Portugal
Founder | Entrepreneur | Investor | Sustainability Advocate | Delivering Sustainable Abundance With over three decades of building globally recognized public and private companies, I work at the intersection of people, planet, and community—deploying technology, impact investment, and collaborative models to drive meaningful, systemic change and help deliver sustainable abundance to communities. As founder of Openet, I helped transform the telecommunications industry by pioneering content charging, lawful intercept, and real-time data analysis. Serving the world’s top ten telecoms that reached a billion+ users, Openet played a foundational role in enabling the app economy and modern internet and it’s innovation quickly earned global recognition including Wall Street Journal’s “VC Envy” list, finalist at Entrepreneur of the Year and dozens of awards and major contracts with players like AT&T, Verizon, and Orange that underpin their networks today. Today, I lead The Global Sustainable Initiative (GSI), which was founded to start and/or invest in enterprises that tackle critical global challenges: climate adaptation, resource depletion, community health, education and the misuse of digital infrastructure to help communities achieve sustainable abundance. GSI enables these communities attract capital talent and technologies in the background with world class entrepreneurs innovators to build long-term, citizen-centric systems that promote circular economies and sustainability at scale and abundance. From sovereign community AI systems and robotics that serve humans, universal healthcare models, regenerative land projects, volumetric modular housing programs to energy independence, our programs align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and deliver on them. I believe true transformation requires more than just innovation—it calls for community-driven talent and entrepreneurs working together building decentralized models that merge human insight with machine intelligence and help reshape the global dialogue from concentrated power structures and oligarchs in the fog of paid lobbyists. My mission is to disrupt extractive and corrupt systems and enable empowered, sustainable and abundant futures—for all irrespective of how AI the and digital intelligence is expected to disrupt society.
Health and Wellness Exchange The Health and Wellness Exchange is reimagining healthcare through a community-driven, preventative, and technology-powered model rooted in UN Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Wellbeing. We connect individuals with a broad spectrum of wellness services—spanning clinical, holistic, and digital care—while integrating AI copilots and secure data systems to unlock the future of personalized health. Globally, healthcare remains the largest and often most inefficient sector. Escalating costs, long wait times, and inequities dominate many systems—whether it’s procedures costing 10x more in the U.S. than in Spain, or the months-long waiting lists in Ireland and the UK. Preventative care, functional medicine, and emerging health technologies are underutilized. We believe the system must evolve—and that evolution means combining human expertise and AI capabilities in real time. Our platform partners with world-class providers to deliver a secure, inclusive ecosystem of care—from urban smart cities to rural communities. Services include: • Online doctors & digital clinics • Healthcare tourism & drone delivery • Real-time diagnostics for chronic conditions • Functional foods, personalized nutrition, and wellness AI • Residential child care & holistic support systems User control and data privacy are foundational—health records are encrypted, user-owned, and accessible only by the individual. With a leadership team spanning the USA, Australia, the Philippines, and beyond, we’re committed to equitable access to care, enabling better health outcomes and lower costs for all. The Health and Wellness Exchange is where future-ready healthcare meets community empowerment.
Skills & Wisdom, Culture & Heritage Exchange The Skills and Wisdom, Culture and Heritage Exchange is a transformative platform built on two decades of research—originating from Openet Media’s pioneering work at the dawn of the internet multimedia era. Powered by innovations in digital service monetization, the platform has evolved from early MMS technologies into today’s immersive digital twin and spatial AI systems, designed to enhance—not replace—human experience. Now scaling through a global network of Sovereign AI Data Centres, our platform hosts fully virtualized environments—entire cities, business districts, hospitals, and cultural spaces—delivering experiences nearly indistinguishable from the real world. These immersive experiences support education, cultural preservation, skills transfer, and innovation, tailored to benefit communities. As AI redefines access to knowledge, traditional education systems—many rooted in centuries-old industrial or military models—struggle to keep pace. At the same time, vast reservoirs of informal knowledge and wisdom remain untapped: indigenous knowledge, intergenerational skills, cultural traditions, and forgotten intellectual property. We bridge this gap by fusing AI compute power with community-driven content and experiential learning, unlocking the value of underutilized talent, IP, and heritage assets across: • Universities and national archives • Indigenous and local knowledge systems • Media broadcasters and independent content creators • Women-led and intergenerational knowledge networks • Developing nations and underserved communities This dynamic platform offers a marketplace for IP owners, media distributors, AR/VR developers, and skill providers—empowering them to share, monetize, and scale their contributions. Every initiative is mapped to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, supporting inclusive innovation, cultural equity, and a future where human wisdom is valued alongside machine intelligence.
Biodiversity, Land & Fairchain Exchanges Launched in 2010 as a Commitment to Action at the Clinton Global Initiative, the Biodiversity, Land, and Fairchain Exchanges were created to accelerate sustainable consumption and production within the circular economy. These exchanges are a core pillar of the Global Sustainable Initiative (GSI) and reflect its long-standing leadership in environmental innovation. At the 2010 CGI Congress, GSI unveiled the world’s first carbon-neutral phone service—a bold step in showcasing how sustainability could be embedded into everyday technologies. In 2011, GSI launched the world’s first biodiversity exchange, built on the First Derivatives trading platform and backed by a coalition of 30 partners, including PwC, Kraft Foods, Deutsche Telekom, and Trinity College Dublin. The initiative enabled consumers to offset the environmental impact of everyday products—like Bewley’s coffee—through a simple AR interface developed by Blippar, marking a milestone in accessible sustainability tech. Today, the Exchanges leverage AI-driven platforms and digital twin infrastructure to power end-to-end, verified sustainable supply chains. In industries like construction, they enable environmental verification from forest to flooring, embedding carbon offsets and natural capital assets into both existing and legacy supply chains. These solutions not only help companies reduce their impact toward Net Zero, but also bring transparency, traceability, and credibility to environmental claims. Operating globally through a network of partnerships and joint ventures, the Biodiversity, Land, and Fairchain Exchanges are proving that sustainability and profitability can coexist. The model drives measurable revenue and EBITDA growth for businesses and communities alike, while aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and reshaping how industries interact with the planet’s resources.
The Impact and Paymaster Exchange (IX) Launched at the 2017 ITU Conference in South Korea, the Impact Exchange (IX) is the flagship platform of the Global Sustainable Initiative (GSI)—built to incubate, accelerate, and scale sustainable marketplaces across sectors and regions. IX harnesses cutting-edge AI, digital twin technologies, and secure financial infrastructures to empower governments, corporations, NGOs, and communities to transact within the circular economy and drive measurable, long-term impact. IX provides a fully integrated digital ecosystem that includes: • AI copilots accessible via any smart device • Smart contracts, blockchain, NFTs, and BIOZ authentication and payment services. • Secure APIs, payment gateways, and settlement systems on and offline • Governance, finance, and voting tools tailored for impact economies While aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, IX goes a step further with SDG+—a framework focused on governance, transparency, and anti-corruption, ensuring safe, equitable, and scalable impact delivery in areas often underserved by traditional SDG metrics. IX is being deployed as digital twins across global circular supply chains, enabling sustainable trading and verification of assets such as: • Land rights, biomass, carbon credits, forests, buildings, and commodities • Food, water, and energy exchanges at both micro ($10) and macro (>$100M) scales • Professional services like health, legal, telecom, and accounting • Smart city capabilities including data storage, digital currencies, and Sovereign AI-as-a-Service Whether facilitating $10 microtransactions or $100 million energy and food trade deals between Africa and Europe, IX enables trust, traceability, and inclusivity—empowering sustainable value chains and long-term collaboration. IX has been featured at major global forums on blockchain and sustainability, including #Davos, #ClintonGlobalInitiative, #ZermattSummit and family office events
Declan Conway founded Openet in 1996 to meet the emerging need for real-time billing of data services, securing contracts with 60 leading telecom operators, governments, and integrators. These early wins funded the development of Openet’s first mediation product, the M2000. In 1999, Openet spun out the M2000 technology into a new entity—Openet Telecom—focused solely on telecom billing. Backed by strong venture capital and a visionary team, and with early customers like AT&T, Openet helped pioneer flexible charging and business models that enabled operators to thrive in the new internet economy. Initially self-funded, Openet raised tens of millions over several rounds, attracting a senior executive team: Barry Murphy (CEO), Joe Hogan (CTO), Philip Hogan (VP Business Development), Stuart Kelly (VP Sales), and Gerard Curtin (VP Engineering). Valued at $27M in its first round, it quickly rose to $100M through oversubscribed rounds led by Benchmark Capital, Orange, SAIC, Cross Atlantic, PwC, and AIB. These rounds also enabled founders to place shares with institutions at a premium. By its $180M acquisition by Amdocs, Openet had grown to 1,000+ employees and delivered a 6x return for early institutional investors. Its systems power trillions of mobile transactions and helped shape the data charging infrastructure used by most iPhones, iPads, and Android devices today. Openet received numerous industry awards and was featured in the Wall Street Journal’s “VC Envy” list. Declan Conway was a finalist in the 2001 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, recognized for helping lay the foundation for today’s connected economy. Awards.
Retix was a pioneering organisation in networking and communications protocols, founded by Andi DeMari. Following 8 years with the company in roles covering technology, business development and sales, and including activities such as building networking solutions for the TVG, communications protocols for the Italian stock market and Credit Lyonnais and sales roles in the UK, Asia and France, Declan resigned from his role as Head of European Sales and Marketing to found Openet, to address the emerging Market for realtime convergent mediation and charging.