2nd GIWA Categories & Judges

Litsa Panayotopoulos is co-founder and President of EVIA Intelligent Performance Ltd, A committed advocate of innovation, she creates opportunities for entrepreneurship in various roles:
Vice-President of Intale A.E. Retail Solutions and Papapostolou S.A. Medical Technologies Treasurer of the American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce
President of its Innovation, Education and Entrepreneurship Committee.
Secretary General of the Non Executive Directors’ Club.
She regularly participates in international events as a judge, moderator and key-note speaker. She is active in the organizational development of innovative companies alongside CEOs and boards of directors in order to turn their business endeavors into strategic action and profit.
In addition to her business activities, she is on the Business Advisory Council of the Athens University International MBA, a Board Member of the Greek-Serbian Business Council and Citizens Movement (Kinisi Politon).
Her extensive career has been built in major international systems and projects in the USA, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa in large multinational companies, Control Data et.al. She developed and managed: Geranos SA (a subsidiary of Commercial Bank of Greece being responsible for the 20 affiliates of the bank); Oracle S.E. Europe, Greece and Cyprus (establishing and managing subsidiaries of Oracle corporation in the region), and OTE Academy, the largest professional training organization in Greece, amongst others.
Litsa is a Founding Member and Honorary President of SEN/Junior Achievement Greece, presiding over its leadership in various capacities for 15 years. She has served on boards of major professional associations such as the Hellenic Management Association (EEDE) where she is an Honorary President and founder of its Hellenic Institute of Information (EIP). Former BoD member of IOBE (Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research), f. President and Board Member of ALBA Business University. Honorary Member of CEO Clubs Greece.
She holds a BSc and MSc in Computer Science and Management from London University.

Steve is an award winning creative who has worked on the launch of the iPhone and Amazon in the UK with NASA (Space Lab), The United Nations, UNICEF and headed up the Creative Lab at Google in EMEA for 8 years.
Most recently he was appointed as the Chief Creative Officer for Greece to help develop a new country narrative as a Special Advisor to the Prime Minister.

Some of his projects include: a machine learning musical instrument called the NSynth Super, Assembly of Youth, an installation giving youth a voice at the United Nations, Inside Abbey Road – a virtual tour of the iconic music studios, Project Jacquard – an interactive wearables fabric and Chrome Web Lab, an installation connected live to the internet from the Science Museum in London.
You can view some of those projects here:
https://youtu.be/MeHdXaSNaRU
Steve also worked on the launch of project Bloks, a physical coding platform that teaches kids to code for which he was granted two Google patents and bringing dinosaurs back to life in Virtual Reality at the Natural History Museums in London and Berlin.
In 2015 Steve went to the island of Lesvos to build a mobile information site (refugee.info) to help Syrian refugees fleeing civil war keep safe.
Steve’s work has been recognised by the D&AD (33 including 2 yellow pencils), Cannes Lions (12 including a Grand Prix and Marketer of the year), ADC, One Show’s, Campaign Big, Webbys, Lovies, FWA, BIMA and Clio’s. Two of his projects are also in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York (Sketchbots and Jaquard).
His work has been featured in WIRED, The New York Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Creative Review, Huffington Post, FT, Design Week, Adage and he’s written columns for Adweek, Marketing, Campaign and conducted interviews with the BBC, CNN, CNBC, Lürzer’s Archive and Shots.
Steve has spoken at TEDx in Athens about ‘Making technology matter’ and at the Palais in Cannes on ‘What creativity can do’.
Steve also serves as an advisor to one of the world’s hottest fashion technology startups unmade.com.
In 2018 he was president of D&AD where he made it his mission to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds get into the creative industries.

Costas Voyatzis {Vo-yatzer} is the founder of Yatzer.com and former Curator of the Art Shop at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens. Born in Piraeus, Greece, in 1980, he is an international at heart!
After dabbling academically in Meteorology at the Physics University of Athens, his passion for design prevailed, and he switched his major to Interior Design. In the search for a career to suit his far-reaching curiosity and thirst for design knowledge, Costas worked with a number of Greece’s leading interior design magazines for seven years and in his role as a stylist and trend forecaster, began developing relationships with many international designers and manufacturers, quickly becoming distinguished and acclaimed for his unique perspective on anything new and innovative.
In January 2007, he created Yatzer thereby realising his vision of creating a single, high quality source of design information. In April 2011, Costas Voyatzis was named one of the 100 most influential people in the design industry by French heavyweight Architectural Digest.

Tonia Vassilopoulou was born in Athens-Greece. She received Bachelor in International Business Administration, Cum Laude from the American University of Paris in 2001 and continued her Postgraduate studies in Hospitality Management at Glion Hotel School in Switzerland from where she graduated with Distinction in 2003.
Since then, she has been working as the Marketing Director of St. George Lycabettus Hotel a 5 star boutique hotel located in the center of Athens-Greece www.sglycabettus.gr and a summer lifestyle hotel at the island of Andros in the Aegean Sea www.paradiseandros.gr.
In 2009 she created the ‘Suite Home’ hospitality concept in Paris by buying , renovating and renting a suite style apartment and offering hospitality services to its guests managed by local companies. In 2010 Suite Home Mykonos and Suite Home St. Moritz followed. www.suitehome.gr.
She travels extensively and had her own ‘Hotelier Expert’ column in various magazines where she suggested unique hotels to the readers. She has been an active member of the Greek Tourism Business Association , public relations ephor of the Athens Hospitality Association, member of the Elpida Youth committee which supports children with cancer and major collaborator of the Sympossio Greek gourmet touring which aims at promoting Greece and the greek gastronomy abroad.
All proceeds from her Suite Home Escape book –which she recently published- go towards the causes of Elpida youth in order to support a therapeutic summer camp for kids.
She received the Greek International Women Award in Hospitality at the first GIWA awards ceremony that took place at the British Museum.
She is married and has a son and a daughter.

Danae Bezantakou is Managing Director of Navigator Shipping Consultants LTD. , shareholder of KEFI S.A. (Travel Agency) and MATILDA HOTEL in Zakynthos Island. She is also President of iforU-Greek Mentoring Network, which empowers women’s entrepreneurship through mentoring, a founding partner of the business think tank THE CANVAS and President of the 1st Hellenic U.S. Alumni of State Department. The 1st Young Executives Shipping (YES) Forum was organized under her initiative during International Shipping Exhibition Posidonia 2016. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Blue Growth. Danae represented Greece in International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) “Women in Leadership” organized by Hilary Clinton (March 2011), has been selected to be one of the European Young Leaders (2014) and her name was included in the “Purpose Economy Europe 100 List 2014”, as well as in the 40under40 list of Fortune Greece. She was also appointed as Young Global Leader from World Economic Forum for the years 2015-2020. She has an 8 year old daughter.

Elpida Kokkota is the Founder and CEO of MEXOXO, a Non Profit Organization that empowers women in entrepreneurship. Her personal story and the prompting of her mentor Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus gave her the power to start empowering women all over the world. In 2015, at the Clinton Global Initiative 2015 Meeting, Elpida committed to Empower 5,000 women to showcase their strengths and grow socially and economically. Today Elpida has empowered more than 4,200 women in ten countries around the world.

Nine years ago, she graduated with an MBA from Hult International School and worked for the Hult Prize as Global Brand Identity and Events Director. She has 15 years of international experience in event planning, marketing and strategy in Europe, USA and Mexico.