MIMPACT™ Governance
MIMPACT™ Governance
The Maximal Impact Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation that covers many domains. We operate on a 'radically humble, extremely generous' basis because we believe that's the only way to be actually global. And it's the best way to avoid duplication - you can't compete with humility. For the foundation, the most important part is that things scale openly in a shareable way - globally connected but locally driven.
Founding Members and Backers
Davor Meersman
Dr. Davor Meersman is the Executive Chairman of The Maximal Impact Foundation and a highly reputed change maker with a history of initiating and scaling up global platforms. Before MIMPACT™, Davor was CEO of niche city network OASC after co-founding the well-known IMEC City of Things. He is a long-time advisor to several fora of the UN, EC, WEF, and various governments. His selective strategic advisory engagements have also helped a number of first-rate teams grow and scale up successfully (including a 'homerun' unicorn currently valued at more than USD 5 billion).
Davor volunteers his time to incubators as a judge and mentor, and speaks on impact technologies and innovation from boardroom to classroom. He is an Ambassador of the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals and holds a PhD in Information Systems from Curtin University, Perth, Australia.
Davor is married to the love of his life (22 years and counting!), has a super smart and funny daughter, and lives and works out of Belgium (Antwerp).
Executive Chairman of The Maximal Impact Foundation
Hassan Mohanna
Hassan Mohanna is the Secretary General of MIMPACT™ and a seasoned innovator and advisor working on the intersection of Business Strategy and Civic Innovation. Widely respected for his aptitude, operational excellence and diplomatic talents, he has over 13 years of experience in smart city flagship projects, including OASC, the Philips Lighting-as-a-Service programme (reliability, digital twins, predictive analytics, TCO...) and LinkNYC (Optimisation, socio-economic impact of broadband, digital equity, quality of life, resident experience...).
Hassan is an innovation and analytics expert focused on strategy, operations, and impact. He has an extensive record of building relationships, developing initiatives, and facilitating action plans in support of organisational objectives, inclusive growth, and solving the problems that count. He holds degrees in telecommunications, public policy, and urban science & informatics from NYU, SOAS University of London, and the American University of Beirut.
Hassan is a twin, and works out of Lebanon (Beirut) and the United States (NYC),
Secretary General of MIMPACT™, Member of the Board of Trustees, and Head of the Executive Board
Kris Libunao
CEO of SmartCT, Member of the Board of Trustees of The Maximal Impact Foundation
Gert De Tant
Gert De Tant is one of the most sought-after technical profiles in Western Europe when it comes to deployment experience with open sharing capabilities in cities. He has been the IoT advisor to the City of Antwerp for many years, and has deployed FIWARE context broker based platforms in cities and regions worldwide including Antwerp, Bruges, Leuven, Roeselare, Ghent, and the national digital twin of Luxemburg. He is also one of the technical strongholds of the ODALA CEF project, and has recently established a commercial consortium with Cegeka, the leading IT services and network operator for cities in Belgium. He was the CTO of fledgling city network OASC before transitioning to The Maximal Impact Foundation with many former OASC colleagues. Gert has been a driving force behind the Living-in.eu technical working group, the ITU smart cities reference architecture, the ETSI CIM ISG, the ETSI CIM context broker certification task force, the ground-breaking Microsoft Azure Digital Twin Definition Language, and various other interoperability initiatives over the past years.
Gert is a computer scientist with an MBA from the world-renowned Vlerick Leuven-Gent Business School. He has been a Microsoft Gold Partner for many years as well as a FIWARE partner, and operates with a 'boy scout mentality' - quality over quantity and responsibility over structure. He continues to attract talent with his stellar track record, no-nonsense attitude, and high ethical standards. (He's too humble to write this stuff. so we went ahead and did it for him - you're welcome, Gert and don't you dare touch that edit button to tone things down to Flemish cultural standards!)
Gert is a father of two awesome boys and works out of Belgium (Ghent).
CEO of Sirus NV, Member of the Board of Trustees of The Maximal Impact Foundation
Aldo De Moor
Over the past decade, Aldo has perfected the community network mapping and collaborative sense-making methodology that underpins the MIMPACT™ SenseMaking Roundtables and important aspects of the MIMPACT™ Impact Intelligence Platform. The CommunitySense methodologies have been used in the context of URBACT, USAID, government administrations, companies, local communities, universities, and many more. Aldo has developed a large network of researchers, practitioners, and friends over the years and publishes regularly both academically and via his blog.
Aldo holds a PhD in Information Management from the University of Tilburg. His work has been widely adopted both academically and commercially - Aldo's ideas and research paved the way for one of Europe's best performing spin-offs in recent history, with a valuation of more than USD 5 billion today. Aldo works with the world from his hometown Tilburg in the Netherlands.
CEO of CommunitySense, MIMPACT™ Sense Maker and Founding Member
Evelien Verschroeven
Evelien is an anthropologist with 17 years of experience in business coaching and she is also a lecturer of entrepreneurship at the Thomas More University of Applied Science in Belgium. She was one of the founders of the Flanders EdTech network in Belgium, together with nanotech and digital research institute IMEC, public broadcaster VRT, vocational education stalwart Syntra, and public employment agency VDAB.
Evelien was the head of the CITYxCITY Academy of OASC before transitioning to the foundation with a number of colleagues. At the foundation, she will work on intercultural education programmes focused on impact capacity and data competence building.
Evelien is a respected visual artist and also volunteers her time to a variety of charities related to youth, education, and intercultural dialogue. She works out of Antwerp, Belgium.
Learning Designer and Founding Member of The Maximal Impact Foundation
Francesco Mureddu
Aside from his primary activity, he serves as partner and business development consultant for the consultancy start-up DataPower s.r.l. and for the cybersecurity start-up Intelligence Framework inc., as well as consultant for several clients including PwC Italy, KPMG Italy, NOVA, JRC Seville, Outsight s.l., Region Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Proter s.r.l. and I2Grow s.r.l.
Francesco works out of Italy (Sardinia) and Belgium (Brussels).
Executive Director of the Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Bart Rosseau
Bart Rosseau is the embodiment of a creative change maker who relentlessly works for democracy and the common good with a no-nonsense, impact-minded approach. He is the Head of the Data and Information Management Unit, spearheading the open data strategy of the city and the vibrant open data tech and startup ecosystem in Ghent.
A true trail-blazer, Bart was also one of the instigators of the open data movement in Belgium, a founder of Open Knowledge Belgium, Chair of the Knowledge Society Forum of Eurocities, the inaugural Chair of the Council of Cities of the derivative OASC network, and a highly sought-after public speaker and evaluator. Bart is a critical, independent thinker whose perspectives and passions bring tremendous value to any initiative he chooses to support.
Bart also doubles as the kick-ass drummer of one of Belgium's coolest rock bands: Fifty Foot Combo. You can watch the master at work here. Bart lives and works out of Ghent, Belgium, and it's safe to assume that will never change. 🤘
Head of the Data and Information Management Unit of the City of Ghent, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Alanus Von Radecki
CEO of the Data Competence Centre for Cities and Regions, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Paul Theyskens
Founder of the Brussels Hub of MyDataGlobal, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Jim Spohrer
Director of Cognitive OpenTech at IBM (retired), ISSIP Board Member, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Ulrich Ahle
After an apprenticeship as toolmaker at Hella KG, he studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Paderborn. In his career, Ahle held several positions as development engineer, project manager, sales director and Vice President. He has been part of Nixdorf Computer AG, Siemens and Atos.
Ulrich is a highly valued community leader in his region of Paderborn and works out of Berlin, Germany.
Chief Executive Officer of the FIWARE Foundation, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Jorn Verbeeck
Jorn is a generalist with specialist experience in the many facets of sustainability & circular economy. He thrives in innovation, project and stakeholder management, systems thinking and transition management - creating clarity in complexity. He has a knack for turning vision into action and connecting dots between bottom-up initiatives and top down policies or frameworks. He has held various leadership positions in sustainability-related organisations throughout his career and is a current Board Member of the Club of Rome.
In his personal life, Jorn is at the helm of the Vosberg project, which is transforming an old monastery into a fully circular, climate-neutral, and socially inclusive co-housing development. Jorn works out of Belgium (Brussels).
Senior Manager Sustainability and ESG at KPMG, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Rozina Spinnoy
Managing Director of the Belgium Design Council, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Charles Landry
International Authority on Using Imagination in Urban Change, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Nuria De Lama
Consulting Director EU at International Data Corporation, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Juanjo Hierro
Chief Technology Officer of the FIWARE Foundation, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Kishor Narang
Technology Philanthropist and WG Vice-Chair at IEC, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Marc Wesselink
Marc works out of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, yet his work leaves impact marks all across the globe.
Founder of VentureRock, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Jean Baptiste Oldenhove
Jean Baptiste Oldenhove is the CEO and founder of Estari Group. He is one of the leading investors in sustainability, having invested close to half a billion euros across 15 geographies over the last decade in clean energy, advanced agriculture technologies and sustainable textile. Jean Baptiste is an electricity and mechanical engineer by training, with an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Founder of the Estari Group, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Lanfranco Marasso
Lanfranco works out of Genoa, Italy, but in between you can find him cycling his road bike all around Europe.
Smart City Program Director of Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Jann Wendt
CEO of North.io and NatureConnect, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Belinda Carr
Belinda Carr is a Building Scientist with a global perspective on innovation and best practices in the construction industry. She shares her insights and knowledge via her category-leading YouTube channel with more than 175.000 followers, in her trademark to-the-point, slightly geeky, relatable style. She was also recently featured on CNN on the topic of 3D printed houses. Through her channel, research, and media engagements, Belinda helps global markets discover and critically weigh sustainable and/or transformative construction materials, technologies, and innovations with the goal of improving the science of building, which as a sector today still accounts for 40% of global carbon emissions.
Belinda is advising the foundation in some of its climate-positive open-knowledge construction initiatives and pilots in Europe, Africa, and South-East Asia. Belinda also provides architectural, MEP and construction support services as a consultant to the market and builds Dynamo plugins with Python scripts and AutoCAD LISP routines to streamline operations in the industry.
She has cum laude degrees in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati and the American University of Sharjah. Belinda hails from Dubai but lives and works in Dallas, Texas these days.
Building Scientist and YouTube Creator, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Dalibor Baskovc
Digital Innovator and Ecosystem Builder, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Miguel Eiras Antunes
Miguel works out of Lisbon, Portugal, at least when he manages to not be awesome at some high-profile event somewhere on the planet for a time.
Global Leader Smart Cities & Urban Transformation of Deloitte, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Oliver Rack
Oliver works for the working group Open Government Partnership Germany, the City of Heidelberg, Nextlearning e.V. and the network Politics for Tomorrow. Oliver Rack teaches at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Mannheim in the degree course of New Public Management and E-Government and at the Design Department at Mannheim University of Applied Sciences.
Oliver works out of Mannheim, Germany.
Professor, Board Member of Politics for Tomorrow and Open Gov Partnership, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Olivier Dion
Co-Founder and Mobility Alliance Leader of aNewGovernance, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Leonid Kholkine
Leonid is someone who deeply cares about the people, the community, and the environment behind results - as well as the results themselves, naturally. Leonid was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia and has been on the move since he was 7 year old. He has lived in Switzerland, the US, Portugal, and Belgium. He has always developed activities which were there to help students to develop and reach their full potential. Leonid lives and works out of Belgium and Portugal.
Co-Founder of the World Data League, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Lea Hemetsberger
Lea is working at OASC as Communications & Project Manager. She is responsible inter alia for OASC network coordination, event and workshop organisation, and communication and dissemination activities for OASC and related projects (e.g. SynchroniCity). With a background in journalism as well as new media and ICT, she has been working as a communicator for carmaker Audi, Brussels-based NGO Transport & Environment, and the Brussels office of the German Friedrich-Ebert-foundation.
Bid & Relationship Manager of the DKSR, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Dimitris Kosmidis
ICT Consultant at the City of Athens (DAEM), MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Jaap Gordijn
Previously, he was a member of Cisco’s International Internet Business Solution Group, active as an e-business strategy consultant in the banking, insurance and digital content industries for Fortune 500 companies.
Professor at VUA Amsterdam and Founder of The Value Engineers, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Lennert Hermans
Lennert is a huge dude, in stature, status, and heart. He works out of Brussels, Belgium.
Founder and Director of Ensemble Architects, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Wim Seynaeve
Next to that he is the Managing Partner of Moore FaaS, focusing on financial solutions for scale-ups in terms of both product and service. Working towards the spotified accounting world.
Wim works out of Antwerp, Belgium.
Managing Partner FaaS at Moore Belgium, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Jane McLaughlin
Innovation Director of The Lunar Works, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Ed Synnott
Director of Tynos Consulting, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Emmanuel Mondon
Co-Founder of the Space Cooperative Europe, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Erik Ravijts
Erik is an avid extreme sportsman - in fact, building professional extreme sports infrastructure is one of the things he does all over the world. His most recent project is a mechanically morphing top sports slope for the elite national athletes of Flanders.
Erik works out of Schoten, Belgium.
Founder and CEO of Mapix, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Anneleen Vander Elstraeten
Managing Partner of Four&Five Law, MIMPACT™ Legal Counsel and Founding Member
Wim Godden
CEO of Cu.be Solutions, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Harald Sundmaeker
He was also treasurer of the FIspace Foundation that was founded as spin‐off from the FIWARE public private partnership. Evaluator of EU project proposals, at open calls in industry and jury member at startup open pitch events. Researching on topics related to Internet of Things, energy efficiency in industry, collaborative work and innovation in complex supply networks. Experienced with projects specifically in agri-food, manufacturing and automotive industry. Author and co‐author of over 40 technical and scientific publications.
AgriTech Innovator and Senior Researcher at ATB Bremen, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Erik Mannens
He heads the Internet and Data team of +50 Semantic Technologies & Artificial Intelligence Researchers. The primary objective of the Internet and Data Lab team is to advance research and technology in the sweet spot of the fusion of Semantics & Artificial Intelligence and to widely apply this research in large-scale use cases. The Internet and Data Lab is also committed to the Open Source, Open Access and Open Knowledge movements.
Director at IMEC and Linked Data Professor at Ghent University, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Alessandra Bonoli
Professor Circular Economy at the University of Bologna, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Frederic Van Durme
Connectivity Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Laurent Horvath
Energy Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Stefano De Panfilis
He actively participated in the creation and start of the NESSI ETP of which he was the Technical Director. In June 2011 he became the Chief Innovation Officer of the Engineering Group. He has been involved in several Future Internet initiatives set-up by the European Commission being one of the founders of the FIWARE initiative.
Since its very beginning he is he responsible of FIWARE Lab and member of the FIWARE Technical Steering Committee. Stefano is author of several scientific papers appeared on international journals and in conferences proceedings, he is member of a number of international conferences Program Committees.
Chief Operating Officer of the FIWARE Foundation, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Karen Vega
In Washington DC she advised projects from one of the most visible social entrepreneurship grants competition programs of the World Bank Group (Development Marketplace) supporting development of 80 innovation grants worldwide. Identifying & funding innovative, early-stage projects with high potential for development impact.
Karen works out of Lima, Peru.
Senior Business Development Manager of the FIWARE Foundation, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Federico Bernardinelli
Federico is the comms manager of MIMPACT™ and he can write his own damn bio! :-)
Communications Manager at The Maximal Impact Foundation
Paul Luttik
Trees Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Tom Soroka
Startups Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Iggy Kaminskas
Domes Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member
Eliane Meersman
And it was her 5th birthday.
So, here she is: my beautiful daughter Eliane :-)
Special advisor to the Chairman
MIMPACT™ Foundation
Any project that contributes to speeding up the digital transformation of communities, the deployment of resource-saving technologies, and increasing the data and knowledge underpinning our overall model of delivering impact intelligence, we can facilitate.
The Maximal Impact Foundation consists of four governing bodies: the Foundation, the Commons, the Society, and the Open Calls. The bodies are supported by an executive structure governed by the Foundation.
MIMPACT™ Society
MIMPACT™ Commons
MIMPACT™ Open Calls
The MIMPACT™ Open Calls pool resources to tackle the most difficult problems head-on, and to allow learning what works and what not in the process - in a uniquely low-risk structure. The first three focus areas are for the fund open calls will be Climate Change, Migration, and Legal Tech. The first calls will launch concurrently in Europe, India, Africa, and North-America.
MIMPACT™
SenseMaking Roundtables
What matters is not all the projects that get done, but what remains afterwards. The end result, but also the 'stuff between the cracks' that can be hard to grasp or put into action. The SenseMaking Roundtables activate front-stage and back-drop capabilities of organisations and communities. It's an exciting collaborative process that drives value from day one. It's the stuff you know you miss when interacting globally, but didn't have an answer to. Until now.
The MIMPACT SenseMaking roundtable method actively elicits opportunities for fruitful collaboration with local stakeholders and map those to the organisations in our own broad impact ecosystem.
Through a scientifically validated process that was perfected over more than a decade, the roundtables provide a way to build value from the seams. Even remotely.
MIMPACT™
Open Data Spaces
We strongly believe in the necessity of free and open data and information in solving challenges on a global scale. That's why we spur open data spaces.
Too many ecosystems across industry domains are pre-occupied with carving out marginal advantages at tremendous societal cost due to suboptimal implementations of what essentially boils down to data cartels, or often even nothing at all due to the failure of well-intended projects once public funding dries up. Accessing good data comes at too high a cost to our young generations setting up companies, testing ideas, fixing problems that they inherited from nested prior generations. Society as a whole pays for their inability to access good data (due to cost. conditions, or absence) via high fail rates, slow innovation, suboptimal solutions, and overloaded ROI models.
A global initiative in collaboration with our friends at the FIWARE Foundation, the Global Convenant of Mayors, the Data Competence Centre for Regions and Cities, and Marispace-X to support climate action and indicators based on peripheral context data enabled by federated context brokers and Smart Data Models.
An initiative under preparation in collaboration with our global fund partners to bridge the gap between company profile / performance data and regulatory context information by structuring and making freely and openly available operational and sensor data streams related to deployments.
MIMPACT™
Good HOST Charter
The Maximal Impact Foundation champions the 'Good HOST' values and underlying principles. MIMPACT™ is the platform where we define the principles that grow and nurture the fundamental underpinnings of post-competitive global action. It is the place where we can evolve our digital DNA and reflect on what we want to share and give back to the world and future generations.
The Charter is currently in a draft format, as it should be. Over the course of 2022, we will organise a global series of roundtables that intends to capture global perspectives emanating from the world's digital and impact ecosystems
If you want to get involved with this programme, please get in touch and we will get you started.
MIMPACT™
Local Value Engineering
MIMPACT™ partners with e3value / the Value Engineers to build category-leading value networks that allow local actors to thrive locally and globally. In today’s world of complex value networks, high-speed communication and global logistics, innovation requires a major effort to understand your value network and to convince independent, profit-and-loss-responsible actors to go along with you. This is where e3value is useful.
Resources
Initiatives
The community open source platform for smart and affordable SDG-driven construction
Started 2021
The open data space for climate action and reporting
ClimateContext.io is a collaboration between MIMPACT, FIWARE, GCoM and DKSR to exponentially increase availability of climate action data for local levels worldwide.
Feb 2022 onwards
Identification and operationalisation of individual and societal tipping points for targeted action.
info to follow soon.
November 2022
Building the GOOD HOST Charter
Info to follow soon
March 2022 onwards
Defining the global impact baseline
Info to follow soon
Feb 2022 onwards
Autonomous flights between South-Africa and Brazil with solar blimps
More info on participation towards summer 2022
2023 onwards
Inspiration programme for future leaders in school today
Programme pilots started Dec 2021. More info to follow soon.
2022 onwards
Events
FutureCraft Media Launch Event - June 2022
MIMPACT™ Gathering - November 2022
MIMPACT™ Summit - November 2022
- more info soon -
Meetings
This section is will list member meeting dates.
Book a meeting
Fee free to get in touch and have a chat.
The Maximal Impact Foundation vzw
Sint-Pietersvliet 7
2000 Antwerp, Belgium
Phone : +32477514581
Reg. BE0772292125