Mariana Christen Jakob

Mariana Christen Jakob

Mariana Christen Jakob founded SEIF Inno­va­tion in 2011 as an early player in the field of social inno­va­tion and impact entre­pre­neur­ship. SEIF supports impact start-ups with various services and programmes. For example, for the past 10 years, a Europe-wide compe­ti­tion has been announced with an increasing number of appli­ca­tions, which is now recog­nised as a quality label. In the Impact Academy, around 70 impact entre­pre­neurs from various sectors can benefit from a demanding 5‑month coaching process, which is accom­pa­nied by specific work­shops. In coop­er­a­tion with large compa­nies, SEIF runs various accel­er­ator programmes. Impact manage­ment services and work­shops are another impor­tant pillar. Mariana Christen Jakob is frequently requested as a speaker and keynote speaker, and also attends various renowned commit­tees as a jury member. In 2020, she co-founded SEIF Invest and focuses on the early phase of “tech for impact” invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for start-ups with new tools. A struc­tured and data-driven process is crucial in building a profes­sional impact manage­ment and reporting system. Currently, Mariana’s work focuses on impact investing and tech for impact in the context of the Euro­pean ecosystem.

Mariana holds a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from the Univer­sity of Zurich, a Diploma in Organ­i­sa­tional Devel­op­ment, an Exec­u­tive Master’s degree in New Media and Commu­ni­ca­tion from the Univer­sity of St. Gallen, a Design Thinking degree from HPI Potsdam and an Impact Investing degree from Oxford Univer­sity. She was engaged at the Lucerne Univer­sity of Applied Sciences and Arts for 13 years, as Vice-Rector and Professor for Social Inno­va­tion. She initi­ated and led the SocialLab, various inter­dis­ci­pli­nary modules and a contin­uing educa­tion course in Corpo­rate Social Respon­si­bility. In large research projects, she inves­ti­gated aspects such as corpo­rate part­ner­ship between sectors or instru­ments for measuring respon­sible entre­pre­neur­ship. She has also published on these topics.