Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

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John Dutton

Highlights

  • Having worked at the World Economic Forum for fifteen years, John focused on creative communities of impact for young leaders and social entrepreneurs.
  • Young Global Leaders, YGL, is a community of change-makers under forty and global shapers in their twenties from across a wide range of society. They range from CEOs to journalists, academics to entrepreneurs.
  • The Schwab Foundation for entrepreneurship is joining in creating this digital community for global change.
  • The one thing that has been a constant in all of this background has been the event software, which was built internally since the days of kiosks and manual ticketing.
  • The magic of Davos is that you can get back to the origin of people to people without the chaperone organizing your schedule.
  • Peter Gabriel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were also part of an initiative by YGL trying to promote global dignity.
  • In a typical year, there are around 2300-2500 official delegates attending the forum, with another 700-1000 people who are attending in support of those leaders. Outside of that, tens of thousands of people are coming to the city to participate in side events.
  • Strategic intelligence, Uplink, and Davos are all part of the same digital ecosystem.
  • Uplink is the free public side of this digital ecosystem, with over 55,000 people on the platform.
  • There are two functions they are looking at on the platform for their app: end-to-end innovation sourcing and trying to inspire people to get involved in this movement for people and planet.
  • 1T.org (the trillion trees movement), is looking to tackle the climate problem through a nature-based solution with the mission of getting corporate pledges for tree planting, supporting ecopreneurs, and helping countries on the ground with regional chapters.
  • Making a big wave is also the First Movers Coalition. An initiative exploring how to get the technology necessary to get to a net-zero future through the aggregation of the demand side of corporate partners.

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