My name is Evelina. I’m a social entrepreneur and a change maker.
I love being in the centre of action – leading, coordinating and making a difference – and I love to do this together with other people. I’m always looking for new challenges and ways of realising my ideas.
I work with business development, project management, and marketing, mainly within social entrepreneurship, sustainable development, CSR and business ethics and current economic paradigms in transformation. I do academic research, write, moderate conferences and debates and give lectures. I’m an expert on using creativity to make sustainable development and change understandable and fun.
First project at age of 5
I organized my first project when I was four or five years old. My grandfather, my sister and I organized circus performances in my grandparents’ kitchen. We made tickets and practiced our horse and elephant performances on our grandfather’s back. Lap after lap on the kitchen floor.
I found this piece of paper when I was cleaning out my childhood stuff. You know, sometimes you tell a story so many times you start wondering if it actually happened. But now I’ve got solid proof. This is a photo of one of the poster we made for one of our kitchen shows. I think it’s my great grandmother Lisbeth who wrote it for us. My sister, Emelie, and I signed with our names.
I was born in the province of Dalarna in Sweden in 1981. I spent my childhood in the city of Falun, and my teenage years on my parents’ farm close to Stockholm intensively playing theatre, riding, competing with our horses, studying and travelling.
Establishing the SIP Network
When I’d finished high school I moved the city of Växjö to work. During my years in Växjö I started The SIP Network (Nätverket SIP). The SIP Network is comprised of a bunch of organisation working to support young peoples’ ideas, specifically focusing on gender equality, innovative thinking, entrepreneurship, empowerment and how youngsters use new media. I was around 18 when we started the first activities, throughout the years to organization grew and expanded. I couldn’t have gotten a better leadership training than being responsible for dussins of employees, big budgets, various boards, financiers and the members’ interests.
The second poster from the left came with a feature in a regional newspaper on one of the biggest LAN parties we organized.
Moving to a new country
In September 2007 I decided to move to Austria. Yes, of course it was love that lured me here! New people, new language and new challenges… exactly what my soul and brain needed. During the summer of 2008 I also discovered a new sport – triathlon. Exactly what my body needed!
Life taking a new turn
In February and March 2009 I went on a five weeks long trip to southern India together with my dear friend and business partner Gayathri Rathinavelu. We visited Gayathri’s family and spent a wonderful week on the Andaman Island. (Paradise on earth!) The trip was one of the most valuable I’ve ever done. I love to practice my capabilities of seeing things from different perspectives – and India trip certainly offered that. What we saw and experiences on the Andaman islands, in Tamil Nadu and Kerala really made me think about what I want to do with my life. India is a country of extremes; poverty, amazing nature, lacking social security, crowded temples, and delicious food. Everything is different from back home – and still with all of our individual differences and similarities we all live on this planet together. Knowing that there are many things we need to work on to make our coexistence with each other and with the planet this is what I want to focus on.
During the trip, me and Gayathri found out that we have many similar goals in life and since we are both dedicated social entrepreneurs we decided we should start doing more things together. This is where The Good Tribe was born.
Me getting blessed by a an elephant in Meenachi Temple in Maduari, Tamil Nadu.
My focus
My focus in The Good Tribe is business and concept development, sales and marketing. In September 2009 I also started to study an MBA, majoring in CSR and Business ethics. I expect to graduate during the winter of 2012. The title of my master’s thesis, which I’m writing together with fellow tribster Michael Bauer-Leeb is “Social Entrepreneurs and Business Angels — A quest for factors facilitating business relationships”.
Thank you for visiting my blog and taking your time to get to know me!
Evelina Lundqvist, December 2011