Andrea Carafa is an entrepreneur turned innovation ecosystem leader, startup and institutional advisor, and lecturer based in Silicon Valley, with two decades of cross-sector experience advancing the Sustainable Development Goals through technology innovation, policy, and partnerships for global impact. He currently serves as Director of the Blackstone Launchpad powered by Techstars, QB3 Entrepreneur in Residence, and CIED Entrepreneur in Residence and Lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches Hacking for Oceans. He has been named a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, member of the Fast Company Impact Council, member of the Partnership on AI, MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 Ambassador and Judge, member of the UN U4SSC Group on AI in Cities, member of the Review Committee for America's Seed Fund of the National Science Foundation, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and Delegate to the UN Science, Technology & Innovation Forum for the Sustainable Development Goals.
Previously, Andrea advised startups, conducted research, and lectured on technology innovation, human-centered design, and entrepreneurship for sustainability, societal health, and the SDGs at Stanford, the University of Milan Bicocca, CERN, the European Commission, Bocconi and more. He also was the Founder & CEO of the food biotech startup Vita, the sharing economy startup ArtsUp, and the sustainability innovation studio GYE. Andrea chaired the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative at President Obama's Global Entrepreneurship Summit and advocated for the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals at the UN. He was an EU Marie Curie Fellow in emerging technology for sustainability, health and global impact, and helped shape Future Earth, a global sustainability research and innovation initiative announced at the UN Rio+20 Summit. He also co-created an EU Knowledge Alliance aimed at spurring innovation and entrepreneurship in European universities, and inspired and helped CERN to launch CollSpotting, a data analytics platform helping science labs and companies to increase their technology transfer to society. Andrea has been a speaker at summits hosted by institutions such as the World Economic Forum, European Commission, The Economist, and UN, and his work and ideas have been featured by publications such as Reuters, Fortune, Huffington Post, and Fast Company.
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