The Problem: Mission-driven leaders across all stages of development, from founding to global institutional maturity, operate in high-stakes environments where the complexity of the mission often outpaces existing leadership frameworks and capacity. Whether launching a new initiative, seeking to scale their impact or navigating a high-pressure moment, leaders face profound isolation and strategic “stuckness” during critical organisational inflections, often becoming the “bottleneck” of their own ambitions. This misalignment can ultimately limit the systemic impact of their innovations and compromise their wellbeing and long-term potential.

The Intervention (What):

An independent practice focused on building the capacity of leaders to make and sustain impact throughout their careers. This is achieved through targeted training and high-impact tailored one-on-one support focused on equipping changemakers with lasting tools, mindsets, confidence and a sense of belonging to unlock their leadership and organisation’s potential without creating dependency.

The Intervention (How):

• C-Suite Advisory & Strategic Guidance: Providing end-to-end support for founders, executives and leadership teams at every stage of the organisational lifecycle and impact journey. The focus is on providing the strategic clarity and safe peer support required to navigate challenges across all aspects of leadership: psychological, strategic, operational, governance and relational.

• Institutional & Ecosystem Capacity Building: Designing and delivering leadership capacity-building modules for innovation and entrepreneurship programmes hosted by multilateral agencies (UN), national governments (Italy) and EU institutions. The mandate involves building the skills and confidence of diverse changemakers to orchestrate scalable social change.

• Academic & Professional Advisory: Developing and delivering specialised modules for leading international universities, business schools and professional education programmes, preparing both the current and next generation of impact leaders to innovate and navigate organisational and (eco)systemic complexity.

• Whole-Person Whole-System Methodology: Combining strategic clarity, emotional intelligence and systemic analysis to help leaders navigate every stage of their professional journey while re-centring personal and organisational wellbeing, sustainability and ease.

The Result:

• Strategic Growth: : Supported 200+ impact founders and executives across 30+ countries over four continents, spanning a wide range of issues and business models, at all stages of impact leadership and organisational lifecycle to  unlock both personal and organisational potential.

• Capacity at Scale: Built the skills of hundreds of future and current impact leaders through targeted training around entrepreneurship, collaboration, ecosystem leadership and system innovation.

• Ecosystem Impact: Partnered with international impact accelerators and fellowships of leading institutions including UNSDSN, Ashoka, the EU and Zero Project to identify promising changemakers and enhance the capability of impact-driven cohorts.

• Resilient Stewardship: Secured clients’ personal and organisational wellbeing by addressing leadership challenges at the root, ensuring sustained systemic impact throughout the entire organisational lifecycle and changemaker leadership journey.

The Problem: The social innovation sector, representing 10 million enterprises globally, has historically remained unaligned and under-recognised. In Europe, this fragmentation prevented social innovators from acting as a unified “delivery engine” for the continent. Ecosystems remained unevenly developed and accessible, leaving many changemakers isolated from fellow impact leaders, opportunities to grow their capacity and impact, and the mature networks and regional policymaking circles where power, capital and policy converge.

The Intervention (What): 

• Global Strategic Guidance: Board-level leadership on the Governing Council since the network’s inception, co-guiding strategy for a multimillion-dollar global movement alongside leaders from Skoll, Schwab/WEF, Echoing Green and Ashoka. The focus is on a democratic governance approach that moves capital, legitimacy, and decision-making toward those closest to the problems and facilitates multi-stakeholder collaboration to accelerate systems change.

• Regional Executive Leadership: 
  Founding and stewardship of the Europe Chapter as a dedicated platform to build the capacity and facilitate the efforts of 900+ regional changemakers across 35 countries and the broader ecosystem. The strategic priorities are to accelerate the exchange of ideas and opportunities, create “containers” for collaboration and co-learning, and elevate the voices of practitioners in regional policy to advance a fair, green, and inclusive society where no one is left behind.

• The Intervention (How) (Focus on Europe): 

This is executed through a triple approach of Ecosystem Architecture, Infrastructure Development, and Policy Brokerage:

• Ecosystem Architecture & Capacity Building: Designing and executing member-centric regional strategies to transition the sector from scattered solutions to a coordinated network. This includes establishing infrastructure in underdeveloped regions while building connections within mature ecosystems to enhance the pan-European flow of information, opportunity, and capacity across 35 countries.

• Infrastructure for Distributed Action: Developing member-driven “containers” and structures designed to surface needs and amplify momentum. This includes:

  • Governance & Feedback: Embedding continuous feedback systems and participatory agenda-setting to ensure the member-driven evolution of strategy and practice.

  • Operational Structures: Establishing regional assemblies, specialised task forces, and thematic and geographic chapter spaces to strengthen collective intelligence and collaborations, creating the conditions for emergence and co-creation.

  • Engagement Tools: Establishing co-created newsletters (e.g. the Buzz), collaboration tools, and distributed campaigns to circulate opportunities, build members’ reach and power, and foster peer-to-peer support.

• Multi-Stakeholder Policy Brokerage: Convening and facilitating high-level dialogues between practitioners, institutions, and Commission representatives, securing policy language that reflects grassroots priorities in the EU Social Economy Action Plan and Transition Pathways. Representing membership in institutional expert multi-stakeholder groups and coalitions, ensuring the voice and realities of practitioners are centred in regional policies and ecosystem development.

• Narrative & Collective Mobilisation: Spearheaded Europe Impact Week, a pan-European distributed festival of member-hosted events focused on elevating the work, voices, and power of practitioners. This initiative leveraged collective visibility to attract diverse stakeholders to shared tables and is now relaunching as Bridging the Gap Week, specifically focused on bridging the distance between grassroots actors and public-sector institutions.

• Leadership Stewardship: Serving the chapter by centring member needs and priorities surfaced through assemblies, feedback tools, and spontaneous outreach. Leading and stewarding a distributed team of Co-Chairs, coordinators, and interns, ensuring highly participatory delivery. To ensure long-term stability and values-alignment, designed and launched the Associate Co-Chair Programme, a relational leadership journey designed to ensure continuity and stewardship-based succession by prioritising trust and shared experience over status.

The Result: 

The Europe Chapter stands as one of the movement’s most active regional hubs and the continent’s largest social innovation networks, representing 900+ member organisations across 35 countries working on a diversity of systemic issues. The initiative provides a home to changemakers previously working in isolation, giving them access to opportunities to build their capacity, collaborate, and move from acting and lobbying in the margins to “shaping the centre.”

This impact is evidenced by the engagement of a diverse membership including those typically unable to gain access to other regional networks, sustained active participation in the Chapter’s flagship offerings and the successful embedding of grassroots priorities into landmark EU policy frameworks, including the Social Economy Action Plan and Transition Pathways. After five years of piloting, experimenting, and learning, the current work focuses on consolidating proven models, letting go of what doesn’t work, and accelerating the institutionalisation of the Chapter. Combined with the ongoing Associate Co-Chair pipeline and continuous feedback systems, this work ensures the Chapter functions as a self-sustaining “nervous system” for European social innovation and a non-competitive partner to the broader ecosystem, capable of accelerating members’ work and turning shared priorities into coordinated regional action.

The Problem: Despite its potential to help fund, protect, and regenerate all aspects of sustainable development at the level of community and ecosystem, the 10+ trillion-dollar global tourism industry is causing more harm than good. As one of the largest sectors of the mainstream economy, it currently suffers from a focus on short-term growth and a governance disconnected from community needs and industry impact leading to the impoverishment and displacement of community, and destruction of the local socio-economic tissue and natural and cultural heritage.

The Intervention (What): Through OTC, sought to unlock the potential of the visitor economy to foster the wellbeing of people, places and planet by moving the mindset, learning and practice behind Venezia Autentica (see: relevant case) from the fringe to the mainstream. The work focused on widespreading and accelerating the adoption of inclusive and regenerative models of territory management based on community-centric governance and wellbeing-focused economic models.

The Intervention (How): This was executed through a triple approach: building the capacity of changemakers across public, private, and citizen sectors; shifting the policies that stand in the way; and supporting multi-stakeholder collective action and learning. Directly advised dozens of public sector leaders across all levels and geographies on policies and practices for their own contexts and shared insights at high-level fora and policy consultations. Developed and presented capacity building training to public, private and civic sector leaders including in partnership with UN founded certification such as GSTC and economic development government agency such as Italy’s Invitalia’s Innovation programme. Facilitated and led multistakehoders co-creation experiments and in-depth consultation. Operated through a distributed and responsive team structure backboned on parent organisation and blending a team of teams and a remote global programme of young talents.

The Result: Effectively influenced sector knowledge, training, practice, and policy on five continents across academia, the public and private sectors, and from the municipal to the multilateral level. Operations were concluded to pivot the focus from growth to impact in the broader economy and to promote informed multi-stakeholder participatory governance across sectors.

The Problem: 70% of local residents of Venice had been leaving their city. Most were not leaving by choice but because of the lack of accommodation, opportunities, and services. Rising business and living costs and diminishing quality of life were linked to an economy dominated by an exploitative and extractive visitor economy. This resulted in a close to monocultural economy which threatened the community as well as cultural and natural heritage.

The Intervention (What): Created and operated a narrative engine and an ecosystem proposing an alternative to the current dominant story, economic model and management. This was achieved by retaining existing recurrent revenue generated by the visitor economy: revenue currently predominantly leaking out of the destination. Directed these flows to locally owned businesses providing decent jobs, services, and products that benefit the local community and visitors, thereby contributing to the regeneration of local cultural and natural heritage.

The Intervention (How): Established a hybrid globally available digital and locally rooted in-real-life model to raise awareness, increase understanding of the situation, and inspire new consumer behaviour in visitors while incentivising and rewarding responsible production in the local economy, through a combination of social innovation, community-centric storytelling, enterprise vetting and a digital platform connecting customers and community-based enterprises. By bridging desire and tools, digital and human experiences and local and global communities, made it easy and fun for global consumers to act and adopt new behaviors: investing their time and money in vetted local businesses and organisations.

The Result: Reached a 100M+ global audience and mobilised, retained, and redirected multimillion euros of visitor spend yearly to partners from the proximity, social, and regenerative economy locally. Advocated for models that centre the wellbeing of community, place, and planet in global media including Nat Geo, CNN, BBC, and the FT. VA rapidly became a globally recognised case study sought by public sector leaders across continents and featured in industry curricula, professional training and policy reports. Global multistakeholder interest led to the establishment of global systems change arm Overtourism Solution to enable the dissemination of VA’s model, learning and recommendations. Local operations concluded with a strategic high-stake exit preserving VA’s impact and reputation. A permanent open-source digital archive of VA’s learning and model is in development to ensure a continued and maximised breadth of impact.

The Problem: Bangalore lacked a market and sustainable platform for creative economic and inclusive cultural expression. This limited opportunities for artists and social projects to thrive within a professional infrastructure and deprived marginalised communities of safe, community-centric spaces for engagement. The development of the sector was hampered by a lack of established market, with audience used to consuming music and performances for free, and artists being often compensated in ‘visibility’ rather than a dignified fee.

The Intervention (What): The Humming Tree was established to provide a platform and market access for social and cultural projects and conversations, as well as a safe space for marginalised communities. The vision was to create a leading cultural incubator and performance space that bridged cultural expression with commercial viability, fairly compensated artists, and prepared the market for new consummer behavior, supporting both the local and national creative economies and its evolution.

The Intervention (How): Co-established and -led a physical space bridging performance venue and community space welcoming of all people, regardless of gender, sexuality, and background. Built a business model leveraging F&B and sponsorship to host over 100 multidisciplinary events in its first year breaking new artists into the music scene, facilitating fundraisers and market access for causes and artists, and producing multi-day festivals that promoted and enabled participation in the arts and social dialogues. Led a cross-functional organisation of 50+ employees, optimising operations and budgets to maximise positive impact through responsible supply chains.  Established innovative programs that attracted partners and accolades, promoted culture and causes in many forms, promoting co-creation and diversity of content and leveraging the power of arts to foster and fund social change and provide space for participation and dialogue. 

The Result: THT became a national benchmark within a year of operation. It attracted artists and faithful audience from India and the world, secured national press coverage and forged high-level alliances with global brands such as Budweiser and Diageo and leading cultural institutions including the Goethe-Institut and Alliance Française. It established a viable platform for ambitious cultural and social projects, shifted consummer behavior and habits  selling tickets before the end of the  first year. The space a community pillar, establishing a place of dialogue as well as creation as described in Rolling Stones:  ”The people who visit The Humming Tree write, perform, make films and work here regularly – it’s a collective space rather than just a venue. The goodwill that is generated is not typical of any other venue that I’ve ever been to.”
After establishing THT to the ranks of leading brands in the country, Valeria transitioned her portfolio and stepped down to pursue other entrepreneurial projects. THT went on to exist for a total of six strong years until changes in policies forced all establishments providing live performances out of business. It was relaunched in 2026.

Selected Advocacy, Narrative, & Policy Innovation engagements: 

 Health in a wellbeing economy – WEAll, Member of Health Working Group (2024-)

Code of conduct for data management and sharing in the social economy –  European Commission, Member of Drafting Committee/Special Group (2025)

Energy Transition – EUSEW, European Commission, (Digital) Ambassador (2018-2023)

AI and Social Economy – Social Good Accelerator, Think Tank Member (2024) 

Increasing the recognition of the Social and Solidarity Economy Worldwide – Observer, UN Task Force Social and Solidarity Economy (UNTFSSE) (representing C2030) (2022-2024)

Tourism Ecosystem’s Industrial Transformation – European Commission, Member of Stakeholder Groups (Green and Digital Transition) (2023-)

Social and Proximity Economy Ecosystem’s Industrial Transformation – European Commission, Member of Stakeholder Groups (Green and Digital Transition) (2023-)

European Union Social Economy Action Plan – European Commission, Member of Stakeholder Group (2021)

Eldercare – Advocate

Network and Ecosystem building – current and past areas of engagement:

New Economies –  Venezia Autentica and The Humming Tree, Founder (see: ventures)

Social Innovation – Catalyst 2030, Board/Governing Council Member; Founding Co-chair Europe Chapter; Member & Co-chair UN and Government Collaboration (2020-)

Startup and Creative Economy- Construkt (Bangalore Startup Festival), Partner (2014)

Healthcare Innovation – Health Tech Forum, Co-Organizer (2011-2014)

Scientific Literacy and Education – Plume! (Student Association for Scientific Popularisation), Co-organizer and local lead