Judges

Ohio University

Paul Mass

Paul Mass is “Entrepreneur-in-Residence” at the College of Business, Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio.  He also serves as Director of the University’s Center for Entrepreneurship where he will help build the entrepreneurial ecosystem supporting student and faculty entrepreneurs, as well as individuals and businesses throughout the southeast Ohio region. Paul has benefited from a diverse career beginning as a corporate attorney and continuing on as a successful entrepreneur and business executive helping to create, fund, manage and lead companies in the cable television, radio, information service, biotech and e-commerce industries.  Paul has served as a Partner, General Counsel, Chief Operating Officer, and President and CEO, respectively, at various times throughout his more than 35 year professional career.   Two of the ventures Paul helped build are still owned and operated out of San Diego, CA: ClosingCorp, Inc. is a proprietary data base of residential real estate information providing consumers and mortgage lenders with critical data needed for home purchases covering every address in the United States.  GovX, Inc. is the country’s largest online e-commerce website exclusively serving members of the U.S. military, first responders, and certain government service employees. Paul received his B.A. degree in Political Science from Duke University, magna cum laude, and his J.D. degree from the Emory University School of Law, Order of the Coif and Member of the Board, Emory Law Journal.

Judge of the international round
Judge of the local round
University of Pécs

Norbert Sipos

Norbert Sipos is an assistant professor at the University of Pécs, Faculty of Business and Economics. He defended his thesis in 2018, titled ‘Graduate Career Tracking practices in Hungary and abroad – Comparison of the Graduate Career Tracking System and the Administrative Databases Integration’. The main lectures are management, leadership, and labor-market. Since 2017 he is responsible for the Graduate Career Tracking System of the Faculty. In 2019 he became the leader of Competence and Talent Development Center. In 2018 he was awarded with the Janus Award, given by the Janus Pannonius College for Advanced Studies.

Main research interests:

  • Graduate Career Tracking System and Administrative Databases Integration
  • Labor-market tendencies
  • CRANET
  • EU migration and its consequences
  • Collective Bargaining

Since 2009 he is an active tender, feasibility study, business plan writer and organizer of several national events. From 2009 he was a presidency member of the Alumni of Pécs Graduated Students of Advanced Studies from 2012 until 2019 he was the president.

Judge of the local round
University of Pécs

Anikó Kuczkó

Anikó Kuczkó is startup coordinator at INPUT Program, a high-priority government project, financed by the EU, what aims to create and nurture internationally competitive Hungarian tech startups. Being a member of the nationwide coordinator network she finds the hidden, talented idea owners, innovative ideas, startups and help them to get free services from the program: trainings, mentoring, business development services and international market access.

Beside INPUT Program, Anikó takes on a role in building the local startup ecosystem in cooperation with local partners such as Pécs University, Simonyi BEDC and local companies.

Judge of the international round
University of Pécs

Krisztina Radnai

As a professional business consultant my mission is to make companies successful: to increase their turnover and profitability and achieve sustainable and calculable growth, providing them with strategic planning & program execution. My toolset includes market research, consumer understanding, consumer and trade marketing tools. Strategic approach and consciously built up structures ensure not only good results but also a sustainably growing business with repeatable achievements, so I strive to offer not only one-time creative ideas but lasting solutions based on market understanding. With my 20 years of experience on international markets, cross-industry B2B and B2C experience I offer a "human”, down to earth, practical approach and honest answers to my clients' questions. 
Areas where I can help the most: strong strategic thinking to reveal and resolve bottlenecks for growth; structural solutions to build up a system to sustain growth results; making and realizing successful launch and/or marketing plans for specific markets.
Activity extensions include: realization of projects, project management; GDPR consulting.  

Judge of the local round
University of Pécs

Péter Kristof

Peter Kristof is a seasoned advisor, lecturer, conference speaker and specialist in disruptive innovation, exponential technologies and industry4.0, having several transformation projects, a PhD and a Harvard degree under his belt. He is passionate about creating welfare and prosperity through science and technology.

His current activities cover company and country wide innovation and transformation programs, startup mentoring and funding, team coaching and research on future technologies and business models.

He is the founding CEO of frazir.com, a boutique advisory firm focusing on the transformation of businesses by providing hands-on insights into exponential technologies and disruptive innovation. Furthermore, he is an invited lecturer at the Corvinus University of Budapest and at the University of Pécs, a senior mentor at Hiventures (a 200 million USD venture capital fund), the president of Chief Information Officers’ Association in Hungary, and board member at the Hungarian Association for Innovation. He currently acts as a certified exponential organizations coach, trainer and ambassador at OpenExO, a global transformation ecosystem helping organizations, institutions and people to transform and unlock abundance. Furthermore, he holds the chief innovation officer position at YourAnastomosis, a startup making surgical education data-driven, and also works as digital transformation and innovation advisor to the president of the National Basketball Academy (Hungary). Additionally, he also acts as an advisor and evaluator at the European Innovation Council.

Judge of the local round
University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

Randy Knaflic

Currently an advisor and investor in technology start-ups, Randy Knaflic leans on his years of experience as an HR executive for technology organizations—including Google, SpaceX, and Jawbone. He is currently the producer of the Storytelling with Data, handles legal matters, manages systems and technology, and helps to continue to build and scale the organization by offering advisory, mentoring, and operational support to make everyone's job easier. Randy is a jazz musician and owns his own record label, having produced jazz albums. Follow on Twitter | Connect on LinkedIn

Judge of the local round
University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

Adrienne Palm

Adrienne Palm has spent the last two decades honing in on a varied set of skills that have allowed her to work in a broad cross-section of industries. Major career highlights include dalliances in business development (media + CPG), talent attraction and retention strategy, experiential marketing, large scale event production and finally a humbling and unexpectedly sexy role in the trenches of the tech sector. Through her work at gener8tor, an accelerator and community investment platform, Adrienne has personally worked with nearly 50 early stage startups in a formal capacity, from Northeast Wisconsin to Los Angeles to Detroit, who have cumulatively gone on to raise over 10M in the last 2+ years. https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriennepalm/

Judge of the international round
Judge of the local round
University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

Abigail Kiefer

Abigail (Abby) Kiefer is the Entrepreneur in Residence at Royal Street Partners where she works with her lead investment team from Red Clay, which she founded, to add strategic value to the venture fund. Abby is a former policy planner for the city of San Francisco. https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigailkiefer/

Judge of the local round
Judges | University of Pécs

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