Yonca Braeckman
Yonca Braeckman is the founder & CEO of Impact Shakers, a global impact ecosystem tackling complex societal and environmental challenges through inclusive entrepreneurship. She is a mission-driven entrepreneur and investor in underrepresented founders. With the Impact Shakers Microfund, she created a financing instrument with the double goal of investing 'family and friends' sized tickets and introducing new people to impact investing with a very low barrier to entry.
She helped build the Belgian and European tech startup ecosystems and is a sought-after startup mentor and jury member. She has advised and mentored hundreds of startups and was involved in global startup programmes & competitions like Empow’Her, Village Capital, IBM Hyper Protect, PayPal Finance Forward, SXSW & Slush. She built a new smart city hub in Ghent, Belgium, with an in-house acceleration program called Watt Factory.
Yonca serves on the board of Kaira Fund, a new philanthropic fund investing in systemic change. She was selected for the new group of Belgian changemakers “40 under 40” to help advance bold societal goals and was named as one of the "Top 100 most influential women in the European startup and VC ecosystem" in 2023.