Barbara Scheck
Barbara is the Professor for Entrepreneurship at Munich Business School. Her research focuses on the financing of social enterprises, impact and mission-related investing and impact assessment. Prior to joining MBS, Barbara was assistant professor for social investment at Hamburg University.
During her Ph.D. she has developed the Social Reporting Standard, guidelines for impact-oriented reporting. Other significant experiences include consulting for a social venture capital fund and projects for development cooperation agencies on social entrepreneurship. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Asia Centre for Social Entrepreneurship & Philanthropy at NUS National University of Singapore and is a co-founder of the digital mentoring platform Volunteer Vision. Barbara was a member of the EU’s GECES subgroup on impact measurement in social enterprise and the Impact Measurement Working Group of the Social Impact Investment Task Force established by the G8.
Barbara holds a Diplôme de Grande Ecole and MSc from the European School of Management where she studied International Business Administration in Paris, Oxford and Berlin and a PhD from Technical University Munich.
Clémentine Blazy
Clémentine studied management, business and economics at ESSEC as
well as corporate finance and capital markets at Sciences Po. During a
sabbatical in Berkeley, Clémentine worked as a pro bono expert for REDF,
Haas School of Business’ Global social venture competition and ESSEC.
She started her career working for Accenture in Paris. Clémentine
joined France Active in 2004 and worked in various roles until June
2020. Among others, she was responsible for recruiting a national social
finance team, coordination of core business topics with the network and
managed an equity impact portfolio (€20 million). In her last year she
designed a roadmap for European operational development and was active
in various research activites.
In July 2020, Clémentine joined the
European Center for Social Finance. She will be involved in the
Technical Assistance program managed on behalf of the European
Commission, research on social finance as well as the development of new
products.
She has a honorary degree from the Social
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Chair at ESSEC, is involved in the
investment committees or advisory board of various funds and has an
extensive experience as advisory board member of NGO and social
enterprises.
Giulia Parola
Giulia started her university studies in International Trade at the University of Turin in 2009 while gathering various academic and work experiences in Italy, Germany, Spain, Morocco as well as India. She moved to Germany in 2014 and received a Master’s Degree in Life Science Economics and Policy from the Technical University of Munich.
Since October 2018, Giulia has been working as a Research Associate at Munich Business School, where she is responsible for the impact management of the project “YES! Young Entrepreneurs Succeed” funded by the EEA & Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment. Giulia also manages a different initiative that kicked-off in October 2021, “Stay-on: a community-based and driven project”, financed by the same fund.
Since October 2019, Giulia is pursuing her doctorate at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. Her doctoral dissertation covers the governance models of transnational projects and academic-practitioner collaborations in particular. Her research is contributing to closing the gap between research and practice and helps to implement modern forms of governance.
Adewale Olowode Olushola
Adewale studied Demography from Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, before proceeding to study Masters in Social protection systems in Bonn, Germany. His passion for the humanitarian world led him to work in several interventions and projects in the area of Monitoring and Evaluation of cash transfer, voucher and food distribution projects on North West Syria.
At the European Center for Social Finance, he is working as the project manager on the YES! Young Entrepreneurs Succeed” funded by the EEA & Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment.
Wolfgang Spiess-Knafl
Wolfgang studied management engineering at the University of Technology in Vienna with two academic years spent at PUC Rio de Janeiro and INSA Rouen. He started his career as an analyst in the investment banking division of Morgan Stanley. In 2009 he began working on his doctoral studies with a focus on social finance at the Chair for Entrepreneurial Finance at the Technische Universität München which he completed in 2012. Until 2016 he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Civil Society Center and the Chair for Strategic Organization and Financing at the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen focusing on social finance, impact investing and social innovation. In this time he worked on a national mapping of social enterprises, an ex-ante evaluation on imperfections in the social investment market and a study for the German Federal Ministry of Economy Affairs and Energy.
Since 2016 he worked on the development of the social finance market for the European Commission and FEBEA, conducted studies on social finance for the Association of German Foundations, NEOS Lab and European Liberal Forum among others. He has also written “Impact Investing” published with Palgrave Macmillan and “Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain for Social Impact” with Routledge. Since 2019 he is part of the European Center for Social Finance.