Yanis Varoufakis

Dr Yanis Varoufakis is a sought-after keynote speaker on global finance and an acute analyst of the changing political landscape, technological shifts, and the evolution of modern economies. He is best known for serving as Greece’s Minister of Finance in 2015 during the peak of the Eurozone debt crisis. He was featured in the six-part documentary series In the Eye of the Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis, which explores his career alongside his perspectives on democracy, capitalism, leadership, and the future of humanity.

He is a prolific author whose works explore economics, technology, and society. His book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism offers an analysis arguing that traditional capitalism has been replaced by Big Tech platforms operating as digital fiefdoms driven by cloud capital. His work Raise Your Soul: A Personal History of Resistance provides a memoir and political history tracing a century of Greek resistance through the lives of five women in his family. He also wrote Another Now, a political fiction novel offering a vision of an alternative, post-capitalist society. Varoufakis taught economics and econometrics at the University of Essex and the University of East Anglia. In 1988, he spent a year as a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1989 to 2000, he was a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sydney, and in 2000, he accepted the Chair of Economic Theory at the University of Athens.

From 2004 to 2006, Varoufakis served as an economic advisor to George Papandreou, then Leader of the Opposition in Greece. Between 2012 and 2014, he served as Economist-in-Residence at Valve Corporation, where he researched virtual economies and digital asset trading on the Steam platform. From 2013 to 2014, he was a visiting professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also held an Honorary Professorship of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.

Varoufakis regularly speaks at global events, financial summits, and academic institutions. His primary keynote topics cover AI and cloud capital, including how digital platforms and artificial intelligence are transforming global markets, labor, and property rights. He presents on the global economy and geopolitics, addressing decoupled trade networks, central bank digital currencies, inflation, and market instability. Additionally, he speaks on crisis leadership and high-stakes negotiation using lessons drawn from negotiating with European and international creditors under intense geopolitical pressure, as well as the future of democracy and Europe, focusing on reforming European Union institutions, overcoming economic inequality, and navigating global governance.