[member profile] Johan Sundström

Johan Sundström. Entrepreneur wanna-be.

I want sustainopreneurship to happen. Meet me inside Sustainopreneur’s Café if you’re curious!

[member profile] Vivekan (a. k. a. William D. Meija)

Vivekan - Yoga Instructor and Studio Owner in New York

Vivekan (AKA, William D. Mejia, Jr., B.S., E-RYT) is a New York City native and the founder/director of Park Slope, Brooklyn’s Bodhisattva Yoga. He received certification under Jayadeva, a direct disciple of Swami Satchidananda. Vivekan credits Rodney Yee as an asana and flow-sequence giant from whom he learned a great deal. “I also must credit my venerable and sagely mentor, Serge Ledan, MD, as a peerless friend and one who has completed the trainings. His empirical mind has helped me yoke the essence of Buddhism and the utility of yoga.” Vivekan’s exposure to eclectic yoga styles, along with his home practice, has led to his unique style, which he terms as Inspired Flows^TM. “My Inspired Flows^TM differ from class to class – I never come in with a script; it is based on the premise that fun and effort are not mutually exclusive. One can be interested in, and mindful of, form and breath and yet not be restrained by orthodoxy.” Vivekan has instructed thousands of students in the New York City area; he has also worked extensively with individuals coping with hard-drug addictions, HIV, AIDS and their respective difficulties and treatments. He has attended to under-served populations such as seniors and individuals with physical, visual and hearing disabilities. He has led numerous workshops, seminars and retreats based upon wellness, yoga & meditation.

Vivekan operates Bodhisattva Yoga as an ecologically and socially responsible business – using recycled products and wind-energy, while hosting monthly activist meetings called Engagement for Change. Aspiring to Right-Livelihood, he now terms himself a sustainopreneur (and is a founding member of AEREAS) as he seeks to marry his entrepreneurial spirit with his concern for ecological and social issues. He is currently in a graduate program for Environmental Management; and, his next project of interest is tentatively titled, Bodhisattva Group International (BGI). BGI is an envisioned organization intent on solving problems facing habitat, species and humanity on a global level. BGI’s function will be to meet the increasing demand in eco-tourism and holistic wellness while addressing key ecological and social difficulties unique to locality.

[member profile] Adite Banerjie

Adite Banerjie - journalist, media/communications/brands consultant, screenwriter

Adite Banerjie is a journalist by training with more than 20 years experience. She has worked with some of the leading business publications in India. She works as a consultant in the domains of media, communications and brands. Her areas of specialization include media and product research and developing communication strategies for brands and the social/development sector. She is also making a foray into popular culture as a screenwriter.

[member profile] Sofia Bustamante

Sofia Bustamante - Turn Up the Courage / Melanin Partnership: Creating healthy communites at all levels of society through systemic and indivual transformation, where she helps individuals and organisations in four areas: Know your World, Know your Role, Move quickly in flow, Engage and Collaborate.

Sofia Bustamante, Turn up the Courage, is a community builder and social technology innovator and a process work practitioner. Overall, she is a social entrepreneur or rather sustainopreneur!

As a social technology innovator, she pioneers techniques in online collaboration, with a particular emphasis on bridging the online/offline divide. She pioneers techniques in online collaboration such as the Confluence model and her range of holistic peer development workshop designs such as The Applied U-Process and Evolution Lounge.

As a community builder: Since September 2007, Sofia is co-founder of The Melanin Partnership, a think-do tank addressing the societal need to strengthen the ever more fragile sense of community through constant participatory-led innovation and a core holistic practice. A key part of the work is supporting young people to have access to progressive models within the business world so that their ideas and dreams can be channeled into sustainable enterprises. The intention is that these young people’s initiatives become a force for changing the society in which they live, through their innovation and courage to challenge the old models and integrate the best of the new. The support is necessarily holistic, addressing personal, group and contextual challenges along their paths. Sustainopreneurship needs to be at the heart of this.

As a process work practitioner she facilitates real-time events with small and large groups, designing the appropriate processes to achieved the desired outcomes. A recent example of her work was to bring together stakeholders within the global banana industry for 1.5 days, to support them in putting together a multi-stakeholder forum in which dialogues and practical challenges can be addressed.

As a sustainopreneur she is kept alive and re-believing in her work by the diverse set of peers – ever increasing – that are taking steps to ‘create the world we want’ – stretching their minds and hearts beyond the outdated models such as ‘either charity or for profit’ business models and ‘either family or career’ outdated choices.

Lastly, she is able to turn up the courage herself, thanks to the strong hearted support of her peers and social support networks.

Other clients include Be The Change, Amnesty International, UNIDO, Changemakers, Common Purpose, AIESEC, Think tank 30 Club of Rome

[member profile] Sunil Malhotra

Sunil Malhotra - change-the-world entrepreneur, multi-cultural expert and industrial designer focusing sustainability through design and innovation

Sunil Malhotra is the Founder & CEO of Ideafarms – a smartsourcing enterprise that helps globalised corporations to achieve value through innovation. His diverse experience in consulting, manufacturing and IT confirms his belief that for leveraging the true value of innovation we have to embrace multiple disciplines.

A breakthrough thinker in innovation and a prolific writer, he has professional degrees in Industrial Engineering and Law. He completed the Graduate Program in Industrial Design at IIT Bombay and thereafter ran a successful consultancy in New Delhi, India, that morphed into Ideafarms in 2002.

Author of the term ‘Heart Capital’, which he coined over a decade ago, he believes that focusing on the individual is what will shape the future of work. At the core of his business philosophy is the simple understanding that ‘everything produced by human beings is meant for use by other human beings’.

Innovation is his current agenda. “Tools and methods of innovation will provide little value if people cannot understand how to use them in their own contexts”, he says, “and this is a cultural issue. The business of culture will be the future of business.”

Sunil is a lateral thinker and a fan of Ed de Bono’s creativity methods. A highly creative individual himself, he takes upon himself the responsibility of creating work environments that give people a chance to explore their own potential. He makes time to coach and mentor people, both within his own company and outside. He calls himself a change-the-world entrepreneur but is quite content in knowing that he can make a difference to individuals, one at a time.

His quiet ambition camouflages his keen passion for a variety of subjects that interest him, providing a visionary dimension to his thinking. He is a staunch humanist with a critical streak. He criticises education paradigms all over the world and believes that this area needs activist interventions. He also believes that designers have the highest responsibility towards sustainability.

He would like to see a new world where business is a means to the end of societal improvement and not an end to itself as it has come to be today. He has unflinching belief in the globalised world. “We cannot underestimate the power of the Internet as a force that will eventually equalise our worlds”, he says. His unabashed posturing on India’s role in defining the future is something you will love to hate.

[member profile] Naima Benali

Naima Benali - transqurist - transcultural sustainopreneur and physician

Naima Benali is a multi-occupational, multi-lingual transqurist and she do consider herself as a genuine multi-culti individual with great affection for high quality glocal life, work and network with the focus on sustainable and fair entrepreneurship that offers the smartest trans-cultural resources for excellent Global daily life and business opportunities, for everyone everywhere – “Today for Tomorrow”!

Naima Benali has a broad academic background and rich real-life experience, ”different thinking”, multi-lateral/ horisontal thinking, idea injections, social-, language- and culture skills. Multi-occupational carrier. Just now among other projects: work as a physician, occupational health and psychiatry. Long multi-national experience. Also as above: multi-lingual and multi-cultural skills. Very interested in trans-cultural-issues, gender issues why she is now building up her company to deal with that kind of tasks with a focus on migrating problems in a multi-prospective way.

Interdependent Individualist. Futurist, humanitarian, sustainopreneur, social entrepeneur, simply because it is a win-win perspective. With a strong sensual and mental capacity. Challenger.

She is always engaged at least mille %. Energetic. Problem solver, doer.

Her motto is: Intirable and continuate goodness and fighter!

Founder of company ‘Transqure’ – http://www.transqure.com/.

[member profile] Mats Frejd

Mats Frejd - keeping an eye on renewables

Mats Frejd, Nässjö, Sweden, has a keen interest into localizing accessibility of renewable energy and support sustainopreneurial ventures in local settings, getting sustainopreneurship rooted into the local context, with main playground in northern Småland, Sweden, as main regional focus. He is co-founder of “Creator’s Bank”, Skaparbanken, a local association with the purpose to facilitate sustainopreneurial processes in the local context, with main focus to support sales processes in hands-on training.