Birgitta Jónsdóttir is an Icelandic poetician, anarchist and activist. She was first elected as an MP representing the Citizens' Movement in the 2009 election. She became involved with WikiLeaks during Julian Assange's visit to Iceland in 2010, and helped to produce the Collateral Murder video. Following her time with WikiLeaks, she created the International Modern Media Institute, of which she became executive director in 2011. She was also involved in two court cases in the United States during her parliamentary term, one of which was the high-profile case Hedges vs Obama. In 2012, close to the end of her term, she co-founded the Icelandic Pirate Party, becoming their first MP.

In this episode, Birgitta shares about her unique approach as a poetician working from within the system to change it.

Gorka Espiau Idoiaga is a social innovation specialist well known for his conflict resolution work in the Basque country. He initiated his professional career in Elkarri, the Movement for Dialogue and Accord in the Basque Country. He was the Head of Social Innovation Programmes at Innovalab, and served as Senior Adviser for Peace Building to the Executive Office of the Basque President. Gorka subsequently held various positions including director of International Affairs at The Young Foundation, Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, Senior Associate to the Centre for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University in New York.

In this episode, Gorka talks to us about systems change through social innovation through the lens of conflict resolution.

Learn more about conflict resolution: Innovation in Real Places, Deep Listening and Community Data Collection, Platforms that trigger innovation

Jan Jakub (Kuba) Wygnanski is a sociologist by training. He started his public activity as a Solidarity activist in Poland. Kuba started several NGOs including KLON/JAWOR Association and Forum of Nongovernmental Initiatives (FIP) which plays a key role as representative of the Polish Third Sector. He was the initiator and coordinator of a multi-year systemic project of the Polish Model of Social Economy. Currently, Kuba is the President of the Unit for Social Innovation and Research SHIPYARD.

Kuba shares the work of the Shipyard Foundation in Poland, an organisation that works on  multiple levels from working with civic organisations on the ground to supporting incubators to shifting systems in public participation. He talks about the social innovations happening in Poland currently, in response to the recent crisis in Ukraine.

Minna works as a civil society advisor at the Estonian Ministry of the Interior. Her role includes policy making in the field of social innovation and social economy at a national level and she believes that social innovation plays a key role in finding solutions to very complex and sometimes unpredictable societal problems.

In this episode, Minna shares about her work in the Estonian government and the unique socio-historical context of innovation in Estonia – which straddles between both the digital and social, local and national spaces.

Geoff Mulgan is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London. Over the years, Geoff has had many roles - as a CEO, social entrepreneur, policy-maker and author, working at different times in civil society, government, technology and academia, always curious about how the world works and how it can be changed for the better.

In this episode, Geoff talks to us about why social innovation matters and how the field has developed in the UK context. He shares his lessons about how to institutionalise social innovation, the importance of learning from other places and what gives him hope for the future.

Until recently, Katrin Elsemann was the Managing Director of the German social entrepreneurship network, SEND and the co-founder of two social enterprises. SEND was founded in order to increase communication and collaboration between social entrepreneurs as well as to build bridges with actors outside the social entrepreneurship scene, aiming to improve the general ecosystem for social enterprises in Germany.

During her time in SEND, Katrin has led a successful social innovation advocacy campaign with German political leaders which was critical in putting social innovation onto Germany’s national agenda. Katrin shares her insights on working with political leaders across various ideological spectrums and what it takes to create a successful advocacy campaign for fostering a national social innovation ecosystem.

Stéphane Vincent is the founder and director of "la 27e Région" (Region 27), a French action-tank dedicated to the public sector created in 2008. La 27e Région plays the role of a “public transformation lab” and explores new ways to improve public policies and policy making, inspired by service design, ethnography, open source and "makers" cultures.

This episode addresses public innovation and co-creation in the french context. Stéphane discusses creating a new social contract, reframing relationships with the public sector and the ways in which public sectors can innovate and transform. Tune in to hear Stéphane’s insights from decades of working with the public sector in France.

Amalia was previously elected as a member of the Athens Municipality City Council and vice mayor for civil society and innovation from May 2014 to September 2019. She created the digital platform “synAthina” which was further developed into an idea that won one of the five Mayors Challenge awards of 1 million euro from Bloomberg Philanthropies in September 2014.

Prior to the Municipality she was working as an independent documentary producer since 1998. She has a B.A. in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and an M.A. in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research in New York in 1991.

In this episode she shares her role as an intermediary and translator in between funders, governments and civic society.

Filipe Almeida is the President of Portugal Social Innovation, a visionary government initiative that mobilises European funds to promote social innovation and social entrepreneurship, and develop the social investment market in Portugal.

In this episode, Filipe talks about how the Portuguese government developed a national policy to catalyse the social innovation ecosystem over the last decade. He also provides his vision for a connected future in Europe. Tune in to hear key learnings in experimental social financing solutions, cross sector partnership building and the Portuguese nation-wide social innovation capacity building support strategy.

https://inovacaosocial.portugal2020.pt/en/about-us/portugal-inovacao-social/

Madeleine Clarke is the Founding Director of Genio, an Irish NGO that brings government and private/philanthropic funders together, in order to develop better ways to support disadvantaged people to live full lives in their communities.

In this episode, Madeleine chats with us about her work with governments, foundations and civic organisations in scaling social innovations for systems change. Genio’s approach to scaling is about bringing stakeholders together to navigate the pathway through the challenges of system reform and helping to implement more personalised, community-based and cost-effective social services.

She explores the advantages, gaps and challenges in the Irish ecosystem and the role Genio plays as a mutual broker to support social innovations. She talks about what is unique about the Irish context and culture that makes social innovation work, the importance of breaking down silos and putting end beneficiaries at the heart of service design.

Find out more about Genio’s approach in their recent publication, Learning as you scale.

https://www.genio.ie/publications/learning-as-you-scale

Hosted by So Jung Rim and Louise Pulford, music by Evan Schaeffer, produced by Fié Neo.