Sotiris Karagiannis

Sotiris Karagiannis is a founding member of HEBAN and is currently serving as the Chief Innovation Officer (Digital & Commercial, Global Markets & Startup Partnerships) at Space Hellas, a publicly traded company and the top Hellenic “Digital integrator”.

He has more than 40 years of experience in the software industry, starting from 1983 when he wrote his first commercial software at the age of 17 and continued with his first AI programs in 1986 using Turbo Prolog. He then became obsessed with AI and went to study it in Edinburgh, Scotland.
He graduated from Artificial Intelligence & Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh Department of AI-CS, UK (1989-1993), and was one of the first people in Greece to study Artificial Intelligence with the purpose to capture human knowledge and make what we see today happening in AI a reality.

Sotiris was also an early Internet & Web Entrepreneur (1995-2001) who successfully exited his investment as the first commercial B2B ISP in N. Greece.

He has held positions in both Technology and Commercial roles in the Enterprise sector and with Startups since 2012. Having a significant experience in Software Development and System Integration he is mentoring and advising startups in Europe and Silicon Valley since 2010, on technologies and trends like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cloud, SaaS, Information Security and Blockchain and in the fields of the Future Of Work, DeFi, People Safety, Fintech & Team Collaboration.

He is a strong advocate of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity in the Workplace, using the “Ethos, Gnosis, Pathos” motto, and is a trusted partner to a large global network of experts in technology and business.