Next guest
Jan-Philipp Ahrens
About our guest
Jan-Philipp Ahrens, profesor habilitat la Universitatea din Mannheim, conduce un grup de cercetare în AI și sustenabilitate. A publicat în reviste de top, a contribuit la rapoarte guvernamentale și a câștigat peste 30 de premii. Predă antreprenoriat, mentorând start-up-uri, și a fost cercetător invitat la universități de prestigiu, inclusiv Stanford.
Sophie Rippinger | 10.03.2025-14.03.2025
Sophie Rippinger is a freelance Circular Economy specialist. She worked for Edinburgh Innovations, the commercialisation arm of the University of Edinburgh, where she contributed to the delivery of the Venture Builder Incubator program and created the award winning EARTH Centred Business Design (ECBD) framework, a circular net zero business model toolkit for early stage start-ups.
Sophie worked as a Circular Economy Senior Consultant for Wood Group Plc where she supported multiple local and international projects including developing plastic pollution prevention policies for the World Bank and providing direct business support to small and medium enterprises wishing to move towards a Circular Economy for Zero waste Scotland. Sophie is also an accomplished Waste Manager. She has project managed new waste strategies for Ford, Renault and Peugeot while working for Veolia Environmental, implemented the waste management contractors for University of Edinburgh, and benchmarked and conducted waste management gap analysis for the University of Strathclyde and Historic Environment Scotland.
Over her 20 year career, she has engaged with hundreds of business founders. This includes students, professionals from both academic and non-academic backgrounds representing over 25 European higher education institutes, as well as entrepreneurs and workers from a wide range of business sectors.
Sophie firmly believes that the Circular Economy holds the potential to address the pressing climate crisis and environmental emergency we currently face. Therefore she adopts an interdisciplinary and experiential approach with businesses and start-ups that goes beyond traditional settings to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable society.
Jan-Philipp Ahrens 24.03.2025-30.03.2025
Jan-Philipp holds a venia legendi (Habilitation) from the Faculty of Business Studies at University of Mannheim. He is head of the interdisciplinary research group at the University of Mannheim which operates a supercomputer dedicated to AI & big data research on sustainability. His research appears in international peer-reviewed top journals, such as Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice (VHB: A), Journal of Management Studies (VHB: A), or ICIS (VHB: A). He authored books and contributed to scientific reports comissioned by German Federal Ministries. His research won or was nominated for more than 30 international peer-reviewed awards. He also holds the award for diversity & gender equality from University of Mannheim and a recognition for outstanding engagement for leading the 'task force Ukraine' of the University of Passau. Jan-Philipp is a frequent reviewer & was honored for this service by receiving a best reviewer award.
He supports the profession by co-organizing international conferences, such the European Academy of Management and the Interdisciplinary European Conference on Entrepreneurship Research. He teaches at Bachelor, Master, and PhD level (entrepreneurship, organization, management, strategic & international management), is a frequent speaker in classes for international executive education (Mannheim Business School), and has coached more than 25 start-up teams. Jan-Philipp's research is discussed in the public media, such as Deutschlandradio/Deutschlandfunk, Spiegel Online, Der Standard (Austria), Brand Eins, DIE ZEIT or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Jan-Philipp Ahrens gained his PhD (Dr. rer. pol.) from University of Mannheim (2010-2013). He was a visiting researcher at Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München & Humboldt University at Berlin. From 2013-2014 he joined the German Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin as a political advisor in business restructuring. In 2024 he was a visiting researcher at Stanford University, Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research. Marathon-Rowing is one of his passions.
He finished 3rd in the quad-scull team discipline of the international Rhine marathon contest and 1st in the eight-team of the Technical University Munich team at the Roseninsel contest.
Amnon Dekel | 5.05.2025-11.05.2025
Dr. Amnon Dekel is the Executive Director of ASPER-HUJI Innovate, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Previously, Amnon was the Head of the Software Engineering Department at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Israel. With over 20 years of experience in developing products for IT-based services and applications, as well as more than 15 years in applied research focused on User Experience and Mobile Computing, he has contributed to the launch of three companies in areas such as video sharing, personal networking, and indoor navigation. He has received numerous international awards, including a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for his work with the New York Times. Amnon holds a PhD in Computer Science from Hebrew University. He is passionate about translating art into technology and dedicates his free time to this hobby.
LinkedIn_Amnon Dekel
Debra Zahay-Blatz | 26.05.2025-01.06.2025
Debra Zahay-Blatz is full, tenured professor of marketing and former department chair of in the Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. She oversaw the inclusion of digital marketing and analytics in the undergraduate marketing and entrepreneurship curriculum and the development of a Master’s Degree program in Digital Marketing and Analytics, where she served as program director. She holds her Doctorate from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, her Master of Management from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, her Juris Doctor from Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, and her undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Dr. Zahay-Blatz researches how firms can facilitate customer relationships, particularly using customer information. She also teaches and researches leading-edge pedagogy for teaching digital marketing. She has published extensively in marketing journals in the United States and Europe. She was selected as a Fulbright Specialist in 2023. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing Analytics as well as that of Industrial Marketing Management and the Journal of Marketing Education. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing from 2012 to 2017, guiding the explosive growth in influence of that journal. She is the co-author of two Cengage Texts, Digital Marketing: Foundations and Strategy, 5th edition and Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach, third edition, and solo author of the second edition of Digital Marketing Management: A Handbook for the Current (or Future) CEO by Business Expert Press, LLC.