Olesea Fortuna

Olesea Fortuna, Ph.D., is the Founding Chair of the Board of GEN Moldova. She is a qualified leader with extensive experience in executive management of various community building and leadership projects and private enterprises, entrepreneurship ecosystem and development programs, large events, acceleration programs, with business and institutional development training and consulting experience of over 15 years. 

Her academic background is in international economics, business, and economic diplomacy as well as the application of circular innovation economy in the global economy. Her interests reside in promoting sustainable and inclusive innovation to communities of entrepreneurs within her country and globally. She has a leading role in the education of startups in Moldova, being the Chair of GEN Moldova and also by teaching a variety of courses at the Universities (Academy for Economic Studies of Moldova and the Technical University of Moldova). She has been involved as a speaker, mentor, group coach, and experimental trainer in projects focused on business development at both international and national levels.

Her interests revolve around assisting entrepreneurs in creating, launching, developing national and international businesses and particularly in creative industries and sustainable business models. Proud USG Alumna, Best Alumna of 2018 for her role in promoting entrepreneurship in the Republic of Moldova. 

Among projects deployed in the country she has participated in the design of the first rural entrepreneurship cup (a rural business competition deployed and acceleration program with Estonian partners and with several rural incubators), designed the first fashion acceleration program in collaboration with Fashion Technology Accelerator from Milan and a French fashion consulting agency, deployed and consulted one of the first ecological CSAs groups in Moldova (Community Supported Agriculture). 

With regard to women entrepreneurship: she has initiated projects for young women starting with 2010 "Life and Business Skills for Girls", started women programs such as GEN WOW Program - a peer to peer women entrepreneurship development program (2014), GEN Creative Women, invited as a national country expert in an EU-funded project "Women Entrepreneurship – A Job Creation Engine for South Eastern Europe" and others. She was nominated and accepted the role of WED World Ambassador for Moldova for 2015 and 2016 and led the Authorship of a publication about Women Entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe.