Where creative industries, technology, and enterprise converge
EDGE26 is a new national platform that brings together industry leaders, startups, researchers, third-level institutions, policymakers, and investors to strengthen Ireland’s role in the global creative economy. This one-day summit will showcase Ireland’s creative strengths in film, animation, games, immersive tech, design, and digital media.
Date: 21 May 2026
Location: Dexcom Stadium, Galway
Hear from expert speakers on business models, scaling, IP, investment, talent, technology adoption, and market access across the digital creative industries.
Connect with creative founders, CEOs, investors, policymakers, and industry leaders shaping high-growth digital creative businesses.
Explore how creativity and innovation translate into commercial outcomes, export, jobs, and regional economic impact.
Understand the capabilities required to build resilient, competitive, and investment-ready digital creative businesses.
EDGE26 convenes entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and industry leaders to drive collaboration, capability, and competitiveness across the creative economy.
EDGE26 is supported by a select group of organisations invited to join the summit as Founding Patrons. Founding Patrons play a strategic role in shaping Ireland’s first national Creative Economy Summit and supporting the growth and international competitiveness of commercial digital creative industries.
“The Global Creative Shift: How Creative Industries, IP, and Innovation are Reshaping Economies Worldwide.”
Melissa Sterry is an internationally recognised scientist, innovation expert, entrepreneur and creative, with more than 25 years’ experience working at the forefront of science, design, technology and enterprise. Known for her ability to bridge disciplines and sectors, her work focuses on developing pioneering, future-facing solutions to complex global challenges, with particular expertise in sustainability, resilience and nature-inspired innovation.
A serial founder and board-level advisor, Melissa has held governance and leadership roles across multiple first-to-market start-ups operating in B2B, B2C and hybrid markets. She has founded a number of world-first initiatives herself and has advised on the creation and scaling of many others, helping organisations move from radical concept to commercial and cultural impact.
Her early career included serving as on the boards of the world’s first online event network and of the world’s first online private members club, positioning her at the leading edge of digital culture and creative enterprise at a formative moment for the internet economy. Since then, her expansive entrepreneurial portfolio has continued to push boundaries across creative and industrial sectors.
Current roles include founder of boutique biofuturism and bioinnovation consultancy Bioratorium® and its laboratory Labioratorium®; founder of Design for Wildfire school – the world’s first school dedicated to bio-inspired design research and education for building resilience to wildfire; and showrunner and board director of borderless fashion and arts magazineCellotape. Through these and other ventures, she explores how innovation can respond meaningfully to major global environmental, cultural, social, and economic shifts.
Alongside her entrepreneurial work, Melissa advises governments, global brands, NGOs and research institutions worldwide. She is also founder and media figurehead of the Original Minds, Rightful Credit campaign, which launched in 2025 is pushing back against research plagiarism, IP theft, and misappropriation in science, technology, engineering, design, and innovation.
Recognition of the value of her contribution to the innovation sector include over a dozen national and international awards including the Woman Icon of the Year award 2024 in the International Inspirational Women Awards. Ranked one of the top 100 futurists in the world, she was also voted one of the world’s top 20 speakers influencing sustainability at board-level in a 2025 poll of over 750 companies.
Áine Kerr is a digital entrepreneur, broadcaster and thought leader at the intersection of technology, journalism and leadership. In 2025 she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy by Dublin City University for her contribution to media and society.
She co-founded Kinzen, a tech company that developed tools to detect and disrupt harmful online content. As COO, she guided the company from startup to global impact, leading to its acquisition by Spotify in 2022. She is a former Director at Spotify, where she shaped global strategy on digital safety. In 2025 Áine was awarded an Honorary Degree from Dublin City University for her contribution to media and society.
Prior to Kinzen, Áine led global journalism partnerships at Facebook in New York. She was central to launching the Facebook Journalism Project and co-founding the News Integrity Initiative, both designed to support trusted journalism and strengthen news ecosystems worldwide.
Earlier in her career, Áine spent five years at Storyful, where she rose to Managing Editor following the company’s acquisition by News Corporation. Before that, she worked for over seven years as a political correspondent and reporter with The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Irish Examiner.
Áine’s leadership extends beyond media and technology. She is Chair of the Gaisce Council, which oversees the President of Ireland’s Award, as well as Chair of Rethink Ireland, a €109m social impact fund, and The Shona Project. She also serves on a Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media advisory committee, focusing on women’s stories in national cultural collections.
Her academic background includes a B.Ed., an MA in Journalism from Dublin City University, and an MSc in Business Science from University College Cork. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Sulzberger Leadership Program and holds further qualifications from Cornell, Harvard and Kingstown College.
Áine has been widely recognised for her contributions. She was named Irish Tatler’s Woman of the Year in Media (2018), received the VIP Eir Power of Women award in 2022, and the Woman of Vision award for business and technology in 2023. DCU also honoured her with an Alumni Award in 2020.
She is regularly invited to speak at international conferences and events, and has served as a judge for initiatives such as The Pitch by Samsung and Image. On air, she is best known as the host of Reignite on RTÉ Radio One (six seasons, 2020–2025) and as an occasional presenter of The Business and other RTÉ programmes.
Áine has consistently been recognised among Ireland’s most influential voices: included in The Irish Examiner’s “100 Women Changing Ireland” (2021), The Irish Independent’s “50 Rising Stars” (2023), and The Business Post’s “Top 100 People in Tech” (2024).
