Michelle Obama, former first lady of the United States, is coming to Poland for the first time. She is to be a guest at the Impact’24 conference in Poznań. Impact is the largest economic and technological congress in this part of Europe, focusing on the most current global trends.

Speakers at each Impact conference are influential personalities from the business, science and technology and culture. According to the organisers, “the most important people in the world” will speak at this year’s event, including: AI Kenneth Cukier (deputy editor of The Economist), world-renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel and the wife of former US President Michelle Obama.

Michelle Obama is the author of ‘The World Within Us. How to Live in Uncertain Times’ and also ‘Becoming’, a book that remained at number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 2.5 years. She is also the co-founder of Higher Ground, a company that has produced many Oscar and Emmy award-winning films and programmes. The Obama Foundation runs the Girls Opportunity Alliance programme, which supports global organisations fighting for girls’ access to education around the world.

Jesse Eisenberg will also be coming to Poznan. The American actor and director comes from a Jewish family. As he says himself, he has strong ties to Poland.

“My family comes from Krasnystaw, between Lublin and Zamość. My grandfather’s family lived there. They left that place in 1918. But some of my relatives who survived the war in basements in Lwów later lived in Szczecin when it was annexed to Poland”, said Eisenberg.

Representatives of the Polish government will also be present, including Barbara Nowacka, Minister of Education, and Krzysztof Gawkowski, Minister of Digitalisation.

Impact is a meeting place for the business elite. The event is attended by representatives of the largest and most innovative companies, experts from various fields and representatives of government and European institutions. 

Arkadiusz Słomczyński