Christian Gessl

Advisory Board Member

Christian Gessl is since March 2015 developing the Public Private Dialogue activity within the EU Project “East Invest 2”. He is one of the representatives of UEAPME in the Project Management Team of East Invest 2.

For the last 26 years, he was working for the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber representing the interests of the Austrian Exporters. He worked as Deputy Commercial Counsellor in South Korea, the Russian Federation and Belgium, from 2000 – 2007 as Commercial Counsellor in Ukraine and from 2007 – 2010 as Head of the Commercial office  in Barcelona.

Form 2010 – 2015 he was Director for Central Europe and the Baltics in Advantage Austria. He organized conferences like the CEE LAC Business Forum bringing together companies from Latina America and Central Eastern Europe, the Danube Region Business Forum on Value Chains in the Argo-Food Business and Forums on Touristic Infrastructure. He worked on the topic of Hidden Champions in Austria demonstrating their importance for the success of the Austrian economy.

He participated in different EU projects as expert and trainer on organisational development in Business Membership and Business Support Organisations.

Christian Gessl has a University Degree in Business Administration from the University of Innsbruck and he is an honorary doctor of Lugansk Pedagogical University.

Colin M. Donohue

Advisory Board Member

Colin is an entrepreneurial leader with a passion for helping organizations and businesses grow. He has been recognized by Google for various achievements in marketing as well as his role advising Adwords agencies and SMES.

Colin has been engaged in the Georgian startup ecosystem in increasingly deep ways for the past two years, as founder of the renewed Startup Grind Tbilisi chapter and convener of startup ecosystem improvement process including: Startup Grind Tbilisi, Organizing a delegation of Georgian startups to Startup Grind Global in Silicon Valley, Participating in the US Embassy Working Group on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Moderating of German-Georgian Startup Forum funded by GIZ and the German Embassy, Planning and facilitation of the Startup Ecosystem Strategy Retreat, a 2-day retreat in Kvareli Georgia involving 30 top leaders in the startup ecosystem

He is founder of a startup project not yet made public, and an advisor for VREX Immersive, a travel marketing platform using Virtual Reality.

Colin has consulted with numerous US companies, incubators, accelerators including award-winning ones in his home state of Ohio. He has conducted trainings for startups and diverse business audiences.

Before he switched to for-profit work he led regional and national nonprofit organizations in the US including Rural Action (director of the sustainable economies section) and National Network of Forest Practitioners. Most of his work focused on sustainable economic development, so he has over 20 years of history working with a wide variety of founders and companies from tiny rural microenterprises to nonprofit-based social enterprises to advising on big-picture entrepreneurial economy projects for donors such as Ford Foundation.

His personal founding experiences have included a fair-trade import business, Bali Karma, which received awards such as Best New Business in Athens Ohio.  Currently he operates Root Deeper Marketing, a profit-driven marketing consultancy.  In Georgia he is launching Georgian Ventures a startup ecosystem advisory company and a not-yet-announced project with a Georgian co-founder.

He currently lives in Tbilisi with his Georgian-Ukranian wife and delightful children Daniel and Nicholas.

Jonne Catshoek

Member of the Board

Jonne Catshoek is a social entrepreneur who specialises in applying mobile solutions to the field of International Development. He has been working and living in Georgia since 2009. Jonne is currently the CEO of Traktor Technologies, Georgia’s leading online agricultural marketplace. He is also the Founder and Director of Elva Community Engagement, a nonprofit that provides international development organisations on four continents with mobile solutions and strategic consultancy services to strengthen their programmes. Jonne holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from King’s College London.