About Valeria
Meet the person behind the work
AS SEEN IN
I aim to break boundaries and stigma to accelerate the transition to systems, cultures and economies that centre the wisdom and wellbeing of people closest to the problem. I believe that to get there we need to transform the way we think, act, and relate to each other and the world around us. To me, empathy, wisdom and joy are key drivers of transformational change.
Meet Valeria Duflot
With a surname that translates to “from/of the flow (of water)”, Valeria believes that everyone should feel equipped and authorised to make waves.
A multicultural woman who has lived with trauma, migraine, an invisible and stigmatised neurological disorder, and the demands of caring for someone living with Alzheimer’s, Valeria has been challenging mindsets, breaking barriers and building bridges all her life.
She has transformed her experience of pain, loneliness and stigma into an unshakable commitment to building equitable, compassionate and regenerative systems that connect and empower people, foster trust and prioritise the wellbeing of people and the planet.
Driven by a profound sense of duty, Valeria is determined to make her vision a reality: a world where everyone can live well, dream big and contribute to shaping a better society and economy.
Empathy, curiosity, audacity, joy and a deep belief in human potential are at the core of everything she does.
Vision
A world where the wisdom and wellbeing of people are at the centre of our economies, governance and systems, and where all forms of life thrive, belong and receive the respect they deserve.
Mission
To build the conditions that make it possible, and easy and fun, for all to live well, dream big and contribute to shaping a better future for people and for nature.
Professional Journey:
Helping change travel from the fringe to the mainstream
Since her teens, Valeria has been leveraging narrative transformation, innovation and field-building to shape cultures and conditions for change. For the past 15 years, she has made it her full-time job.
Her focus is double: to empower stakeholders to imagine and play their part in bringing to life a new future and to remove the barriers that stand in the way of change. Across all her work she seeks to create the conditions for purpose-driven action to be easy and fun for all, fostering joy, trust and agency and bringing impact from the fringe to the mainstream.
A neuroscientist-turned-consultant-turned-social impact leader, she is best known for establishing and leading pioneering place-based social enterprises in both the Global North and South that influenced market, mindset and practice at the national and international level. Her flagship organisation, Venezia Autentica, became a global reference point for community-centred economic transformation, mobilising and redirecting multimillion euro revenue flows annually to regenerative local economies and reaching a 100M+ global audience. Its global systems change arm, Overtourism Solution, empowered public, private and civic leaders across five continents to adopt new mindsets and tools, reshaping business practice and public policy from the local to the UN level. Her work has elevated the voice and wisdom of communities to global media and policy and inspired new industry practices internationally.
Committed to helping others unlock their strategic potential, she has coached and advised over 200 impact leaders across Europe, Africa, South America and Asia through partnerships with institutions including the UN, EU and Ashoka and has stewarded sector-building coalitions and networks across industries, geographies and scales.
At the institutional and public level, Valeria’s focus has been two-fold. She has worked to mainstream stories, practices and policies that elevate the voices and experiences of communities and enable them to shape what matters most, while reframing economic systems as levers for wellbeing and promoting participatory governance. In this context, Valeria has collaborated with governments, multilateral and academic institutions and media worldwide. Appointed roles include EU Sustainable Energy Week Ambassador, Observer to the UN Task Force for Social and Solidarity Economy and Member of the EC Special Group on the Code of Conduct for Data Governance in the Social Economy.
Her years between the field and institutional rooms taught her things she couldn’t have learned any other way: the scale of impact can far outstrip the scale of resources when you leverage the right levers and let go of attribution; that narrative and governance move together or not at all; that inner work and systems work are two sides of the same coin; and that most people want to contribute to a better world but face barriers that were never theirs to face alone. It also convinced her that real socioeconomic transformation requires rethinking the purpose of our economies and governance altogether, reinventing how we define success, value and the distribution of resources, attention and decision-making power, and placing participation, collaboration and agency at the centre of everything we do and design.
Valeria’s work has appeared in documentaries and earned global media coverage including the NYT, BBC, CNN, Washington Post and National Geographic, as well as recognition for “changing society,” notably for its inspiring approaches and groundbreaking use of digital social innovation and new media.
She has appeared on stages alongside and collaborated with leaders from all walks of life, from the grassroots to world-leading institutions.
Valeria is Co-founding Chair of Catalyst Now’s Europe Chapter, a 900+-member network spanning 35 countries, and a member of its global Governing Council representing 6,000 social innovators across six continents. She is convening a new pan-European coalition of networks working on the future of the European economy and governance and co-shaping WEAll’s narrative for health in a wellbeing economy.
She is now focused on her next executive chapter, leading field-building and systems change initiatives at the frontier of new economies, governance innovation and social impact, and exploring board appointments and senior mandates. She continues to support a select number of founders, executives and institutions as a thought partner and adviser.
She currently lives in France and is active worldwide, after spending nearly 15 years living and building abroad, first in Bangalore, India, then for almost a decade in Venice, Italy.
Whether the projects I engaged in aimed to heal the physical and psychological pain I experienced as a chronic migraine sufferer, the loss I felt as a repeat brain and mental health caregiver, or the injustice I experienced as a member of an exploited community, they all allowed me to recognise our shared experiences, our need for purpose, our infinite power, and the potential of what we can achieve when we work together.
Turning Pain into Purpose
It is Valeria’s personal history that has shaped her deep-rooted commitment to societal transformation.
Growing up in a French-Malagasy family, she witnessed early the stark contrast between dignity and deprivation: a great-uncle who biked up steep hills daily to sell samosas and nems to support his family, rich in purpose, community, joy and meaning despite having nothing by Western measures, and the economic systems that extracted from him and communities like his without giving back. That ache is inseparable from the grief she carries witnessing Madagascar’s disappearing biodiversity, sacrificed on the altar of development. These experiences planted a seed that never stopped growing: to protect life and joy, we must transform the systems that govern society.
As a multicultural woman who has lived with trauma, migraine, an invisible and stigmatised neurological disorder, and the demands of caring for someone living with Alzheimer’s, she has experienced first-hand the pain, frustrations and isolation created by outdated systems and mindsets and witnessed the knock-on impact they have on people and nature. Navigating systems not designed for people like her taught her what it means to be rendered invisible by the structures meant to serve you. It also gave her an unshakable drive to design equitable, caring systems that centre lived experience, foster trust and create space for everyone to contribute and belong.
An advocate of behaving and listening compassionately, and a natural weaver of people, worlds and ideas, Valeria has spent her career amplifying knowledge and untold stories and imagining and creating physical and digital experiences and platforms that shift power to people most impacted by the state of our systems, bring individuals closer to themselves and together, and generate joy, meaning and impact.
From a young age, she engaged in caregiving, advocated for better elderly care, helped replicate a student association, developed campaigns and events to democratise scientific literacy and built communities of creative individuals wherever she lived. Long before she became a full-time social innovator, the throughline was already there, anchored in the same core tenets: empathy and innovation, user-centredness and her fundamental motto: making change “easy and fun” for all.
Valeria's Approach to Change
Valeria’s approach to change is grounded in a conviction that transformation must work simultaneously at the level of consciousness, culture and structure, and that inner work and systems work are inseparable. She brings a “whole-person, whole-system” lens to everything she leads: bridging local and global, community and institution, embodied wisdom and strategic rigour. She leverages the biology and mechanics of change, as well as a multidisciplinary and future-ready toolkit, to foster imagination, agency and collective action, and to decouple the scale of impact from the need for resources.
I’m committed to breaking barriers and pushing the boundaries of the ordinary to make room for more joy, more wellbeing, and thriving on a healthy planet
Committed to Unlocking Potential
One of the most defining moments of Valeria’s life came in her early twenties, when Ruchi, an accomplished woman innovator, looked deeply into her eyes and said: “I’m not always going to be here. You need to get on the ground or build something now.”
Already committed to becoming an entrepreneur in service of people and nature, Valeria had held back. Coming from a hierarchical culture that did not believe in the potential of youth to make a difference, she had assumed it was not yet her time. Ruchi’s words shattered that assumption. They showed her a different reality: one where she didn’t need to spend ten years building skills and her network before taking action on her own terms. A world where she could realise her potential now.
Soon after, she took the plunge. As a tribute to Ruchi’s contribution to her life, she has since made it her mission to do for others what Ruchi did for her: to unlock potential, dissolve barriers and show people a different reality, both through her own organisations and initiatives and in partnerships with institutions.
Leadership Hub
Dive into Valeria's leadership dossier: spanning her track record, leadership philosophy and peer endorsements.
Executive Services
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REACH OUT TO TALK
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