Al Gore and Pablo Isla, among the speakers confirmed for South Summit Madrid 2022

Madrid:  South Summit, co-organized by IE University, the leading meeting of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, will be held in Madrid between June 8-10. The inauguration of the 10th South Summit will be attended by Al Gore, former vice president of the United States and presidential candidate in 2000, along with Pablo Isla, CEO and President of INDITEX until last March.

Al Gore is also known for his role as an environmental activist and for being one of the world’s leading climate change awareness leaders, as well as being the founder of the Climate Protection Alliance and Generation Investment Management. He will be present at South Summit Madrid 2022 telematically. In this intervention he will share, among other topics, how he works in the search for intelligent and sustainable transport solutions to reduce environmental pollution, one of his main objectives in the fight against climate change.

For his part, Pablo Isla, a renowned entrepreneur who has spent 17 years in the Inditex group, first as executive director and vice president and, in the last 11 years, as CEO, will also attend the 10th South Summit. Following his departure from Inditex, he has become chairman of IE University’s International Advisory Board and has also joined as a senior global advisor to the General Atlantic fund.

In 2017 and 2018, Pablo Isla was considered the World’s Best CEO by Harvard Business Review. In 2020 Forbes also distinguished him as the best CEO of the decade. His expertise and professional career will inspire South Summit attendees.

Both leaders will be at this edition of South Summit, which celebrates its 10th anniversary as the main meeting point for the global entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem. A place where entrepreneurs, investors and corporations meet to generate real business opportunities in the global entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This objective will once again be achieved this year, which will be held again at La Nave in Madrid, where more than 450 internationally renowned speakers who have confirmed their participation so far will gather. These leaders will share the stories behind their careers, as well as their expertise in the field of innovation and the business world.

Among them, Sal Khan, founder and CEO of the non-profit educational organization Khan Academy; Marc Oshima, co-founder and CMO of AeroFarms, leaders in sustainable indoor agriculture; Marci Zaroff, founder and CEO of ECOfashion Corp, leaders in the sustainable fashion sector; Iñigo Charola, CEO of the biotech company BioTechFoods, dedicated to the development of synthetic meat; and Hrish Lotikar, co-founder and CEO of SuperWorld, a virtual world of augmented reality (AR) geographically mapped in the real world, among other profiles.

Technological progress, the speed of innovation or the challenge of fighting climate change will be some of the central themes of the content program of the South Summit edition, which will be gathered under the heading [de]coding complexity.

Also present at South Summit Madrid 2022 will be the 100 finalist startups of the Startup Competition, selected after a rigorous selection process from more than 3,000 applications from 114 countries. The 100 finalist startups come from a wide range of sectors and have innovative and cutting-edge projects, such as a robot harvester, or a system for detecting forest fires from space.

For this year’s edition, South Summit is expected to generate economic activity of around €20 million in Madrid during over its four days, with more than 22,000 attendees expected to this essential event for the entrepreneurial ecosystem and global innovation. In 2021 all attendance and participation records were broken, with more than 1,600 investors with a portfolio of approximately 135,000 million dollars, 8,000 startups, 680 speakers and 7,000 members of corporations.