- FUTURE FORWARD DATES
Dates with experts in making ideas reality.
Book these experts as a soundboard for your idea or challenge, small or big, in a 30 minutes, one-on-one conversation.
Siska Hoebeeck
Siska has got plenty of experience with complex processes. With her company, Studio Siska, she helps clients to find the core and free up space for new ideas and solutions. She knows how the concretization of an idea can result in resistance among the many different stakeholders involved. Siska is an expert in finding the key to a deadlock. Based on deep democracy, she can help you find solutions that are inclusive and don’t ignore tension and conflict.
Pierre Echard
Pierre has his feet firmly grounded in both the entrepreneurial world and higher education. With his heart for social entrepreneurship and circular economy, he believes in taking action. As a soundboard for your idea, he can draw from a lot of experience from different ventures. As the founder of InnovaTerra, he has a long history of advising and supporting companies and organisations in designing sustainable solutions. He is the go-to-guy for questions about design thinking, social innovation and circular business models. And as the creator of the master program in social design at university-college Saint-Luc, he knows what it takes to bring about change in a higher education institution.
Niek D'Hondt
Niek is all about closing the gap between science and the public. And he is not afraid of taking action. He is one of the founders of ReaGent, a place for citizen science with the goal of finding sustainable solutions. He also started Ekoli to let youngsters and disadvantaged groups experience science. And with his workshops about storytelling, he helps researchers to bring their work to the public. His efforts earned him a place in Generation T, a network of young changemakers for sustainability. Talk to him about citizen science and storytelling or let his action-oriented mind take a look at your idea.
Daniella Tilbury
Daniella has a longstanding career in university research and leadership positions the UK, Australia, Hong Kong and Gibraltar. She assessed sustainability initiatives in over 45 countries. She knows the ins and outs of leadership for sustainability. She understands that change comes with resistance. Like a snakes and ladders game, you need to learn to avoid slippery snakes and build ladders to accelerate change. What does this mean for your challenge or idea? Discuss this with her during a Future Forward Date.
Lies Verhetsel
Lies has a background in psychology, project and policy work in Belgium and developing countries. She uses service design as a framework for participative projects and social innovation. Lies is strong in bringing ideas together and finding the connecting thread. She has plenty of experience with running multi-stakeholder projects. She knows how empathy and respect for different points of view are the key to an enthusiastic and successful cooperation.
Miranda Geussens
Miranda supports educators in higher education to apply principles of ecodesign. She believes that ecodesign is a must for the transition to a circular economy. If you’re an educator or head of an education program and you’re looking for support in rethinking your education program, speak to her. Using the EHE-kit that she developed with OVAM, she can help you pinpoint where exactly you want to change the curriculum and give you plenty of examples of how to do so.
Yolan Gielen
Yolan is passionate about the intersection between education and entrepreneurship. His bootcamp Circular Economy is the perfect example of this intersection. His real ambition, however, is developing a cooperative business school. So why start with a bootcamp? Because big ideas cause friction. His creed: think big, begin small and act now. Yolan knows how to make a big idea attainable. Talk to him about it.
Liesbet Van Ackeleyen
Liesbet supports educators in higher education to apply principles of ecodesign. She believes that ecodesign is a must for the transition to a circular economy. She organizes the OVAM Ecodesign Award for students which challenges students to design a product that might change the world. With the OVAM Ecodesign Challenges, she assembles more than 100 students of different educations to collectively work on a challenge. The last topics were: plastic soup, e-commerce, and the lifetime of toys. Have a Future Forward Date with her and discover how these tools can help you.
Marlies Deforche
Marlies combines her service design agency, Twisted Studio, with a position as teacher in Crossmedia Design at AP university-college. She has an international background in social service design. Marlies has a talent for developing solutions at a very concrete level. She digs into the details that are important to users and analyses these into design challenges that wouldn’t have been found by others. Do you have a challenge? Let her help you turn it into ideas and visualize them.
Jasper Bloemen
As a postdoc researcher, Jasper started Glimps, a design agency on the cross-section between biology, design and architecture. His mission is the transition to a bio-based society. Think bacterial leather and lamps made of biodegradable mushroom materials. Have a date with Jasper if you have questions about peer-to-peer learning, biomimicry or want to learn how he uses design principles in a scientific setting
Elaine Meys
Elaine is an artist, designer, music lover and perpetual energy bomb. She has a passion for identity and will turn literally everything inside out: “you have to dig deep to be able to add something”. She now integrates her expertise in concept development. Book a date with her to let her turn your idea inside out. Don’t be surprised if you leave with a head, filled with new ideas and loads of ways to put them into action.
Clemens Mader
Clemens has been the president of COPERNICUS Alliance during the last couple of years. As president of this European network for sustainable higher education he is the reference on everything concerning international academic collaborations for sustainability and relevant European policy for sustainable higher education. Talk to him about your idea and find out how COPERNICUS Alliance can be of value.
Gaby Crucq-Toffolo
As a teacher and researcher at university college Fontys in Tilburg, Gaby has specialized herself in creativity and concept development. Her books ‘Conceptdenken’ and ‘Concept Code’ are references in creating a shared vision in your organization and bringing that vision to life. She can help you develop your idea with creativity techniques. And above all, she’s brilliant in helping you find out your or your idea’s added value.
