Co-Founder & CFOYunus Social Business
Sophie is Co-founder and CFO of Yunus Social Business Global Initiatives (YSB), founded by Peace Nobel Laureate Prof. Yunus. YSB has the goal to help create social businesses. YSB enables entrepreneurs to create social businesses by providing non-financial support and financing. YSB is based in Germany with local subsidiaries and teams in 7 countries. YSB consists of 40+ employees globally, plus volunteer consultants and network of supports
Prior to YSB, Sophie was the Director of the Grameen Creative Lab (GCL), responsible for large Social Business country initiatives which GCL initiated, including Haiti and Albania. Previously, Sophie worked as a strategy consultant for Siemens Management Consulting in Munich as well as financial analyst for GE Capital in London, Amsterdam and Munich. She lectured at universities in Milano, in Bogota and in Tirana on the topic of Social Business.
Sophie headed up the YSB Haiti initiative for the past 4 years and has since 2015 taken over the leadership for the YSB Colombia initiative. YSB Colombia incubates social businesses in Healthcare, Agriculture and Food. YSB has created a joint venture with McCain, the Canadian potato production and marketing company. The Social Business joint venture Campo Vivo supports and trains local farmers to plant and market potato thus achieve a higher and stable income. Besides Sophie is initiating various other Corporate Partnerships globally.
She holds an MBA from European Business School, Oestrich-Winkel Germany and a MBA in International Business from INSEAD. She studied abroad in Argentina, the US, Singapore and France and worked in a number of countries including the US, China, UK, Netherlands, Haiti, Bangladesh, Colombia and Dubai. She is founding member of Step-up, a network which helps disadvantaged young people in Germany to pursue their academic studies.