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WORTH Partnership Project

WORTH Community

WORTH is about creating a relevant community throughout Europe whose members share vision and values around design and innovation.

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WORTH Community (79)

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  • Buying Strategy Manager and Innovation Expert in the Fashion and Textile Industries

Tirza Brems

Responsibilities

Tirza Brems has worked for many years in the fashion and textile industries as a buying strategy manager and innovation expert for big Dutch brands. From Amsterdam, she develops sustainable solutions, concepts, and products. With the focus on creating new value chains and business models for the combination of crafts and the rising state of the art production methods in Europe.

Tirza works as an expert consultant on sustainability, circularity, high tech production, on-demand fashion, value chain modeling, and business intelligence systems. Founder of the zero-waste brand NITTO.Amsterdam and COO of New Industrial Order.

WORTH Community
Mentors
  • Chief Executive Officer of Caimi Brevetti

Franco Caimi

Responsibilities

Franco Caimi is a member of the board of Caimi Brevetti and the other companies in the group, one of the leading manufacturers of design furniture, accessories, and acoustic systems for the workspace and contract markets. He is a member of the board of the ADI Design Museum in Milan and a member of the Design Jury. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of AIPI, the Italian Association of Professional Interior Designers. He has been the coordinator of the companies' department of the ADI (Association for Industrial Design) and ambassador of Italian design. He managed lessons and conferences in different universities and institutions, such as Politecnico di Milano, IED (European Institute of Design), Takarazuka University Osaka, Kale Design Center for Research Istanbul, University IULM Milano, University IUAV Venezia, and the University of Genova. Caimi Brevetti is a leading company in design innovation; the firm’s products have been displayed in museums and in design exhibitions in Italy and around the world. The company has won many awards since its foundation in 1949, including three Compasso d’Oro awards and the DesignEuropa Award in 2016.

WORTH Community
Steering Board Members
  • Fashion Tech and Sustainability Investment Expert

Giusy Cannone

Responsibilities

Giusy is the CEO of Fashion Technology Accelerator, the international digital innovation centre for the fashion industry. She has ten years of expertise in investing and startup management. She was the Investment Manager of Italian Angels for Growth, a business angels network that invested 14 million euros. She formerly worked as an innovation expert at Intesa Sanpaolo bank, where she oversaw a programme that helps tech start-ups grow their businesses. She has also worked in the United States, first as a Researcher at the Kauffman Foundation and subsequently as the coordinator of the Mind the Bridge incubator programme in San Francisco. In addition, she has worked on consulting initiatives to help other countries build their entrepreneurial ecosystems.

She teaches at prominent Italian fashion schools including Istituto Marangoni and Domus Academy.

WORTH Community
Mentors
  • CEO at CELEN CONSULTING, Coach, Mentor and Adviser of start- and scale-ups with focus on Go-To-Market Strategies, Sales Methodologies and the Psychology behind sales

Paul Celen

Responsibilities

Paul Celen has been an entrepreneur for the past 21 years. He now works as an independent business consultant in Austria, specialising in coaching start-ups or scale-ups, interim management, and coaching other entrepreneurs for any occasion involving growth and business development.  

Celen holds a PhD in science from the State University of Ghent, an MBA from the University of Antwerp - affiliated with Boston University (USA), a Masters in Molecular Biology and Finance, and a number of other prestigious degrees from international universities.

Prior to starting his consultingancy career, Paul was the founder and CEO of Supplitel AG, the first independent ASP for Voice Portal applications (1999 -2001).

Prior to that, he was COO of Phillips Speech Processing, where he was in charge of all worldwide operational activities, including launching the company globally with an emphasis on the United States. He worked at ICLFujitsu as a Managing Director in and for 5 European countries, as well as business manager Retail for the East European countries, with an emphasis on turning around loss-making firms and expanding others. He was named the best turn-around manager ever at ICL-Fujitsu, developing a new GTM methodology and hence similar to start-up activities.

WORTH Community
Mentors
  • International Innovation Expert & Currently AID Executive Director

Jorge Cerveira Pinto

Responsibilities

He is an international innovation expert, currently AID (Assoc. Inovação Design – Portugal) executive director. Since 2010, has been European Commission expert and external consultant in the fields of innovation, creativity and creative economy. He collaborates with the Design and Craft Council of Ireland (DCCoI), Design Council (UK), Birmingham City University (STEAMHOUSE project), Coventry University (Research Unit), Assoc. Modalisboa, Fed. Portuguesa de Artes e Oficios (FPAO) and with the Spanish Network of Creative Cities and Territories. He holds several non-executive positions in international cultural and creative institutions in Europe, Brazil and United States, and is invited teacher at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Catholic University in Porto and Lisbon University. He is a regular writer and contributor in several international publications, blogs and events. He was the executive director of Lisbon design Biennale experimentadesign (2013 and 2015 editions) and has curated several professional fairs and national pavilions showcasing the best of Portuguese design, crafts and fashion in Europe, Asia and Americas.

WORTH Community
Ambassadors
  • BIOS Organization (artistic director) - European Creative Hubs Network (president)

Vassilis Charalampidis

Responsibilities

Vassilis Haralambidis, is a founding member and the artistic director of BIOS, a cultural organization for today s art, urban life and the creative industries. Romantso, a creative hub in the center of Athens and the first structure to support cultural and creative businesses and professionals in Greece, is also an initiative of BIOS.

Since the foundation of BIOS in 2001, Vassilis Haralambidis has been curating numerous events and performances about urban culture, cross media and various expressions of contemporary artistic creativity.
Additionally, as a graphic designer, he has received numerous Greek and European awards and distinctions.

He is also a founding member and president of the board, of the first European Creative Hubs Network, along with partners from all over Europe and over 300 members in 36 different countries. ECHN is a network that has been created to connect the creative professionals and empower the cultural and creative industries, as well as to shape equivalent strategies at a national and European level.
Vassilis Haralambidis has also been keynote speaker at conferences and events that take place around Europe concerning culture, creativity and the life in the city.

He is evaluator of European Programs in the field of culture and creative industries for the European Commission. He participated in the consultation on the shaping of the new European agenda for culture, as well as in various meetings on the process of creating new European Commission programs focusing on cultural and creative industries, innovation and social cohesion.

He is devoted to highlight the importance of culture and today s creative practice in shaping society and the modern way of life; to promote the interdisciplinarity and the unexpected intersection between art and science giving rise to new ways of thinking about our world and the ways we interact with it and creating accessibility platforms to the various forms of expression for all.

WORTH Community
Ambassadors
  • Platform for fashion and emerging designers and artists

FASHIONCLASH

Responsibilities

FASHIONCLASH is a Maastricht (Netherlands) based innovative and interdisciplinary showcase platform for fashion and a worldwide network of emerging designers and artists.

FASHIONCLASH has developed a worldwide network of designers, artists, partners and experts to enable the realisation of visually dynamic fashion concepts and tailor-made events. The portfolio includes more than 300 projects including fashion shows, exhibitions, performances, interdisciplinary projects, fashion talks and events.

With ten years’ experience in fashion project management, creative concept development and curating, an innovative vision and an international network, FASHIONCLASH has gained a powerful position in the fashion world. One of the main projects is the successful annual manifestation ‘FASHIONCLASH Festival’ where designers from all over the world gather to show their work and where the avant-garde fashion is celebrated.

Driving forces and artistic leaders behind FASHIONCLASH are Branko Popovic, Laurens Hamacher and Nawie Kuiper.

WORTH Community
Ambassadors
  • The UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities

British Council

Responsibilities

In 2016 the British Council launched an ambitious sustainable fashion programme which aims at fostering the exchange of good practices among creative minds in Europe.
The programme has been developed in France, Greece, Spain and the UK, around three strands. First, workshops and mentoring sessions have been organised to train designers and to gather the future leaders of this industry. Second, awareness raising has also been a key element of the project and has been achieved by organising lectures, showcases and meetings in order to allow the general audience to have a better understanding of the sustainable fashion sector. Third, the programme has fostered the creation of a fashion network developed through a number of networking events across Europe

So far 150 designers have participated in and benefited from this initiative in France, Greece and Spain and they have gained insights into creative development, business models and communication strategies.

WORTH Community
Ambassadors
  • Lead in Sustainability & Circular Economy

Gwen Cunningham

Responsibilities

Gwen was born in Ireland and trained as an apparel designer in her home town of Dublin. In her role as designer, Gwen became critically aware of, and increasingly uncomfortable with, the linear nature of the apparel industry. A drive to inspire change - and to design new systems, not new products - led her to Amsterdam, the proclaimed 'circular hotspot of Europe'. Today, Gwen leads Circle Economy’s Textiles Programme, whose mission it is to achieve a zero waste industry through the practical implementation of circular solutions, together with its network of brands and solution providers. To get there, the programme focused on two key pillars; firstly, enabling the technology and infrastructure needed to valorize textile waste at end-of-life (reducing the waste mountain) and, secondly, building apparel brands' capacity to adopt circular design and circular business models (preventing the waste mountain).

Recent and ongoing projects include the development and commercialization of Fibersort (a breakthrough technology that automatically sorts post-consumer textiles by fiber composition in order to generate consistent input for textile-to-textile recycling), the launch of On Course (an educational circular training programme for apparel brands), and Switching Gear (a project that guides five apparel brands in the design and launch of a rental or ecommerce business model pilot).

In addition, Gwen is the Lead for Sustainability and Circularity at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

WORTH Community
Steering Board Members