Velvet Innovation

John has addressed over 1,500 conferences around the world and was a faculty member of the World Economic Forum from 2002-2008. He is the author or co-author of 20 books including the million selling Green Consumer Guide. His most recent book—Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism—was published in April 2020 by Fast Company Press and has reinforced his reputation as ‘The Godfather of Sustainability’. He has helped inspire and incubate movements including the B Team, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, the Global Reporting Initiative, and B Lab UK. In 2009, he was named 4th in an international survey of the top 100 CSR leaders, after Al Gore, Barack Obama and Anita Roddick.  In 1994, John coined the phrase; ‘Triple Bottom Line,’ and in 1995 the popularisation ‘People, Planet and Profit’ (variously known as the 3Ps, TBL or 3BL). Among other things, the framework now provides the intellectual DNA for over 7,000 B Corporations worldwide. In September 2021, John received the World Sustainability Award.

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Erinch leads DEAL’s work on business and enterprise. For over 10 years, he has focused on the transformation of the business world to make sure it is regenerative and distributive by design – exploring governance and ownership models that embed social and ecological priorities. Erinch’s background spans business, government, social enterprise and NGOs. Most recently, he was the chief executive of the World Fair Trade Organization, a global network and verifier of social enterprises and cooperatives that practice Fair Trade. Previously, he spent 7 years at Oxfam leading campaign and advocacy initiatives, and founding Oxfam’s Future of Business Initiative. He has also worked at Procter & Gamble as a market strategy manager, established a furniture business and worked for Australia's aid programme. Erinch speaks and writes regularly on cooperatives, social enterprises and other enterprise alternatives to profit primacy. He has lectured extensively on sustainable business and holds degrees in finance and law, and an honorary doctorate from Oxford Brookes University.

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Denny Royal is an established design leader with over 30 years of experience. He has served as a creative executive for a number of top design firms and start-ups. For each, he was responsible for the overall strategy, design, and implementation of all design and service design engagements. His background in design research, customer experience, brand, design, biomimicry, and technology allows him to bring a holistic and regenerative approach to solving clients' challenges.

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Kaija has 40 years of experience on successfully founding, growing and coaching deep tech companies. She started her first company in 1983, and after a successful exit in 1998 became an Angel Investor, Business Coach and Board Member in deep tech startups, growth companies and listed companies. She has been board member in Finnish Industry Investment and VTT Ventures, and is currently LP in three deep tech growth funds. Her own portfolio exits include Flockler and Ultimate.ai. Kaija is also a Horizon EIC Accelerator Business Coach since 2015, and a member of the EIC Scaling Club. She has coached hundreds startups through several incubator programs in Scandinavia and the Baltics, including Kiuas, Tribe Tampere, Innovasjon Norge and LuxInnovation. With an M.Sc. (Tech.) in operations research, data science and decision theory from Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto), she is especially interested in creating new services and operative efficiencies from data, AI and ML.

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Jana is the founder and managing partner of the law firm SEDLAKOVA LEGAL s.r.o., which she established in 2015 in response to the question of whether law can keep pace with the turbulent changes around us. With over 8 years of experience in IT and IP law, corporate law, investments, and startups, she reflects her passion for technology and entrepreneurship. Additionally, she is a partner at the tax and accounting firm TaxCounting, s.r.o. and the company Ochrana nápadů s.r.o., which focuses on assisting aspiring entrepreneurs. She has been mentoring Czech startups within the Startup Academy for a long time.

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Kamila is the CEO of Lakmoos AI, an award-winning tech startup which copies minds to simulate customer behaviour. Her background is in behavioural science. Kamila started winning national prizes for original research as a teenager and has been publishing since her undergraduate. Applying her knowledge in business, she did corporate research for giants like Nestlé, The Nature Conservancy and Ogilvy. Now, Kamila automates collecting opinions for faster innovation at scale at Lakmoos AI.

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Jindřich is, essentially, a designer. When he was only 17, he was making jewelry from industrial waste, and at 25, he was already showing his chandeliers at the world's greatest exhibition EXPO 2015 in Milano. This led him to establish Q Designers - an impact design studio that works with companies like Erste, Skanska or Ikea to design new products and services. He also co-founded The Greenest Company, which monitors employees' well-being, mentors young start-ups and leads a Design Thinking course with hundreds of absolvents.

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Petr Pridal, founder and CEO of MapTiler, gained his Ph.D. in the field of cartography and geodesy and a master’s degree in computer science. He is a consultant, researcher, programmer, and entrepreneur. Within the last years he participated in several international research projects, and developed popular software.

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Alžběta Králová specializes in branding, strategic communication, and marketing, focusing on building and developing brands. She assists individuals, organizations, businesses, and politicians in formulating and transforming their values and visions into long-term sustainable communication. She gained experience on winning campaigns abroad, primarily in the United States and France, and adapts these campaign management trends and tools to the Czech environment, contributing to its professionalization. She has received five professional awards for her work.

Her long-term goal is to motivate women and support them in actively seeking elected positions, starting businesses, or advancing in their career ladders, thus enhancing their influence in both the public and private sectors. She actively teaches women how to effectively self-present and focuses on supporting women in business. An example of this is the Women’s Business, which educates women in crucial areas. Over six months, 6,000 women from across the Czech Republic participated in the program named Academy of Professional Development. She is a graduate of the prestigious U.S. government program - International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) and serves as the Vice President of the Czech IVLP Alumni Club under the U.S. Embassy in Prague.

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Petr Bittner is a Brno-based philosopher, journalist, moderator, podcaster, media consultant, spin doctor, and copywriter. His articles are published in the weekly magazine Respekt, and for the third year, he has been releasing the sustainably successful podcast Škrty with his brother Jan.

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Jan Bittner is a rural economist currently balancing work as a labor market analyst, studying, and parenting. Jan is the spiritual father of the podcast Škrty and is also involved in the regular calculation of the Minimum Decent Wage. He enjoys mushroom picking.

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Veronika Oudova is a Co-founder and CEO of S-Biomedic, a leading company in the skin microbiome field which successfully exited and joined the Beiersdorf Group in 2022. Veronika completed a master’s study in International Trade in Prague and a master’s in International Management within the program CEMS located in Prague, Vienna, and Rotterdam. Together with her team, Veronika has built S-Biomedic from an idea on a paper into a clinical-stage company with a validated technology platform and first products in the market. Under Veronika’s leadership, S-Biomedic has attracted the attention of several major investors and grant programs such as the EIC Accelerator. Since 2021 Veronika acts as EIC Ambassador.

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Vojtěch is a podcaster, podcast producer, moderator, and lecturer. He gained experience in spoken word mainly during his seven years at Czech Radio, where he started in the domestic editorial office. In 2018, he co-founded the scientific and technical magazine Experiment and later produced the scientific podcast Budoucnost R. Thanks to this, he also became involved in the topics of sustainability and the circular economy, to which he still dedicates himself, among others. In 2021, he decided to go freelance and try his luck as a podcaster and podcast producer with the ambitious mission of improving the quality of the Czech podcast scene. For the third year, he has been releasing his podcast on sustainability, LOOPA Vojty Kovala, in cooperation with CIRA Advisory. Under the banner of his Circular Studio LOOPA, he produces podcasts for ŠKODA AUTO, Czech Invest and the Ministry of Transport (Czech Space News), Vodafone (Tady Vodafone), the Ria brand (OnRia), the BlueGhost agency (Update), and the Europeum Institute.

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Marketa has experience in both academia and the startup world. In the last eight years, she shifted her focus from academia to working with early-stage startups and high-tech university projects. Her expertise and passion are in blending academia and entrepreneurship. She helps university students develop an entrepreneurial mindset through collaborative initiatives designed in partnership with universities. These activities aim to nurture the next generation of innovation leaders.

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Libor is an entrepreneur and consultant at JIC. His entrepreneurial journey began at 13, and at seventeen, he founded Toprecepty.cz, which he later successfully sold. In Brno, he established DobroKávu, distributing over 27,000 coffees for good deeds. He invested in the Nesnězeno app against food waste and leads the non-profit news site Pozitivní-Zprávy.cz. In 2018, Forbes listed him among the 18 inspirational figures of the Czech Republic.

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