One Young World is delighted to announce the winners of the One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Created to identify and promote the world’s most innovative entrepreneurs, the award honours five leaders – aged 35 and under – who have been judged on the positive social impact of their business ventures and how they are inspiring others with their leadership.
The five honourees were selected by a panel of international judges from across the business world from a shortlist of 15 young international entrepreneurs.
The winners will be presented with the Award at the One Young World 2022 Summit taking place in Manchester, 5-8 September.
The Winners
Alejandra Ríos, Mexico
Alejandra Ríos is the CEO of Ambrosía, a leading company in the creation of culinary experiences and events in Mexico. as well as Founder of investment fund Meraki Ventures. She is currently the youngest Shark on Shark Tank Mexico for their seventh season. Additionally, Alejandra is an angel investor in projects such as Básicos de México (bscs.mx), The Positive Foods (thepositivefoods.com), among other projects. She has also been actively involved in other venture capital funds such as Amplifica and 500 startups, focused on promoting entrepreneurship in Mexico and Latin America.
Clementine Jacoby, United States
Clementine Jacoby is the Founder & CEO of Recidiviz, a non-profit using technology to safely unwind mass incarceration in the United States, which has the highest rates of incarceration in the world. During COVID, Recidiviz helped states safely release 36,000 people from prison early, at a rate 3x higher than states that didn’t leverage their technology. Recidiviz offers free policy impact modelling to advocates working to advance criminal justice reforms. To date, they’ve supported bills that will return 99,000 life years to people who would otherwise be incarcerated and save states 790 million dollars to reinvest in strengthening communities and addressing the root causes of incarceration. As part of her work at Recidiviz, Clementine is outspoken about helping young technologists use their skills to change the world: to start companies and build careers that marry true social impact with real technical challenges.
Freddy Vega, Colombia
Freddy Vega is the CEO of Platzi, the largest tech school in Latin America. Every startup in the region has a Platzi student. Every country has founders that studied at Platzi. They are the growth engine of the Hispanic tech world. Platzi is the 1st company targeting Hispanics to be funded by Y Combinator (YC W15). Prior to this he was the Founder of Cristalab, the Stack Overflow of LATAM.
Keely Cat-Wells, United States
Keely Cat-Wells is an Entrepreneur and Disability Activist dedicated to making social, systemic, and economic change. Keely founded her first company at a young age during her time in hospital, which developed into C Talent. C Talent is an award-winning talent management company that represents high-profile Deaf and Disabled talent. C Talent's goal is to change the way the world views and defines disability, utilizing the entertainment, advertising, and media industries' massive reach and power. C Talent works to place disabled talent into all roles, not just disability-specific roles – normalizing disabled people being experts in subjects beyond disability. C Talent also serves as a founding member of #WeThe15, a campaign being called sports' most significant human rights movement in history – that aims to transform the lives of the one billion disabled people globally.
Steven Bartlett, United Kingdom
Steven Bartlett is the 29-year-old Founder of the social media marketing agency Social Chain. Steven is a speaker, investor, author and content creator, hosting Europe’s biggest podcasts, ‘The Diary of a CEO’. He recently released his debut book, ironically titled ‘Happy Sexy Millionaire’ which is a Sunday Times best seller. More recently, Steven has invested in and joined the board of Huel, which is the UK’s fastest growing ecommerce company internationally. He’s invested in and taken a role as an advisor in atai life sciences - a biotech company working to cure mental health disorders, and his other investments focus on blockchain technologies, biotech, space, and social media. Steven is particularly focused on inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs and creators from a BAME background and much of his work after winning the “British Black Entrepreneur of the year” award focused on disadvantaged schools and communities. Steven will join BBC’s Dragon’s Den for Series 19 this January 2022, as the youngest ever Dragon in the show’s history.
