Felix Guttmann
Felix Guttmann is a successful serial entrepreneur in Amsterdam, working in various fields for over 30 years.
He is the initiator and chairman of Amsterdam Light Festival, a non-profit cultural festival, which since 2012 has used the universal language of light art in public space to connect and enrich people. The festival gives artists commissions to produce new work, attracts a very wide audience and has made a significant contribution to the awareness of this relatively new art discipline. The light art developed for it is subsequently shown worldwide.
For many years Felix was active in tourism. He built Canal Company to become the market leader in sightseeing in Amsterdam with more than 350 employees. The company was successfully sold to the Scandinavian Stromma Group in 2016.
Felix holds and has held a variety of board positions, both in the profit and non-profit sectors, both in the Netherlands and internationally and both large-scale and small. He is used to sharing his knowledge. Some of his experiences include:
Tourism:
- Over 20 years co-chairman of the European Tour Operators Association (London), which in that time grew from a small association to the leading trade organization for tourism in Europe,
- founder and for many years chairman of VEVAG (Association of Boat Operators in the Amsterdam Canals).
Social/cultural:
- Founder and Chairman of the Board of Amsterdam Light Festival,
- Executive Board Member of Humanity in Action Inc (New York); organization active in 6 countries that activates young talent to not be a 'bystander' in the field of human rights, (for several years also board member Humanity in Action Netherlands),
- since 2017 supervisory board of the Jewish Historical Museum,
- co-founder and board member of St. Amarte Fund, a cultural fund (ANBI) that supports
innovative artists both financially and with expertise
- was a member of the Amsterdam Economic Board, Tourism and Conventions cluster,
- board member Henry Hudson 500 (who played a role as Henry Hudson 400 in the celebration of 400 years of relations between Amsterdam - New York),
Education:
- was for over ten years an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at RSM, Erasmus
University's MBA program
- was chairman of the St. European Business Plan of the Year Competition, a
European cooperation between top universities where business plan competitions were organized to stimulate entrepreneurship among MBA students,
Social Impact
From the beginning of his career, Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility have guided his actions. He consciously chose the human-powered pedal boat as a means of sightseeing in 1984, was the first in Europe to introduce clean CNG (natural gas) engines in ships in the early 1990s, and played an important role in the next step with electric motors and hydrogen. Canal Company was for many years a member of Social Venture Network Europe and held the Golden Green Key, the industry standard for CSR.
In the current phase following the transfer of the company, the Guttmann family is involved in several Social Impact investments. They are active members of the international ‘Toniic 100%’ network and the Dutch PYMWYMIC.
Felix was appointed Knight of the Order of Oranje-Nassau in 2009 and was elected Amsterdam Entrepreneur of the Year in 2010. In 2018, he was awarded the Frans Banninck Cocq penning of the City of Amsterdam. In 2022, he debuted as an actor in "1000 Ships" at Amsterdam On Stage.