László Ágoston sociologist. Through his work over the past five years his interests have led him from pure market research and opinion polling to a deeper understanding of socio-economic structures and phenomena, such as socially responsible companies and the research and improvement of quality of life. Later he became fascinated by think-tanks that bridge the gap between science, journalism and politics. He founded the Publicus Institute, and more recently the Kreater Social Innovation Laboratory, which coordinates collaboration between socially responsible for-profit organizations and NGOs bringing together ideas and investors.

Miklós Antal graduated from Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) in 2007 in engineering-physics. He is conducting his PhD studies on the mechanics of environmental decision making. He lectures on environmental economics and is currently developing a course that will teach environmental issues from an interdisciplinary point of view. He revived the Student Environmental Association, the first step of which was to organise selective waste collection at the university. He is an enthusiastic environmental activist and a great believer in the power of grassroots initiatives in changing institutional practices. He is a member of LINK network research group.

Sarolta Laura Baritz an economist by training, used to travel around the world as sales development manager for Pepsi-Cola Hungary. And yet, she made the longest journey of her life without leaving town, practically her own apartment. Sarolta Baritz, a successful business manager, became Sister Laura, a Dominican nun. She gave away her wealth and moved into the convent. Instead of making decisions worth millions she was doing chores around the cloister. She had seven years to change her mind, but she renounced her secular life. Since then she graduated as a teacher of Religion & Ethics, teches at Sapienta College and is about to receive her PhD in economics.

Gabriella Benkő used to be a project manager and management consultant in the private sector and has always been sensitive to social issues. In 2010 she joined Ashoka as Country Director. Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. Ashoka supports individual entrepreneurs, brings them together in communities to leverage their impact and helps build the infrastructure and financial systems needed to support the growth of the citizen sector in order to facilitate the spread of social innovation globally.

Vilmos Benkő is an economist, motivational speaker and entrepreneur in the healthcare and financial sectors. He has been living in Hungary for 20 years. For 11 of those he worked for Euronet building a network of ATMs first in Hungary, then in Central Europe. He established the Hungarian branch of Toastmasters International, an organisation teaching public speaking and leadership skills, and launched the public speaking course in the Kozma street prison. He is currently working with his colleagues on building the Hárskút Center for Renewable Energy and popularising the switch to green energy sources.

Botond Bognár property developer fell in love with the villa of the Hatvany family 15 years ago. Built in 1872 in the side of the Buda castle after the plans of renowned Hungarian architect Mikós Ybl, the villa was completely destroyed during World War II. He founded the company Budapanoráma, which bought the property. The project that became a personal passion spent 7 years in the bureaucratic quagmire of obtaining permits, as the plot falls within a World Heritage site. A further 2 years were spent excavating the site; the remains of the medieval Turkish fortress unearthed now form a part of the building.

Dan Barber is the chef at New York's Blue Hill restaurant, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Westchester, where he practices a kind of close-to-the-land cooking married to agriculture and stewardship of the earth. Barber's philosophy of food focuses on pleasure and thoughtful conservation -- on knowing where the food on your plate comes from and the unseen forces that drive what we eat. He's written on US agricultural policies, asking for a new vision that does not throw the food chain out of balance by subsidizing certain crops at the expense of more appropriate ones.

Günter Pauli is a world-renowned innovator whose entrepreneurial activities span business, culture, science, politics and the environment. Under his leadership Ecover, a small European company, pioneered the first ecological factory built from recycled materials and using renewable energy, manufacturing cleaning products, exclusively natural soaps and renewable raw materials. Pauli is the founder of Zero Emissions Research Initiative, author of ‘The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs’ and was directly involved in the design of a series of pioneering projects including rainforest regeneration.

Veronika Harcsa is an internationally celebrated young Hungarian jazz singer. She formed her own jazz quartet in 2005, three years before graduating from the vocal jazz faculty of the Liszt Ferenc College of Music. Both her first album, Speak Low, and her second album featuring her own original songs, You Don’t know it’s You became top selling albums in the vocal jazz charts in Japan. Besides her jazz quartet she has tried herself in many genres. She is the singer of the well-established Erik Sumo Band and her latest project, Bin Jip will debut in September this year.

István Joós was a successful web entrepreneur in the late 90s, but his company collapsed within a decade due to his "selfish shortsightedness", as he now puts it. He had to give up his BMW, the apartment in a wealthy neighbourhood, restaurants, skiing, sailing. At first, it hit him hard, but now he is grateful for the carte blanche from life. He could spend a year sitting under trees, figuring out what he really wanted to do. This led to szivesseg.net, a website where people can ask for favors, or offer them for free, anything from a bicycle to gardening – a then serpak.net, a community of business coaches who are rigorously licensed based on their own experiences.

András Lang is a musician, mediator, amateur actor, and co-founder of the Pesti Est free cultural magazine. The initially local magazine over the years grew into a national media group. He became involved with the Waldorf teaching method through his first child and co-founded the first Waldorf Kindergarten. He studied at the Waldorf teaching school, where he became familiar with the Organic business model. In 2005 he co-founded the Ethical Loan Society. In 2010 he became the marketing director for MagNet, the first Hungarian community bank, which emphasises a policy of sustainable development and transparent, ethical practice.

Attila Dávid Molnár is a passionate nature filmmaker. He made his first movie early, while still in primary school, with a Super-8 camera – it was called „Evolution” starting with a single cell and ending with a human. He hasn’t let the camera out of his hands since. As a member of the First Hungarian Antarctic Expedition, he documented wildlife and research on the continent in a four-part film series. His documentary “The Invisible Bird Photographer” on Bence Máté, regarded as one of the best bird photographers in the world, was screened in competition at the 2010 Hungarian Film Festival.

Beáta Oborny is a theoretical biologist, currently an Associate Professor in the Biological Institute, ELTE (Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem) and leads the Ecological Boundaries International Research Group. Her main field of research is modelling ecological end evolutionary processes. Her present studies are related to the dynamics of species extinctions, to the emergence of self-organized patterns in ecological systems and to the evolution of clonal organisms. She explores verious cross-border topics building on connecting sciences and arts & humanities.

Paul Garrison former Managing Director of Coca-Cola Hungary, prior to that the Marketing Director for the Coca-Cola East Central Europe Division, received the "Woodruff Cup” for running the highest performing division in the world for The Coca-Cola Company. He is now Chairman of the Budapest based Garrison Group, a development consultancy agency with prestigious clients throughout the whole region, such as Telenor, Procter & Gamble and Sony PlayStation. Paul is a former Dean of the CEU Business School where he still teaches marketing.

Simon Cohen is a media ethics maverick. Founder and Managing Director of global tolerance, a PR firm that shuns spin and glitter in favour of ’principled public relations’, upholding truth and integrity. Simon is committed to shine the media spotlight on inspirational people and organisations, believing that socially driven stories can feature on the front pages. Simon has worked directly with HH Dalai Lama, HRH The Prince of Wales, Desmond Tutu and even Wallace & Gromit. Last year, Simon was included in PRWeek's Powerbook of the most influential people in the PR industry.

András Takács-Sánta does his research and teaching at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at ELTE (Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem). András has been the director of the Small Communities Program since 2008, which looks at solutions for environmental sustainability at the local level of small communities. His main interests lie in finding and understanding how humans affect the biosphere, exploring the social background of environmental problems and searching for ways to build ecologically sustainable societies. His PhD dissertation “Great leaps of our changing biosphere” was published as a book in 2008.

Tamás Vicsek is a Professor of Physics at the Biological Physics Department of ELTE (Eötvös Lóránd Tudományegyetem) and a head of the Statistical and Biological Physics research group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Over the past 25 years, he has been involved in computational and experimental research on fractals, pattern formation, the collective motion of bacterial colonies and the structure and evolution of complex networks. Applied to crowds, he co-authored papers on mapping group dynamics within social networks and spontaneous collective decisions, such as initiating a Mexican wave.

László Zsolnai is professor and director of the Business Ethics Center at the Corvinus University of Budapest as well as fellow associate at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge and author of numerous books used in university courses around the world. Having been inspired at age 13 by the moral courage of Socrates, Zsolnai developed a radically new way of thinking about economy, ecology and ethics that transcends Western-style consumer capitalism in the direction of a more ethical and spiritual economics that meaningfully integrates, but goes beyond the single-minded profit oriented approach to business. His thinking aims to find balance between serving our own intrests and those of nature, society and future generations.