Dr. Georg Serentschy is Managing Partner of Serentschy Advisory Services GmbH and is active on global level for Governments, Regulators, operators, vendors and the digital industry. He possesses particular expertise in the digital sector (including traditional telecommunication), media and technology, and the postal sector. He has over 40 years of professional experience advising the C-suite and experts in these sectors on strategy, policies, regulatory and spectrum issues, innovation and communication.

Georg is a former CEO (Telecommunication and Postal) of the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunication. While in this role, he served as Chairman of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communication (BEREC) in 2012, and Vice-Chairman in both 2011 and 2013. He has also held the position of Head of the Austrian Competence Centre Internet Society (KIG), a governmental advisory body. Previously Georg served as a Director at Arthur D. Little and CEO of the Austrian Aerospace Company.

More can be found at www.serentschy.com and on LinkedIn.

Patricia Hirl Longstaff is a Senior Research Fellow in the Moynihan Institute at Syracuse University, specializing in interdisciplinary and international policy. Her current interests are policy issues for resilience in various systems and for artificial intelligence. She is a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Subcommittee on International Disaster Recovery Communications. Her book, The Communications Toolkit: How To Build or Regulate Any Communications Business, (MIT Press) integrates ideas from her interdisciplinary search for clues for answers to the problems confronting communications businesses and their regulators.

She has earned the following advanced degrees:
Harvard University, Master of Public Policy (1994)
University of Iowa, JD (1976), and MA in Communications (1976).

Xu Yan has recently been promoted to Associate Professor of the Department of Information and Systems Management of the HKUST Business School, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received his PhD from the business school of the University of Strathclyde of the UK in 1997. He had working experience in the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) of China, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, British Telecom’s Laboratories and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). His research and teaching interests include corporate management, competitive strategy and regulatory policy of telecommunications. He has also provided extensive research and consulting for the former MPT of China, British Telecom, China Mobile, China Telecom, Nortel, OFTA, Audit Commission of Hong Kong Government, the Internet and Telecom Association of Hong Kong (ITAHK) and the ITU. He has published extensively in renowned international journals such as Telecommunications Policy. His recent book (with Douglas Pitt), Chinese Telecommunications Policy, published by Artech House, is regarded as the benchmark in the analysis of Chinese telecommunications policy. He is currently on the board of directors of the International Telecommunications Society (ITS).