Agenda

Anton heads Google’s Government Affairs & Public Policy for Switzerland, Austria and International Organizations in Europe. Since joining Google in 2011, he has shaped the company’s policy strategy in the region and played a key role in the growth of Google Zurich, a significant global engineering hub (around 5000 employees), including a period as interim Site-Lead. A strong advocate for using Artificial Intelligence to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he advises brainforest.global, a non-profit focused on forests, biodiversity and climate action. He was also part of the core team that established Zurich's Accessibility Discovery Center, a collaborative space dedicated to co-designing inclusive, assistive technologies.

Carrie is an Accessibility Evangelist at Atos. Prior to this role, she held strategy and leadership positions as solution architect, data expert, alliance & business development manager, head of marketing & communication, and steering committee of the group portfolio. She was also an IT Helpdesk Manager at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games and has served on the Editorial Board of the former Atos Scientific Community and as a Senior Expert in the Atos Expert Community in the data / AI domain. Her voluntary engagements include UN projects for AI Lab for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and race official at CYBATHLON (a non-profit project of ETH Zurich that hosts international competitions to foster innovation in assistive technologies) and Zero Project Scaling Solutions mentor. Currently, she volunteers as Digital Accessibility expert with the ITU Global Initiative on AI and Virtual Worlds (Track “Digital Inclusion and Accessibility”), and the Equitable AI Alliance (supported by Zero Project and the Seneca Trust).

Connect with her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrichow

After a degree cum laude in Political Science from the University of Florence, Italy (1983), Anna joined the European Parliament in Luxemburg as stagiaire. She then worked on international issues for CGIL in Rome and from 1990 in New York (USA) where she was President of INCA CGIL, supporting workers through social security and emigration services. In 1998 she moved with her family to Geneva, as Deputy Director of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions’ office, later International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Nominated Director in 2004, she became Secretary of the Workers’ Group at the International Labour Organization until 2009. In this period, she also represented globally the Geneva NGOs having been elected in 2007 as Vice President of the Conference of NGOs (CoNGO). Anna then joined the ILO as Deputy Director of the Bureau for Workers’ Activities. In this capacity, she worked on various issues linked to policy organs as well as overseeing relations with NGOs and external actors. She has been part of the Advisory Committee of the Project “Future of Work – Labour after Laudato Si” since its origin in 2016. Now retired, she continues with her pro bono engagement towards supporting independent trade unions and NGOs, in particular through her role as SPI CGIL representative in the UN Working Group drafting the international human rights treaty for older persons.

Roxana WIDMER-ILIESCU heads the Digital Inclusion Service at the Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), where she has dedicated over 28 years to advancing the global digital inclusion agenda. She advises ITU Members on inclusive digital policies and strategies that enable everyone’s participation in the digital society, economy, and environment.

A passionate advocate for ICT and digital accessibility, Roxana promotes human-centred technologies and equitable digital opportunities for all—regardless of age, gender, ability, or location. To support global efforts toward building a digitally inclusive world where no one is left behind, she has spearheaded the development of more than 90 ITU-D key resources aimed at fostering the implementation of available, affordable, and digitally accessible technologies.

Before joining ITU, she served in the International Relations Department of the Romanian Parliament. She holds a legal background with a specialization in strategic management of telecommunications, and is fluent in English, French, Romanian, and Spanish.

Viktors Makarovs is the first Envoy on Digital Affairs appointed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia. His current focus is information integrity and security and the impact of AI. Since 2014, he has led the Ministry’s work on disinformation, focusing on EU policies and international cooperation. Before joining the Ministry in 2011, Viktors acquired a background in the Latvian NGO think-tanking community where his two main interests were Latvian political culture and Russia’s foreign and domestic policy. He holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.