The Jury
impACT³ Jury members are:
Florian Forster
WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management
Florian Forster is working as scientific assistant and PhD student at the Otto Beisheim Chair of Entrepreneurship (Prof. Dr. Dietmar Grichnik) at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management since November 2008. He has finished his studies of Business Administration and Computer Sciences at the TU Munich. During this time he already was an active entrepreneur and awarded for his engagement. At the same time he held various positions in industrial enterprises and service companies. Florian Foster was responsible for the central European market development of the globally operating internet start-up FON before joining WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. Now he is dealing with Social Entrepreneurship.
Prof. Dr. Heinz Klandt
European Business School
Prof. Dr. Heinz Klandt sudied Business Administration and Social Psychology at University of Cologne. Here he also completed his doctoral studies in 1984 after several years of self-employment as consultant and trainer. Following various activities as assistant and starting a market research company, he became professor for Methods of Empirical Economic Studies and Social Research at University of Dortmund. 1997 he respond the call to the European Business School and since then is owner of the first German Chair for Entrepreneurship. Furthermore Prof. Klandt is Managing Director of bifego e.V. (Institute of Business Management in Empirical Foundation and Organisation Research) and honorary president of the FGF academic network, Bonn.
Michael Vollmann
Ashoka Deutschland
Michael Vollmann works coordinates the German search and selection process to find new Ashoka Fellows in Germany. Additionally he works in supporting the existing German fellowship, manages the contacts to universities and helps Ashoka Germany to connect and catch up with the digital economy, and become savvy in online marketing. The summer 2009 he spent at the Ashoka Changemaker Program where he supported the online outreach team in Washington DC. He has written his Diploma thesis about "Social Entrepreneurship in Germany" and completed his studies in International Cultural and Business Studies at Passau University and Universidade do Estado de Rio de Janeiro. What is more, during his studies and his compulsory community service in Chile he gained deep insight in the field of international development cooperation. Michael used to be an active scout and a youth leader, and built up a youth apprenticeship center.
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Prügl
Zeppelin University
Since October 2008 Reinhard Prügl is a Junior Professor and chairman for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship at the Dr. Manfred Bischoff Institute for Innovation Management of the European Aerospace Defense and Space Company (EADS) at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. He was previously active for six years at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien) and one year at the Univesity of Innsbruck (both in Austria). Among other positions he was also between 2006 and 2008 the founding CEO of the Competence Center "TU/WU Entrepreneurship Center Vienna" a co-initiative from the Techical University of Vienna (TU Wien) and WU Wien. After receiving his PhD at WU Wien (also awarded with the renowned Rudolf-Sallinger-Prize) and a research fellow in many countries, for example also being invited to Prof. Eric von Hippel to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his research interests are in the following areas: (1) Open Innovation/User Innovation/Lead User Research, (2) Technological Competence Leveraging, (3) Search Methods, and finally (Social) Entrepreneurship. The results of his research activities which are predominantly empirical, are published primarily in well-known international journals (ie. Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Marketing Letters,and R&D Managment), and within the context of collective projects are then made accesible to companies (ie. with Start-Ups, Research Institutes as well as with Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) and big corporations like Siemens or Magna.
Markus Seidel
Founder, Spokesman and Managing Director, Offroad Kids Foundation
Markus Seidel (42), is a founder and spokesman of the board as well as a managing director of the Off Road Kids Foundation. The Off Road Kids’ Street Social Work attaches great importance to inquiring about the teenage “runaways” and street kids’ best possible future prospects all over the country. Since 1994, more than 1,500 young people where kept away from the streets by social workers of the Off Road Kids Foundation. Off Road Kids has street social work-branches in Berlin, Hamburg, Dortmund and Cologne, and a hotline for parents of “runaways” and two children shelters in Bad Dürheim, in the Black Forest. Off Road Kids finances the total Countrywide Street Social Work exclusively from sponsorship without state subsidy. Main sponsors are Vodafone Foundation Germany, Deutsche Bahn AG, Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall and Permira Beteiligungsberatung GmbH. The most recent initiative has been the establishment of the Institute for Pedagogic Management (IfPM) in April 2008, in Bad Dürheim. For the first time in Germany there is a part-time undergraduate program for pedagogues without A-level. With respect to interconnectedness of pedagogy, management, and communication, Markus Seidel maintains that IfPM stands for result-oriented education, which constitutes a demanding management and communication. In 2003, the former German President, Johannes Rau, awarded the Federal Order of Merit to Markus Seidel. For managing the public social aid of the foundation and balancing the dimension of its corporate profit, the achieved perspectives for street kids, as well as the resulting economic return, Markus Seidel, Off Road Kids‘ president, was named the first German “Social Entrepreneur.” Seidel was awarded the prize by Klaus Schwab in the name of “The Schwab Foundation” and invited to Davos in 2006. This year, both concept of the nationwide social street work and establishment of an academic institute, were granted with the “Land der Ideen” award by Federal President Köhler. Markus Seidel comes from Donaueschingen, a small town in the Black Forest. He studied sociology in Freiburg, originally worked as a journalist and ran an advertising agency. In 1994, he published the book “Straßenkinder in Deutschland” and was an editor of the „Dees-Verzeichnis Wirtschaftwissenschaften – Bibliographie der Prädikatsarbeiten“ published in 1998. Since the establishment of Off Road Kids, Markus is managing the public social aid to the foundation.
Dr. Mark Speich
CEO, Vodafone Foundation Germany
Mark Speich has been the Head of Corporate Responsibility and Foundations at Vodafone D2 GmbH since 1 May 2008. He also serves as a CEO of Vodafone Stiftung Deutschland GmbH (Vodafone Foundation Germany). Prior to this, he was working as a Head of the CDU/CSU Planning Group in the German Bundestag.
Between 1999 and 2005, he worked at ALTANA AG's Herbert Quandt Foundation in Bad Homburg in several management positions, the final one being a head of the Society and Politics department in the Foundation's Berlin Office. In 1997 and 1998, Mark Speich worked as a personal assistant of the president of Bonn University.
He started his carrier in the CDU Secretary General's Political Advisory Office in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus in Bonn.He studied history, political sciences and constitutional law in Bonn and Cambridge. Later he obtained his PhD in Bonn. His advisor was the prominent historian, Professor Hans-Peter Schwarz. Mark Speich is married with five children.
Prof. Dr. Steven Ney
Jacobs University Bremen
Steven Ney is Professor in Social Entrepreneurship at the Jacobs University Bremen. Trained as a policy analyst in the UK, he has worked in a wide variety of different research organisations in the past two decades. While he has worked and published on a wide range of issues, Steven has consistently tried to understand how institutions change, learn and adapt in rapidly changing policy environments. He suspects that institutional learning has something to do with the way policy actors, particularly social entreprteneurs, deal with messy policy problems. Some of the messy issues he has researched over the past decade and a half include the environment, the challenges of demographic ageing for welfare states, science and technology policy as well as, more recently, health care policy. In this time, Steven Ney, along with his colleagues, have developed an interdisciplinary toolbox for solving messy issues that not only provides innovative approaches for public management but also has increasingly met with interest with private sector firms facing messy problems.
Prof. Dr. Birgit Weitemeyer
Bucerius Law School
Prof. Dr. Weitemeyer completed her post-doctoral studies in 2003 with the thesis entitled “The Corporate Taxation of Public Enterprises with a Particular View to Their Hidden Profit Distribution,” receiving the venia legendi for Civil Law, Commercial Law, Corporate Law and Tax Law. From 2004 to 2007 she occupied the Chair for Civil Law, Foreign and International Private Law and Comparative Law at the Technical University of Dresden. She is a trained assistant in tax and corporate consulting, editor of the new magazine for Landlord and Tenant Law and among others, member of the Zivilrechtslehrervereinigung, the Deutschen Steuerjuristischen Vereinigung, the Gesellschaftsrechtlichen Vereinigung, the Deutschen Mietgerichtstags and the Deutschen Juristinnenbundes. Since April 1, 2007, she holds the Chair of Tax Law and is Director of the Institute for Foundation Law and the Law of Non-Profit Organizations.
Saskia Bruysten
Director Grameen Creative Lab
Saskia is the Director of the Grameen Creative Lab (GCL). She joined GCL in late 2008 and has been setting up the organization together with Prof. Yunus and Hans Reitz. The GCL aims at accelerating the idea of Social Business as vehicle to end poverty by 2030. Previously Saskia worked for the Boston Consulting Group in their Munich and New York offices. She holds an MBA from European Business School (first class), Oestrich-Winkel Germany and an MSc in International Relations from London School of Economics (distinction). Saskia holds German and Canadian citizenship, studied abroad in Argentina, the US and UK and privately has been active in social initiatives for a long time.