Oriol helps corporations find, select and implement innovation opportunities within startups and new technologies. From optimizing a process, to new business models and digital transformation. He has recently been involved in developing the Food Tech sector in Spain.

He also helps entrepreneurs to work with corporations bridging the gap between different mindsets. He has a background in engineering and IT but devoted most of his career to business development, marketing and strategy.

Oriol is a Program Director as well as a mentor for AfCE and especially likes to work with Spanish speaking teams. He is also a long-standing Director at the Founder Institute, the world’s largest startup launch program.

Andrea is a certified business model canvas trainer by Strategyzer Academy and professional for Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile Working. She leads teams to product and business model innovation, and towards a company culture, which fosters innovation.

She has a background in electrical engineering and business economics. Paired with her experience in senior positions in the telecoms and Internet service industry, she has acquired a sound knowledge in technology and economics. Her recent focus has been in a coaching and training role, where she has guided more than 250 team members and executives in agile, design thinking, lean startup and business model design techniques.

Andrea believes in an interactive face-to-face coaching, where she helps teams to reduce business risks, while navigating through uncertain terrain of innovation.

Location: Amsterdam
Speaks: English, Dutch
Specialty: Marketing and Customer Experience
Fact: Was at Mark Zuckerberg’s first ever client dinner. We were with the 6 of us

Caroline is a Dutch / American recently relocated to Amsterdam from Singapore and has resided and worked in New York, London and Bangkok. Caroline is currently CMO/CXO and Director Client Strategy for a tech start-up specialising in retention and loyalty marketing.

Caroline has been working in and around (digital) marketing strategy her whole career. She was Unilever’s first ever global head of digital marketing and new media where she helped some of the world’s biggest brands (Knorr, Dove, Becel, Lux, Ponds) make sense of the digital space. Later she became Director for Global Communication Planning in London and in Bangkok/Singapore before taking a career break to sail around the world. Caroline also worked at WPP and JWT (the largest communication holding company and largest agency in the world). In her free time she’s been mentoring startups and launching her own startup ventures. With AfCE Caroline has been leading teams through sales and marketing topics as well as the incubation stage.

Location: Amsterdam
Speaks: English, Dutch
Specialty: Lean start-up and design thinking methodologies, business model innovation, digital transformation, organizational change
Fact: Is one of the initiators of ING’s Innovation Lab that grew from a handful of people to a large international Lab

During her 20+ years in Innovation and Organisational Change, Angelique has mentored over 100 teams, was CEO of an internet startup and managed marketing and operations teams.

Angelique worked 9+ years for ING, being the mastermind behind ING’s Intrapreneurship strategy – probably the largest in the world with over 25 million in funding. She has also been a key mentor to the ING internal startup teams. She is one of the pioneers of the Leading Innovation Excellence program at the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship in Rotterdam and is involved in developing the curriculum, is a guest lecturer as well as an entrepreneurship coach.

Angelique is a Certified Innovation Mentor by the Mendoza Business School of Notre Dame. She studied in Europe and the US and has 3 masters degrees: Marketing, Communication and Organizational Change.

Boris helps enterprises succeed faster by turning visionary innovation ideas into human-centered, evidence-driven strategy and execution.

With a unique combination of creative and quantitative experience, he has brought customer centricity, discovery mindset, and outcome-focused organizational alignment to large enterprises in North America and Europe including Johnson & Johnson, Bank of America, and Humana.

In addition to consulting and speaking, Boris teaches in the Strategic Design and Management graduate program at the Parsons School of Design. He authored and contributed to industry publications on digital messaging, user experience design, and management of experiments. He also has mentored hundreds of startups through public workshops and accelerators like Google Developers Launchpad.

Trisha is a certified Innovation Catalyst and Lean Start-up Coach at Intuit, one of the world’s most innovative organisations which produces leading Fintech cloud software such as QuickBooks and TurboTax.  Intuit is located in the heart of Silicon Valley and known as the ‘30 year old startup’ for its focus on innovation. She allocates 10% of her time coaching internal teams across multiple functions and regions through Intuit’s world famous Lean StartIN program. The program was featured in Eric Ries’ book, The Lean Startup.

As a Senior Marketing Manager based in the London office, Trisha leads a team responsible for acquiring accountant firms onto the QuickBooks platform and motivating them to refer all of their small business clients onto QuickBooks.  She looks after above-the-line advertising, promotions, product marketing and loyalty program. She enjoys using the AfCE curriculum to help teams with either their first 3 weeks or marketing related challenges.

Claudia has a wealth of corporate marketing, branding & positioning experience within technology companies such as Verizon, Juniper Networks and Nokia. She is a loved start-up at the Founder Institute and Telefonica’s incubator Wayra.

Having spent her career working with tech companies globally she is quick to get to the point of helping organizations determine who they are, how they can be different and the best way to get that information across in their marketing materials.  Having been on both the development side – corporate and the receiving side – editor and industry analysts, this helps to refine what topics will get you noticed.

Currently she leads the marketing organization for a communications company with a focus on security and safety-critical applications.

Chris is currently the CEO of Iothic, an Oxford University joint venture, focussed on cybersecurity in large enterprise IoT systems. He has built and sold 3 startups over a career spanning more than 20 years and has won several awards for innovation in technology. He has worked in over 50 countries, and lived in 7, and has in-depth knowledge of the Asian, European and North American markets. He is keen on technology and business in Asia and has lived both Kobe Japan and Sydney Australia for many years. Prior to assuming his role as CEO of Iothic, Chris worked with various VC and PE funds in the EU, Asia and the US on due diligence and the assessment of innovative technologies for investment purposes. He is also a BCG (Boston Consulting Group) alum.

Chris is a UK citizen and grew up in the US and France and currently lives in central London. He is passionate about getting involved in the early discovery & incubation stages of AfCE projects from a financial and logistics standpoint. While he believes (disruptive) technology is crucial, he also believes that the right framework, team and market understanding, make or break the success of a company. He likes to focus on what really matters–getting your idea funded, off the ground and successfully up and running.

Stephan recently served as CEO of the German Institute for Telemedicine and Health Promotion (DITG), and was previously Director, Global Innovation Management and Strategy at Boehringer Ingelheim, responsible for developing and executing the corporate innovation agenda to drive growth.

As part of broader agenda, key growth initiatives include maturing capabilities in areas of Digital Health (clinical and commercial applications), Co-creation through Customer Collaborations, Open Innovation, and Patient as Consumer.

Within Boehringer Ingelheim Stephan also collaborated with Gifford Pinchot (who coined “intrapreneurship” to set up a “School for Intrapreneurs”. As a result, he is extremely passionate about helping corporates to benefit from the AfCE program.

Nick brings some Silicon Valley flair to AfCE. He works with startups, product teams, large organizations, and governments helping them design and implement innovation programs according to Lean Start-up principles. He specializes in teaching Lean Startup techniques, especially to early stage companies, focusing on methodologies like Customer Discovery Interviews, Rapid Prototyping, and Channel Discovery for Marketing.

At the SanomaLab, Lassi was responsible for putting innovation into everyone’s job title. He was tasked to create new business lines for Sanoma using intrapreneurship and lean innovation as its main tools. In addition to launching new internal ventures, the SanomaLab educated over a thousand Sanoma employees in new ways of business development through the Sanoma Accelerator programs.

Now Lassi enables a 192 strong new product development team at Solita, Finland’s largest digital services company with EUR 85 million in revenues. Agile methods, smart strategies and inspirational leadership are his keys to success. A specialist in project management, all things digital & service innovation, Lassi also understands the dynamics of online communities, professional and user-created content, and has strong experience in motivating teams to work towards a common goal.

Adam is a lean entrepreneur, lean teacher, and Serial Entrepreneur. He is one of the more intrepid experimenters. He was until recently an Implementation Coach at Pearson and Entrepreneur-In-Residence at The Entrepreneurial Science Foundation.

In the past, he has founded or cofounded Neighborrow, Fotogether, and the MilValChal, which funds all startups at a $1,000,000 valuation if they conduct + submit 100 customer interviews within 50 days and use the funding to test a hypothesis (or multiple hypotheses). He holds a BA in Economics from Emory University. With AfCE, Adam loves to get teams off to a flying start and push them hard to learn the context around who their customer is and what problems their customers have.

A Swiss (corporate) entrepreneur, innovation coach and business mentor, Oliver is passionate about enabling large companies and startups/SMEs to:

• find and use their “why” to inspire and engage their teams
• be more entrepreneurial and innovative, effective and efficient
• sustainably scale their ventures, accelerating growth
• create shared-value with purpose and impact

Oliver enjoyed a corporate career in marketing, commercial and business leadership positions, acting as an intrapreneur within Nestlé in Switzerland and Asia, building and leading multicultural teams to award-winning performance. He also acted as a non executive director of a Swiss high-tech startup for traffic security. Oliver is an early supporter of the AfCE.

A lean startup enthusiast and life-long learner, Oliver is currently scaling Online Academy, after launching this corporate startup for blended online learning at Migros Club School – Switzerland’s biggest further education institution – in 2016. Oliver is also a member of the board of directors at the food-tech startup DigiMeals and an angel investor in several tech startups.

Benson is a strategist, innovator, and entrepreneur. Aside from his other business ventures and consulting he also worked closely with Alexander Osterwalder and his team at Strategyzer for several years. He produced numerous pieces of content and was part of the core team that produced their second book, Value Proposition Design.

Benson has traveled the world facilitating Business Model Generation and Lean Startup inside large organizations such as Intel, J&J, Mastercard and Medtronic. His passion for corporate intrapreneurship as well as traditional entrepreneurship and startups is unrivaled.

Joshua Cohen leverages his years of experience as an entrepreneur, investor, and adviser to give large organizations the tools and know-how they need to move and act with speed, agility, and creativity.

Joshua has deep roots in technology-intensive sectors, having founded and built startups in both Europe and the U.S., including Germany-based iPharro, a spinoff of Germany’s world-renowned Fraunhofer Organization, and NYC-based Ganxy. He is the former co-head of US investments for SevenVentures, the venture capital division of one of Germany’s largest media companies.

Through many years of international work and living, he’s developed a deep global network and continues to advise startups and companies all over the world. He is as an adjunct professor at the European School of Management and Technology. Joshua is a graduate of Princeton University with an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business and additional studies at the University of Cologne.

Gui is an educator and entrepreneur who believes in the power of creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurship to change the people who can change the world.

He facilitates educational journeys harnessing several tools and techniques within frameworks such as Creative Problem-Solving, Design Thinking, Outdoor Leadership Education and Polarity Management. As a mentor, Gui has worked with large corporations and small teams of entrepreneurs in the design and implementation of innovation programs, creative leadership and entrepreneurial educational. He was the coordinator and helped develop Social Good Brasil Lab, a program that supports the development of startups that tackle major social problems through the use of technology, digital media and innovative thinking, that supported over 300 social entrepreneurs in Brazil.

Gui has founded several startups such as Global Sapiens, that works in the field of educational travel and aims at facilitating the learning of empathy as a universal language.

Location: Barcelona
Speaks: English, Spanish
Specialty: Lean Startup, Design Thinking
Fact: Was the first Global Innovation Catalyst at Schibsted Media Group

Valerie created and led Schibsted Classified Media’s global  innovation program for 1.5 years. In this role, she delivered training in 15 countries to over 400 people and founded the Innovation Catalyst group. She was a thought leader in changing Schibsted’s approach to experimentation and innovation accounting. Her program was a launchpad for numerous initiatives, some of which went  on to create new value for the company. Many program participants have become innovative leaders within Schibsted while others have caught the fever and gone on to found their own businesses or to lead existing startups.

Valerie’s areas of expertise include Lean Startup and Design Thinking;

she is also an experienced user research and design leader with a passion for creating new value for customers and companies.

“Valerie is one of those very few people you meet during your career that profoundly shakes the way you see the world and truly helps you grow… Visionary, passionate, she is a Maximizer with a unique ability to bring out the best in everyone.” – Cecile Barbaroux, Insight Director, Schibsted Media Group

Location: Brazil / France
Speaks: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French
Specialty: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Fact: Organized during 3 consecutive years a startup competition across 8 European capitals and linked the winners with Silicon Valley ecosystem

Frederico is an expert in new businesses strategies with focus on entrepreneurship and innovation management. He counts with a solid international background having lived in US and after in Europe for more than 15 years. During this period he managed multicultural and remote teams while leading business expansion between Brazil, Silicon Valley and eight European capitals.

Since 2008 he is involved with tech startups and seed capital investment activities. As a mentor and advisor he has already followed thousands of startups helping them to validate their business model, raise money and scale their businesses. He has already participated in the design process of acceleration programs and he is an enthusiast of lean startup methodologies.

Today he accompanies large corporations, investors and innovative entrepreneurs to build trust relationships and implement key partnerships in order to identify unseen opportunities in their markets.

Location: New York, USA
Speaks: English
Specialty: Startup Methodology, SaaS, Corporate Innovation
Fact: Spent six months in the rain forests of Borneo studying the behavior and social structure of orangutans

Christie Nicholson is an award-winning science journalist and entrepreneur.

Most recently Christie was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Citi Ventures, where she was a founding member of D10X, Citigroup’s internal accelerator that nurtured 150+ startups within the firm.

Christie is a contributing editor at Scientific American magazine and co-founded the publishing startup, Publet.

As an adjunct professor at New York University she designed and teaches a 6-week graduate program in entrepreneurship.

For the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, Christie has coached more than 3000 scientists on how to communicate clearly and persuasively with colleagues, policy makers and the public.

Christie is on the board of South by South West Interactive and is the board chair of PopTech.

She is an alumni of the startup accelerator AngelPad and holds degrees from Dalhousie University in Canada and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was awarded the Eibel Fellowship.

Location: New York, USA
Speaks: English, Mandarin
Specialty: Digital Marketing & Growth
Fact: Pioneered film marketing on Facebook, bringing Harry Potter, Batman (The Dark Knight), Superman, and many others to the platform

Rossanna was one of the first to bring digital marketing to Hollywood and built the digital marketing department for Warner Bros. Pictures turning it from a one-woman show to a global team of 100+. At Estee Lauder, she transformed the business to be “digital first”, developing new technologies for product discovery and consultation, while growing the e-commerce business over $120M in just two years. As Founding CMO for start-up Moda Operandi, she helped launch this first in kind fashion e-commerce business and raise $60M in funding. She has since gone on to help numerous start-ups with their go to market strategy and launch successfully. She currently runs a consulting practice where she helps businesses grow, scale, acquire and connect with customers. She is passionate about social impact and serves on the board of numerous non-profit Organizations. Rossanna has lived in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, London, and Los Angeles.

Location: Hong Kong
Speaks: English
Specialty: Corporate Innovation, Strategy, Operations
Fact: Made it up 2 of 7 summits (Kilimanjaro and Elbrus)

Yi Hoo has been based in Hong Kong the previous 12 years having moved from the UK where he studied and worked for 8 years previously. A Malaysian citizen with a Singaporean upbringing, Yi Hoo considers himself a global citizen.

Yi Hoo is an open innovation specialist. Having spent 11 years at Li & Fung, he has held a wide variety of roles including strategy, operations, special projects and most recently leading ‘the workshop’; Li & Fung’s open innovation unit and subsequently The Explorium HK; the Fung Group’s innovation lab.

Today, Yi Hoo is the Chief Innovation Officer at human at work; a strategy and innovation lab focused on helping CEOs and executive teams through their transformation journey and create high performance organizations. Yi Hoo’s work is focused identifying and unlocking value at the intersection of startups and large corporations through acting as an innovation sherpa for corporations and a supercharger at startups as they scale.

Location: Paris, France
Speaks: English, French
Fact: Grew a startup program from 6 to 60 within a year with no budget

Dominique is helping companies to better engage with startups and to create Intrapreneurship programs where everybody wins. 

Previously, Dominique has launched innovation programs at Oracle France. As a corporate rebel, he engaged employees to become startup advisors by connecting them to Oracle’s customers. The program grew tenfold in a year. Dominique even presented French startups to Oracle’s CEO Safra Catz, which helped Oracle decide to launch a worldwide network of accelerators. In parallel, he guided over 100 French employees to become intrapreneurs as part of an EMEA program. 

During his tenure at Oracle, Dominique has built strong expertise in the field of Product Development, Product Strategy, Business Operations, Business Development, HR, Corporate Responsibility, Startups and Innovation.

He is very active in the French startup ecosystem and is advising startups as an adjunct professor at Skema Business School.

Location: Shanghai, China
Speaks: English, Hindi, Basic Manderi
Fact: Volunteers 20% time on an average each year for the past 6 years helping mentor start-ups, young talent, students

As a lean innovation coach and executive leadership facilitator with China, India and Asia experience of over 16 years, Nishtha designs, facilitates and delivers collaborative leadership and digital capabilities acceleration for corporate workplaces with the purpose to infuse start-up, learn-by-doing, experiment, collaborative, intrapreneur culture.

Program offerings are across 4 key pillars of growth and impact – a) Frame, b) Immerse, c) Train and d) Develop.

And format ranges from 1:1 coaching to team coaching, stakeholder engagement/buy-in sessions, co-creation accelerator programs or workshops to prototyping hackathons, market learning expeditions and go-to-market new services experience design.

Client partners range from the Fortune 500 companies across different industries – Beauty, Sports, Lifestyle, Auto, F&B, FMCG, Health Tech, IoT, New Retail and more. An active mentor in the startup & tech community (Chinaccelerator, startup next, startup weekend, failfaster, startup leadership program (SLP), industry keynote speaker/moderator, and an avid enabler of cross-industry talent collaboration.

Recognized as 2018 China Digital A List talent, 2015 Asia Pacific 40 under 40 talent by Campaign Asia. Nishtha lives with the motto – ‘commit to the uncomfortable’