Participant 
Partner 
Monika Barton
Monika is a lecturer and researcher of business and management at the University of Economics in Prague (Faculty of Business Administration) and the Executive Director at CAMER (Centre of Applied Management and Economic Research). Despite her original education in chemistry Monika has been involved in development and education all her life. She has twelve years of multinational corporations management and more than ten years of human resources consulting (intrabusiness, leadership, motivation, coaching) experience. Monika has found her new home in Invercargill (South Island, New Zealand), where she works as a senior lecturer and programme developer at The Southern Institute of Technology (SIT). She is involved in a number of New Zealand-Czech projects and believes that Czechs and New Zealanders have a lot in common – despite a few fundamental differences in their approach to life.
Oldřich Botlík
Oldrich Botlik (* 1951, Zlin) graduated from the Charles University in Prague with a PhD in Mathematics and has been earning his living as an educational consultant for the past twenty years. He participated in implementing a new system of financing primary and secondary education and the ExTra grants scheme for innovative teachers and schools. In addition, O. Botlik helped shape the principles of the national educational legislation. For 17 years he has been co-authoring the KALIBRO project, which provides teachers with feedback on their pupils' ability to use acquired knowledge and skills in new situations. In a ten-year cycle, he also collects various pupils' dreams about their ideal school. The first child-based reflection of schooling appeared in a major Czech magazine in 1992 under the title The School of My Dreams Is a School Without Pupils.
Zuzana Derflerová Brázdová
Professor Zuzana Derflerová Brázdová is the head of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, where she focuses on nutritional assessment, development of methods of assessment, children's nutrition in emergency, public health nutrition, and food and nutrition policy. In the years 1999-2009 she participated in a number of national and international nutrition projects (e.g. WHO, International Red Cross, American Red Cross, UNICEF, ADRA) in areas of crisis from Russia, Asian post-Soviet countries, Nagorno Karabakh, Chechnya, Kosovo or Yemen, to Zimbabwe, Angola or Kenya. Her intensive work effort is balanced by her hobbies which include triathlon, skiing or baroque violoncello.
Jakub Dvorský
Jakub Dvorský is a Czech game designer and visual artist. In 2003 he successfully finished the Academy of Arts in Prague with the flash adventure game Samorost as his thesis project. At the same year he founded Amanita Design, a small independent studio focused on game development and animation. Among the most notable projects are the short games Samorost, Samorost2, The Quest For The Rest, Questionaut and Osada, the full-length game Machinarium and the design for the feature puppet film Kooky by Academy Award-winning director Jan Sverak. The Amanita Design team is currently nine people strong and hard at work on the games Botanicula and Samorost3.
Pavel Fajt
Pavel Fajt is a drummer, music composer, educator and producer. Guest of many prestigious music festivals and stages around Europe and overseas. Author of movie scores and tunes. He also received the Alfred Radok award nomination for music in the NOD Quijote theater performance. Pavel Fajt is most famous for his work with Iva Bittová - their joined recording being considered as one of the best albums of the decade. Thereafter, he produced more recordings for Iva Bittová. He was one of the founders of Dunaj and Pluto bands (best album of the year). Leader of international Drummers' Gathering project since 2001. Currently playing drums in international jazz formation Mia Zabelka Trio. In his latest solo project DrumTrek Pavel Fajt connects multiple genres and combines percussions with electronic effects, toys and his voice.
Vladimír Franz
Vladimír Franz (*1959, Prague) is well-known Czech music composer, painter and educator. Currently lecturing at Faculty of Theater, Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He mostly composes music for theater, radio and film. Furthermore, he composes chamber music (oratorios, operas, cantatas, madrigals, songs) as well as monumental works. He is known for his music score for Tomáš Vorel's movie Kamenný most (Stone Bridge); opera Ludus Danielis, Válka s mloky (War with the Newts), symphony Písně o samotách (Songs about Solitudes), ballet Zlatovláska (Goldilocks); or music for Jiří Suchý's operetta Pokušení sv. Antonína (The Temptation of St.Anthony). Franz was six times awarded Alfréd Radok prize for best theatric score. Another prize from The Theatre Newspaper he won together with Jiří Suchý for their operetta The Temptation of St. Anthony.
Milan Knezevic
Milan Knezevic is a vet interested in travelling, photography, philanthropy and yoga. Born in Vsetín (Czech Rep.), he grew up in Bar (Montenegro). He began his veterinary studies in Belgrade, but graduated in Brno. Next few years he spent in Hong Kong working first for the daughter of the Macao tycoon Stanley Ho and then for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Lately, Milan has been travelling around the world helping people, animals and nature. After travelling in South America, working in Kenya in The Shed orphanage, he worked in a charitable clinic at the Peleliu, Palau (Micronesia), joined the Oranghutan Rescue in Borneo, danced at the carnival in Rio and celebrated May Day in Cuba. Today, he is a locum vet in London.
Ratnesh Mathur
Ratnesh came to Brno in 2003, to setup a outsourcing center for an Indian company, Infosys. During his 7 year stay, he created a team of 20+ nationalities, processing in 16 languages. Prior to this European experience, Ratnesh had lived & worked in different cities of India & Afghanistan, experiencing the full diversity of south asian languages & cultures. An MBA with a graduate degree in maths, Ratnesh has 13 years of international banking, 5 years of IT/Outsourcing & 2 years of Consulting experience. Ratnesh believes that multicultural communities can be created without speaking too many languages but merely by an awareness of the approximate Origin of Words, of everyday use. Ratnesh has now created a company, Indoeuropeans, to create new cultural ties between a Rural Indian village and an Urban European town, through trade & community development projects.
Zoja Mikotová
Prof. Zoja Mikotová is an artist, director, choreographer and educator. She has been engaged in directing, choreographing and mime in a number of Czech theatres (including The Puppet Theatre Radost, The National Theatre in Brno, The Archa Theatre and The V Dlouhé Theatre in Prague), as well as in Hungary, Poland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy and USA. She is the founder of the Department of the Educational Drama for the Deaf at Theatre Faculty, JAMU, where she has been the head of the Educational Drama for the Deaf Studio since 1992. She has become famous for the success of her Theatre of the Deaf (Caprichos, Genesis, Odysseia, Coming and Going, Fables and Dreams) and of her students and graduates at national as well as international festivals. She received the Czech Annual Award of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People ASSITEJ. She was also awarded with the Medal for Art and Pedagogy by the Czech Ministry of Education, and with the Gold Medal of JAMU.
Rod Paton
Radim Polčák
The Head of The Institute of Law and Technology at the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, Brno. Radim is a regular guest speaker and lecturer at law faculties and legal education institutions all over Europe and the USA. His research interests include ICT Law and Legal Theories. Radim is the founder of the international Cyberspace Symposium (2003) and the founder and editor-in-chief of The Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology as well as The Law and Technology Review. He is a panelist of the .eu ADR arbitration court for .eu and cz. domain names, co-founding member of The European Academy of Law and ICT, European Law Institute council member and occasional expert advisor of Czech and European legal institutions, governmental bodies and private corporations.
Kateřina Šedá
is an acclaimed Czech artist. In 2000-2005 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts at professor Vladimír Kokolia´s Graphics II Studio. In 2005 she received the Jindřich Chalupecký Award and in the following years she exhibited at the Renaissance Society in Chicago (2008), the Mori Museum in Tokyo (2010) or in Tate Modern in London (2011), among others. In her projects, which she often undertakes in the surroundings of her hometown (in small villages or on a city's peripheries), she attempts to bring the local people together. Through their own (provoked) activities and thanks to the non-traditional use of everyday means, she attempts to evoke a permanent change in their behaviour.
Tomáš Turek
Tomáš Turek (*1979) is a music programme director and editor-in-chief at digital public radio station - Radio Wave. He has been preparing music programme of Radio Wave for more than five years. He also writes about music for several magazines and papers, recently for news server Aktuálně.cz. Tomáš graduated in humanities at University of Ústí nad Labem and media studies at Charles University in Prague. Originally from Ústí nad Labem he lives today in Prague. Music is his passion and he frequently travels abroad for further music inspiration.
Renata Veselská
Renata Veselská graduated from the Faculty of Science (FS), Masaryk University (MU), with a M.Sc. and later Ph.D. in molecular biology & genetics. She worked at the Faculty of Medicine teaching medical biology and specialising in the cell biology research for ten years. Currently, Renata is the head of the Laboratory of Tumor Biology that focuses on solid tumors in children. Having been interested in the area of ethical aspects of biomedical research since her studies, Renata co-founded the University Centre for Bioethics. In 2005, she won a Fogarty International Center of the NIH scholarship thanks to which she participated in the educational programme Research Ethics in Central and Eastern Europe. Later, she studied bioethics at the Union Graduate College a Mount Sinai School of Medicine (NY, USA). Renata currently teaches courses focused on molecular & cell biology and on bioethics at the Institute of Experimental Biology of the FS MU.
Aleš Zemánek
Ales Zemanek (*1977) is a manufacturer of lay bikes. In 1997 when travelling around Norway he saw a strange bike called "lay bike", which changed his life. He started to ride a lay bike in the same year and in 1999 he constructed his own one. That became the cornerstone of his newly founded company which currently produces 11 models and exports lay bikes to approximately 25 countries, from Japan to USA. He is also a pioneer of lay bikes wider use. He has showed that lay bikes can be successfully used even in challenging terrains and, in 2006, he was selected for the "Dvanáct odvážných" (The Brave Twelve) TV documentary series focused on entrepreneurs who had chosen their own paths. Since 2000, he has been presenting various possibilities and potentials of cycling to Czech customers. He supplies Czech shops with folding bicycles, baby carriages, special leather seats, waterproof bags, and many other bike-related goods.
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