Sian Young SDG’s Accidental’ #techpreneur in Luxembourg

When the SDG Assessment team got a call from  Luxembourg House of Finance (LHoFT) informing us that we had been accepted to 2022  ‘Catapult Kickstarter’ we were excited by this opportunity.

We were  surprised as we were just settling into the pre-christmas vibe after achieving finalist status at the 3 month QBE AcceliCITY Challenge with the amazing Leading Cities. Where we as a team paid this experience forward by providing 35 days of business training for women in Guatemala. 

However, we are an agile team here at SDG Assessment and as our team member Sian Young was the only team member able to attend she embarked on a trip to Luxembourg.

Sian has a 3 year old daughter and is COO of SDG Assessment and also CEO of Center for Sustainable Action you can imagine this called for some flexible thinking and teamwork to prepare our ‘accidental’ #techpreneur to attend a predominantly male #Fintech Accelerator!

‘Accidental’ #techpreneur?

Now we say ‘accidental’ #techpreneur because before co-founding SDG Assessment Sian  was the CEO of Center for Sustainable Action a not-for-profit cooperative supporting SMEs and Entrepreneurs to build sustainable enterprises. In this role Sian uses her over 20 years experience in ©Sustainable Health & Wellbeing to transform the members approach to sustainable business.

Sian Co-founded SDG Assessment with Dr Lowellyne James and Talal Bolch because it was identified that the members of the cooperative r required  a tool for for reporting  commitment to UN SDGs and carbon footprint reduction. . SDG Assessment was born so imagine her surprise when SDG Assessment Ltd  having only been open for business since May 2022 was a finalists in two globally recognised accelerators.

SDG Assessment team prepared Sian to show up at the LHoFT    contributing to the successful achievement of the Laureate Award just in time for Christmas!

What did we experience?

Catapult Kickstarter was the first 2 weeks where we met leaders from Luxembourg banking and insurance sectors. We had lessons from Compellio, PWC and Deloitte to mention a few. We really got a chance to refine our pitch online and understand Luxembourg’s cloud management and financial infrastructures.

When we arrived in Luxembourg the team at the LHoFT could not have done more to make our in person week fulfilling. Annabelle Albert supported each of the finalists to gain the most they could from the experience and Alex Panican guided our pitches to near perfection as the week went on, really testing us. 

Nasir Zubairi shared with us his expertise on how to build a winning team and we felt the product of this knowledge as we were expertly guided and supported by the LHoFT team.

We can’t name them all but Luca Mancuso, Zhanel Rakhmetova, Antony Martini, Oriane Kaesmann and Dilek Ayaydin- Batal were ever present making sure we not only learned and developed during our stay but that we were introduced to leading people in the Luxembourg #Fintech ecosystem. 

SDG Assessment seized the opportunity to pitch to leaders at PWC offices; the venue was on point for inspiring Sian’s professional speaker development. 

We also pitched to Deloitte and private VC’s which not only stretched us but showed us that the Luxembourg #Fintech community is a group of businesses ready and willing to take action on important matters such as climate change and how the financial industry will play a major part in positive change for good.

Sian Young has specific allergies and Romain Iovalone went above and beyond to make sure that her dietary requirements were accommodated .

The outcome

Sian learned a great deal to develop our business and product proposition ,   also had the opportunity to present our  pitch to leaders in the Luxembourg ecosystem and build lifelong connections both in business who  share an interest in  making a difference in this world with the financial industry leading efforts towards achieving global sustainable development goals..

We also want to give a thank you to Ian Smith who welcomed Sian Young to Luxembourg setting the scene for an excellent week of learning.

Will we be returning….. Keep checking in with us to find out how we are excelling and what’s next!

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©SDG Assessment is a research based mobile app designed to support small business sustainability, environmental social governance (ESG) planning, implementation and performance reporting. Supporting large businesses with improving value chain impacts and reducing scope 3 emissions.

We are not just saving our planet, we are saving your profits!

Author Sian Young