Gergely Böszörményi Nagy
Gergely Böszörményi-Nagy has spent much of his life asking a deceptively simple question: what kind of future are we building, and who gets to imagine it? A writer and entrepreneur, he is best known as the founder of Brain Bar, Budapest’s world-renowned festival of the future. His path to the big questions began in lecture halls across Europe and America. He earned his degrees at Corvinus University of Budapest, Central European University and the London School of Economics, and later broadened his perspective at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Gergely recognized early that Hungary’s most inventive young people needed more than good ideas. They needed a structure in which those ideas could grow. He went on to found the country’s first institutional accelerator program for early-stage ventures, one of the very first of its kind in Central Europe. Working alongside founders showed him that the future is rarely shaped by grand predictions. It is shaped by curious people who have the right tools and the courage to experiment. That conviction led to his best-known venture. Brain Bar brings scientists, innovators and thinkers from around the world to Budapest, and it has grown into one of the largest educational events about the future designed specifically for students and teachers. Today more than 15,000 young people take part in its programs every year.
As an Andrássy Fellow, Gergely is devoting himself above all to his new book, Homo Genus. The project is an ambitious act of synthesis.
“My book brings together what we know about the cultural and ecological transformations reshaping our world, and it uncovers the hidden connections between the two. Taking the long view of deep time, the book invites readers to reconsider the role Homo sapiens has played, and may yet play, in the history of planet Earth”. – Gergely Böszörményi Nagy
Drawing on decades of experience in international relations, Gergely is conducting research at leading American universities during his stay in the United States and visiting some of the world’s most remarkable think tanks devoted to understanding the big picture of global existential risks, including the Santa Fe Institute, the Berggruen Institute, the John Templeton Foundation and the Long Now Foundation.
When he steps away from his desk, Gergely is most likely to be found on a hiking trail or searching for a rare and unusual book. Both passions sit comfortably alongside his work. The trail keeps him close to the landscapes that have shaped our species over millennia, and the books keep him close to the ideas that might shape what comes next.