Explore how to turn shared purpose into collective action

Polona Novak is a global change advisor, ICF-certified coach, and PROSCI practitioner with over 15 years of experience in HR and leadership across international tech companies. She helps individuals and organizations turn transformation into growth by aligning business goals with human potential. Her mission: to empower leaders and teams to shift mindset, grow, and thrive.

As we close the SIA 2025 chapter, this session offers space for reflection, sharing, and celebration. Together, we’ll look back on our individual and collective journeys as SIA Coordinators — recognizing the moments that shaped us, the challenges we’ve overcome, and the achievements we’re proud of. Through guided reflection and group dialogue, we’ll celebrate growth and appreciate one another’s contributions.

True communication doesn’t come from unlimited budgets or safe, predictable ideas. It comes from courage, creative thinking, and the willingness to challenge the ordinary. When our work carries a positive purpose—when it makes a meaningful difference for society—every decision becomes an opportunity to push boundaries and exceed expectations. We will also explore how to craft winning cases and win the hearts of your users.

How can smart marketing turn a startup into a global success story?

Žiga from Freecompany shares how partnering with Spartan Agency – both as investor and marketing powerhouse – helped them grow beyond borders.

Tjaša reveals the strategy behind it: how digital channels, creative storytelling, and data-driven decisions fueled the company’s expansion.

As a young social entrepreneur, it’s easy to fall into common traps of startup life: overworking, blurring the lines between work and life, or pushing through exhaustion because you’re passionate about your mission.And the best way to prevent these and ensure long-term success as well as wellbeing is energy management, the art of understanding your most valuable resource in life.By understanding how to harness your energy highs and lows, you can optimise productivity, embrace guilt-free rest, and maintain long-term resilience as social entrepreneurs.This session will introduce you to the fundamentals of energy management, helping you prevent burnout, boost motivation, and make more impactful decisions both personally and professionally.

We will take a look at how Co-Design is practiced at Independo and the benefits it creates. Then, we’ll get hands-on with how to include users, partners, or stakeholders in your own projects.

This is a closed session, designated for the SIA Stratgeic Group and Coordinators.

GoTo Market Canvas is a simple, Day 0, strategy building tool with a structured framework that will help you uncover your go to market strategy and give you action items to work on. This works well for all idea stage products and services across sectors and industries.

Less than a month after Slovenia adopted the EU’s first ESOP law – a reform that the Institute for Economic Democracy (IED) began advocating for back in 2019 – Kosta, Director of Operations at IED, will take us through the tumultuous journey that led a small but highly motivated group of individuals to shape public discourse on employee ownership in their country and beyond.

This session shares the journey of turning an idea from SIA 2023 into tangible social impact across Ukraine. Through personal storytelling and hands-on demonstrations, participants will explore how AI tools can enhance educational initiatives, discover practical strategies for engaging youth in social innovation, and learn from real-world experience of delivering 100+ workshops on digital literacy. The session combines inspiration with actionable tools participants can apply to their own ventures.

Whether it is philanthropic funding, corporate funding, or public funding, the vast majority of social entrepreneurs rely on such sources as part of their business models. But how to identify such funding opportunities? How to approach those funders? How to negotiate with them successfully to close attractive funding partnerships? And how to keep those partners engaged and involved?

This peer-to-peer session is designed to help participants tap into each other’s experience, ideas, and insights. Everyone brings their own challenges — and together, you’ll work through them in small groups, offering feedback, tips, and fresh perspectives.

Key objectives:

• Leverage the collective know-how of peers
• Get feedback and outside perspectives on your own challenges
• dentify shared questions and solutions
• Exchange resources, insights, and motivation

This session explores how career launch built and evolve their social company by walking through the customer journey, from the first pilot users to a growing, engaged community. You’ll see how feedback shaped their programs, communication, and product iterations, and how staying close to their users turned them into co-creators of the mission itself.

Social entrepreneurship can be a deeply rewarding and pleasurable work experience. At the same time, it puts a high demands on founders, often causing stress and sometimes serious challenges for well-being. In this session, I will share findings of some of the first studies into the mental well-being of social entrepreneurs (including your fellow SIA alumni) and how it can be retained. The session will also invite you to reflect on your own ways to ensure well-being as a founder and connect with other alumni who care about mental well-being.

Step up and share your project idea! The Pitching Stage is an open session where anyone can practice presenting their concept in a supportive environment. Get valuable, independent feedback from experienced SIA alumni and fellow participants to sharpen your pitch, build confidence, and take your idea to the next level.

In this 90-minute interactive session, Aldo Pancardo — founder of Dis-CapaciTodos and Social Impact Award Mexico winner — presents “The ARC of Inclusion,” a framework showing how inclusion evolves from social responsibility to economic strategy. Using global market data, cases from Latin America and Eastern Europe, and an exercise, participants will learn what the can improved anad drives growth, competitiveness, and sustainable impact.

Discover a dynamic environment dedicated to design, craftsmanship, and innovation. Get to know more about their diverse workshops and labs, including metalwork, ceramics, and more, that support makers, creators, and social entrepreneurs in shaping sustainable futures.

Meeting Point is at the main entrance of Center Rog.

War, a climate crisis, economic uncertainty, anger, anxiety. The tides have changed. How does SIA meet this moment in time? Come shape the future of SIA’s identity

Get crafty with your Aha-moments & visualize what you want to take home

The ultimate competency for leading in volatility is emotional regulation. This executive session confronts the Validation Trap, a primary source of strategic paralysis.

This peer-to-peer session is designed to help participants tap into each other’s experience, ideas, and insights. Everyone brings their own challenges — and together, you’ll work through them in small groups, offering feedback, tips, and fresh perspectives.

Key objectives:

• Leverage the collective know-how of peers
• Get feedback and outside perspectives on your own challenges
• Identify shared questions and solutions
• Exchange resources, insights, and motivation

This session invites young social entrepreneurs, founders and changemakers to explore how inclusive, intersectional leadership can strengthen collaboration, authenticity, and social impact guided by the African philosophy of Ubuntu (“I am because we are”).

Participants will reflect on the challenges many founders face when working across cultures and identities such as staying authentic while navigating mainstream expectations, building truly inclusive teams, or managing representation and responsibility within their communities. Through guided discussion and interactive exercises, they’ll learn how Ubuntu values like empathy, shared growth, and interconnectedness can help them lead more effectively and collaboratively.

This is a closed session, designated for the SIA Youth Council.