Chris Eigeland is not your average startup co-founder. Earlier this year Chris was selected as a finalist for this years Queensland Young Achiever Awards, as well as being appointed as the 2016 Australia Youth Representative to the UN, which is an amazing achievement. Now after months of traveling around Australia to prepare, Chris is now in New York, where in the coming weeks he will be presenting to the UN General Assembly.
As a part of the preparation for his United Nations address, Chris travelled to each of the states and territories across Australia and spoke with more than 5,000 young Australians to understand which issues they viewed as priorities, so he could include them in his address.
Some of the key issues raised by the Australian youth that will drive Chris's address include education, unemployment, mental health, gender equality and indigenous equality.
In order get these youths starting thinking about how they might be able to start addressing these issues themselves, Chris also ran entrepreneurship workshops with over 1,000 young Australians, from which more than 300 solutions were developed and will be presented during the UN General Assembly.
Over the past few weeks Chris has had the opportunity to attend a number of high Level Forums covering diversity, innovation and youth, as well as being invited to speak as a part of Peace Day on Friday September 16. His Peace Day address touched on enabling the youth of the world to develop the education systems of the future through the use of improved technologies.
Chris is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly during the week of October 3.
You can follow Chris's journey at the UN via his Twitter and Instagram accounts, as well as through the Australian Youth Representative to the UN Facebook page.