Stephan Balzer

Stephan Balzer is an entrepreneur, innovator and an influential voice in the Pan-European innovation community. The studied media consultant is one of the pioneers of the German new media scene. He worked from 1991 to 1996 at Pixel Park in various positions. In 1996, Balzer founded with friends the agency Lava in Hamburg, which held responsibility for many innovative formats and implemented award-winning customer projects. Lava has been sold to the UScompany iXL in 1999.

With over a decade of technology experience, Balzer founded Berlin’s idea incubation company, “red onion GmbH”, in the 90’s. By 2009, he was the first German TEDx conferences licensee and was soon appointed TEDx ambassador for Europe by the American TED organization. Today, he organizes TEDx events in the 4 major German cities Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt. In 2015 Balzer started a partnership with Singularity University (SU), a Silicon Valley based organization, which was founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis.

Since then, he is SU Ambassador for Germany and the head of Germany’s first SU Chapter in Berlin. Having organized more than 60 conferences on pivotal themes and subjects impacting society, science and the future - Balzer is a C-Level advisor and change facilitator. Stephan Balzer is a frequent speaker on innovation and technology, avid art collector passionate about culture, and active citizen initiating constructive discourse on global challenges facing society. He strongly believes in the impact of change, transformation and innovation on corporations, organizations, institutions, public entities, and NGOs.