Dimitris Messinis

• Founded Mindspace, a nonprofit aiming to make students entrepreneurial. • Growing and establishing the organization regionally, with operations in the Balkans and the U.S., I had to raise funds from private and institutional investors, manage 100s of volunteers, hire and manage permanent staff, hire a board of directors, represent the organization in media, essentially learning how to successfully manage multiple stakeholders, bringing the right people together and allocating resources to get results. • Invited to U.S. government’s premier leadership program (IVLP). 338 chiefs of state among their alumni, such as Nicolas Sarkozy, Tony Blair • Won the U.S. Department of State’s AEIF grant. There were only 64 winners (only 6 of them in Europe) among 1400 organizations from 150 countries. • Greek Ministry of Education invited me as advisor for innovation of Greek universities. • Through our ‘Mindspace Trip’ program, 60+ student startup founders visited the U.S., meeting with employees at Google, Facebook, Uber, Salesforce - with professors at MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley and with accelerators like MassChallenge.