IRYNA SOLOVEY (Lviv, Ukraine)

Since 2008 — the strategist for community development, the president of the public organization “Garage Gang”, co-founder of the platform of social innovations “Big Idea” and strategic development consultant for the urban program “City Code”. She holds a Bachelor of Economics and Management Marketing Post-graduate Diploma from McGill University (Montreal, Canada).

Garage Gang NGO is a non-profit non-governmental organization that has been implementing the mission of resilient communities in Ukraine since 2009. Starting in 2012, together with the team, she has been successfully developing a crowdfunding mechanism Spilonokosht at the Big Idea platform biggggidea.com. The main purpose of her professional activity is to enable sustainable urban development through the strengthening of creative potential of communities, the crowdfunding of civic initiatives and entrepreneurial leadership, and the empowerment of talents to participate in self-organized initiatives. She teaches courses in Crowdfunding and Fundraising Strategies at the Ukrainian Catholic University. Regularly gives public lectures on managing urban projects, the culture of giving and strategic philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, community development, cultural change and institutional growth conflicts. Promotes the game City Synergy as a learning instrument for getting crews in sync.