention by the EC. She has been also recognised with the EAIE Rising Star Award in 2009 and the SGroup IMPACT Award in 2016.

Ulrich Grothus is the President of ACA. He obtained a master’s degree in Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1976. He then worked as a journalist before joining the International Division of the former West German Rectors Conference in 1982. He has been working for DAAD since 1988, first as spokesman and head of the president’s office. From 1991, he was consecutively director of all three DAAD program directorates. In between, he served as director of the Paris office from 1998 to 2000 and of the New York office from 2004 to 2008. Grothus was also the Deputy Secretary General of DAAD and the head of the organisation’s Berlin office. Grothus speaks five foreign languages and has given three others a try.

Jonas Brunschwig is the CEO and Consul General of Swissnex in India, where he leads a team connecting Switzerland’s education, research, and innovation ecosystem to India with the aim to foster activities that pursue inclusive prosperity, urgent progress, and a vibrant exchange. Prior to joining the team in India, he led Swissnex in Boston’s academic portfolio for six years. He is a graduate of MIT where he studied innovation ecology, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He also held positions at MIT in fundraising, at the Boston Global Forum in international affairs, and at Uncharted Play (now Uncharted Power) in social entrepreneurship. Before moving to India, he has lived in Switzerland, Egypt, Argentina, and the United States.

Christian Simm joined the University of Zurich in August 2020 as Head of International Relations, after having spent 23 years launching various initiatives to foster high-level exchanges between Switzerland and North America in research, education, innovation, as well as at the intersection of art and science & technology. With partnerships from both
the private and public sectors, he created and led swissnex San Francisco, swissnex Boston and the expansion of the swissnex network to currently five worldwide locations. Christian holds a PhD in physics from EPFL, is a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, sits on the board of directors of EHL Advisory Services in Lausanne, and was nominated as one of Switzerland’s ”100 Digital Shapers“ in 2018 & 2019.