“It doesn’t matter where we start our journey, but where we are headed. With imagination, our potential is limitless.”
Yemi Akinyemi
About
Yemi is a serial entrepreneur and a multi-disciplinary creative force with more than two decades of experience spanning the entertainment industry, arts & technology, alongside a profound passion for social innovation and youth empowerment.
As a choreographer, Yemi was chosen from among 1 million candidates to be a crew member of dearMoon, marking the first civilian space trip around the Moon, operated by SpaceX.
Yemi is the founder of JAD Productions, a leading European creative agency that has garnered over fifteen international and global awards for outstanding campaigns, digital innovation, creative concepts, and social impact, serving clients such as Mercedes Benz, Adidas, Apple, Google, or ABB.
Yemi is the founder of Moonshot Platform Inc., a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization focused on accelerating young leaders, their ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ focused organizations, and their tech based social innovations. Under Yemi’s leadership, Moonshot gained members across 88 countries, reached over 3 million people within the first two years of existence and was endorsed by late US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright.
Notably, his five-year collaboration with Grammy Award-winning artist Kanye West saw him also create and execute global concerts, tours, and music videos, including his VMAs performance (2010), the short film “Runaway” (2010), Saturday Night Live performances (2010), and The Yeezus Tour (2013), among other works.
Yemi is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, he frequently speaks on the Future of Creativity, or Space Exploration, including TEDx, CNN International, Aspen Institute, or Singularity University Summit. His recent keynote at SXSW, “Robotic Renaissance,” developed in collaboration with Apptronik and their humanoid robot Apollo, presented a unique perspective on the future of human-robot interactions.
In 2022, he was honored with a Silver Medal by the President of the Senate of the Czech Republic for his contributions to the field of social innovations. Additionally, Yemi serves on the board of directors for PSYRES, a European foundation dedicated to the research of psychedelics.
In 2024, he became a board member of Space for Humanity, a non-profit dedicated to empowering purpose driven leaders through sponsored spaceflights. This initiative fosters a transformative shift in perspective, equipping them with a unique platform to effectively address and work towards solutions for global challenges.
Why Should You Listen
to Him?
What You’ll Learn
How creativity, technology, and imagination can reshape your sense of what is possible and strengthen the clarity, courage, and disciplined imagination needed to create change wherever you stand.
Why You’ll Love Him
Yemi brings rare energy and authenticity, blending visionary thinking with real world experience that inspires people to expand their sense of what is possible.
What’s Unusual
A creative force who has choreographed global icons, built award winning companies and accelerates young innovators worldwide, Yemi stands at the intersection of art, technology and social change.
Moonshot Mindset: Making the Impossible Inevitable
This keynote offers a blueprint for turning impossible challenges into inevitable outcomes. The world feels unstable and fast changing. Entire communities are living through uncertainty while technology and AI rapidly expand what humans can build. Some experience this moment with security. Others face realities that turn creativity into a survival skill.
Born as a Black child in communist Czechoslovakia, Yemi’s path led him from the margins of possibility to creative partnerships with Apple, Mercedes Benz, Google, and the world’s biggest stages including the VMAs, Saturday Night Live, and Coachella, and eventually led to his selection as a civilian for a SpaceX mission. Through this journey he developed a leadership practice that aligns head, heart, and gut into one coherent source of action.
The keynote also highlights the work of young leaders within the Moonshot community who embody this mindset every day and invites audiences to develop the clarity, courage, and disciplined imagination needed to create change wherever they stand.
Leadership and Creative Recognition
Yemi Akinyemi has earned wide recognition for his work in arts, sustainability and leadership, including being named a Czech Goodwill Ambassador and a UN SDG Ambassador, receiving the Czech Senate President’s Silver Medal in 2022, and becoming the first Czech member of the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship in 2019. He has also led his company, JAD Productions, to major international awards for digital innovation and creative excellence.
Get to Know Yemi
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2026 Speakers
