Agriculture and the Global Food Crisis Plenary
Hear from our inspirational delegate speakers
Speakers
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Diana VirgovicovaCEO & Co-founderDiana Virgovicova
CEO & Co-founder
Diana Virgovicova was born and raised in a small village in Slovakia, Eastern Europe. At fourteen she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, traced to agricultural activity and the pesticides that had ended up in her town's water. She survived it, and it set the direction of her life.
That summer she persuaded her mother to take her travelling. In the suburbs of Mumbai she saw black rivers and young women falling ill from the water they washed in. She came home, wrote to a professor at a local university, and spent three years teaching herself quantum chemistry software. By seventeen she had modelled a photocatalyst that destroys contaminants under ordinary visible light, with no UV reactor required. It earned her a Diploma of Excellence at the Stockholm Junior Water Prize, presented by Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden. She came to Canada on a Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship and founded Xatoms in 2023.
Xatoms uses AI and quantum chemistry to design photocatalysts, materials that destroy contaminants in water using nothing but light. The company has discovered 88 new photocatalysts, eight of them patent pending, and treated over 3 billion litres of river water. Its work spans four countries. In South Africa it is removing E. coli from a contaminated river with the University of Stellenbosch, in Kenya it supplies safe drinking water to a community without a reliable source, and in Canada it works with Indigenous farmers on pesticide removal.
Diana is the youngest advisor to the World Economic Forum's CEO Alliance for Nature, serving alongside chief executives of Fortune 500 companies. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, a winner of the Forum's UpLink Water Resilience Challenge, and represented Canada at Davos in 2026. In May she received Global Citizen's Cisco Youth Leadership Award.
She has committed to reaching one million people with safe water by 2030.
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Faith Naome AwuorFounder & CEOFaith Naome Awuor
Founder & CEO
Faith Naome Awuor is a social entrepreneur and climate innovator from the Nyando Basin in Kenya, where she founded FloodGuard Bioballs to solve a problem she grew up living inside: a region that floods every year, then dries out, losing its rice harvest both times. FloodGuard combines early-warning river sensors, floodwater disinfection and storage, and precision irrigation to turn floodwater into a dry-season resource, with over 133,000 litres captured and reused so far.
Through Nyando Rice, the venture's fair-trade rice brand, Naome also buys directly from women farmers at above-broker market prices,mills, packages and provides online retail nearly tripling their dry-season income . Her work has been recognized by beVisioneers: The Mercedes-Benz Fellowship, the African Union through the Africa Climate Summit 2, FAO and PAFO's Empowering Youth in Africa programme among others. She is currently part of the NewNow Young Leaders cohort with One Young World and Virgin Unite. Her goal is a world where farmers in climate vulnerable regions are prepared for the climate, not afraid of it.
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Emmanuel TwesigyeCo-founder and CEOEmmanuel Twesigye
Co-founder and CEO
Emmanuel is a former administrator at an NGO, a former agricultural credit banker and now the Cofoundeer and CEO of Everlend AgriTech Ltd.
H equit his well paying job to pursue his dream of supporting smallholder farmer women and the Youth with unsecured credit disbursed as quality seeds and organic fertilizers to help bridge the financial inclusion gap while increasing farmer yields, improving soil health and creating more jobs in the Agricultural sector -
Daria BalatskyCofounder and CTODaria Balatsky
Cofounder and CTO
I am currently the CTO and a CoFounder of Alga Biosciences, a company established in 2021. Alga Biosciences makes products to reduce methane while making animals more efficient. Prior to Alga, I was a PhD Candidate at the University of California, Berkeley studying physical chemistry. My background includes working at OpenEye Scientific using computational chemistry, at Chinook Therapeutics for manufacturing drugs for rare kidney diseases, and at one of the Max Planck Institutes. I graduated with an Honors in Chemistry from the University of British Columbia. As a part of my studies I received the Chemical Industry Merit Prize, the Faculty of Science International Student Scholarship, the International Community Achievement Award and the Outstanding International Student Award. In 2026, I was awarded Forbes 30 Under 30 for Energy and Green Technology with my work at Alga Biosciences. My current aspirations are to continue building Alga Biosciences into a provider of enteric methane products globally.
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Jabra DukmakCo-founder and CEOJabra Dukmak
Co-founder and CEO
Jabra Dukmak is the CEO & Co-Founder of EarthWise for Green Technology Solutions, a startup based in Palestine working to fight food insecurity and reduce food waste through the mobile app Laheq Halak. The app connects local vendors with consumers to offer surplus and near-expiry food at affordable prices, supporting both families and the environment.
He also works with TEA Group in Florence, Italy, contributing to the development and deployment of AirQino, a smart air quality monitoring system used across Europe and the MENA region. With a background in civil and environmental engineering, Jabra is passionate about sustainability, innovation, and creating practical solutions for real-world challenges. He has received several international recognitions and awards for his work in green technology and social impact.