Rogerta Leka and team ‘HEST’ from Albania in #eEntrepreneurship category

Idea: Digital Marketplace focused in the trading of the agricultural products, food and goods that today are produced in the WB6 countries and make them available to every customer at any time.

Nenad Jovanovski and team ‘Bifrost’ from Serbia in Green City category

HEMP represents a new project with the idea of Design, prototyping, testing and development of user-friendly, eco-sustainable and affordable single-use packaging fabrication machines that will contribute to reduction of polymer plastic pollution

Sanela Pajazitović and team ‘Pokupi’ from Montenegro in Smart City category

Pokupi.Me is a platform and app-powered, on-demand taxi service provider for smart phones which works with the existing licenced taxi companies and drives.

Aleksandar Kovač and team ‘E-klinika’ from Bosnia and Herzegovina in E-health category

E-Klinika is on-line platform that makes a doctor appointment easier and faster to do for our users, at the same time it helps clinics in their daily management. Using modern technology E-Klinika brings together doctors, patients and clinics on one place.

Ilir Asllani and team ‘Kosovo Digital Association’ from Kosovo*, special award Young Rising Stars

eHealth Clinic is a cost-effective solution in healthcare and offers faster, closer, and less expensive health services to patients regardless of the distance with their preferred physician in the Western Balkans.

Katerina Klimovska and team ‘ISLAA’ from North Macedonia, special award Girls Power

The overall objective of the assignment is to present all interested small businesses, especially those that belong to the social entrepreneurship, in one place, through a digital platform, and to connect them with the big businesses that would appear as their consumers.

Vedran Simunovic

Vedran Šimunović - Current Executive Director of the Foundation for Innovation and Technological Development (INTERA Technology Park) - a foundation established in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the goal of providing encouragement and support for the development of economic processes in the region of Herzegovina. Implementing more than 30 different projects of domestic and foreign donors, INTERA Technology Park has gained experience and is a reliable partner in creating a better business environment for all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, the foundation is active in implementation and promotion of new technologies in businesses, the region and cities through organisation of business meetings, creating opportunities for internationalisation, and hacking for the development of smart cities. As a business mentor Mr. Šimunović has worked on research on sustainable smart cities and implementation of digital business processes and is a member of the European entrepreneurial network. He has previous work experience in the metal sector as a manager for negotiating with foreign suppliers.

Sasa Buric

Saša Burić is a manager of IT department at Blicnet d.o.o. Banja Luka, which is a member of the Mtel Group.

Strong information technology professional with a demonstrated history of working in the telecommunications and banking industry with more than 20 years of experience in development and implementation of IT systems. He started his career at a university computer centre, then at the World Bank in the position of developing IT systems. He worked at the Balkan Investment Bank for 9 years as Director of the Information Technology Sector. Currently employed by Blicnet as IT Department Manager in charge of: analyses, improving performance, and automating existing ICT systems, implementation of new ICT systems, integration, projecting and developing.
Highly skilled in Database platforms, Application Architecture, Web/Mobile Applications and Integration interfaces.

Last few significant projects at Blicnet are:

• IoT, Mtel LoraWan project, developing big data based app server, compatible with Actillity and Nokia network servers; design of system and business cases, team lead, backend developing for use cases: smart parking, location tracking, remote reading of water consumption.
• Support system for reading electricity consumption; design of system and business cases, team lead, backend developing, Android java – ocr of digits, API for Android app (php - RESTful API).
• Development of several connectors for SAP:
• DMS, integration Canon DMS (Therefore) with SAP (ORACLE PL/SQL, c#)
• Work presence-events records (VIRDI system), integration with SAP HR module (Oracle PL/SQL, c#)
• CRM, master data integration with SAP RMCA, SAP SD modules (ORACLE PL/SQL, c#)
• Wholesale billing, integration with SAP SD module (ORACLE PL/SQL, c#)
• Integration of mass retail billing system with SAP RMCA module (ORACLE PL/SQL, c#)
• Payment receivable integration with SAP RMCA module (ORACLE PL/SQL, c#, php)

Ivica Penic

Ivica Penić is an expert in Facebook marketing, entrepreneur, author, mentor and business skills trainer. He is a co-founder of the Grow Up Academy which aims to empower future entrepreneurs through several educational programmes.

He first encountered private entrepreneurship at the age of 13 in a family business and founded his own at the age of 21. He graduated from FTVT Dubrovnik and EFZG in Zagreb. He currently lives in Skopje, where he has been working on his projects for the last 2 years, leading the Startup programme for the Macedonian-American Accelerator.

Since 2010 he has been working as a business consultant, start-up mentor and motivational speaker in the SEE region. He writes professional articles for renowned business magazines and portals and edits his blog. He is the author of 2 books and several educational programmes in the field of sales and marketing.

Through marketing channels and social networks, Ivica communicates with tens of thousands of fans in the region every day. He uses the acquired knowledge and skills in his every day work with private clients and companies. Ivica believes that Facebook is an ideal channel for promotion if you are a private entrepreneur, and its mission is to show the possibilities and results to as many interested people and organisations as possible.

Aleksandar Janicic

Aleksandar Janičić is a Manager for projects and development of entrepreneurship in the Technopolis Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre. He has over 10 years of relevant experience in project design, business development, complemented by years of experience in research in diverse fields of work. Mr. Janičić has been organising business competitions since 2012.

Branko Krsmanovic

Experienced Manager skilled in Negotiation, Business Planning, Entrepreneurship Education, Sales, and Creative Entrepreneurship. Strong entrepreneurship professional with Bachelor's Degree of the Faculty of Law. Project Manager with over 40 leading projects.

Igor Izotov

Igor Izotov is the Head of Exploration at UNDP Acceleration Labs. Mr. Izotov responsible for starting, designing, and managing activities, directly engaging with local communities, and collaborating across global networks in order to accelerate the fulfilment of UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. Mr. Izotov is looking at behavioural insight/data science of emerging trends and uncovering the implications of those trends for systemic impacts on key development issues.

Marina Dimova

Marina Dimova is Governance Chief Technical Specialist at UNDP. In addition to supporting the organisation in the area of inclusive governance and public administration, she leads the innovation work of UNDP in the country, including the establishment of the UNDP Accelerator Lab, digital transformation efforts in the public sector and the pilot future cities initiative.

Srdjan Krco

Srđan Krčo, PhD, is a co-founder and CEO of DunavNET, a company designing turnkey IOT solutions for Smart Cities, agriculture and industry. Srđan has over 20 years of experience in working with multinational companies and international research and innovation projects. He was the coordinator of H2020 project TagItSmart, which, through collaboration of 30 partners across Europe, has designed solutions to improve transparency in the logistics chain in the field of food production, and, in general, in the FMCG domain. Srđan is one of the founders of the International IoT Forum and he actively participates in the work of the organisation's AIOTI (Alliance for IoT Innovation). He is the author of over 15 patents and of over 100 papers at international conferences and magazines. In 2007, he won the Innovation Engineer of the Year Award in Ireland. Srđan is a frequent speaker at international events engaged in IoT technologies and their deployment, he is a member of IEEE (senior member), and for the last 3 years, he has the MVP status for IoT activities awarded by Microsoft. In his spare time, Srđan works with students on the business aspects of IoT and digital transformation at FEFA, as well as at the African Centre for IoT in Rwanda.

Ivana Tomasevic

Ivana Tomašević currently works as director at Foundation Business Start-up Centre and as Teaching Assistant at the Faculty for Business Economics and Law. Mentoring and consulting skills and qualifications acquired through 5 years of experience in consulting and mentoring to SMEs and start-up entrepreneurs. Qualification in Mentoring provided by JICA (Japanese Agency for International Cooperation). Ivana has specific business skills for preparation of business plans and investment studies acquired through supporting entrepreneurs with their applications.

Resad Zacina

Rešad is leading a company called Ministry of Programming, which is a venture builder, helping startups succeed. The company has been recently ranked as one of the top 50 fastest growing companies in Central Europe by Deloitte.

The success of our ventures is facilitated in many ways: investing, tech operations, hiring, pitching with them or even architecting and coding systems. We dive all in and help entrepreneurs make it!

Rešad ended up on the top 50 digital startups list with 3 startups in 2016 (Google/McKinsey) namely: Fishbrain, Stylemarks (merged into Juniqe.de) & NAGA. Also ran the second biggest ICO by number of participants in 2017 (NAGA COIN).

Some additional awards:

• Manager of the Year in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2019 ( SNL )
• Stockholm city key of honours while acting as a tech ambassador representing the city startup environment.

Failed and succeeded in all major startup ecosystems: London, Stockholm, Berlin.

Djordje Celic

Education: Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Management (Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad); M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management (Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad).

Field of specialisation: Industrial marketing, entrepreneurship, business model development, high-tech marketing, customer development. Training delivery and mentoring for start-ups and SMEs.

Experience: Prof. dr Đorđe Ćelić is an Assistant Professor at the University of Novi Sad. His area of expertise is Industrial Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management. With more than 40 publications in 12 years of academic career he is well-established researcher in the international academic community. Besides engagement at the University, Prof. Dr. Ćelić is also the CEO of Business Incubator Novi Sad, leading hub for support and development of IT startups in the city of Novi Sad. Since the incubator started working in 2010, Đorđe has been the head of this institution. In the previous nine years, he has helped the development of over 55 startups. He is responsible for the overall operation of the incubator, development of incubation models and procedures, and facilitation of the incubator mentor and consultant network. Đorđe is deeply involved in the startup community as an active business consultant and trainer with an emphasis on business model development and marketing. As CEO of the Incubator and University professor, Đorđe participated and led more than 10 EU and national funded projects, including Tempus, Erasmus+, COSME, IPA type of projects.

Arta Istrefi-Jahja

Arta Istrefi-Jahja is currently the Ecosystem Facilitator with Swiss Entrepreneurship Programme. Her expertise is in the fields of innovation hubs, digital transformation for SMEs, and supporting women in business. Before joining the Swiss EP Kosovo* team, Arta worked as Business Incubator Manager at VentureUP.

She has 14 years of experience in private sector development with substantial practice in developing economic policy at the national level, and international development agencies. For eight years she worked in senior positions with the EU and USAID donor funded projects with focus on business development, marketing, connection to market and technical assistance. Mrs. Istrefi has a MSc. in Economic Development and Policy Analysis from University of Nottingham, U.K. She is Certified Digital Transformation and Certified Sales Executive.

Viktorija Petrov

Viktorija Petrov is Teaching Assistant at the University of Novi Sad, lecturing undergraduates on the subjects of Microeconomics and master students of Microeconomics Models.

Viktorija also works as Programme Manager in nStrater and Business Incubation Assistant in the Business Incubator Novi Sad. Viktorija participated as mentor and trainer in multiple events such as Startup Weekend, Competition for the best business idea UNS, Competition for the Best Technological Innovation, and other competitions related to entrepreneurship. 

Through her work, Viktorija actively participates in the development of Novi Sad startup ecosystem.

Sanja Sisovic

Board member YHO / International Youth Health organisation
Board member DPNSEE/ Drug Policy Network SEE

Sanja Šišović comes from Podgorica, Montenegro. She has been active in the health field since 2010 when she joined NGO CAZAS as a youth worker and health activist. Currently, she is very active in the promotion of health innovations among youth, advocacy, and health policy shaping. Since 2018 she is a member of the National Alcohol Council within the Ministry of Health in Montenegro and is active in more than five different working groups and national teams for non-communicable diseases and reproductive health of youth. Her professional background has been mostly focused on health and youth & vulnerable groups-related topics, with more than 10 years of experience in volunteering and working in the field of public health in the SEE region, active participation and involvement in more than 50 regional and international health events in the last five years and representing Montenegro as a delegate at seven international networks on different health topics. Her professional interest is focused on health topics with special emphasis on smart and innovative solutions, mental health, youth development, sustainability of services as well as combating COVID-19 consequences among most at risk groups.

Newest innovative projects she worked on are platform for self-assessment of risks in terms of sexual behaviour (http://zdravlje.co.me/zdravisa/) as well as #OnACT programme dedicated to building digital skills among youth for innovative solutions in youth work and employability (http://cazas.org/2016-12-19-01-31-60/onact)

Dragana Bajovic

Dragana Bajović is currently running the Business Incubator in the Innovation Centre Banja Luka. She has over 5 years of professional experience in working with youth, startups, entrepreneurs and SME. 

Dragana has participated as a mentor at several business competitions, as well as a member of the jury. As a mentor she worked on the development of business plan and presentational skills – preparations for the pitching.

She actively works on projects related to the improving labour/business skills of youth and youth entrepreneurship. On a daily basis she works with entrepreneurs, helping them to grow their ideas and businesses, and reach new international markets. 

Jonida Kellezi

Jonida (Këllezi) Cako is the Marketing Director at EasyPay.

She is an experienced professional, with a long history of working in the academic sector, marketing and communication agencies and startups.

Jonida holds a PhD in Marketing Management, as well as a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from the University of Sheffield.

Ogerta Elezaj

Ogerta Elezaj is a Lecturer at the Department of Applied Statistics and Informatics, University of Tirana, teaching courses on Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Data Analyses.
She received her Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Tirana in 2018.

She was a recipient of Alain Bensoussan postdoctoral fellowship from European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) in 2019-2020 and held ERCIM postdoc fellow positions at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Her main fields of competence are artificial intelligence, machine learning applications, big data, digital crime evidence collection and ontologies, etc. She has recently been focused on conducting interdisciplinary research to address complex information security and privacy issues of Online Social Networks using machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Dr. Elezaj worked at the Albanian Institute of Statistics for more than eight years as a Director of IT and Methodology Department.

Dr. Elezaj has worked as a trainer and consultant for different international organisations such as UNDP, UNFPA, and European Commission.