Advisory Board

Advisory Board

It is our ambition to develop an international IT platform of Social Entrepreneurship, with different modules to support and connect social entrepreneurs and their wider ecosystems. To achieve this, we are developing several “offline” activities aimed at developing universities’ capacities and connecting the local ecosystem to leverage local actors, their resources, and capabilities.

We are very honoured with our advisory board members commitment to support our goals. The Advisory Board will provide overall guidance to the consortium on the technical development of the platform and the content of the various Working Package activities.

Karel Vanderpoorten (Belgium)

Policy officer for Social Economy in DG GROW, European Commission. 

Karel is currently policy officer Social Economy in DG GROW and focuses mainly on the use of digitization and new technologies within the social economy, scaling up social business models and the creation of business partnerships between traditional and social economy enterprises, financing opportunities for social economy companies and social innovation.

Philippe Eiselein (Belgium)

Coordinator Belgium Impact 

Phillipe is currently a Senior researcher at Odisee University college. He is part of the scientific research recenter CenSE (Center for Sustainable Entrepreneurship), where he currently is focusing on circular economy and circular transition projects.

He is also a Ph.D. Candidate and Visiting Professor at the Department of Business at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Furthermore, he is the coordinator of Belgium Impact, the national platform in support of more than 300 Belgian impactful social entrepreneurs. Initiated by His Majesty the King of Belgium, it wishes to further stimulate the Belgian Social Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and aims to inspire others using a transdisciplinary approach.

Karina Astudillo (Ecuador)

Expert in IT Security

Karina is an IT Security Consultant and co-founder of Consulting Systems, and she is also a professor at the Masters of Applied Information Security, Masters of Information Systems Management and at the Cisco Academy of ESPOL University.

She has more than 20 years’ experience in Information Technology, holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering and an MBA and also has international certifications such as Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Computer Forensics, Cisco CyberOps Associate, CCNA Security, CCNA R&SW, CCNA Wireless, Sun Certified Solaris System Administrator (SCSA), Hillstone Certified Security Associate (HCSA), Hillstone Certified Security Professional (HCSP), among others.

Viviana Angulo (Bolivia)

Co-Founder of Pista8: Bolivia’s International Collaborative Accelerator

Viviana is the Director and Cofounder of Pista 8, Bolivia’s first accelerator program for startups. Pista 8 is based on an international collaborative model that is supported by the corporate sector. Viviana led several business development initiatives, for instance, the first accelerator program for mature companies in the Caribbean – Guayacan Venture Accelerator; the deployment of Babson’s scholarship program in Puerto Rico for academicians in the area of entrepreneurship; and the execution of international conferences such as: the Puerto Rico Venture Forum (2013) and the Roundtable of Entrepreneurship Education co-organized by Stanford University (2011). She is also a member of WeInvest a women led investor group and represents Bolivia in the World Angel Investing Forum. She is considered a connector in Latin America and an evangelist of the value of mentoring for women in entrepreneurial and professional roles

Jens Anderson (The Netherlands)

Monitoring, evaluation and learning specialist, IKEA Social Entrepreneurship 

Jens is a Swedish national, with 20+ years’ experience of leading strategy development, monitoring and evaluation in the intersection of business, philanthropy and development cooperation.

Since 2019, he is responsible for monitoring, evaluation and learning at IKEA Social Entrepreneurship based in The Netherlands. He has a PhD in Economic History from Lund University.

Rüdiger Wetzl-Piewald (Austria) 

Managing Director of the Social Business Hub Styria 

Rudi is currently the managing Director of Social Business Club Styria, the regional competence center for social impact entrepreneurship in Southern Austria. He also serves as a Board member of Social Entrepreneurship Network Austria (sena.or.at).

Previously, Rudy was the founder and long-time managing director of Compuritas, a pioneering company in the field of IT refurbishment, which due to its extensive innovative strength belongs to Europe’s most awarded impact ventures. His experience accounts for the conception and implementation of counseling programs for social entrepreneurship (idea phase, pre-founding and founding phase, scaling phase) and Conception and implementation of innovation projects in the field of social business + circular economy.

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