Startup Nations is a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing platform, and as such its members are combing the world for entrepreneurship policy experts and innovative policy instruments.
As part of the vision to encourage a community of startup-savvy policy leaders, the Startup Nations Awards celebrate the accomplishments of those who have applied their knowledge of the dynamics of startups and scale-ups to shape innovative public-sector-driven programs and policies.
Among the past winners of the Startup Nations Awards include the former Envoy for Startups from The Netherlands, Neelie Kroes, Antwerp Mayor Bart De Wever, and Dr. Choi Yanghee, Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning of South Korea.
At the upcoming Summit in Cork, Ireland, Startup Nations members will recognize, for a second year, innovative public sector leaders through three Awards: National Policy Leadership, Local Policy Leadership and Groundbreaking Policy Thinking.
What makes the Startup Nations Awards of great international prestige is its high-caliber Selection Committee. We are proud to announce that the 2016 Selection Committee will be composed by a diversity of policy experts from across the world:
Adriana Tortajada Narváez
Director, Mexico Ventures
Adriana’s public policy legacy is recognized across the Latin American region and beyond. As an advisor to the Mexican Government in innovation entrepreneurship and as General Manager of Entrepreneurship Programs & Financing at the National Entrepreneurship Institute (INADEM) until July 2016, she has led the strengthening of Mexico’s young innovation ecosystem and coordinating the guarantees program for financing SME´s through the National Development Bank and manage US ($280 million) for finance and entrepreneurs.
Adriana has been a leader in portfolio management and public fundraising and has over the past decade, worked with policymakers to generate more innovative programs for fostering the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Adriana Tortajada was part of the Entrepreneur Venture Capital Fund CONACYT-NAFIN* since 2004. She is a founding member of the first public capital fund for technology and scientific entrepreneurs, where she leads diverse internal and external groups in the evaluation, negotiation, and closing of 44 investments (US $20 million) in seed and venture transactions throughout Mexico. Also she collaborate in the design of the strategy to create the venture capital industry in the country, which include the launching of the first venture capital fund of funds (US$100 million), and is benchmarking performance using international indicators of enterprising and investment activity across seed-stage, venture capital, and private equity.
Adriana received her Bachelor’s Degree in finance at the University of Guadalajara, and received her MSc. in public administration from Ortega y Gasset University of Madrid, Spain. Adriana is a member of Class 16 of the Kauffman Fellows Program (KFP) at the Center for Venture Education in Palo Alto, California. The mission of the KFP is to develop the next generation of leaders in Venture Capital over the world.
In 2006, she was recognized as one of the 30 professional promises in their 30’s in Mexico, a ranking by the business magazine EXPANSION (“30 promesas en los 30”), being the youngest on the list and the only public executive at the time.
Bart De Wever
Mayor, City of Antwerp, Belgium
Since 2013, Bart De Wever has been mayor of Antwerp, the largest city in Flanders. Startup Nations and the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) honored Mayor Bart De Wever of Antwerp, Belgium, with the 2015 Startup Nations Award for Local Policy Leadership.
De Wever was recognized for his public sector achievement in championing policies and programs that advance new and young firm formation. He and his team introduced the Antwerp Startup City Program in 2014, as an ambitious and all-encompassing response to the absence of a startup scene or city-wide program.
His leadership in favor of entrepreneurship has focused on four main goals – to stimulate entrepreneurship, provide a premium incubator network, have virtual incubation and see growth and internationalization. The Startup City Program has improved Antwerp’s digital infrastructure by installing wireless Internet connections, LoRa and open-sensor networks. An aspect of the program, the City of Things project, improves Antwerp’s “user experience,” and involves local startups in continuously improving the digital infrastructure.
At the national level, since 2004, Mr. De Wever has served as a representative in several of the country’s parliaments, including the Senate.
Bart De Wever has also written editorials for various Flemish newspapers for years about social trends and events that preoccupied him. These have been bundled in several books, along with essays he has written. As an indisputable opinion maker, Bart is a particularly sought after speaker and participator in debates.
Anders Hoffman
Deputy Director General, Danish Business Authority
Anders Hoffmann serves as Deputy Director General at the Danish Business Authority. He holds a PhD in Economics. As Deputy Director General he is responsible for developing and implementing most of business development policies in Denmark both at the national but also regional level.
He has previous been involved in a range of projects related to the development of a theoretical approach to micro--policy research, and has also been a key participant in the practical use of benchmarking analysis in identifying best--practice policies and evaluating the effects of policy instruments at a micro-level.
Dr. Hoffmann was previously employed as a Senior Economist with the OECD supervising a team of economists and statisticians and coordinating activities related to micro--policy benchmarking. Prior to this Dr. Hoffmann served in various leadership positions with the Danish Ministry of Trade and Industry. Dr. Hoffmann also served as External Assistant Professor in International Economics at the Copenhagen Business School.
He has published articles in several major journals including Journal of International Economics and Economic Modeling.
Kwanghyon Kim
Executive Director, D.CAMP, Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs
Seoul, South Korea
Kwanghyon Kim is Executive Director at Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs, leading the Foundation’s entrepreneur supporting activities and investment strategy through D.CAMP. D.CAMP is run by the Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs, one of the largest non-profit organizations in Korea founded by Korea’s 20 major banks and financial institutions in 2012 to help young entrepreneurs and start-ups. He is also leading tech opinions as a well-known IT blogger under a pen name “Kwang82” with hundreds of thousands’ followers.
Prior to D.CAMP, Kwanghyon was a veteran tech journalist for 27 years. He covered IT and economic section at Korea’s leading economic daily newspaper “The Korea Economic Daily” since 1995. Also he served as a head of Strategic Planning Department and spearheaded the newspaper’s Digital Strategy as Deputy Managing Director. He is often compared with Walter Mossberg, a prominent technology industry journalist in the U.S., who created the Weekly Personal Technology column in the Wall Street Journal.
Kwanghyon received master degrees in English literature and International Economics from Sogang University.
Dane Stangler
Vice President for Research and Policy, Kauffman Foundation
As vice president of Research and Policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Dane Stangler serves on the Foundation’s senior leadership team and leads a staff of more than twenty economic research analysts and senior scholars who are conducting or funding hundreds of studies on entrepreneurship and youth education.
Charged with creating new knowledge about entrepreneurship, Stangler is the author of several research reports on what drives economic growth in an entrepreneurial economy. His reports include “Path-Dependent Startup Hubs” and “Where Will the Jobs Come From?”
An avid writer, Stangler has written dozens of op-eds, guest columns, and blog posts for national news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Inc., The Hill, Real Clear Politics, and Huffington Post, and is a regular blogger on Forbes.com. He also is frequently quoted in news stories in these outlets as well as on broadcast news outlets, including CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and Bloomberg.
With the goal of translating research into real-world implications, Stangler engages with policymakers at the national, state, and local levels. He has spoken at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual conference and at National Governors Association events, and testified before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. He also presented testimony before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging and the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on the advantages of senior entrepreneurship.
Stangler earned a bachelor's degree in English from Truman State University, and a JD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Robert Litan
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
As an economist and attorney, Litan has had nearly four decades of experience in the worlds of the law, economic research and policy, and as an executive in both the private, public and government sectors. Through his extensive publications and many speeches and testimony, he has become a widely recognized national expert in regulation, antitrust, entrepreneurship, innovation and finance, and international trade, among other policy subjects.
Litan has directed economic research at three leading national organizations: the Brookings Institution, the Kauffman Foundation and Bloomberg Government. He has also been a member of the international advisory board of the Principal Financial Group. He is currently is a partner with Korein Tillery, a law firm based in St. Louis and Chicago specializing in large case antitrust litigation, and a senior consultant to Economists, Inc and the Brattle Group in Washington, D.C.
During his research career, Litan has authored or co-authored twenty-five books and edited another fourteen, and authored or co-authored more than 200 articles in professional and popular publications. Litan blogs on economic policy issues regularly for the “Washington Wire” section of the Wall Street Journal Online.
Litan has held several appointed positions in the federal government. In 1993, he was appointed Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, where he oversaw civil non-merger litigation and the Department’s positions on regulatory matters, primarily in telecommunications. In 1995, he was appointed Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He later was a consultant to the Department of Treasury on financial modernization and the effectiveness of the Community Reinvestment Act and co-authored several reports on these subjects. In the early 1990s he served as a member of the Presidential-Congressional Commission on the Causes of the Savings and Loan Crisis. He has chaired two panels of studies for the National Academy of Sciences. He began his career as a staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Litan earned his BS in economics at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania; his JD at Yale Law School; and his MPhil and PhD at Yale University.
Jonathan Ortmans
President, Global Entrepreneurship Network
Jonathan Ortmans serves as president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, a platform of programs and initiatives helping people in 160 countries unleash their ideas and turn them into promising new ventures—creating jobs, unearthing innovations for society and strengthening economic stability around the world.
In 2014, Ortmans was tapped by U.S. President Barack Obama to chair the SPARK Global Entrepreneurship initiative that has helped generate more than $1 billion in private investment for emerging entrepreneurs around the world. He is also a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and serves on the boards of several non-profits including the Center for Entrepreneurship in Moscow.
Trained as an economist, with two startups and exits under his belt, Ortmans blogs weekly on high-growth entrepreneurship at kauffman.org and has emerged as a chief global strategist in building startup ecosystems around the world. Ortmans lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and three young children.
Do you know of talent promoting smarter policymaking in the field of entrepreneurship? We encourage all interested individuals to submit nominations by August 15, 2016.
Thomas M. Cooney
Policy Advisor to the Irish Government, European Commission, OECD and European Training Foundation
Professor Thomas Cooney is Professor in Entrepreneurship at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Editor of Small Enterprise Research academic journal, and a member of the Department of Enterprise Advisory Group that published the 2014 report 'Entrepreneurship in Ireland'.
Prof. Cooney is an expert for various EU and OECD working groups with substantial media experience, as has contributed to various initiatives in that capacity, such as Jury Member for the European Enterprise Promotion Awards and Grand Jury Member for the European Commission ‘European Enterprise Promotion Awards’.
Elmira Bayrasli
Author, From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places; Co-Founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted
Elmira Bayrasli is the author of From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places, a book that looks at the rise of entrepreneurship globally. She is also the co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted and a lecturer at New York University. She has lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina where she was the Chief Spokesperson for the OSCE Mission. From 1994-2000 she was presidential appointee at the State Department, working for Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke, respectively. Elmira writes about foreign policy and global entrepreneurship and innovation. Her work has appeared in TechCrunch, Reuters, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.