Testimonials
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Valeria’s tailored coaching approach has led to remarkable outcomes. I’ve seen her coachees achieve goals faster than expected—whether it’s doubling revenue, securing high-level partnerships, or restructuring their organizations for greater impact. She doesn’t just coach; she empowers, offering support that’s both strategic and deeply empathetic.
What truly distinguishes Valeria is her unwavering commitment and versatility. Not only is she consistently available and eager to provide constructive feedback, but she also steps beyond her coaching role to actively collaborate with Empow’Her. Valeria has volunteered her expertise on our selection committees and participated in in-depth diagnostics for our fellows, showcasing her dedication to our mission. Her contributions have had a profound impact, both on the women she coaches and on the program as a whole. Valeria’s positive energy, professionalism, and extensive experience as a social entrepreneur, combined with her clear and effective communication, make her an absolute pleasure to work with.
I highly recommend Valeria to anyone looking for a coach who brings both business acumen and heartfelt commitment to personal growth. Her impact is profound, and she’s a true asset to any program supporting entrepreneurs and innovators.“
“Valeria is one of the best workshops facilitators I’ve ever worked with. She invents motivating, intelligent challenges full of sense, she delivers face to face or online with the same energy and kindness.”
“ Valeria is a brilliant communicator and a creative mind. She is always ready to support your work and to look for solutions…she is unrestless! In particular, she supported my organization in structuring the yearly international event Making the Change Happens, bringing many insights on how to raise the effectiveness of communications, how to increase the positive impact for the community of Ascoli Piceno and certainly her sharp contributions raised the level of attention of the attendees and of our international network. “
“Working with Valeria is so pleasant. She is very professional, passionated and full of energy and creativity! And most important: she is able to easily transmit all of it to the audience 👏👏👏. I am looking forward to working with you again..”
“I was fortunate to be linked to the highly skilled Ashoka mentor Valeria Duflot as part of the Zero Project Impact transfer programme. Valeria is an excellent social entrepreneur and systems innovator, and her passion for making a positive impact is evident in everything she does. She is an exceptional communicator with great patience and empathy to support us in framing our scaling strategy and public speaking competencies. Valeria acted as both facilitator and coach during our sessions. She supported us in leveraging our skills and vulnerabilities to showcase the project’s innovative aspects to drive positive change. Working with Valeria was a pleasure, as she brought a unique blend of clarity, creativity, energy, and expertise to support us with our Impact Transfer Programme. I know Valeria will continue to make a meaningful impact in her work and inspire those around her to do the same.”
“I had an opportunity to work with Valeria when our program was selected by Zero Project for the impact transfer. The project lasted for 6 months. She was our mentor. She was so committed. We had fortnightly meetings to check on the progress. Her inputs on the business model, impact model, and transfer model were very good and worth mentioning. Finally, she helped improved our project presentation and the process that brought out the strength of the program and simplified the impact transfer process. We felt comfortable and enjoyed working with her on this project. We hope others benefit from her skills too.“
“Our exchanges were a great help to me: it infused the whole summer so that in September everything would settle naturally.
What you do is powerful!
A big THANK YOU!“
“Valeria is always ready to get involved into your project. She works on it as if it were her own. She has strong values in social awareness, helping other and a great work ethic. I have seen her build communities around social and cultural subject, she is really a great asset for your projects. Valeria has been a great asset during the creation of my film production company Film Searchers. Her help in communication and digital marketing lead me to save a lot of time in content creation for my website. Her business acumen and customer-first approach were crucial in identifying and defining my strategy and niche. I definitely recommend working with Valeria on your venture. She is always encouraging, ready to get involved and eager to give you relevant business advices. “
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“We are so grateful for all your support, patience and trust. Even after going through a complicated health situation, you thought of us first — that shows what a wonderful person you are. Things went really well, and we owe a big part of that to you. We were able to make important connections for possible expansions of our app in other countries. It is in India now. We will not say goodbye because we will meet again soon “
“During the time I worked with Valeria, she has approached my early stage start up with enthusiasm and encouragement. As with most micro business start up’s encouragement is a key factor in moving ahead especially in the planning stages. Valeria helped me set goals and made me accountable for them . I have frequently appreciated her because she keeps me accountable to my goals, challenging me when I didn’t meet them or helping me when I needed external insight to meet them. My business, Saisha Ayurveda is a skin care retail business that has a lot of clogs in the machine from supply chain management and regulations to marketing ,branding and packaging. Valeria has been a particularly good sounding board for me in terms of the marketing and branding and has helped me stay on track and avoiding any major bottlenecks. Valeria’s role to ensure ‘I am accountable’ for my actions and to challenge my thought process has moved my business from formulations to market ready products in a much quicker span of time than expected. The thought process she has trained me in has helped me manage my time to focus on achieveing my highly valuable goals. I now have the ability to create a clear direction and to be in control of my time to ensure Saisha Ayurveda’s success. Having improved my focus and direction, I am now enjoying the journey so much more. Thank you Valeria!“
“Working with you, when I think about where we started and where we are now, you really helped us navigate that roller coaster. Sharing these kinds of topics can feel quite uncomfortable, but you made us feel genuinely at ease. That safe space allowed us to dive deep and really work on the hard things. I find myself reflecting on what we discussed long after our sessions. You were there at one of the lowest lows of our journey. The fact that we are smiling now, you are part of that. I would highly recommend you to other founders without hesitation. And this is not goodbye,who knows what is around the corner.”!“
“What I really appreciate about our sessions is the incredible diversity of topics we covered. We started off not quite knowing what we wanted to discuss, both of us had different things on our minds, yet they crossed in unexpected ways. What emerged felt natural and right. The tools you taught us, particularly non-violent communication, were incredibly helpful. We already had a good baseline when we started, but these tools took things further, especially during some really tricky times in the last few weeks, where they genuinely helped us build better understanding and communication as co-founders. A big thank you for the variety of topics and the tools you gave us. So, so helpful.”
“As part of the great privilege, we at Access Israel had this year, to be chosen as one of the ten selected projects by Ashoka’s Impact Transfer program, with our Mystery customer project and to be one of the projects selected by Project Zero as an innovating leading project for replication, I received a huge gift that is Valeria.
From day one, Valeria, who was assigned to me as a mentor throughout the program, understood our project perfectly, asked questions that made me think and raised new ideas all the time that already improve the existing product, and all along saw the great potential and how it should be presented and replicated.
Our sessions were very professional in a very pleasant, instructive, goal-oriented atmosphere and always with a smile! There is a big difference in managing such a complex process, and even more when it is remotely through zoom, when done with a person who on the one hand is professional and very busy but on the other hand, so pleasant, without a drop of condescension and always give the feeling that our time is equally important.
As it was my first opportunity to experience a program that incorporates diverse worlds of business development, thanks to Valeria, who helped me to finetune the impact strategy, replication and marketing strategy of our service I now feel I know how to look at the service we offer from other angles, how to ask the questions that will promote it and keep it relevant to the worlds we want to enter as well as an understanding of investor-entrepreneur relationship. We also worked on storytelling and pitch preparation for the Zero Conference in Vienna that helped me a lot to at the end perform in front of all these people.
I’m 100% sure my experience wouldn’t have been the same without Valeria!
Thank you so much again for all the support and help.
Lilach.“
“Having Valeria as our mentor for the Zero Ashok Impact Replication project was both fun and useful. Being a social entrepreneur herself she is clear on how to shape your business model…She ably fine-tunes your ideas to give them shape. Her ability to both add to ,and actually perk up your communication, is worth mentioning…Valeria takes her role seriously, keen to follow up ,participate in discussions, and most importantly makes work fun….. I like her work and working with her!“
“Valeria is an attentive listener and an active group member. Valeria balances very well the need to go ahead and focus on the content as well as on the personal situation of her client. Especially, when external circumstances are challenging, she is open to change plans and puts herself in the shoes of her client. This is very helpful for me since circumstances and hence the project had to be adapted and changed. Valeria always refers back to the core mission and purpose and she makes one realise where to focus. Additionally, she is very supportive with creative ideas and thinking from different perspectives. She draws from her wide experiences as Social Entrepreneur as well as Marketing expert. I always leave our sessions with good intentions and a set of priorities and a big smile:) “
“There is no doubt that Valeria is one of the most remarkable members of Catalyst 2030! Her proactivity, positive leadership and incredible capacity to build teams and facilitate them to achieve their goals, just makes her a role model for this global network of social entrepreneurs! It is a real pleasure to work with Valeria, her ability to connect with people, make them feel included and heard and get the best of each one of them is just inspiring. Her level of commitment is outstanding, and she has the great capacity to be involved in multiple initiatives of the network and succesfully help them achieve their objectives. Looking forward to keep working closely with Valeria! We are really lucky to have her as a Catalyst 2030 member, her contribution to this network has been impressive! “
“Valeria is an energizer and an inspiring social entrepreneur. Valeria’s fascinating journey has led her to deal with challenging societal problems at a local and global level such as over-tourism, and as a brilliant entrepreneur she builds and creates projects and solutions, takes different strategies –policy changing, grassroots work with the people and flips every stone to promote a solution. I participated with Valeria in the Ashoka Mediterranean Visionary Program. Throughout the program, Valeria connected with people, led the teamwork, made sure to build organized programs, and connected very different and diverse people to common challenges. Today we are collaborating on a new project, a movement striving for co-existence between people around the Mediterranean and Europe regions. Valeria continues to promote the connection between the people and is constantly looking for more places to impact. She is undoubtedly one of the most exciting entrepreneurs and managers I have ever met.“
“I was privileged to be part of the Tourism Allies Global Talent Impact Program as a Research and Ecosystem Analyst Intern. Valeria was an amazing supervisor who guided me through my research internship with a key interest in enabling me to grow both professionally and personally. Professionally, she took time to teach me new analytical and research skills and gave me an opportunity to own the process through co-creating my mandates and learning journey. Valeria was keen to enabling us, all the interns, to grow in areas we were interested in thus she gave me opportunities to hone my leadership skills through leading intern teams and owning the internship experience. One of my key takeaways from the Global Talent Impact is getting to experience the power of collaboration and collective intelligence as I worked together with other interns and Valeria on different projects.
She also was and is a great career mentor in the social impact/innovation sector who was ready to listen and guide. I worked on social innovation projects and sessions with her where I learnt a lot about sustainability, transformative change and the social impact world. I particularly appreciate this as she identified my passion in the sector and gave me the platform to learn and grow.
She was keen in creating a work environment that was fun, that built relationships and that was productive which made working quite interesting and lovely. I enjoyed chatting with Valeria about development, international experiences and life as she was passionate and ready to share her experiences and views of the world. Her passion for transformative change in the world is amazing and I am privileged to be associated with her. I plan to continuously keep engaging with Tourism Allies as I love what they stand for and I am grateful for the opportunity to keep enagaging.“
“Valeria is a visionary leader and an inspiring mentor. I feel so lucky for the opportunity I had to learn from her and to support the mission of Venezia Autentica. Through my internship I was given incredible learning and growth opportunities, individualized mentorship, and opportunities to go above and beyond. I was challenged but also felt seen and supported, and felt like I could truly be myself at work. In one summer, we were able to accomplish so much more than we had originally outlined in the job description thanks to Valeria’s leadership and mentorship. She held me accountable, provided useful feedback, and pushed me to the best of my capabilities. Being able to learn from a creative and interdisciplinary entrepreneur like Valeria has inspired my own plans to pursue a career in sustainability and social innovation. “
“I worked with Valeria as she was my supervisor when I took part in Tourism Allies’ Global Talent Impact Program in the summer of 2022. She is highly organised and helped me carefully through every step of the internship programme while still allowing me independence to grow and learn.
During one of our first meetings we laid out goals and expectations which I thought was incredibly helpful because it enabled me to understand what the expectations were of me and how the organisation could help me achieve my goals also. I was able to be challenged but also supported, for example she was able to check in with me to see if felt comfortable with the tasks set whilst also allowing me creative freedom. The environment that was created was very safe and collaborative. I was able to learn new skills from her like teambuilding, how to hold meetings correctly and record minutes and agendas. These key skills I learnt I will take on in the future and thus I am very grateful to have this level of tailored mentorship.
Being more confident in my designing was one of the tasks that I had set myself going into this project from the very beginning and I’m so proud that I’ve managed to achieve this with Valeria’s help. Moreover, I hope to use my experience and growth in confidence with Tourism Allies to go forward and create a successful design and illustration career. I would enjoy working on a project like this again and it has definitely given me an insight into the world of sustainability and how I can contribute with my design work.
In regard to my future, I plan to stay engaged with the organisation after my internship ends. I’m so grateful that I am able to continue the relationship with the organisation because I love what they stand for and love working with the team. I can tell that the organisation really values the people that they work with and I really appreciate that. Finally, I really value contributing to something bigger than myself and the goals of the organisation and Valeria is something that is truly admirable.“
“Valeria is an inspiring person with a lot of positive energy. We attended together the Ashoka Visionary Programme in Athens and she had a very active role within the group, always ready to propose new ideas and assist others. In the focus groups that we worked together, I noticed her analytical thinking and her innovative spirit. She provided new perspectives and solutions that would be considered out of the box. Her communicative skills and her continuous energy motivated the whole group! “
“Our paths crossed with Valeria in the summer of 2022. We have started conversations about spending my mandatory internship period for my master’s program with Tourism Allies. She was quite kind, understanding, and patient from the very beginning of the process. She was willing to assist in any way she could. She never compromised her professionalism while making things easy for everyone. So we made a great start, and I started working with her as a research intern in the fall of 2022. Working with Valeria is definitely an unusual and unique experience. She is a professional who cares about people, listens to their thoughts and wishes, and always tries to find the middle ground. She takes her job very seriously and cares about the people she works with. She is not just a professional who cares about work and what needs to be done but also about the well-being of the people she works with. It is an invaluable, hard-to-find feeling in today’s business world. She was always in close contact with the people she worked with from the very beginning of the process; everything was planned in such a way that the individual boundaries and spaces of the people were respected. She gives people space to develop, expand their imagination, be proud of their work, and be happy. She is a very supportive, encouraging, and positive leader.She is quite good at managing challenging processes, both personally and professionally. She is a unique mentor. It’s inspiring to chat with her and talk about work.In a professional sense, she has a lot to add to society, the future, the world, and individuals. Her ideas and vision are exciting and impressive. During my internship / volunteer period, she did not hesitate to transfer her knowledge and expertise, not only in the field of research but also in many interdisciplinary fields. I have learned things in many different fields beyond what I thought I could learn. Working with Valeria and assisting her in implementing her values and thoughts has added a lot to me and brought me joy. I am happy and proud to be a member of the community in which she is involved.”
Looking for more leadership endorsements?
Discover how global leaders and collaborators describe working alongside Valeria
Thank you for the exceptional presentation! We need to plan ahead in order to preserve our city-system!
I really enjoyed your sessions on systems change and ecosystem mapping. You came across as a genuine educator. Your material resonated most with my team’s work.
Thank you for sharing your experience today. It was really inspiring!
Thank you for these 2 days of workshops that really helped me progress. I have been able to learn new mechanisms that will help me in my future life and projects.
Thanks for these 2 days, it was a really interesting and relevant module. It will really help us with our project. You are a great teacher who knows how to capture and maintain our attention and make learning interesting and fun through projects and exchanges between peers. I have learnt a lot.
Really interesting. Allows understanding how to really approach a problem rather than focusing on its symptoms. Of all that we have done [during this bachelor], according to me, these 2 days have been the most insightful on how to handle a social problem. Really pleasant and human facilitator. 2 really good days!
Do not change, you know how to keep the attention and it is very important!
Loved to work on real problems that exist and on problematics of today and tomorrow!
Very relevant! Clear explanations of several methods. As you are an entrepreneur and social innovator yourself, we were able to understand your methodology and will be able to use these techniques and tips in our future projects
The methodologies were really useful. Thank you!
The group exercises were very interesting!
Thanks a lot! I am now able to solve problems taking into account what is around them!
This was very interesting! It really helped me change my vision of social innovation and allowed me to better understand how a real project is being built!
It made us challenge ourselves and our thinking! Great!
I enjoyed thinking outside the box and being creative!
Very interesting! Really liked it!
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Valeria based and does she work internationally?
Valeria is based in France and works worldwide. She is available for in-person and remote engagements across all geographies and has worked across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
In what languages does Valeria work?
English, French and Italian. Working understanding of Spanish.
Does Valeria work in person or remotely?
Both. Format is adapted to what serves the engagement and the people involved best.
I am a founder or impact leader feeling stretched. How do I know which type of support is right for me?
You do not need to know before reaching out. The best starting point is a short conversation to understand your situation, your organisation and what would actually move things forward. From there, the right modality, whether coaching, advising, a thought partnership or something more embedded, will become clear. Reach out and Valeria will help you find the right fit.
Can supporting organisations or funders commission Valeria's services for their cohorts or grantees?
Yes. Valeria works with accelerators, fellowships, funding organisations and other supporting organisations and programmes to provide peer-level coaching, advisory and training for the leaders they support. Institutional partners have included Ashoka, UN SDSN, Empow'Her and the European Union Social Innovation Competition. Get in touch to explore a partnership.
What happens after I reach out?
Every enquiry is answered personally by Valeria. She will suggest a short introductory conversation to understand your situation and explore fit. There is no obligation and no pressure.
Is Valeria currently available for new engagements?
Yes. Valeria is actively exploring her next executive mandate and board appointments and is available for a select number of advisory, speaking and training engagements. Reach out to discuss availability.
How are fees and investment discussed?
Investment is discussed as part of the initial conversation and tailored to the engagement, the scope and the context. There is no standard rate card.
How can I collaborate or partner with Valeria beyond a formal service engagement?
Valeria is open to conversations of all kinds: coalitions, joint initiatives, research collaborations, informal partnerships and more. If you have an idea or a shared interest, reach out. Not every conversation needs to lead to a formal engagement.
Is pro bono or discounted support available?
A portion of Valeria's time each year is reserved for organisations working on causes she is personally committed to. See the Pay it Forward page for the full list of supported causes and eligible services.
What is the Dream Big Act Bigger series and how can I get involved?
Dream Big Act Bigger is Valeria's interview series exploring how global leaders and changemakers, from the frontline to the boardroom, unlock imagination and potential for outsized impact. Conversations span systems change, social and political innovation, economic transformation and the future of leadership. Subscribe on Substack to be notified when the first episodes go live.
How can I stay in touch with Valeria?
Subscribe to Outsized on Substack for the conversation series and her direct handle for all her posts on the platform (both launching soon). You can also follow Valeria on LinkedIn for updates on her work and engagements.
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