• Open Impact Intelligence
    for a Brave New World.

    We are the post-competitive platform for change makers and leaders delivering change done right, worldwide.

    Est. 2021

The Maximal Impact Foundation

The Maximal Impact Foundation (MIMPACT™) is an open-membership, not-for-profit organisation built for locally driven societal transformation at global scale with relevant speed. 

We deliver a post-competitive value model based on adaptive financial risk modulation and smart open knowledge engineering, achieving near-zero risk for public servants anywhere when addressing global problems locally and outside of the sandbox.

At the same time we provide impact intelligence to the broader stakeholder landscape with upside for all sides of the market. Cardinally, we are on the cusp of exponentially increasing the (open) sharing capacities of local levels worldwide in order for us all to get ahead of some of the world's most wicked problems: migration, climate change, ethics by design - to name a few.

The foundation is privately operated with membership limited to natural persons only - this allows us to work with industry leaders and change makers under reduced respective fiduciary burdens. We do partner with companies, and already work with some of the world's largest and best.

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
The foundation was provisionally incorporated as a not-for-profit organisation under Belgian law (vzw) in August 2021 in Antwerp, Belgium. The founding members are currently formalising the governance and upgrading the legal structure.
The foundation is privately operated, non-political, not for profit, with membership limited to natural persons only. Projects are executed by partners based on their own business models in which we have no stake. We do not sit on transactions anywhere. If it happens, we're happy.

Founding Members and Backers 

Davor Meersman
Hassan Mohanna
Kris Libunao
Gert De Tant
Aldo De Moor
Evelien Verschroeven
Francesco Mureddu
Bart Rosseau
Alanus Von Radecki
Paul Theyskens
Jim Spohrer
Ulrich Ahle
Jorn Verbeeck
Rozina Spinnoy
Charles Landry
Nuria De Lama
Juanjo Hierro
Kishor Narang
Marc Wesselink
Jean Baptiste Oldenhove
Lanfranco Marasso
Jann Wendt
Belinda Carr
Dalibor Baskovc
Miguel Eiras Antunes
Oliver Rack
Olivier Dion
Leonid Kholkine
Lea Hemetsberger
Dimitris Kosmidis
Jaap Gordijn
Lennert Hermans
Wim Seynaeve
Jane McLaughlin
Ed Synnott
Emmanuel Mondon
Erik Ravijts
Anneleen Vander Elstraeten
Wim Godden
Harald Sundmaeker
Erik Mannens
Alessandra Bonoli
Frederic Van Durme
Laurent Horvath
Stefano De Panfilis
Karen Vega
Federico Bernardinelli
Paul Luttik
Tom Soroka
Iggy Kaminskas
Eliane Meersman
Davor Meersman
Vision

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
Growth

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
Impact

Kris Libunao

A pioneer in the smart city space in the Philippines, Kris R. Villanueva-Libunao, an Internationally Certified Sustainability Practitioner, is the Executive Director and Chief Sustainability Officer at SmartCT (Smart Cities PH, Inc.) and currently training under the ASEAN Smart Cities Leaders Programme. She is also a Smart Sustainable Cities Instructor with IoT Academy and International Telecommunication Union Academy (ITU-Academy).

With almost a decade of policy research consultancies with government agencies, international government organisations, and private companies, Kris’ current commitment is to create a movement transforming how the world thinks, does, and plans smart cities in the Philippines and developing countries. While advocating sustainability and innovation is her primary job function by day, Kris enjoys boxing, with one draw amateur boxing fight on her belt. She also loves true crime show series, weightlifting, ultramarathons, Muay Thai, and yoga.

Kris works out of the United States and the Philippines.

CEO of SmartCT, Member of the Board of Trustees of The Maximal Impact Foundation

Gert De Tant
Technology

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
Community

Aldo De Moor

Dr. Aldo De Moor is a great mind who succeeds in combining technical creativity, intellectual vision, the ability to dive in and relevantly re-emerge from complexity, stellar people skills, and a strong ethical backbone. After boldly transitioning away from a successful academic career in order to dedicate himself to doing good and having a direct and lasting societal impact, Aldo has worked with a huge amount of communities, organisations, and inter-organisational networks around the world - ranging from very high-tech city consortia to indigenous communities of practice - to deliver impact and improve the lives of the members of those communities through social innovation, community building, communication analysis, and systems design.

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
Education

Evelien Verschroeven

Evelien Verschroeven is insanely difficult to peg into the hole of a biographic snippet. In Flemish, we would call her a 'creative millipede'.  Evelien's presence in any setting is always valuable because she comes in from tangential and/or complementary angles with coherence, eloquence, and often a solution outline to get things done.

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
Policy

Francesco Mureddu

Francesco Mureddu is the Executive Director of the Lisbon Council, Europe's most reputed think tank on competitiveness  and  innovation, specialising in high-level events and world-class research in open and e-government, future science, digital transformation of public administrations, ICT, roadmapping and foresight exercises, innovation and start-ups, and the development of skills and human capital. Francesco is a high-level analyst and strategist in innovation and technology policies. During his career he has supported, and in many cases, driven the design and delivery of consultancy and research projects in a wide variety of topics including the impact of Digital Transformation, Big data and Artificial Intelligence, e-government, Smart cities, ICT-enabled social innovation, future science, Citizen Science, research and innovation policies, health. Francesco masters a wide array of methodologies including evaluation and impact assessment of policy initiatives and projects, policy development and benchmarking, technology roadmapping and scenario development, economic and econometric modelling, cost/benefit and sensitivity analysis, stakeholders’ consultation and engagement.

 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
Open Data

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
Data Competence

Alanus Von Radecki

Dr. ir. Alanus Von Radecki is a globally respected and unvaryingly appreciated innovator, entrepreneur and consultant in the field of smart city strategies and technologies. He cares about developing practical solutions to complex urban challenges and translating them into scalable projects and ventures with clients and partners. 

Since February 2021 he is heading the Data Competence Centre for Cities and Regions DKSR in Berlin, aimed at providing open-source data infrastructure and expert data services to cities and municipal companies. Previously, he worked as head of the "Urban Governance Innovation" competence team at Fraunhofer IAO, focusing on innovation management for smart cities and on urban data governance.

As part of the Fraunhofer "Morgenstadt Initiative",  Alanus was responsible for an innovation partnership between 35 European cities, 42 private-sector companies and 12 research institutions, driving urban innovations and the implementation of sustainable and connected solutions for better cities. This resulted in innovation projects with a total volume of >500 million EUR.

In addition to founding DKSR, Alanus was co-founder and CIO of BABLE. In the past 11 years, he has advised cities such as Vienna, Stockholm, Manchester, Eindhoven, Belfast, Zagreb, Porto, Cologne, Berlin, Prague, Dublin, Munich as well as counties and smaller municipalities on digital transformation. Alanus works out of Berlin, Germany.

CEO of the Data Competence Centre for Cities and Regions, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Paul Theyskens
Data Ecosystems

Paul Theyskens

Paul Theyskens is a well-respected entrepreneur and consultant designing digital ecosystems for a fair Human-centric economy. As a digital transformation specialist with an Internet agency background, Paul was a co-founder of 3 startups and working in Digital Marketing, Digital Analytics, Big Data for the last 20 years in Telco, Media and Mobility. Over the past 6 years, he participated in the MyData community and co-founded the Brussels Hub. In Mobility, Paul is working for PTO’s and PTA and in innovation workgroups in the MaaS Alliance, ITS.be and a number of other European collaborations in designing data-driven Mobility as a Service ecosystems. Paul also founded Datamixer, a digital transformation agency helping marketeers with their digital transformation challenges,  sharing the value being generated from their data, and invest in trusted relations with customers. Over the past years, Datamixer has been working in the Mobility sector in Belgium, with digital transformation projects for Public Transport Operators, Püblict Transport Authorities, and MaaS Mobility as a Service provider.

Founder of the Brussels Hub of MyDataGlobal, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Jim Spohrer
Service Systems

Jim Spohrer

Dr. James C. Spohrer is a highly reputed computer scientist best known for having led the development of a new science of service systems, often known as service science, management and engineering. In spring 2017, Jim was named as Director, Cognitive OpenTech for IBM. From 2009 through 2016, he had been the Director of IBM Global University Programs Worldwide. Between 2003 and 2009, he was the Director of Almaden Services Research with IBM at the IBM Almaden Research Center. 

jim was an advocate of the service science, management and engineering initiative across companies, governments and academics. His research group received IBM awards for modelling customers and mapping global service systems including performance measures, costing and pricing of complex, inter-organisational service projects, analytics and information service innovations, process improvement methods, and innovation foresight methods, amongst others. He works with service research pioneers from diverse academic disciplines and he advocates for Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED) as an integrative framework for global competency development, economic development, and advancement of science.

Jim was the Chief Technology Officer for IBM Venture Capital Relations between 2000 and 2002. Before that, he was a Distinguished Scientist in Learning Research at Apple Computer between 1989 and 1998, where he was a co-inventor receiving 9 patents. Jim received a Ph.D. in Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence from Yale University in 1988. He graduated with a B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1978. Spohrer attended Hampden Academy from 1970 to 1974 while growing up in Newburgh, Maine, where his teachers included Stephen King. (Wikipedia)

Director of Cognitive OpenTech at IBM (retired), ISSIP Board Member, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Ulrich Ahle
Industry

Ulrich Ahle

Ulrich Ahle is a globally respected industry leader who is widely known for his relentless drive, high ethical standards, and endearing personality. Ulrich is the Chief Executive Officer of the FIWARE Foundation, one of Europe's most important open source initiatives. FIWARE's mission is to build an open sustainable ecosystem around public, royalty-free and implementation-driven software platform standards that will ease the development of new Smart Applications in multiple sectors.

Formerly Vice President and leader of Manufacturing, Retail & Transportation business and responsible for Industry 4.0 at Atos in Germany, he is also founder and member of the Board of the Industrial Data Space Association in Germany. 

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
Climate

Jorn Verbeeck

Jorn Verbeeck is the Head of Research and Innovation of GCoM, the largest global alliance for city climate leadership with more than 11.000 cities and local governments. Jorn works in the very heart of global climate action to help cities and communities worldwide win the battle for sustainability, wherever they are on their climate action journey. He is a believer in an urban future, with cities as crossroads - where societal challenges become tangible, where social and technological innovation meet, public and private actors start joint ventures, and where societal actors bridge perspectives and shape our common future. And a believer in gut feeling, common sense and technology, innovation, and communication to upscale and accelerate current transitions.

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
Design

Rozina Spinnoy

Rozina Spinnoy was born in Scotland and living in Brussels for the last 20 years. She holds a BSc(Hons) in Interior Design/Architecture from Glasgow Caledonian University and TEI Heraklion, Crete. She is the Founder/Director of Design2Style, Managing Director Belgium Design Council (SME), and NGO BIDs Belgium (New European Bauhaus community partner). Based in Brussels and working locally and internationally, Rozina is an experienced professional, with a career spanning nearly 25 years.

For the last decade, she has been working as a Design Strategist and Social Entrepreneur. A focus on designing impactful purposeful projects, connecting dots with her inter-disciplinary approach between Design Strategy, Futures, and Systems Thinking. Rozina is also the Founder and Co-Founder of several further initiatives, including an inclusive education program focusing on STEAM and Social Impact for youth with intellectual disabilities and mainstream schools of ‘Analogue to Digital’. Co-Founder of Women 100 (W100) an inclusive project focusing on bridging women in the Brussels Region from varying cultural/socio-economic backgrounds. The Founder of ‘Empowering Women and Public Spaces’.

Rozina is a nominated member of the Academy of Urbanism and sits on several Advisory Commissions. Rozina works out of Brussels, Belgium.

Managing Director of the Belgium Design Council, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Charles Landry
Creativity

Charles Landry

Charles Landry is an international authority on the use of imagination and creativity in urban change. He is currently a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. He invented the concept of the Creative City in the late 1980’s. Its focus is how cities can create the enabling conditions for people and organisations to think, plan and act with imagination to solve problems and develop opportunities. The notion has become a global movement and changed the way cities thought about their capabilities and resources. Charles helps cities identify and make the most of their potential by triggering their inventiveness and thinking and by opening up new conversations about their future. His aim is to help cities become more resilient, self-sustaining and to punch above their weight. Acting as a critical friend he works closely with decision makers and local leaders in the short and longer term.. He stimulates, facilitates and inspires so cities can transform for the better. He helps find apt and original solutions to seemingly intractable dilemmas, such as marrying, social creativity, innovation and tradition, or balancing wealth creation and social cohesiveness, or local distinctiveness and a global orientation. His overall aim is to help cities get onto the global radar screen.

Charles is a highly respected globally oriented advisor that assesses deep trends, creative potential, culture and urban change. He has completed several hundred assignments for many public and private interests and given key note addresses and workshops in 65 countries across the continents. His many books include most recently a series of short, illustrated books, including: The Creative Bureaucracy (September 2017), Psychology & the City with Chris Murray; The Digitized City; Cities of Ambition; The Fragile City & the Risk Nexus with Tom Burke; The Sensory Landscape of Cities; The Origins and Futures of the Creative City and Culture & Commerce. He is best known for The Creative City: A toolkit for Urban Innovators (2000); The Art of City Making (2006); and The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage with Phil Wood.

International Authority on Using Imagination in Urban Change, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Nuria De Lama
Data Value

Nuria De Lama

Nuria de Lama is the Consulting Director EU for IDC.  She has worked more than 20 years in Research, Development and Innovation in different IT environments. Before IDC, she was the European Programs Manager at ATOS since 2005. She has managed or contributed to more than 40 innovation projects in areas like Services, Digital Platforms, Digital Transformation, IoT and Big data applied to different sectors, notably Smart Cities and Agriculture. Nuria studied Telecommunications Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

She has played a leadership role and has represented Atos in a number of strategic and road mapping initiatives, such as the European Technology Platform on Software and Services (NESSI), the CELTIC Plus Eureka program, the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group (OISPG) or the Future Internet Partnership leading to the creation of the FIWARE Foundation. She is also one of the founders of the Big Data Value Association where she was first Deputy Secretary General; since 2018 she is member of the Board of Directors. She has devoted the last years to topics related to the Data Economy, including Data Platforms, coordinating a portfolio of data-.related projects and supporting the implementation of the Big Data Value Partnership. She has been a board member of the European Big Data Value Association.

She acts proudly as advisor to a number of projects (BigPolicyCanvas, DataPitch, Cervero, I-BiDaaS, NGIoT, EU-IoT, StandICT, Everest, Decido). Nuria works out of Madrid, Spain.

Consulting Director EU at International Data Corporation, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Juanjo Hierro
Platforms

Juanjo Hierro

Juanjo Hierro is the Chief Technology Officer of the FIWARE Foundation, arguably Europe's most impactful globally operating open source initiative. Known for his humble, measured, and steadfast demeanour, it  is hard to overstate the importance of Juanjo and his work for the success of open standars, open technologies, and open data for public innovation ecosystems around the world. Over a period of more than a decade, Juanjo has initiated, built up, propagated, and driven the vision of the most consistently adopted technical backbone of cross-industry inter-organisational sharing capabilities based on open standards: the FIWARE Context Broker and Smart Data Models. 

Juanjo has been the technical lead of the FI-PPP programme, a founder of the OASC initiative, a founder of the FIWARE Foundation, the driving force and initiator of the ETSI Context Information Management group and standard, and a champion of the adoption of the context broker as a key building block of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the Indian Urban Data Exchange (IUDX). Furthermore, Juanjo has been a widely respected technical architect of many strategic global partnerships such as e.g. with GAIA-X, IDSA, LF Energy, Azure DTDL, MaaS Alliance, TM Forum, World Bank, Red Hat, Digital Twin Consortium, and many more.

Juanjo holds a degree in Computer Science from the UPM in Madrid, Spain and was the Head of the Industrial IoT Unit of Telefónica R&D before founding FIWARE. Apart from his unwavering commitment to open source and open standards, Juanjo is known for his love of Thelonious Monk and jazz music in general, as well as cinema and the arts. Juanjo works out of Madrid, Spain and Berlin, Germany, but never on Fridays from lunch until the late afternoon when he diligently dedicates his time to his loving family and friends.

Chief Technology Officer of the FIWARE Foundation, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Kishor Narang
Ethics by Design

Kishor Narang

Dr. Kishor Narang is a unique mind and creative technologist who consistently brings original perspectives to important technology and business fora. He is a technology consultant, mentor and design architect in electrical, electronics & ICT with over 40 years of experience in education, research, design and consulting. Kishor has over 30 years of research and design development experience in solutions, systems, products, hardware, software and firmware  in fields of industrial, power, IT, telecom, medical, energy and environment. He has over 250 research and design mentees in the electronics, ICT & STI ecosystems.

Kishor is an electronics design engineer practicing design and development of a wide spectrum of products, systems and solutions as an independent design house, NARNIX, since 1981. Kishor has been leading and contributing to multiple National Standardisation Initiatives in India as well as globally though SDOs such as IEC, ISO, ITU and IEEE, such as Chair – Strategy, IEC Systems Committee on Smart Cities; Project Leader – IEC SRD 63188 ED1 – Smart Cities Reference Architecture Methodology; Project Leader – IEC 63205 ED1 – Smart Cities Reference Architecture; Member – Joint IEC-ISO-ITU Smart Cities Task Force (J-SCTF);  and many more.

Kishor has been deeply involved in standardisation in the electrical, electronics, communication and IT domains with focus on identifying gaps in standards to address Interoperable systems and solutions deployments and bring harmonisation by defining standardised interfaces to ensure end-to-end Interoperability. Currently, Kishor is developing a Comprehensive “5G inclusive ICT Architecture for Critical Infrastructure” and leading the 5G Application Layer Standards development in India. Kishor works from Delhi, India.

Technology Philanthropist and WG Vice-Chair at IEC, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Marc Wesselink
Fintech

Marc Wesselink

Marc is a transformational innovator of the investment industry and  a serial entrepreneur who started 12 companies between 1994 and 2008 and invested in over 150 between 2004 and 2018. His purpose in life is to help as many entrepreneurs become successful founders of companies which can create an impact. He is active in Europe & Africa.

As one of the founding partners of Startupbootcamp, he was part of the global roll out and recruited over 160 companies for the Amsterdam & Cape Town programs and have helped them raised over 150 MIO EUR funding. He was responsible of managing the portfolio of Startupbootcamp with a value of over 500 MIO EUR.

Since October 2018 he started his next challenge since the investment landscape in Europe & Africa is still in need of one: How to improve investment in Pre-Seed, Seed & Early Stage companies. He has created an entire digital way of investing in early stage companies at large scale and de-risk it at the same time. The platform will be capable in investing > 150 companies a year by using automated processes and follow on investment based on real time data. The fund will also offer execution power with a network of experienced professionals who will help single founders, founder teams & corporates to start & scale a company.

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
Value Investing

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.

Jean Baptiste brings a true sense of service to his work. Tangibly, he wants colleagues to go into a meeting asking what they can do to help the other person, not what they can get out of it. This applies too to his wider company, Estari Group, which sits at the centre point between investors and entrepreneurs who want to contribute to large-scale programmes around sustainability such as electric bikes for healthier streets or food technology to reduce disease.

His organisation brings together capital investors with the best innovative ideas to create lasting change in our society for people and planet. They deal in multi-million dollar investments sourcing capital from private, individual and public funds for a common goal. To this end, Jean Baptiste is facilitating big change in society with ethics and human connection at its core. He is humble, grounded and a pleasure to learn from. Jean Baptiste works from London, UK.

Founder of the Estari Group, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Lanfranco Marasso
Digital Innovation

Lanfranco Marasso

Lanfranco has a strong managerial background with a proven track record in IT projects and innovation in public sector, as well as a good strategic vision complemented by a remarkable execution effectiveness. After completing Engineering at University of Genova, he took his Ph.D. on Process Engineering at Polytechnic of Milan. He is currently the Smart City Program Director at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica spa (www.eng.it - Italy).

He has been involved at C-level in private companies at national and international level (Boston, MA, USA). In 1999 he moved from private to public sector as CIO of Municipality of Parma (Italy), covering important role for Italian Ministries. In 2003 he went back to private sector, at Engineering covering senior positions in Public Sector Department. Since 2009 he has been working in R&D Department looking at the technological transfer from Research to Innovation to the Market, mainly in public sector.

He has co-founded several companies and startups (first CONTECO 1994, last beMINT 2015). He is playing an active role on several EU initiatives on Software and Services for Public Sector: FIWARE (FIWARE Smart Cities Domain Committee), ENOLL (European Network of Living Lab), BDVA (Big Data Value Association), ECSO (European Cyber Security Organisation) and AIOTI (Alliance Internet Of Thing Innovation). He has published several articles and books on process and project management, new technologies applications and innovation in public sector and smart city.

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
Environmental Data

Jann Wendt

Jann Wendt is Managing Director of north.io GmbH (former EGEOS GmbH), which is based in the Kiel Science Park and which he also founded in 2010. Born in Husum, he completed a Master of Science degree in environmental geography and environmental management at Kiel Christian Albrechts University in 2014. With TrueOcean GmbH (2019) and NatureConnect GmbH (2020), Wendt founded two more companies at the interface of environmental protection and technology. Jann works out of Kiel, Germany.

CEO of North.io and NatureConnect, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Belinda Carr
Building Science

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
Ecosystems

Dalibor Baskovc

Dalibor is a forward thinking innovator and ecosystem builder with a focus on bridges within and into the Balkan region in Europe. He has a long and successful career in Technical, Security (CISM), Sales, Business development and Managerial positions. Dalibor has worked in various industries covering IT-development, IT-system integrators companies, Compulsory health insurance company, Central Securities Clearing Corporation, Telecom and Sales. Dalibor has a profound understanding of using cross-industry partnerships to leverage the strength of multiple industry players giving each player a strong foothold in the market place.

Dalibor is currently engaged at the DG DIGIT of the European Commission, was the founding coordinator of the OASC Slovenia chapter, and was previously chairman of the EuroCloud Slovenia chapter, and vice-president of EuroCloud Europe. Dalibor was also a member of Select Industry Group (SIG), run by the EU commission. He has been actively involved in preparing the EU cloud strategy that has paved the way for data spaces in Europe. Dalibor was CEO of privately owned company Zeleno d.o.o., a consulting firm in the area of cloud computing, where he was responsible for developing the cloud consultancy program, helping vendors, research&development entities, ISV’s, getting value out of cloud industry. A strong hallmark of responsibilities was also knowledge transfer from research institutions to the industry through the competence center he has been running within the Slovenian Chamber of Commerce.

Dalibor is an avid outdoorsman and has a wonderful, loving family. His wife Andrea makes the best Slovenian apple strudel in the world. They both work out of Brussels, Belgium and Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Digital Innovator and Ecosystem Builder, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Miguel Eiras Antunes
Market Intelligence

Miguel Eiras Antunes

Miguel Eiras Antunes is the Global Smart City, Smart Nation & Local Government Leader at Deloitte. Miguel´s career has been built on a path of excellence and success managing complex projects and large business transformation initiatives. Miguel is part of Deloitte Global GPS Leadership team and In 2019 Miguel was appointed as Deloitte´s Global Smart City, Smart Nation & Local Government Leader. Miguel coordinates a team of 4000 Smart City and Urban Development experts, from the 4 corners of the world, who are focused on advising Cities, Urban Developers and Infrastructure Managers, on the smartest path for the future.  This team leverages from Deloitte´s partnerships and in-house developed assets and expertise to turn cities and urban ecosystems greener, smarter and more connected. Miguel is also part of the Leadership Team of the European Institutions Account where he leads the expert group focused on developing policies and solutions for Cities and Transportation. 

During his career Miguel has led the creation and development of several successful leading consulting business units (S&O leader for several years, Healthcare, TMT, Transport, Hospitality and Services, Global Public Sector in Portugal and Angola).  He has been involved in projects all over the world, as leading Partner, Quality Assurance Partner or Subject Matter Expert. Miguel advocates a move “from Urban Living to a more Human Living” in order to have a positive impact on the lives of future generations and contribute to a more sustainable and happy way of living. As a leading expert in Smart Cities and Urban Ecosystems, Miguel is often found sharing his vision at global conferences and leading industry events, such as the World Economic Forum and the European Commission, about the future trends of civil government, education, transport & mobility, environment and sustainability. He has also developed strong relationships with the United Nations, global leadership teams and advisory boards of several global forums.

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
Open Government

Oliver Rack

Oliver Rack is an open innovation, system design and governance specialist. In Germany, he is a central pioneer in the area of open government for the consolidation of innovative capability and the resilience of state and community – especially in the course of digital change. He is therefore active in the research and implementation in GovLabs at all administrative levels, from the EU Commission to municipal administration, primarily in the subsections of smart city development, strategic and political orientation, open infrastructures and resources as well as in the areas of organisation development and competence development.

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
Personal Data

Olivier Dion

Olivier Dion is a pioneer and expert in personal data & data portability for more than 10 years (VRM, MyData, MesInfos). He is active with the French CNIL and has been a speaker at international conferences (IAPP, MyData, IGF, EU Commission events). He has advised the French Government on portability, and participates in the WEF work on a data code of conduct.

Olivier teaches innovation at ULCO Calais and Dunkerque where he has been developing the startup ecosystem since 2014. Based on his experience in CRM and open data, Olivier founded OneCub in 2011 to empower people with their data. He co-founded aNewGovernance in 2019 to unite people and organisations globally around his mission. He leads the Mobility Alliance inside aNewGovernance in order to federate players of the mobility sector for personal data sharing infrastructure building.

Olivier works out of Paris and Calais, France.

Co-Founder and Mobility Alliance Leader of aNewGovernance, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Leonid Kholkine
Data Science

Leonid Kholkine

By day, Leonid Kholkine is a passionate data scientist. By night, Leonid is... also a passionate data scientist. Leonid is currently working on a PhD at IMEC in Antwerp, Belgium after completing his Master at the University of Porto a few years earlier. But Leonid is also known as the entrepreneur pur-sang who co-founded the World Data League out of experience and capacity built up during his studies in Porto, Portugal. Fuelled by good intentions and a desire to increase data competence around the world, the World Data League is connecting data science communities around the world through a model of competition - a league of the world's best data scientists  solving social problems and fixing stuff for karma and kudos.

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
City Networks

Lea Hemetsberger

Lea Hemetsberger is an incredible force when it comes to getting things done and getting it right, for the right reasons. Her productivity is stuff from legends, but it's her aptitude and diplomatic talent that makes her such a known and respected driver within the smart cities ecosystem. Lea is the  Bid and Relationship Manager of DKSR an Head of Network and Projects at OASC 

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
Urban Innovation

Dimitris Kosmidis

Dimitris Kosmidis, is a seasoned Systems Analyst & Business Consultant, involved in the areas of business innovation, technology management and life-long learning, with over a quarter-century exposure in the ICT industry, both in Greece and abroad.

Dimitris has particular interest in business model generation, process modelling and systems analysis & design methodologies. He has extensive experience in technical project management and co-ordination and has thoroughly studied, applied and implemented, human capital management systems. He is an active entrepreneur, a member of the Athens start-up scene and an external expert in EU projects.

Currently he works as a Business Analyst – ICT Consultant, in DAEM S.A.

Dimitris holds a National Diploma in Information Technology from the University of Johannesburg (Wits Tech), an Advanced Studies Diploma in Technology Management from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and a Masters Degree in Management of Business, Innovation and Technology from the Athens Information Technology (AIT).

Dimitris works out of Athens, Greece.

ICT Consultant at the City of Athens (DAEM), MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Jaap Gordijn
Value Networks

Jaap Gordijn

Dr. Jaap Gordijn is founder/managing partner of The Value Engineers, a company designing peer-to-peer business models for technologies such as blockchain. He is an associate professor of innovative e-business at VU Amsterdam. He is key developer of the e3-value method and tool for designing and evaluating networked business models.

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
Architecture

Lennert Hermans

Founder and Director of Studio Ensemble. Lennert is the leading architect of the foundation's Project FutureCraft.

Experienced architect with an extensive knowledge in construction engineering and projectmanagement. Adept in all phases of architectural design and construction, from feasibility studies to construction administration.

Responsible for the day-to-day management of Studio Ensemble, helping and guiding the team in the right direction. In addition, taking charge of several projectsas Executive Architect and Project Manager.

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
Finance

Wim Seynaeve

Wim Seynaeve is an experienced +15 years scale-up CFO and has taken that role in various scale-ups since 2005. He is currently the CFO of Striktly Business Software and Start it X. 

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
Funding

Jane McLaughlin

Jane McLaughlin is a wonderful human being who can think on her feet and act effectively and pragmatically. She is an expert in smart cities, digital, brand, communications, engagement and strategy, with over 29 years’ experience in delivering cross-sector, transformational projects, from cities and public/government, to major utilities, and corporate sectors in the UK and internationally.

Jane has delivered digital transformation, crisis communications, social media and engagement strategies and smart city innovations for clients in the UK, Europe and the United States. Jane has devised and delivered many complex communications initiatives – work has included development and implementation of new approaches to reporting, engagement, impact and behaviour change. Work has included digital transformation and online customer services for major utilities, global knowledge networks and learning platforms, portals and award-winning engagement and behaviour change campaigns, for clients in the UK, Europe and the United States, as well as government, corporate, Third Sector and creative industries.

With extensive experience in the water industry, Jane specialises in corporate social responsibility, sustainability and regulatory reporting, engagement and behaviour change, digital transformation, customer engagement for a number of major water companies, as well as work with regulators and stakeholders. Jane works out of Valencia, Spain.

Innovation Director of The Lunar Works, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Ed Synnott
Sustainability

Ed Synnott

Ed Synnott is an expert in the truest sense of the word: she has depth of experience, mastery of the broadness of the field, and a capacity to communicate key aspects of complex evolutions in an honest yet persuasive and stakeholder-tailored fashion. She is an  international climate change strategy, resilience & sustainable cities expert with 28 years’ experience in urban sustainability and strategy at project development and city scale, including: leading the development of climate change and sustainability strategies for 5 major cities; providing sustainability advice to numerous heavy infrastructure and major site-wide projects; embedding climate change and sustainability assessment into spatial, social and economic measurement of cities; and breaking new ground in delivering the strategic sustainability assurance of the largest-multi-project, multi-delivery agent programme globally (the London 2012 Olympic Games Programme) on behalf of the Mayor of London and UK Government.

Ed’s experience began in policy and strategy in the NSW Cabinet Office, and has worked in and with city and regional governments in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, China and the Middle East, as well as extensively with the private and corporate sector internationally and with projects for the UK FCDO.

Ed is highly experienced in leading multi-disciplinary teams on large-scale, complex projects and has worked in both the private and public sectors. Ed has facilitated workshops, training, in-house seminars for many years and is comfortable working with small groups through to large crowds. Ed works out of Valencia, Spain.

Director of Tynos Consulting, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Emmanuel Mondon
Geospatial Data

Emmanuel Mondon

Emmanuel Mondon is a generous and knowledgeable ecosystem bridger and builder and one of the 9 co-founders of Space Cooperative Europe SCE founded in November 2020, as well as the founder of AdviceGEO in February 2016, a boutique consulting firm that provides specialised services for the Geospatial & Earth Observation (GEO) market, helping this particular segment to tackle the digital (r)evolution. The GEO community, like all the other communities, is deeply impacted by the digital economy. In fact, for Geospatial & Earth Observation, we should speak about a revolution, rather than an evolution, as the required changes generated by the digital economy represent a real paradigm shift.

During his career, Emmanuel has held various positions at some of the most innovative geospatial solutions companies and world’s leading geospatial businesses such as EADS Fleximage, Ionic Software, ERDAS and Intergraph, CloudEO, DigitalGlobe and Maxar. He began his career based in Bucharest (Romania) then Paris (France) with IGN France International, subsidiary of the French National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information (IGN), recognised worldwide as a key player in geographic information engineering (http://www.ignfi.fr/en).

Emmanuel holds an engineering degree in land surveying from Ecole Supérieure des Géomètres et Topographes in his home country of France, and lives and works out of Munich, Germany.

Co-Founder of the Space Cooperative Europe, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Erik Ravijts
3D Mapping

Erik Ravijts

The myth, the man, the legend. Erik Ravijts is a man of action rather than words. Erik is the founder of Mapix, a 3D LIDAR drone mapping company that works with global partners to scan, map, and model complex environments across a variety of domains. Notable clients include global festival Tomorrowland and construction and industrial players. Erik is responsible for the 3D mapping of project FutureCraft, as well as the tree stress measurement using thermal cameras. 

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
Governance

Anneleen Vander Elstraeten

As the managing partner of Four & Five, Anneleen Vander Elstraeten still adheres to this idea: to obtain the best results possible, you need to work closely together. It’s no surprise then, that Anneleen felt the need to start a law firm where lawyers don’t operate from their ivory towers, but rather in close cooperation with their clients.

Clients who work with Anneleen claim their entire perspective on what a law firm is, has changed. According to her vision, it’s all about finding the optimal solution together with your client, rather than simply presenting an array of options and leaving the client to figure it out by themselves. In addition to her function as managing partner, Anneleen leads the technology team. Together with her team, she advises start-ups, scale-ups and listed companies on a whole range of matters, from drafting complex licensing agreements to advising boards of directors, thereby combining expertise in technology (IP/ICT) and corporate law (VC and PE investments and M&A).

Clients praise Anneleen for her profound knowhow, her exceptional leadership skills and her strategic thinking. Above all, Anneleen believes in investing in relationships with clients – open communication and accessibility are key in crafting efficient legal solutions on the ground. Anneleen works out of Antwerp, Belgium

Managing Partner of Four&Five Law, MIMPACT™ Legal Counsel and Founding Member

Wim Godden
Software Design

Wim Godden

Wim Godden has been working with open source technologies since 1997 and has been involved in open source projects such as OpenX and PHPCompatibility.

Next to web development, he's worked with a wide range of technologies (from database clusters to Internet backbone design) and focuses a lot of his time on high-scalability projects and on coaching/training web engineers.

He's a regular speaker at open source conferences around the world.

CEO of Cu.be Solutions, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Harald Sundmaeker
Agritech

Harald Sundmaeker

Dipl.‐Wi.‐Ing. Harald Sundmaeker, Diplom (Master) in Business Administration and Engineering, working between 1994 and 1997 as CO at the German Federal Armed Forces as platoon leader and head of a maintenance company. Since 1998 Harald is working as scientific staff member at ATB in consultancy and funded research projects. Involved in national research activities (e.g. BMWi, Stiftungen, regional programmes) and in several European research programmes since the 4th Framework Programme of the European Commission. He is managing projects and overtakes the role as project coordinator of international research projects. He was acting as project coordinator of CuteLoop, as deputy coordinator of SmartAgriFood, and as coordinator of the FIspace & FInish research projects. Harald overtook the leadership of the IoT integration work package in the large scale pilot project IoF2020. Currently, he is leading the Open Call work package in the pan-European SmartAgriHubs project, aiming at an expansion of the community network to facilitate the digital transformation of the European agri-food sector. Moreover, Harald contributes to the European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things (IERC) and the FIWARE initiative.

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.

n a personal note, he believes that the real world – with its cultural diversity – can be similarly inspiring and he enjoys talking with friends and colleagues over tasty meals. Harald works out of Bremen, Germany

AgriTech Innovator and Senior Researcher at ATB Bremen, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Erik Mannens
Linked Data

Erik Mannens

Prof. dr. Erik Mannens is professor at the Internet and Data Lab, CTO at Data Science & Member of the Senior Management Team of imec since 2005 where he has successfully managed +50 projects. He received his PhD degree in Computer Science Engineering (2011) at Ghent University, his Master’s degree in Computer Science (1995) at K.U. Leuven University, and his Master’s degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering (1992) at KAHO Ghent.

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
Circular Economy

Alessandra Bonoli

Full professor at the University of Bologna, her main research topics are in Environmental Engineering with particular regard to treatment, recovery and recycling of raw materials and solid waste, to the life cycle assessment and Circular Economy, to dissemination of urban Green Technologies and unconventional building materials for climate change resilience in urban areas.

She founded and coordinates the research group of Transition Engineering whose activities are aimed at building a sustainable future by environmentally, socially and economically point of view, through conservation and valorisation of natural resources, raw materials, water and energy.

A precise research concerns the application of the above topics in cooperation activity for developing and emerging countries. Numerous publications and collaborations with national and international universities.

Delegate of UNIBO at UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN, New York) and at UE Commission Operational Groups of the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials (EIP Raw Materials)

Professor Circular Economy at the University of Bologna, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Frederic Van Durme
Connectivity

Frederic Van Durme

Frederic Van Durme is a seasoned executive, connectivity expert and former CEO at Accelleran.

Frédéric always combined Business and Technology to create new ideas and ventures in an international context. After his initial career at Barco, a startup experience with Xemex, he joined Alcatel, where he has gathered 15 years of experience in Telecommunication, Broadband, Video Technologies, Internet of Things and Connected Life. Through several marketing and product management functions at Alcatel, later becoming Thomson and renamed Technicolor, Frédéric became Vice President of Technicolor’s Broadband Division and in 2011, Vice President Europe North and General Manager for Belgium. In 2008, Frédéric was at the origin of Femto activities within Thomson.

Frédéric is also active as mentor, jury and investor in several Technology start-ups and incubators.

Frédéric Van Durme has a Commercial Engineering Degree from the University of Antwerp, an MBA from the Antwerp Management School and a Master of Intercultural Management from ICHEC. He was fortunate to complement his academic career with Corporate Programs at Harvard and IESE business schools.

Connectivity Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Laurent Horvath
Water

Laurent Horvath

Geo-economist of Energy, Laurent Horvath has been studying the impact of energy on economies worldwide for over 15 years. Valaisan of origin, he graduated MBA from Dallas University, Texas and Xavier University, Ohio, USA.  Within the canton of Geneva, he led the cluster of clean technologies and energies and participated in the launch of the Smart Canton initiative. Focused on a pragmatic and sustainable innovation, it accompanied many start-ups and companies. For the city of Carouge, he led important European projects in the field of smart city as well as water management and economics. He was also the first elected city BoD member of niche network OASC. 

Energy Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Stefano De Panfilis
Service Engineering

Stefano De Panfilis

Stefano is Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the FIWARE Foundation e.V. He graduated Cum Laude in Mathematics and held several positions as software engineer implementing complex IT systems at Engineering Ingenieria Informatica S.p.A. In 2004 he became the Director of the R&D Department leading a team of about 100 researchers in Italy and Europe.

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
Development

Karen Vega

Seasoned Harvard Innovation professional and former Director with well-grounded experience working in international development projects with +16 years of professional experience. Master degree in Public Policy: political & economic development. Native Spanish speaker, fluent in French & English & knowledge of German. I implemented projects globally based in Washington DC,Paris,NY and worked frequently with Tanzania, Burkina Faso & Kenya. My experience includes analytical work ,development assessment reporting, research, project management with Government, NGOs, donors, int. organisations & social entrepreneurs in Morocco and Tunisia.

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.

 Author of operations manuals on management of innovation grants worldwide. She worked for the United Nations Headquarters in NY and in rural Tanzania, Africa developing performance management for a Grass-roots organisation. In Peru as a government officer in: Congress, and Ministries of Housing, Infrastructure , Sanitation & Health. Karen led national campaigns & held senior management roles as director and advisor in strategy, design and implementation of social development plans. I taught Research Methods at the University of Lima. I was a teaching fellow of the Leadership Courses taught by Ronald Heifetz & Dean Williams, professors of the Harvard Center for Public Leadership. In my younger days at Harvard I was elected one of the VPs of the Student Government. I am interested in digital twins, technology & societies' innovation systems & change processes.

Karen works out of Lima, Peru.

Senior Business Development Manager of the FIWARE Foundation, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Federico Bernardinelli
Comms

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
Tree Management

Paul Luttik

Paul is a UK certified tree expert who has been following developments there for twenty years, and fit our working methods (tree research, building guidance, soil investigation, vta, tree guidance, tree inventory, tree care) to always be able to work more accurately, this puts us in a rather unique position to be the only one in Belgium to be able to assist / consult in tree protection on construction sites, where we can be at our best. We are in contact with a worldwide network of experts and know-how.

In technical tree care, it is important to be able to work preventively in a consultation, people buy building land in function of natural added value and a tree gives that measurable added value, they prefer to keep it, we will discuss this biotechnically and explain the rules of the landscape elements to all parties.

The sooner we as technical tree caretakers become involved in the consultation process of construction or renovation, the more accurate the information, better sales and more comfortable for all parties involved.

Trees Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Tom Soroka
Product Design

Tom Soroka

Tom Soroka is involved in product management and product development since 2000. He helps startups and companies build successful digital products that work for their businesses. With the Leaware team we help them at many levels and stages of their projects: verifying ideas, meeting users' unmet needs, building and developing software, choosing proper tools. We are focused on understanding goals and bringing value, not on code lines writing and generating functionalities. Our development process goes smooth as we have team members equipped with expertise.

Startups Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Iggy Kaminskas
Thin-Shell Structures

Iggy Kaminskas

Ignas Kaminskas is the Head of Sales of VikingDome, market leader of geodesic dome and freeform structures. He's a lanky life long learner who has a knack for wood, technology, philosophy, and sports - basketball and endurance sports. Iggy is a creative person who is looking implement his knowledge and improve everything all the time and is not afraid to get his hands on anything and get dirty, or spend time solving problems.

Iggy has a background in wood production and works out of Vilnius, Lithuania.

Domes Expert, MIMPACT™ Founding Member

Eliane Meersman
Persuasion

Eliane Meersman

She insisted she wanted to "be among daddy's friends".

And  it was her 5th birthday.

So, here she is: my beautiful daughter Eliane :-)

Special advisor to the Chairman

you can join the foundation as a member today

MIMPACT™ Foundation

The foundation is a trusted environment for change makers, dent makers and all sorts of other makers, builders, and leaders.

We tackle wicked global problems with proven tools and open practices. Together.




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

Based on values of openness and sharing, and years of building relationships and nurturing friendships spanning the globe, the MIMPACT™ Society brings together key stakeholders of global digital ecosystems to form a nexus of open and transparent collaboration across a number of dimensions, models, and mandates.

The Maximal Impact Foundation primarily works with individuals as agents of change, and secondly through organisations, to address the global challenges we all face. Our open governance structure affords us an inclusive and adaptive approach to topic prioritisation and resource allocation.



 The primary focus of any involvement of the Maximal Impact Foundation in any initiative is to increase and improve the sharing and replication capacity of global ecosystems via at-scale, hands-on implementations, deployments, and innovations.
           

MIMPACT™ Commons

The MIMPACT™ Commons are where we bring together all free and open capabilities for digital ecosystems looking for better ways to solve problems. 

Global challenges do not discriminate: post-covid recovery, the climate agenda, the energy transition, the digital divide, digital literacy, social innovation, commodification, migration, universal accessibility, and so on affect us all. No matter where or who we are. They are problems all societies share - global problems that need local fixing



The MIMPACT™ Commons represent universally accessible technical capabilities for connected places and are operated under values of generosity, openness, post-competitiveness, love, trust, and transparency.

MIMPACT™ Open Calls

The MIMPACT Open Calls are a compliance-first, privately operated, publicly engaged, members-governed, self-sustaining, large-scale, global funding programme for local change. We represent risk-free replication of stuff that works from one place to another in a spirit of post-competitive collaboration between connected places.


The Open Calls help agents of change in bureaucracies around the world turn potential into reality and meet their responsibilities to future generations. They help local innovators find global markets faster, and global companies drive down opportunity cost. And they help smart capital find winning solutions  with post-pivot returns. 

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.

Impact Intelligence

The Maximal Impact Foundation helps leverage the platform capabilities of global organisations by eliciting, mapping, and connecting actionable knowledge in collaboration with target ecosystems. We build open data spaces that can underpin impact actions. Impact partnerships allow for multiple cycles and/or concurrent geographic deployments, which increases ROI via better fits through cumulative insights and lower cost through overlap cutting. 

Info deck ➢

MIMPACT™ SenseMaking Roundtables

SenseMaking Roundtables bring to bear local capacity that can be supplemented and put in motion for impact action that stays locally nested to ensure relevance, fit, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability.

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MIMPACT™ Open Data Spaces

Our Open Data Spaces fill a gap that is not being filled. We never duplicate efforts. Either there is no relevant data to speak of, or data that should be open is not. In both cases our Open Data Spaces help mitigate the issue.

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MIMPACT™ Impact Partnerships

Our Impact Partnerships provide our global partners with a model to iterate on prior efforts, to expand on a geographic scope, and to integrate our processes in business operations. 

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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.

LOCALCONTEXT.IO by Davor Meersman

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.

Impact Partnerships

Work with the foundation to make your impact action future-oriented, operationally grounded, cost-effective, and globally remarkable.

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Post-Competitive Platform

Pre-competitive platforms are for when the money's too big. Post-competitive platforms are for when the problem's too big. Not one single organisation, country, or collective is able or expected to solve our wicked problems: climate change, migration, ethics by design, and many, many more. Solving them will take collaboration beyond the usual. It will take more than charity on the weekends. It's an all-hands effort that will take ingenuity and generosity. Come join this first initiative of its kind. 

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MIMPACT™ Good HOST Charter

We achieve maximal impact through universal compatibility in addressing society’s big challenges. While leading cities are often innovators, most local authorities are not in a position to innovate and need to adopt innovations once they are proven. The Charter builds a trust basis to replicate.

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MIMPACT™ Local Value Engineering

Value networks are different wherever you go. Too many times solutions to global problems suppose a cookie-cutter approach that is variably suboptimal, but never optimal. Our systematic, humble, inclusive, and transparent approach is better from the start, more adaptive, and more sustainable.

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MIMPACT™ Impact Ecosystem

Through our high-profile members we have access to an insane amount of impact-capable organisations around the world, who can provide help where needed on the trust basis of the foundation. We never sit on transactions anywhere. We facilitate where optimal, and get out of the way.

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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. 

Illustrative example

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.
E3value is a language and set of analysis techniques to represent and analyse value networks. A value model is a representation of a value network in e3value. A value model does not represent processes but economic exchanges in which two or more parties exchange something of value for them. It does not represent when and how these exchanges take place. It represents who exchanges what value objects with whom; which customer needs are answered by this, and what revenue and expenses are generated by this for each actor.
 E3value represents just enough to be able to make revenue estimations and net present value estimates for actors in the network. To do this you annotate a model with estimates of market size, number of customer needs and the monetary value of object exchanges among actors. Our supporting tools can then compute assessment of commercial viability and well-being for a contract period, and can do net present value flow estimations for a sequence of contract periods.

MIMPACT
Impact Ecosystem

We are an open membership foundation. The organisations on the left are a selection of the various engagements our members have, combined. Viewed together, it represents a powerful global ecosystem.

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Resources

Initiatives

FutureCraft
ClimateContext.io
Migration Exchange
Ethics Exchange
SenseMaking Roundtables
World Solar Airship Race
The Pivot Generation
FutureCraft

The community open source platform for smart and affordable SDG-driven construction

Project FutureCraft is an inter-generational, open-source, climate-positive, circular, zero-waste, nature-preserving, socially inclusive, digital-first construction platform creating open knowledge for future generations. It is the outcome of thorough research, international experience, global stakeholder consultations, and applied innovation methods. It includes a process that both (a) translates global sustainability goals into personal and community needs, and (b) methodically scales local and international digital and environmental technology innovation into the basic functional needs taking into account existing and anticipated policy frameworks.

From the very start, FutureCraft was conceived as a demand-side-driven, open, scalable platform that can help communities around the world achieve SDG-driven construction by applying open global capacities and local culture, preference, materials and competence to satisfy local social needs in a globally sustainable way - with maximal respect for people and nature in places. 

The pilot is currently running in Brasschaat, Belgium, and will be ready in February 2022. FutureCraft is in several conversations for deployments, including in Uganda and the Philippines.

Started 2021

ClimateContext.io

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.

CLIMATECONTEXT.IO by Davor Meersman

Feb 2022 onwards

Migration Exchange

Identification and operationalisation of individual and societal tipping points for targeted action.

info to follow soon.

November 2022

Ethics Exchange

Building the GOOD HOST Charter

Info to follow soon

March 2022 onwards

SenseMaking Roundtables

Defining the global impact baseline

Info to follow soon

Feb 2022 onwards

World Solar Airship Race

Autonomous flights between South-Africa and Brazil with solar blimps

More info on participation towards summer 2022

2023 onwards

The Pivot Generation

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.

Enquire about membership

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Fee free to get in touch and have a chat.

The Maximal Impact Foundation vzw

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Phone : +32477514581

Reg. BE0772292125

info@mimpact.org
www.mimpact.org
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