SPEAKERS 

Cornelia was born in 1976 in Innsbruck, is married, and is a proud mum of a teenage daughter. In 2012, she founded "Cornelia dal Sasso baut Marken auf" to help people position themselves boldly and to succeed on their own terms. Cornelia is a chronically incurable optimist, a personal brand strategist, and a positioning expert.

She is utterly untalented in fitting in. Nonetheless, she keeps discovering unconsciously adopted conformities in herself. According to her grandmother, her first complete sentence was, "Can't it be done differently?" She questioned how we communicate, Pythagoras – not her best idea- and even marketing standards on finding your USP (Unique selling proposition). She knew: What worked when passing the exam would not work when building a brand. So she created a method (AndersFaktor®) for herself and her clients to find USPs easily.

Constantly on a quest to free herself and her clients from conformity and people-pleasing, she follows her vision of a free life on each individual's terms while respecting other people's boundaries.

Simply by knowing

• what makes you unique,
• what you have to offer,
• what you want to be known for and
• what people you should stay away from.

Cornelia is a 2-time cancer survivor. It has made her even more selective about how to spend her life and have fun.

Bernadette is CEO of Instahelp, the mental health platform offering psychological counselling online in five European markets. With Instahelp she aspires to create a room for emotions and open conversations in which new perspectives are developed with dedicated experts. Her PhD was concerned with consumer emotions. Besides, she is a senior lecturer at FH JOANNEUM, Karl Franzens University and Aston Business School UK and strategic head of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor team Austria.

.

Dr. Svetlana Gramatiuk is president of the UAB (Ukraine Association of Biobanks), which she co-founded in 2017. She was also the medical director of the research biobank at ASK-Health (2015-2016) and the Ukraine editor of "The Journal Advanced Research Biobank and Pathophysiology" (2017). Svetlana has also established and managed several biobanks in Ukraine.

In addition to her unique expertise in biobanking, she completed a Master of Science in Biobanking at the Medical University of Graz. In addition to numerous publications in medicine and biobanking, she is also one of the editors of the Springer Nature book "Biobanks in Low- and Middle-Income Countries." As a doctor and scientist, she served in acute war situations and secured the research facility for better times.

Senka Holzer is a mom of two cutie-pie kids, a biochemist with a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine, and the author of Be You: The Science of Becoming the Self You Were Born to Be, which was published in 2022. Furthermore, she is an avid reader and works as an assistant professor at the Department of Cardiology at the Medical University of Graz.

Senka was fascinated by the biochemical connections between our minds and bodies from a very young age. Youthful curiosity quickly turned into a profession, which led Senka to her specialty, heart physiology. After her Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine, Senka was awarded the most prestigious Austrian Science Fund fellowship for women scientists, which took her to the University of California, Davis. While living in California, she completed International Coaching Federation (ICF) accredited coach training and psychology programs at UC Davis and UC Berkeley. Senka left these programs wondering if disconnecting from our values would impact our health and well-being, so she organized a team of coaches and scientists. In 2015, her study was awarded the McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School's Institute of Coaching Research Award. While sharing her knowledge with consultants, coaches, and trainers around the globe, Senka discovered remarkable patterns in how people with high levels of well-being think, act, and communicate about their values, further supporting her experimental findings. Senka leads a research group on heart signaling at the Department of Cardiology at the Medical University of Graz and enjoys sharing her work on values with her students, friends, professional coaches, leaders, and total strangers sitting next to her on a plane.

Yana was born in Vanadzor, Armenia, into a family that had a deep appreciation for art, music, and culture. At age 5, Yana started her musical journey by playing the violin. At age 12, Yana started to arrange her first songs. At 18, she dove headfirst into singing, songwriting, and original composition. She created a band with her four female friends called "Violin Revolution" and started performing and learning how to manage and promote music. From then on, her passion for music has evolved into activism and the creation and promotion of safe artistic communities and industries. She has put down roots for reconstruction in her own country, plagued by genocide and corruption. Yana is now beginning to take her mission to the world by working on projects in economically, socially, and culturally problematic areas. After graduating from Yerevan State University, Yana started working in the music industry full-time, supporting a non-profit organization called "Nvak". Her mission was to find the talents, develop the artists, and support them full-time in Armenia, Israel, and Malawi until 2021.

In 2021, Yana started getting involved in Armenia as a consultant, which gave her the idea to start and run her own A&R company. Nowadays, she is learning, developing, and educating herself to be ready to launch an organization that will be a safe place for singers/songwriters/painters/producers, and other artists throughout their career journey.

Short Bio - coming soon

Akhila Naz was born and raised in the southern Indian region of Kerala and holds a bachelor's degree in Electronics and Biomedical Engineering from the Cochin University of Science and Technology. Also, she was a University rank holder in 2018. Akhila Naz pursued her master's in Electronics and Instrumentation from the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University with a scholarship. She has experience as a research intern at Robert Bosch and as a software engineer at Siemens. Now she is pursuing her Ph.D. (2nd year as of November 2022) in Computational Semantics for Intelligent Digital Health Applications (Clinical Data Science) at the Medical University of Graz. She likes to dance and travel in her free time and loves to tell stories.

Christine Mark is a consultant and coach who advises women in finding their calling and shaping their professional life. She is deeply convinced that our world urgently needs many more visible women who take up space and creatively contribute to working life. Her mission is to inspire and accompany women to create their professional lives the way they want. She helps them to find out what they really want (and not the others), stand by it, and to go their way, so they no longer hide behind the impostor syndrome and adapt to impossible working conditions to create the life they want. She leads them away from thinking small and setting realistic goals to having a beautiful vision and stepping out of their comfort zone to grow, become visible and make a difference in the world.

Christine wants to show that much more is possible and that we can think much bigger and crazier and that it is time for women to get much more involved. Moreover, women should finally stop bending and adapting to a system that no longer serves our society. This is why she founded the Future Lab, where she guides women to expand their mindset, deal with doubts, break free from praise and criticism, think big, and shape their lives according to their wishes.

Anna is a clinical pharmacist who is deeply engaged in the process of oncological biobanking and facilitating the cooperation between academia and industry. Her current area of interest is establishing a practical joint between the biobanks and clinical trials to promote the usage of standardized samples and data sets and reduce bias. Her family and biking fuel her personal life.

As a Serbian-born writer and endometriosis activist, Alekszandra has decided to turn her pain into passion. Upon her endometriosis diagnosis, which she received after 15 years of medical gaslighting, Alekszandra committed herself to raising awareness about endometriosis: through activism and NGO work, as well as through academic work. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the Karl Franzens University of Graz. Her doctoral dissertation is an interdisciplinary project focusing on the experiences of people with endometriosis within the healthcare system. She specializes in cultural studies and health humanities. Her work explores the connections between gender, age, the stigmatization of menstruation, and how this results in discrimination within the healthcare system. She has previously studied and taught in Serbia, Canada, and Vietnam.

Caroline Schober is a biochemist and molecular biologist with many years of experience in international management. She has worked as a marketing and change management consultant on projects involving industrial minerals in the U.S. and in China. After nearly one decade in research management of several large national and international research projects, she managed the Institute of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Graz from 2011 to 2016. Since February 15, 2016, Caroline Schober has been Vice Rector of Research and International Affairs at the Medical University of Graz.

Stěpánka Vojtášová is a pianist, piano pedagogue, and scientist in the field of piano education. She was born and raised in Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic. At age four, Štěpánka started studying the piano. After a successful career in her youth, giving recitals and performing in concerts and competitions, she decided to study for a bachelor's degree in Piano Performance and Piano Pedagogy at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz (KUG).

In 2021, she finished both study programs. Now she is currently pursuing her master's degree in Piano Pedagogy. Lately, she has turned her focus to research in music pedagogy, exploring how the nature of a teacher's speech structures the relationship between students and teachers. Štěpánka works as a student assistant at the Institute of Music Aesthetics at the KUG and the Austrian Student Union KUG, representing students' voices and aiming to make positive changes in the academic scene. To balance her work life, Štěpánka dances salsa, practices karate, and is a proud dog mom of a German Pinscher.