Daria Tataj

Daria Tataj is a strategy advisor, board member and entrepreneur. She has over 20 years of business and public policy experience in the emerging markets and in the most advanced global knowledge economies. Dr. Tataj is the Chairwoman of High-Level Advisors to Carlos Moedas, the EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation. She also advises the World Economic Forum, multinational companies, governments, investors and high-potential teams. The CEO of TATAJ Innovation, a strategy and investment firm, she founded the company with a mission to help cities build innovation districts.

Author, researcher and educator, she is regularly invited to speak about innovation and the growth models for the network economy around the world. Her book ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship. A New Growth Model for Europe beyond the Crisis’ (Tataj Innovation Library New York, 2015) was endorsed by the Holberg Prize winner Manuel Castells as ‘a fundamental, innovative book on innovation that will reshape the way we think about innovation and may yield the most needed policy lessons for a new model of growth in the aftermath of the economic crisis’. Written for the global audience, the book has been presented in a number of cities including New York, Trento, Brussels, Madrid and Dubai.

Dr. Tataj was one of the architects of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and its Knowledge and Innovation Communities serving for six years as an Executive Member of the EIT founding Board. The EIT is the key EU funding institution that brings together best research institutes, universities, industry and high-growth companies in Europe in climate, energy, ICT, health, food and raw materials. The KICs were recognised as some of the most successful innovation, entrepreneurship and education policy experiments for the 21st century, and eventually the EIT received a multibillion EUR budget.

Daria believes that it is important to help improve the world. Alumna of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council, she serves as a jury for the European Space Agency Sustainability Award, and has been mentoring students-entrepreneurs at the University of Michigan, Princeton, and many challenges and pitch competitions. She has been recognised by FORTUNE Magazine as one of emerging global women business leaders, the Social Innovator 2014 in Poland, and the VV100 Fellow by Vital Voices Global Partnership. Currently, she lives and works in Barcelona.