ANDREA CARAFA

Andrea Carafa is a Silicon Valley–based serial entrepreneur turned innovation ecosystem leader, academic, advisor to startups and institutions, and angel investor focused on technology ventures for sustainability, health, and societal resilience. 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, MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 Ambassador and Judge, member of the Review Committee for America's Seed Fund of the National Science Foundation, member of the Partnership on AI, 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 served as Founding Emergence Fellow, Lecturer, Design Thinking Fellow, and Resident Entrepreneur at Stanford, and founded the sustainable food biotech startup Vita and the consumer tech startup ArtsUp, which expanded to 300+ cities across four continents. At Stanford and the University of Milan Bicocca, he conducted research and lectured about entrepreneurship, human-centered design, and technology innovation focused on sustainability and societal health. He co-developed an EU Knowledge Alliance funded by the European Commission, 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 fosters entrepreneurship for sustainability and health. He also created and chaired the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative at President Obama's Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016.

Prior to that, Andrea was an EU Marie Curie Fellow in emerging technology addressing sustainability and health problems at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and at Grenoble School of Management. At the European Commission, he analyzed the bio and climate technologies and ventures that the multi-billion Euro fund Horizon 2020 invested in, and advised the JRC leadership on technology transfer and venture creation. 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. 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 was also the Founder and Executive Director of the sustainability innovation studio Green Young Economy and 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.​

Andrea has been a speaker at summits and institutions such as the World Economic Forum, European Commission, Expo, World Ocean Summit, 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, biotech, 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.