SE Forum consists of a network of people working to promote, inspire and empower social entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurs.
A social entrepreneur identifies a social problem/need and uses innovative and entrepreneurial skills and principles to create, organize, and run activities with the purpose of being part of the solution to the social problem/need. While traditional entrepreneurs only measure the results in terms of economic profit for the company itself, social entrepreneurs also put strong focus on measuring their results in relation to the effects on society as a whole.
SE Forum wants to make the world a better place by promoting social entrepreneurship.
SE Forum is an organization that promotes Social Entrepreneurship by:
- Empowering social entrepreneurs and providing them with the support, tools and connections to enable them to realize their ideas.
- Inspiring people with stories about entrepreneurs and their creative solutions to our global challenges in order to stimulate new innovative ideas and solutions.
- Sharing knowledge about social entrepreneurship and the business models and methods needed to create and scale social impact.
What we do
- SE Support - Within our network there are several competent and professional people including individuals from within business development and management consulting, CSR, PR and legal expertise – all of whom have a unique understanding of the realities of social entrepreneurship. SE Support is SE Forum’s feedback and guidance service, exclusively available to our members. This service is designed to meet your needs and is mainly aimed at supporting you in the process of achieving your goals as a social entrepreneur. We want you to succeed! Contact us and tell us what you need assistance with and we can tell you what we can assist with – free of charge! E-mail create@se.forum.se for more information.
- SE Academy – Through the years we have held workshops, lectures, seminars and conferences on social entrepreneurship. In Spring 2011 the course “Socialt Entreprenörskap – Business for Good” was helt at Folkuniversitetet in Stockholm.
- SE Meeting Place – The SE Bars are a meeting place with the purpose of creating new and interesting discussions and encounters between people working within the field of social entrepreneurship with different backgrounds and experiences. The SE Bar is held once a month. Over the years we’ve had guest speakers such as Coompanion, PeePoople, Vagga till Vagga, Wiminvest, Social Initiative, Solvatten, Heroes of Today, HiNation and Gro Leksaker.
Location
SE Forum is based in Stockholm, Sweden
Members
SE Forum is a non-profit member organization and consists of approximately seventy members with different backgrounds and professions. SE Forum welcomes anybody who wants to work with the promotion of social entrepreneurship – you are welcome to apply for membership.
Members of the Board 2011
Shawn Westcott, CEO SE Forum, SSD Advisers
Shawn is the current Chairman of SE Forum. Through his firm, SSDA, he works with clients across sectors to provide sustainability strategy, training, and stakeholder engagement services. He is a former US political adviser and strategist, starting with Al Gore’s campaign for president and then managing or advising several local and national initiatives. He got his start as a social entrepreneur while a student at the University of Pittsburgh, where he helped launch a national NGO, LIFT, with the mission to combat poverty and expand opportunity for all people in the US. He holds an MSc in Strategic Leadership toward Sustainability from Blekinge Tekniska Högskola. Shawn is a veteran of the US Marine Corps, and is a citizen of the United States and Ireland.
Maja Frankel, CEO Frankel & Friends, Framtidsboxen
Maja Frankel is project leader, process manager, lecturer and motivator. She has a Bachelor degree in media and communication science and a leadership degree from Kaospiloterna. Maja is the founder and since five years back also the manager of the consulting firm Frankel & Friends Samhällsförändrande konsulter. Maja’s focus is value-driven leadership and organizational creativity. Previously Maja has worked as a Youth Ambassador for UNICEF Sweden, published the book Vår förbannade rätt and has among other things developed the concepts of Ungt Inflytande and Framtidsboxen. Maja is currently director of the Swedish Board of UNICEF.
Arne Forstenberg, Founder and Executive director GlobalFOCUS
Arne is one of the founders of GlobalFOCUS – the global project platform for climate entrepreneurs. Since 2007, GF has been running dozens of projects about solutions to climate change in Sweden, China and several other countries. Prior to starting GlobalFOCUS, he was the President of the Uppsala Association of International Affairs. In 2008, Arne received the “Future Leader of Sweden Award” from Junior Chamber International.
Karin Larsson, Trainee Stena Recycling AB
Karin has a Bachelor’s degree in International economics from the University of Linköping. In 2009 when carrying out an internship in Azerbaijan she got to know about SE FORUM which soon led to an internship at the organization. Karin has previously lived, worked and studied longer periods abroad; among other things she has worked at Securitas Direct España and studied development economics at ITESM in Monterrey – Mexico. Since January 2011 she works as a trainee at Stena Recycling AB in Malmö.
Sara Wallén, Manager Mjuka flytten
Currently Sara works as the manager of ‘mjuka flytten’ – the soft move – a consultancy working with and for Third Culture Kids. Sara founded mjuka flytten as a result of her anthropology thesis on third culture kids’ identity creation. The inspiration was gained from being brought up overseas – in Bangladesh, USA, and Vietnam. As an educated Kaospilot from Århus, Sara has traveled the world as an organizational consultant working in Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Copenhagen, the Netherlands and has now landed in Stockholm.
Estelle Joubert Westling, Strategist,
The Good Guys
Estelle holds a MS.c from Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) and has studied Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Business Strategy at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.Estelle currently works at The Good Guys, helping companies and organizations to create strategies, business concepts and communication to leverage on the opportunities of sustainable development.Back in 2007 Estelle started Pimp My Grades at SSE, a social venture motivating youths in school. Since then, she has been involved in the sustainability arena in various projects as holding seminars in the US and France and writing for the blog Axtalk. She has also worked with sustainability at the Swedish department store Åhléns and designed an employer engagement program on sustainability for Pernod Ricard’s 19,000 employees.
Alternate Members of the Board 2011
Josefin Uhnbom, Food for Thought
In addition to her role as member of the board Josefin also represents SE Forums as the official Program Coordinator.
After graduating with a Masters degree in Political Science from Uppsala University and several years working in the public sector Josefin discovered the endless possibilities of social entrepreneurship through her jobs as a Regional Manager for Oxford Language Center, an American company offering educational services to the local community in Guatemala. The experience opened her eyes to how private initiatives can provide solutions to social, economical and environmental challenges. Her main fields of interest are education, employment, integration and community development. Josefin is the Founder of Food for Thought; a start up social enterprise that uses food and culinary arts to defeat social and economical exclusion among young people and adults, through providing services within education and labour market programs.
Gayathri Rathinavelu, Founder, The Good Tribe
Gayathri Rathinavelu is one of the founders of The Good Tribethat works with sustainable events and conferences both in the private and public sector. She is also involved in Sustainergies, an organization that helps students and companies work together on sustainable issues.
Hannes Dernehl, Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship
Hannes Dernehl fosters the next generation of successful entrepreneurs through the non-profit TiE Nordic, the Northern European chapter of TiE, which houses the world’s largest network of entrepreneurs. His goal is to provide start-ups with active business coaching in order for them to achieve fast growth and financial success, and thus create an impact at SSE Business Lab, the business incubator at SSES.
Advisory Board
Harry McNeil, CEO Telge Tillväxt
Harry McNeil is co-founder of SE Forum. Harry has studied applied Engineering Physics at Lunds Tekniska Högskola, has a degree from the Kaospilots and a M.Sc in International Relations from Stockholm University. Harry has worked in China, Uganda, the US and has a background as a senior risk management consultant and business developer, as well as from the Swedish Emergency Management Agency. Harry is also a co-founder of the youth camp association Protus Sverige and Framtidsboxen.
Eliza Kücükaslan is the former chairperson of SE Forum. She initiated the think tank “The role of the private sector in global development” in cooperation with The Swedish Institute of International Affairs. She worked as a consultant within the field of corporate responsibility and sustainability at Enact Sustainable Strategies. She is also engaged with the social work of the cathedral parish of Stockholm (Stockholms domkyrkoförsamling). Eliza has a M.Sc in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Jonas Pinzke, Founder The Good Guys
Johanna Laurin Gulled, Head of Research and Communication, Proventus
Co-founder of SE Forum. Johanna is Head of Research and Communication at the private investment company Proventus and founder and Head of Glasshouse Forum, a network of concerned capitalists and researchers that provides an arena for critical reflection on the merits and demerits of capitalism. Before Proventus, she was Research Director and Project Manager at the Swedish think tank Centre for Business and Policy Studies (SNS). Prior to that she finished her Masters in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics, her Bachelor in Media and Communication Studies at Lund University and worked as Arts Officer and Public Affairs Officer at The British Council in Stockholm.
Svenne Junker, EU Policy Officer, Naturskyddsföreningen
Svenne is working as EU Policy officer at Naturskyddsföreningen, the largest Green-NGO in Sweden. As an expert of public affairs, he is lobbying activities on governmental politicians and Swedish MEPs, organizing public campaigns to raise awareness on the value of nature, travelling to Brussels several times per month with the objective to influence public policy for sustainable development. Svenne has a background as PR and public affairs consultant at Burson-Marsteller. With M.Sc in Business Administration from the Stockholm School of Economics and BA in Political Philosophy from Stockholm University, he is currently enrolled as PhD candidate at the Stockholm School of Economics, studying the construction of decision-making models which influence the value of life and nature.
Carl Jonas Michanek, Founder, SE Forum
Jonas has a B.A. from Uppsala University, has attended the Kaospilot program in Aarhus and has a Global EMBA from Stockholm School of Economics financed by a scholarship from the Wallenberg foundation. He loves doing business with a good cause – good business! Besides SE Forum, Jonas has founded three companies: Idélaboratoriet, an international innovation consulting firm; 2C – producing sport journalistic content; and Innovation Circus – celebrating and promoting innovation in Europe. Jonas has also co-founded digitalbridge, a NGO that brings the knowledge of digital storytelling to Scandinavia.
Interns
Sara Berglöf
Sara has previously taken courses in sustainable development and human geography at Stockholm’s University. During that time she also got in contact with the Red Cross Youth organization were she got inspired and learned a lot about the possibilities of making a better world. In the spring of 2011 she will do an internship at Se-Forum and continuously be inspired.
Miriam Skogsäng Slimani
Miriam has a Bachelor’s degree in Economic History and Political Science from Stockholm University and University of Western Ontario in Canada. After years of working and travelling abroad she now has her base in Stockholm, doing a Master’s degree in International Relations. The feasible combination of social theory and entrepreneurial practice made her interested in the organization and its ambition which lead to the internship.