SingularityU Chapters play an integral role in bringing together local communities, galvanizing them to achieve common goals, and spreading SU’s mission around the world. Today, we are excited to welcome 17 new Chapters and 21 renewed Chapters, bringing the total number of Chapters to 172 in 72 countries, and three new nations to the SingularityU Chapter community.In tandem with our official announcement today, the newly approved SingularityU Abuja Chapter is happy to invite all interested members of the public to its Chapter Launch at the Redbridge Healthcare Innovation Place (RHIPFactory) in Abuja, Nigeria, at 6pm local time.
SingularityU Chapters hold events and get-togethers that reach out to their communities, help connect like-minded individuals who are interested in exploring how exponential technology can solve humanity’s grand challenges, and amplify SU’s mission to global audiences.Chapter members come from a wide range of industries—from entrepreneurs and policymakers to academics and NGO leaders. The diversity in backgrounds enrich the conversation and helps participants discover valuable new viewpoints and perspectives.In the spirit of inclusivity, community members who are not currently SU alumni may now apply to lead a Chapter in their local city through a separate eligibility process. Our Q3 application cycle also opens today. So, if you’re ready to lead a Chapter in your community, we invite you to submit your application by August 1st. To learn more or start your application, visit su.org/chapters/apply.
It’s inspiring to see Chapters forming in new communities such as Colombo in Sri Lanka, Dhaka in Bangladesh, and Debe-Penal in Trinidad & Tobago. It’s also energizing to see new growth in the USA (25), Brazil (17), India (9), and Australia (5). And, where there was once only one Chapter, there are now two in Chile, Guatemala, Nigeria, and UAE. We are also excited to welcome back renewing Chapters, some with new leadership teams, like in Berlin, Germany.Today, we officially welcome new Chapters in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Abuja, Nigeria; Adelaide, Australia; Ahmedabad, India; Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala; Betim, Brazil; Brisbane, Australia; Canberra, Australia; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Debe-Penal, Trinidad & Tobago; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Erode, India; Fairfield-Westchester, USA; Guarulhos, Brazil; Pucon, Chile; Ribeirão Preto, Brazil; and, Washington DC Metro, USA.We have also renewed licenses for Chapters in Bogotá, Colombia; Bordeaux, France; Campinas, Brazil; Cascais Lisbon, Portugal; Cordoba, Argentina; Curitiba, Brazil; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Manila, Philippines; Monterrey, Mexico; Porto Alegre, Brazil; Salamanca, Spain; San Jose, Costa Rica; Sydney, Australia; Trieste, Italy; Trivandrum, India; Vancouver, Canada; and Vienna, Austria.You can browse our full Chapter roster on our website. Each new and returning Chapter was selected in Q2 of 2019, and you can find more information about our announcement in our press release.
Our global Chapters flourish thanks to the collaborative volunteer leadership teams who work hard to bring together local innovators and leaders in regular gatherings that attract expert speakers and encourage impactful discussions. I’m delighted to introduce each leadership team, and to give you the opportunity to hear from some of them in their own words!
Anas Zeineddine, David Provenzani, Gozde Demir, Hanan Khaldi, Maria del Mar Navarro, Mohammed Shahin, Dr. Mohammed Adnan
“As team members who have worked previously across different countries on harboring entrepreneurship and driving impact, we are excited to foster a culture of innovation within Abu Dhabi through organizing events and workshops that come in alignment with the city’s vision to build a knowledge-based economy. Bringing SingularityU Abu Dhabi Chapter to the local community will help nurture a startup ecosystem and support entrepreneurs in achieving their full potential by connecting them with leaders and global industry experts, and we’re thrilled to be part of this transformation!”—SingularityU Abu Dhabi Chapter Leadership Team
Ighodalo Eromosele, Joshua Agbomedarho, Mariam Chukwuemeka, Patricia Eromosele, Paul Omugbe
“A community network of like minds [is needed] in order to share and gain insights on global grand challenges, towards spawning interests, solutions and procedures to solving GGC’s. The Chapter hopes to provide an ecosystem for entrepreneurs, leaders and individuals with an exponential mindset to tap into the bountiful knowledge of the vibrant SU community to accelerate human development. We want to be a part of a global group of individuals and organizations that are looking to educate, inspire and empower the community to use exponential technology to solve regional and global challenges.”—SingularityU Abuja Chapter Leadership Team
“The SingularityU Ahmedabad Chapter is a collaborative platform to bring together like-minded and passionate change-makers to explore the opportunities and the impact of exponential technologies.It will be a connect to the vast global network of innovators, thinkers that are working towards shaping the future.”—SingularityU Ahmedabad Chapter Leadership Team
Alessandra Menezes Rodrigues, Daniel Roman Caceres, Erick Quan, Leandro Mauricio Porras, Rafael Davini, Yara Morales Trujillo, Ziomara Estrada
“Working the local challenges collaboratively and creatively and with the support of exponential technologies make us believe that we can generate positive impact in a global way. Therefore, we want to involve and connect the local community who live these challenges day by day with local entrepreneurs, so that together they can strengthen themselves and empower others in the construction of an innovative, exponential and abundant ecosystem.”—SingularityU Antigua Guatemala Chapter Leadership Team
“The SU Barcelona Chapter aspires to become the reference point around how we can leverage exponential technologies to address challenges and opportunities to bring social and economic value to society. We will focus on education, manufacturing, technology, life sciences, tourism, sports, smart cities and services among other segments relevant to the Barcelona area. Therefore, we would like to invite all key players—either startups, SMBs or corporations, scientific institutions and universities, VCs, Public Administration, think tanks, exponential tech experts and vertical industry stakeholders—to join us around vertical communities of interest and enjoy this adventure together.”—Jordi Mañé, SingularityU Barcelona Chapter Leadership Team Member
Daniel Vidigal, Paulo Henrique, Rodrigo Carneiro, Vinicius Debian
“Welcome to the SingularityU Chapter in Betim, one of the 100 largest cities in Brazil, characterized by its strong petrochemical and automotive industrial pole, which still houses important companies in the metallurgy, mechanics, services and logistics sectors. And as part of this important scenario, as a Chapter of Singularity University, … [our] moonshot [is] to promote the internationalization and development of the municipality's innovation ecosystem through programs that can stimulate leaders and professionals in a new mindset focused on the development of solutions and exponential technologies, especially in the areas of education, health and wellness, employability, productivity and best practices in management and governance. Vinicius Debian, founder of the Ardenas Human and Technology, will be the Ambassador of the Chapter together with Daniel Vidigal, founder of Ivory Technology.”—SingularityU Betim Chapter Leadership Team
Hendrik Brandenburger, Thorsten Linz
Carlos Castellanos, Claudia Aparicio, Isabel Espinosa, Juan Carlos Guaqueta, Santiago Pinzón
Aidan O'Brien, Bertrand Bussac, Pierre Segalen
"Applying for, and being granted, the licence for the Chapter in Bordeaux has given me the most wonderful vehicle for giving something back to the local community which I love. The licence and SU's brand and mission has opened all sorts of doors locally, and helped me find new like-minded friends. It's been a wonderful adventure over the last two years and I'm looking forward to it continuing in the future".—Aidan O’Brien, SingularityU Bordeaux Chapter Leadership Team Member
Olena Tymchenko, Rodney Persky
“The new Singularity University Chapter in Brisbane seeks to continue the global mission of tackling humanities grand challenges in a holistic, grassroots approach. Fostering innovation by example, SingularityU Brisbane will be bringing exponential speakers and facilitating the dialogue of singularity and abundance. Integrating the experience of exponential thinkers gives us an opportunity to share expertise in research, policy and practice across a wide range of disciplines.SingularityU Brisbane, established by Rodney Persky and Olena Tymchenko, is taking home the global narrative of leadership, entrepreneurship and the continued progress on humanity’s grand challenges. The Brisbane Chapter’s leaders are passionate advocates for the development of next generation technologies, as well as positive change and fostering leadership. In a world of uncertainty, ensuring that the global narrative continues to freely flow, and the discussions lead to actions, SingularityU Brisbane Chapter seeks to bring together experienced leaders, moon-shot thinkers and do-ers under one roof to foster the next generation of change-makers.SingularityU Brisbane is a collision factory, aspiring entrepreneurs with big ideas to connect with others and bring their vision to reality. SingularityU Brisbane will be holding a number of transformative events over 2019 and 2020; keep an eye out for these events listed on https://global.su.org/chapters/brisbane.”—SingularityU Brisbane Chapter Leadership Team
Daniel Cobianchi, Mauricio de Campos Bueno, Stefanie M. Falconi
“Our goal is to cultivate community and connect individual efforts to create new narratives of collaboration."—Daniel Cobianchi, SingularityU Campinas Chapter Leadership Team Member“We are thrilled for the possibilities.''—Mauricio de Campos Bueno, SingularityU Campinas Chapter Leadership Team Member"The work is hard, the potential returns infinite...so if you have a transformative idea, join us in this exponential journey to dare to think differently so together we can have a global impact.” —Stefanie M. Falconi, SingularityU Campinas Chapter Leadership Team Member“SingularityU Campinas aims to promote an abundance mindset, leveraging local and international exponential thinkers and connecting them with local game-changers. The Chapter's goal is to connect and expand the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in Campinas. The Chapter will take advantage of Campinas' infrastructure, resources and innovative spirit.”—SingularityU Campinas Chapter Leadership Team
Belinda Newham, Carly Hayes, Craig Barnard, Paul Grant
“Canberra is home to some of Australia's most influential policy makers, academics, innovators and leaders. With the launch of our Chapter, we seek to engage and build a highly effective and networked local community. This means embracing diversity as a default and fostering a culture of curiosity and inclusion so that as a group we can use exponential technologies to make a real impact in our society.”—SingularityU Canberra Chapter Leadership Team
Francisca Pereira, João Mil-Homens, Luís Franco, Maria Pedro Silva, Ricardo Marvão
Fazal Fausz, Subramaniam Eassuwaren, Upamali Perera
“We believe that we have everything we need to solve the most critical issues we face on this planet. Through the SingularityU Colombo Chapter, we envision to create a community and a platform to do good and make people’s lives better. We hope this community will inspire much-needed positive energy and impact by bringing the key players in our society together towards solving the bigger challenges we all face on this beautiful planet. The Singularity University purpose—to learn, connect, and innovate using technologies that connect challenges, practices, and organizations—give us the foundation to build the ecosystem to do this and inspire others towards a growth mindset. Our dream is to create a unique space for conversations and networking, and to collaborate to address challenges, not only in Sri Lanka but also around the globe, while enabling us to do something great and strive towards a better world.”—SingularityU Colombo Chapter Leadership Team
Horacio Caceres, Laercio Simões
“We are strong believers and promoters of Singularity University values. When we started two years ago, we were only a few of us knowing about exponential technologies and how we could change the world and billions [of] people’s [lives] by promoting the word. We are now on this new stage (renewal) more enthusiast[ic] than ever, working with an incredible ecosystem of people and professionals leading this process to the moon. We will do it sooner than later. Thank you.”—SingularityU Cordoba Chapter Leadership Team
Osmar Zózimo De Souza Jr, Francisco Rodrigues Gomes
“We ... feel [a real sense of] accomplishment by sharing knowledge and promot[ing] [a] collaboration mindset about all related emergent technologies ... to support [the] local community [to] better understand the general impact on … [their] lives and businesses from exponential tech … [and] improvements [to their] lifestyle and happiness.” —Osmar Zózimo De Souza Jr, SingularityU Curitiba Chapter Leadership Team Member
“As Ambassador of SU Debe-Penal, I am thrilled to launch one of the first SingularityU Chapters in the Caribbean. Located in South Trinidad, the SingularityU Debe-Penal Chapter is a groundbreaking initiative for a growing entrepreneurial community to tap into new inspiration, leap forward into future-thinking mindsets, experience exponential technologies, and amplify new ideas for exponential technologies that addresses global environmental challenges, natural disasters, agriculture, gender equity challenges and/or the future of work. Through networking, speaker events, design thinking gatherings and SU’s global grand challenges, SingularityU Debe-Penal will act as a catalyst to accelerate the local culture of innovation, introduce local leaders to exponential technologies and serve as a platform to incubate ideas for exponential technologies. We look forward to bringing together the largest network and gathering of exponential thinkers and doers in the country and across the Caribbean islands.”—Pramilla Ramdahani, SingularityU Debe-Penal Chapter Leadership Team Member
Amit Islam, Anik Al Fahad, Mahid Hasan
“Science and technology are solving the greatest challenges of humanity and being an integral part of that process is our purpose. We will connect our community with passionate and like-minded people who believe in the power of innovation and abundance. Creating SingularityU Dhaka Chapter is a great opportunity and we are very enthusiastic to learn and share SU knowledge on exponential technologies, which will accelerate community transformation for a better future.”—SingularityU Dhaka Chapter Leadership Team
Nazar Khan, Ommsharravana Sendamaraai, Prasanna Krishna Subramanian, Siva Balakrishnan
“Traditionally, Erode is a city of Entrepreneurs; nevertheless, we need everyone to not just think big but think exponential. We live in exponential times and our mindset needs to adapt accordingly. We hope to nurture a Singularity community which “unlearns” familiar ways of thinking and embraces the unfamiliar.”—SingularityU Erode Chapter Leadership Team
Devone McLeod, Doug Kuring, Robert Reby
“Educating the community has always been a core component of our mission. Through the SingularityU Fairfield-Westchester Chapter, we are excited to inspire local business and government leaders to engage in discussions about how to embrace exponential technologies to create a better world – both locally and globally. We look forward to organizing local events that facilitate these conversations, with the goal of increasing awareness and adoption of exponential technologies that make life better, particularly as it relates to the grand societal challenge of achieving sustainable financial independence.”—SingularityU Fairfield-Westchester Chapter Leadership Team
Avelino Nader, Leandro Correia, Matheus Pinheiro de Oliveira e Silva, Ricardo França, Roberto Ueno, Rodrigo Azevedo
“Being able to participate in an outlier group of disruptive leaders such as SingularityU Chapter community, it is a great opportunity to pin the Guarulhos city among others as a disruptive and innovative community. Guarulhos is one of the most important cities in Brazilian GDP representation and open doors to innovation from here will be an opportunity to highlight local innovations to the world. I am honored to be able to support Guarulhos in this journey.”—Matheus Pinheiro de Oliveira e Silva, SingularityU Guarulhos Chapter Leadership Team Members“As Chapter ambassador I have the opportunity to represent SU aligned with the mission of developing the innovation ecosystem in Guarulhos. The SingularityU Guarulhos Chapter enables me to exchange information and share a DNA of innovation that connects other global Chapters and strengthens the articulation with the threefold propeller of innovation centralization in the three interrelated elements: business, universities and government.”—Roberto Ueno, SingularityU Guarulhos Chapter Leadership Team Member“I thought that innovation, mainly disruptive innovation, it is possible to positively impact a larger number of people. This is achieved through techniques and engagement of society which I believe that SingularityU Guarulhos Chapter has a great power to contribute.”—Ricardo França, SingularityU Guarulhos Chapter Leadership Team Member
Ahmed Taibah, Alaa Al-Sharif, Duaa Al-Sharif
Benjie So, Dino Lising, Jasen Ko, Venu Kotamraju
Eduardo Valdez, Jorge Lerdo de Tejada, Manuel Alejandro Sanchez
"We admire the philosophy that Singularity University brings to the world by the use of exponential technologies and exponential thinking. Monterrey is a very industrialized city that has had many transformations over the years, and we want to be part of this discussion on what is the best way to build the next centennial for the city. We'd love to continue this discussion with this Chapter—discussions on technology and the economic responsibilities for our region. We will continue to hope and to keep working with all the talented people in our community, and to keep moving forward, creating an amazing path."—SingularityU Monterrey Chapter Leadership Team
Cristian Basilio De Almeida, Diana Werlang, Leandro Pompermaier, Marcelo Paes, Maria Julia Bezzi, Rafael Prikladnicki, Renato Cunha
“Pucon is an amazing and ecological city located in the south of Chile at the border of Patagonia. It is home to a flourishing environmental community. We are sharing tools and resources to help young entrepreneurs be innovative and to stay updated with the 21st century challenges. Supporting them on their journey of becoming important assets during these times of intense technological transformation. By sharing the frameworks for an exponential mindset with this environmentalist ecosystem, we are hoping to have a positive impact in this community.”—SingularityU Pucon Chapter Leadership Team
Eduardo Cicconi, Matheus Lima, Priscila Santarosa, Reneide Melo
“We are very excited and strongly motivated to spread SU’s mindset, encouraging greats insights, knowledge, amplifying the community, promoting further discussion on exponential technologies, innovation, futurism, 10X Moonshot mindset, Global Impact Challenge competition, abundance, [and] long life learning.Our goal is [to] increase the community of inspiring leaders in positive impact and exponential thinking, share their desirable futures and help them create a better one together! The basis for it is the power of shar[ing] knowledge. We hope that the consequence will be a great network of different people from different businesses and experiences inspired in make happen.”—SingularityU Ribeirão Preto Chapter Leadership Team
Marjorie Hernandez De Vogelsteller, Sylvia Taudien, Teresa María Alarcos Tamayo
Maricel Saenz, Priscila Chaves Martinez
Dong Ho Hwang, Juno Ko, San Ko, Tony Lyu
“Seoul is the capital and center of the Republic of Korea. Using the geographical conditions of Seoul, we would like to present a picture of future education in the educational city of Seoul. The Korean peninsula is under a great transition, by running Seoul Chapter we are trying to understand and forecast the next significant events that may change the world.“—SingularityU Seoul Chapter Leadership Team
Alex Baker, Lennaert van Dijke
Bucky Beyer, Kelly Knueven, Lucy Buchanan, Peter Corbett
Georgios Kourousias, Giovanni Loser, Guido Bortoluzzi, Roberto Pugliese
“It has been just over a year since the foundation of the SingularityU Chapter in the north Italian seaside city of Trieste. Roberto, George, Guido and Giovanni—a team of diverse skills worked for the common objective of introducing the Singularity University concepts at regional level both for regular citizens and private companies. This challenging task was successful and led to 5 chapter events and multiple new memberships. Beyond the common aims of the team, each of its members has their own reason for creating the Chapter and maintaining it. George enjoys hard AI, Guido the business side of things, Giovanni follows the exponential organisations—but the motivation that stands above all is that of the Chapter Ambassador, Roberto, who lost prematurely his son Emanuele Pugliese whose desire was to follow the SU concepts which inspire hope for the future of our society. The Trieste team under this motive will continue to contribute back to the community by serving as a communicator and catalyst of SU concepts and ideas.”—SingularityU Trieste Chapter Leadership Team
Anoop Thomas, Ashok Kurian Panjikaran, Binu Koshy, Deepu S Nath, Dr Jayasankar Prasad C, Dr Saji Gopinath, Varun Geethamony
“The SingularityU Trivandrum Chapter has been active since May 2017 and has been focusing on technology sectors like robotics, machine learning , biotech, cybersecurity, AR/VR, and blockchain. [In] the last 2 years, the team was able to conduct several programs and was also instrumental in hosting the SingularityU Global Impact Challenge for the first time in India in 2018. By conducting roadshows and awareness programs in connection with the GIC, our team was able to spread the mission and vision of SingularityU across India and this is reflected in new Chapters that are coming up in our country like in Chennai, Gurgaon, Kolkata, and Mumbai.”—SingularityU Trivandrum Chapter Leadership Team
Eesmyal Santos-Brault, Greg FitzGerald, Min FitzGerald, Soushiant Zanganehpour
"Vancouver has long acted as a nexus that brings together global doers, leaders, and technologists—as the host city to world stage conferences including TED Global, YPO Edge to the Women Deliver Conference. We're now excited to bring together the local community of SU alumni and SU-minded doers, who want to support one another to use their talents to make a difference in Canada and the world stage."—Min FitzGerald, SingularityU Vancouver Chapter Leadership Team Member“My motivations for contributing to growing the footprint of the SU Chapter in Vancouver are in line with many past efforts and initiatives I’ve spearheaded to help make Vancouver a much more vibrant place for entrepreneurs and innovators. I’ve lived away from the city for 10 years, and recently returned 8 months ago with fresh eyes and in a new capacity. As a startup entrepreneur building a venture attempting to tackle one of the Global Grand Challenges (Governance), I selfishly would love to see the ecosystem be a much more resource bearing to people like me and easier to navigate. As an old-newcomer back to the city, I am learning that Vancouver has an abundance of talent, interest, and networks with global relevance and reach but they are highly fragmented and difficult to access. A vibrant SU Vancouver Chapter can help make access to resources for ecosystem members much more convenient, while helping innovators benefit from the platform that the SU brand and alumni chapter provides for promoting their unique ideas and interventions. Building stronger bridges, promoting local talent, bringing incredible learning, insights, and growth opportunities to this community, and generally helping improve the quality of entrepreneurship and level of ambitions locally are my primary motivations for contributing to growing the SU Chapter in Vancouver. Thankfully, I am not alone, we have a very strong and dependable team full of self-motivated, independently minded high-achievers that are all aligned with similar goals and aspirations. I am very excited about what we may do together.”—Soushiant Zanganehpour, SingularityU Vancouver Chapter Leadership Team Member
Margit Berner, Petra Hauser, Philip Gabriel
“The continuation of our successful Vienna Chapter is not only about letting our community grow further, but also about bringing it into reflection to an even greater extent about the exciting content of our events and connecting it with each other, even beyond the salons. We are motivated by the unique opportunity to contribute to the real impact that SingularityU Vienna is able to achieve.”—SingularityU Vienna Chapter Leadership Team
Bevon Moore, Corina LJ DuBois, David Bray, Jennifer Wappaus, Jim Schleckser, Matt Devost, Paul Pagnato, Teri Cochrane
“In this exponential era, we bring together like-minded leaders that have a synergistic vision of synthesizing the exponential nature of technology and social norms producing a positive impact on humanity.” —Paul Pagnato, SingularityU Washington DC Metro Chapter Leadership Team Member“With our era of rapid change both in terms of technologies and social norms, we need to ask important questions of where we want to go? How do we want to uplift and improve our communities with people-centered approaches? We are seeing increasing polarization in open societies. What values or norms do we want to encourage for the exponential future ahead? How can we build better bridges across sectors? How can we develop narratives of hope for open, pluralistic societies that bring people together?All these questions and more represent the important discussions across diverse groups that the Greater Washington DC Chapter of Singularity University seeks to explore and answer. Join us for these important endeavors ahead.”—SingularityU Washington DC Metro Chapter Leadership Team