Vandana SHIVA is an environmental/social activist. She was trained as a physicist and did her Ph.D. on the subject “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory” from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. In 1982, she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times, in close partnership with local communities and social movements. In 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, and the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. In 2004 she started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley in collaboration with Schumacher College, U.K. Dr. Shiva combines sharp intellectual enquiry with courageous activism. Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental “hero” in 2003 and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators of Asia. Forbes magazine in November 2010 has identified Dr. Vandana SHIVA as one of the top seven most Powerful Women on the Globe. Dr. Shiva has received honorary doctorates from University of Paris, University of Western Ontario, University of Oslo, Connecticut College, and University of Guelph.

LEE Woo-jin is a Professor of Economics at Korea University and Chairman of the ILJU Scholarship Foundation. He is also Director of the Center for Public Health and Social Welfare at Korea University. He was a former President of the Korean Econometric Society and a member of the Special Committee on Tax and Fiscal Policies (under the Office of the President of Korea). His main research interests are in distribution of income and wealth, political economy, public economics, and economic development. He published numerous academic journal articles, and books including Racism, Xenophobia, and Distribution (Harvard University Press). He previously held faculty positions at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA and the University of Manchester, UK.

SONG Gil-young is the Senior Executive Vice President at VAIV Company, Inc. In the past, he served as chief strategy officer and, together with his colleagues, pioneered the technologies and business opportunities for gathering and analyzing billions of social media posts to read the minds of people that the posts convey. Vaiv Company now plays a unique role in Korea specializing in natural language processing, text mining, and social big data mining. He received his Ph.D in computer science from Korea University, and serves as an executive board member of the Korea Data Mining Society. He also teaches students at Korea University as an adjunct professor of Media and Communication. He co-established and leads the Opinion Mining Working Group, a non-profit professional organization for data mining industry in Korea. He authored We See Your Desire: a Map of 7-biliion Desires Found in Big Data (2012, Sam & Parkers), Don’t Imagine: a Method of Reading Untold Desires (2015, Bookstone) and Don’t Just Do It: Your Every Move is the Message (2021, Bookstone).