Henley & Partners – Bring Leading Global Talents To The Region
Miodrag Spahić - Jan 16, 2024
AI pioneers and world-class entrepreneurs visiting Montenegro – by Maja Pralas and Nina Bubanja
The Henley & Partners team were delighted and immensely proud to recently welcome two eminent experts to Montenegro – both professionals in the ICT sphere and coincidentally both former Google VPs, but foremost innovators and visionaries.
Bradley Horowitz, a seasoned professional in the industry of IT and AI, with an illustrious biography commencing with his education at MIT, has played pivotal roles in companies that spearhead the industry, including Flickr, Yahoo!, and most recently Google, where he was VP Product. Bradley and his team are the individuals behind the products which millions of people use daily, such as Gmail, Google Photos, Google Drive, and Google Docs. Such products have set the tone for the development of both Google as a worldwide presence and further pipeline advancements in the IT sphere more broadly. Following decades of innovation in renowned industry giants, Bradley has now honed his experience and expertise in a new endeavour. He currently heads Wisdom Ventures, a company that aims to advance a new approach, wherein technology helps nurture personal growth, learning, and mindfulness.
Jeffrey Huber, a Harvard alumnus, is among the great true pioneers of the vastly broad field of artificial intelligence, where options are nearly unlimited. Jeffrey has dedicated over 20 years of his career to discovering new routes and advancing all avenues that AI can open. His efforts are perhaps most familiar and close to the public once they become aware that he has, during his years acting as VP at Google, guided the initial conceptualisation and subsequent improvement of Google Maps, Google X, Google Ads, and more Google products that form an integral part of nearly everyone’s daily lives. Backed by the success of his achievements at Google, he shifted his focus to using AI in fields that carry a stronger personal importance. Most prominently, Jeffrey founded the company Grail, which operates in the field of biomedicine and employs AI in medical research and laboratories, in the interest of early detection of cancer. In addition, he founded the company Triatomic Capital which is the main vessel he uses to fund start-ups that pursue further research into AI, especially in fields that are the most important to global development.
Both Bradley and Jeffrey have recently visited the region with their families for trips that combined an agenda of professional meetings with an opportunity to explore and experience the unique beauty of Montenegro and have repeatedly confirmed their resolve to return to Montenegro. Both families have been genuinely enchanted by the country, its beauty and the opportunities that the country provides equally for personal and professional life as investors and innovators. To them, this is a space of untapped potential that their experience and expertise could feed into and enable it to excel.
The start of Bradley’s obligations was the meeting with the then Prime Minister, Dr Dritan Abazović, to discuss the investment climate in Montenegro, potential opportunities for his personal engagement with the Government, and how he could best lend his expertise with the interest of benefitting Montenegro. The meeting was very fruitful to both parties, and the Prime Minister shared his thoughts on the importance of successful entrepreneurs like Bradley visiting Montenegro afterwards: “I believe that Montenegro is sending a positive and different message in this way. Our doors are open to the most successful people in the world. We are opening up new horizons for the development of Montenegro.” A key event of Bradley’s visit in 2022 was the conference “Openly with Mr. Bradley Horowitz” hosted by ICT Cortex, a cluster of the most important ICT companies in Montenegro, in collaboration with Henley & Partners. The conference took the form of an open discussion, where Bradley first provided participants with an overview of his professional background, and then gave an open space to participants to raise topics concerning the development of the ICT business sphere in Montenegro, to which he could provide an outside perspective and suggest steps toward resolution. Once again, Bradley reiterated his views on Montenegro and its potential: “Having visited your country, I had the opportunity to see in person not only the natural beauty of Montenegro but also its investment potential. During my stay I had the pleasure of meeting the highest Government officials, and also prominent stakeholders not only from the public sector but from the private investment area and ICT industry as well. In a direct and open conversation with them, I realized that Montenegro presents remarkable investment opportunities. I am also aware of the Montenegrin Citizenship by Investment Program and it goes in line with the above. This program contributes not only to the country’s economy and financial stability, it also goes hand in hand with placing Montenegro on the global map and making it visible to the world’s high net worth individuals”. On his second visit to Montenegro, already proving true to his resolve to maintain links with the community here, Bradley visited with his wife, Irene Au, who is also an established expert and innovator in the ICT field. On the occasion of his second visit, already familiar with the Montenegrin business and investment landscape, Bradley said to the media: “Being a small country can be an advantage for attracting talent. Montenegro could be a regional hub for the Balkans, for Europe, and for the whole world. Talent is equally distributed around the world, but opportunities are not – we should be expanding them. Children should not leave Montenegro, but could contribute from here on a global level.”
Jeffrey’s visit was planned with the full involvement of his family members, since his spouse, Angel Vossough, and his brother-in-law, Arsalan Vossough, are also both active entrepreneurs in the AI sphere of Silicon Valley. They are both Berkeley alumni and have worked together on developing AI applications that utilise semantic language models in a variety of different areas – for instance, their application BetterAI serves as a support tool to doctors in setting up their diagnosis, while on the other end of the spectrum, the application VinoVoss works as an artificial sommelier. All three of them work closely on developing new uses for AI and on finding innovative ways where AI can help people work on the most pressing issues globally. They met President of Montenegro, Mr. Jakov Milatović, at Cetinje, the Old Royal Capital of Montenegro. The key topic of discussion was to introduce the activities of the AI innovators and how these may be useful in the context of Montenegro, especially within Government institutions to foster more efficient operations and processes. Following this meeting, the President stated: “I am convinced that our country can become a regional hub in this and the field of education, and thus attract numerous talented and successful people from all over the world”. The main portion of the visit took form over two days, where the three experts participated in three panels organised by the University of Montenegro. The panels were conceptualised as directed to three separate groups that could each uniquely benefit from discussing different perspectives and opportunities for the use of AI. The first panel was organised for the scientific and research community of Montenegro, to discuss the current moment of AI in Montenegro, potential avenues for further advancement, and how this could feed into particular projects that this group is undertaking. The second panel brought together representatives of the ICT business community and emphasised the use of AI in business. Finally, the third and possibly the most impactful panel was intended for students of the University of Montenegro, who had the unique chance to ask established AI innovators of Silicon Valley about their potential future career path, where the still unclear future of AI may go, and how young people can have a role in charting this course. After a successful wrap-up of the panels, Jeffrey said: “AI represents an enormous opportunity for Montenegro because of the richness of the educational system here. The very rich foundation of maths, science, and statistics provides a great opportunity for Montenegro to leap ahead. There is a great opportunity to build on the foundation of informational technology and to extend that into the new areas of data science and AI and build programs around it so that you are educating the future of Montenegro to be leaders in the area.”
“Henley & Partners continues its tradition of bringing the most successful and reputable world innovators to the region. It is a great pleasure to welcome remarkable individuals like Bradley and Jeffrey with their families in Montenegro. The fact that they were able to share their immense knowledge and fantastic experience with students, scientists, ICT business community and policy creators makes our team effort purposeful in the true meaning of that word. Henley & Partners, as a global leader in residence and citizenship by investment, will continue its mission to bring more world class global talents to the region”, stated Rade Ljumović, Managing Director in Montenegro office.
“Being a small country can be an advantage for attracting talent. Montenegro could be a regional hub for the Balkans, for Europe, and for the whole world.”
Henley & Partners is the global leader in residence and citizenship by investment with more than 40 active offices worldwide. Henley & Partners has an active role in conceptualising, creating, and establishing citizenship and residence by investment programs across the globe. Henley & Partners is involved in acting as a link between individuals who are globally recognised talents in their respective fields, and countries, such as Montenegro, where an influx of foreign global talents would significantly accelerate development in those fields. The Montenegrin Citizenship by Investment Program has seen remarkable success with bringing over EUR 500 million to the Montenegrin economy, and facilitating the construction of tens of hotels across the country. Henley & Partners maintains its intent to keep up its presence locally, achieved through continued initiatives of attracting and bringing global talents to the countries of the region.
„Now, it is important to work on promoting good ideas and success stories, on bringing speakers and hosting panels that show that global topics apply to Montenegro. The fact that we live in a small country should not be a limitation to the development of ideas that may change the world, but an encouragement toward this. In order to nurture the culture of start-up development, it is important to lose the fear of failure. We have to accept failure as expected, but that we must learn something from it and to have our next idea be even better“
“Every administration is based on the processing of a huge amount of text, which is mostly unstructured – it is not only various memos, draft regulations, public hearings in writing, but also verbal exchanges: sessions, working groups, meetings of the Government, sessions of the Parliament, communication between the state and citizens through contact centres… Most of that text and knowledge is logged in different archives and no one uses it, because so far, we did not have an easy way to search through it. AI would enable both the administrators and citizens to make full use of existing archives and accelerate positive development in the public administration sphere.”
“The synergy of Montenegrins who have been abroad, who want to return and help Montenegro, and foreigners who have knowledge, skills, and capital, is the key to great things. Taught by many years of experience in Estonia, Sweden and Slovenia I believe that the key to success for Montenegro is digitalized and simplified company registration, facilitated online business for freelancers, start-ups, and digital nomads, as well as the introduction of global trends when it comes to international payments, such as PayPal and similar platforms. It would be great to strive to make one Montenegrin “unicorn”. There are about 10 of them in Estonia, and it all started with Skype.”
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Take advantage of the international concierge services facilitated by one of the world’s leading ultraluxury lifestyle management groups, combined with expertise in residence and citizenship planning, real estate and education consulting, and the global reach of Henley & Partners. This includes among many other services:
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