ANDREA CARAFA

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. 

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Previously, he advised startups, conducted research, and lectured on technology innovation, human-centered design, and entrepreneurship for sustainability, societal health, and the SDGs at Stanford and the University of Milan Bicocca. He co-developed an EU Knowledge Alliance which connected Stanford and several European partners to spur greater innovation and venture creation in European universities. At Stanford, he also helped design and launch Emergence, an initiative that catalyzes entrepreneurship for sustainability and health.

 

As an entrepreneur, Andrea founded and led the food biotech startup Vita, the sustainability innovation studio GYE, and the consumer tech startup ArtsUp, which expanded to 300+ cities across four continents. He also created and chaired the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative at President Obama's Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

 

Previously, Andrea was an EU Marie Curie Fellow in emerging technology for global impact at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and at Grenoble School of Management. He informed EU policymaking to incentivize and support innovation addressing global challenges, and led efforts to invest in climate and biotechnology solutions across Europe through the multi-billion-euro Horizon 2020 fund. At Grenoble School of Management and as a European Science Foundation Visiting Fellow at Bocconi University and a HEPTech Visiting Fellow at GSI and CERN, he conducted research on technology innovation and transfer for impact. As a result, he inspired and helped CERN to launch Collaboration Spotting, a data analytics platform that facilitates the technology transfer from science labs and companies to society, which CERN features among its success stories.

Andrea served as the AEGEE Representative at the United Nations, where he created a multi-stakeholder initiative within the UN Rio+20 process and advocated for the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Secretary-General's first ever Envoy on Youth role. He also helped shape Future Earth, a global sustainability research and innovation initiative announced at the UN Rio+20 Summit, and funded by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, NASA, NSF, the European Space Agency, and several universities, academies, foundations, and governments around the world.​

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As a public speaker and thought leader, Andrea has contributed to summits and conferences hosted by institutions such as the World Economic Forum, European Commission, Expo, The Economist, and the UN, and his work and ideas have been featured by publications such as Reuters, NASDAQ, Fortune, Huffington Post, and Fast Company.

 

Born and raised in Italy, Andrea earned a Bachelor's Degree in Economics & Business Administration from LUISS University in Rome, a Master's Degree in EU Business & Law from Aarhus University in Denmark, and a Master's Degree in Management from ESADE Business School in Barcelona, thanks to a number of scholarships funded by the EU, ESADE, Apulia, and the Italian Ministry of Labor. He also received certificates and executive education in entrepreneurship and the climate crisis from the University of Oxford, Stanford, Kauffman Fellows and Techstars, among others.

In his free time, Andrea loves going on road trips and hikes with family and friends, playing volley, swimming, writing songs and jamming with other musicians, as well as bringing people together through music and art experiences.