MENTORING THE PARTICIPANTS

Mentors will provide participants with advice, tips and recommendations in order to help them with potential issues during the event. They will be key partners during the whole competition.
Mentors are not only familiar with wildlife trafficking but also with new technologies, IT, project management or legislation issues.
Mentors could be :
-
- Wildlife conservation enthusiasts
- Engineers (Dev, UX, Data, Architects, Data security
- Searchers
- Environmental lawyer
- DevOPS
- Ethics specialist
- Project managers
- Communication managers
MENTORS :: EXPERTS IN WILDLIFE CONSERVATION or WILDLIFE TRAFFICKING CRIMES

PAULINE VERHEIJ
Netherlands
Independent consultant wildlife and forest crime - ECOJUST
ABOUT PAULINE
Pauline is an environmental lawyer with 20 years of experience tackling wildlife and forest crime in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Having worked with the Dutch police, Dutch public prosecutors office, several NGOs and as an independent consultant, Pauline’s main experience is in researching/investigating wildlife and forest crimes, both in the field and online.
HOW SHE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
Pauline can provide support as a resource on wildlife and forest crime, e.g. on which species are targeted by traffickers, where and how they are sourced and smuggled to consumer markets, relevant laws and policies, law enforcement responses, impacts of these crimes, etc.

RIKKERT REIJNEN
Netherlands
Director Wildlife Crime Program - IFAW
ABOUT RIKKERT
Rikkert Reijnen’s career began in the Netherlands, where he worked to protect exotic species across the country. As Public Affairs Coordinator for AAP, he led a campaign to ban wild animals in Dutch circuses and other entertainment venues. He also advocated for a national « positive list that specified the particular animals people could keep as a pets. Both of those campaigns were successful. In 2008, Rikkert joined IFAW. And he has been working to improve the lives of exotic animals in Africa and Europe ever since.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
Richer can help the teams to understand the initiatives that governments and partners try to put in place to develop strategies that will minimize wildlife poaching.

LILIANA JAUREGUI
Netherlands
Senior expert environmental Justice - IUCN Netherlands
ABOUT LILIANA
Liliana studied natural resource economics and she has 18 year of experience on nature conservation projects in the Global South. Familiar with field work and knowledge of protected areas, wildlife and forest crimes and relevant socio-economics aspects.
HOW SHE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
Liliana can provide support on wildlife and forest crimes practices, regional differences, information on how things are done on the ground, species, impact and groups involved.

ZOLTAN FEHER
Hungary
Head of Zoology Department - HUNGARIAN NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, BUDAPEST
ABOUT ZOLTAN
He is a zoologist, studying primarily the taxonomy, phylogenetics,
biogeography and conservation biology of molluscs (snails and bivalves).
His workplace, the Hungarian Natural History Museum is regularly
requested by Hungarian Police and border protection authorities to make
CITES-related expert judgements about seized animals and animal
products. He is responsible for expert opinions about marine molluscs
and other marine invertebrates (e.g. corals).
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
Zoltán tries to help with questions about invertebrates: their biology,
distribution, conservation status, etc., and first of all, about
web-based biodiversity information resources that you might find useful
for your work.

NINA TRONTTI
Finland
Director of Animal Care and Conservation - KORKEASSARI ZOO FOUNDATION
ABOUT NINA
I’m a biologist (MSc) and have been working over 20 years in animal care and environmental education. Last 5 years I have been a director of animal care and recently also for conservation in Korkeasaari Zoo.
HOW SHE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
I can help with: 1) Conservation of endangered species around world. Close to my heart are big hairy mammals but all species are valuable. 2) Understanding legislation and different kind of agreements in nature conservation. 3) If I can understand how the developed technique works then it is fool proof for others too!

DAAN VAN UHM
Netherlands
Post-doc researcher / Criminologist - UTRECHT University
ABOUT DAAN
Dr. Daan van Uhm works at the Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology, Utrecht University. He conducted research on various forms of environmental crime, such as transnational wildlife trafficking, deforestation and timber trade in Southeast Asia, illegal mining in Latin America and the illegal trade in dogs in Europe. Daan van Uhm obtained his PhD in Criminology at Utrecht University in 2016 (The Illegal Wildlife Trade: Inside the World of Poachers, Smugglers and Traders, Springer). In 2018 he received the Veni grant of the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for his research project: ‘The Diversification of Organized Crime into the Illegal Trade in Natural Resources’. Van Uhm primarily focuses on empirical research in the context of green crimes and harms.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
In-depth knowledge about wildlife crimes, laws, harms, community-based conservation, crime networks etc
MENTORS :: IT EXPERTS

ANTOINE MILLET
France
Head of IT Operations - Veepee
ABOUT ANTOINE
Passionate about Management, Information Technology, Information Systems and Scuba Diving. Graduated from EPITECH in 2009. I worked from 2009 to 2016 for Dalenys (former Rentabiliweb) as an Engineering Manager then I became CTO in 2016. I joined Veepee (former Vente-Privée Group) in 2017 to create and manage the new monitoring & metrology team. I am now in charge of the overall IT Operations of Veepee.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
I started 15 years ago as a system administrator then I move to team and product management. I believe in shipping what we call the MVF, or Minimum Viable Feature, rather than waiting for something to be perfect. I may help you to deliver enough of a feature to test the adoption and usefulness before expending lots of resources on fully building out the feature.

THOMAS LETSCHER
France
Product Manager - Akeneo
ABOUT THOMAS
After an MBA in tech management,3 startups creation, and many years in product management (from tech startup to Dassault System Group), I consider myself as a global advisor who will be able to create the big picture and the needed mind mapping to find the solution to solve a pain.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
IA modelization; Product management (focus on need more than the solution); 3D creation; Business direction; Programming; Music creation/recording; Problem-solving

JUAN VELA
Spain
Cloud Engineer/Architect - GEKO CLOUD
ABOUT JUAN
Linux evangelist. Kubernetes’ dark side warrior. Tech passionate, agile mastering, result oriented and good people. Trouble-solver as a Service. Caffeinholic. Lazy as duck, but always accomplishing what I said I was going to. Arduino/RPi DIY projects just for fun. Curious about IA & Quantum computing.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
Be awesome, handsome, and also some tech stuff: Linux, Cloud, Architecture design, Git, Bash, Python, PHP, NodeJs, Threading, Concurrency, Distributed Systems, Ansible, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, DBs, CICD…

FABIEN DUGAST
France
Lead SRE - VEEPEE
ABOUT FABIEN
Passionate about DevOps, IT, Reading and running. Graduate from IMT Mines-Ales in 2014, I’m currently in charge of the Finance infrastructure of Veepee (former Vente-Privée Group). I always try to help people solving problems and being benevolent.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
Team/Project organisation Technical Architecture Design Automation design

THOMAS VUONG
France
Head of International Network and Security - CREDIT AGRICOLE
ABOUT THOMAS
Graduated from EPITA in 2010, with a specialization in Telecom, I have worked over 10 years in IT field in the industry of retail, broadcast, engineering and bank. I have always experienced the challenge to connect IT and non-IT. I have managed multicultural team of 70 people for critical IT issues.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
IT, networking, PM, infrastructure design, financial, problem solving, project management.

JULIE NGUYEN
France
Data Scientist - AVANADE
ABOUT JULIE
Data Scientist specialized in Language Processing, Nature afficionado and a goofy Animal Lover. My two years working as a Data Scientist has taught me unvaluable knowledge in implementing succesfully data-oriented projects and architecture.
HOW SHE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
More than anything, I love to brainstorm, build and cultivate ideas with passionate souls !

GRYSHKA BELHASSEN
France
Data Scientist - AVANADE
ABOUT GRYSHKA
Graduated from EPITA in 2010, with a specialization in Telecom, I have worked over 10 years in IT field in the industry of retail, broadcast, engineering. I am currently working as a trainee Data Scientist at Avanade in France, a tech company specialized in the Microsoft ecosystem, and studying at the Microsoft AI school (Simplon.co).
I am passionate about Artificial Intelligence, for the mixture of mathematics and computer science of course, but especially for all the new opportunities that become possible with AI.g and bank. I have always experienced the challenge to connect IT and non-IT. I have managed multicultural team of 70 people for critical IT issues.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
I have programming skills related to AI (Python, scikit-learn, TensorFlow) and I especially have a good overview of what is possible and what is not in this field, what tools to use, how much time it can take, … I really think I could be useful to the participants who want to use Artificial Intelligence but don’t know which approach to take.

ALEXANDRE BERGERE
France
Cloud architect, Data analyst and CTO at DATAREDKITE
ABOUT ALEXANDRE
I’m the Co-Founder & CTO at DataRedKite and a Cloud Architect & Data Analyst Freelancer- MCSE, Cosmos DB & Delta lover.
I’ve got a tech profile, especially in data (python, sql, cloud provider (Azure & AWS), pySpark …). It is also very important to me to share my knowledge with others, that’s why I am teaching at the University for Master’s Degree’s students.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
During the hackathon I’ll be happy to support the team by giving them advices in tech or either just as a coach for them.

ALEX NOGUÉ SANCHEZ
France
Data Scientist - AVANADE
ABOUT ALEX
Data Scientist at Avanade since almost two years, I can bring knowledge and some experience in many data science related matters. From machine and deep learning until cloud (mainly Azure) data architecture.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
I can bring knowledge and some experience in many data science related matters.
MENTORS :: EXPERTS IN COMMUNICATION

SOPHIE RAMA
France
Independent consultant in communication
ABOUT SOPHIE
Communication professional for 30 years, holder of a master’s degree in marketing and communication and a master’s degree in Sustainable development and organizations, I worked as a consultant in a communication agency, then as director of communication in the media and at the advertiser in particular for 15 years within the non profit field.
HOW SHE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
For the 5 past years, I have been specialized in change and managerial communication, and currently I follow a training as a coach manager. I would be glad to help to structure your ideas into your output and the layout of your support.

JULIEN VIEILLEVILLE
France
CMO - YAPLA
ABOUT JULIEN
Formerly a journalist on TV, Radio even Press, I worked in big companies such as Huawei as Digital marketing manager and Veepee, leading the IT communication for +1K IT employees then group internal communication director for +6K employees. I’m currently CMO at Yapla, a Canadian/French brand which aims to digitalize and support non-profit organizations. Always enthusiastic, I challenge myself everytime finding the best way to do more, to do better and to be creative.
HOW HE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
– creativity – unite group and communication – finding the right way to say the right thing to the right person

VALÉRIE DURAND
France
Head of Communication - NATIONAL AGENCY of CPD in France
ABOUT VALÉRIE
Multi-dimensional communications professional for 20 years with a background in internal and external communication, training and development. Expertise in communication principles and strategies for different coms issues. Today, as head of communication in a heath non profit organization.
HOW SHE CAN SUPPORT PARTICIPANTS OF THE HACKATHON
Confident in giving advice and information, I could help the team to come up with new ideas and inventive ways to promote/present their project. Otherwise, I could also simply encourage the team if needed!