Our Members

Social Innovators from within and beyond the public, private and third sectors are establishing a new form of commerce for the 21st Century. The Hub Brussels is becoming the place they call home.

Our members are what make the Hub. So we take care to ensure that we have a diverse membership mix representing an array of sectors, industries and professions. What unites our membership is a passion to make a positive difference, with a strong motivation to deliver enterprising solutions that provide social and environmental as well as economic value.

Featured Members:

Martin Ophoven is the mind behind Théâtre Carbonique. Comedian and playwright with start in Communications, Martin wanted to find a means of communicating his ideals. Using his own talents as a starting point and with the encouragement of a Technical Carbon-Footprint Advisor who had had the same questions about the role of the individual in bringing a change to the world, he wrote a play based on the corporate and social responsibilities of companies. It is a humourous, thought-provoking and unconventional approach to discussing the issue of social responsibility.

He came to the Hub to be in contact with consultants who might want to implement his tool in order to affect large numbers. Furthermore he finds that the Hub reflects his ideals in terms of showing a system that accepts all perspectives in order to work towards a better world, a system in which everyone's talents and competencies work together to form a new image of the world.

To Martin, if we are blind and deaf to the individual and his/her ideas, then we end up collectively blind and deaf. He wants to encourage group learning and collective growth in which no one is left behind. His part in this collective change is to utilize living communication rather than static in order to provoke thought, reactions and, eventually, change.

Caroline Grégoire grew up in Burundi and came to Belgium for her studies. From the very beginning she wanted to be independent and control her own professional activities and she also wanted to work in a field that could be useful to the world. Thus she works as a freelance consultant in environment and as of late, sustainable development.

Her journey to joining us at the Hub came about through knowing one the founders but she joined eventually in order to network and have a pleasant place to work on her new project: a non-profit for changing the relationship between man and nature towards a more cooperative one instead of a competitive one. We wish her all the best!

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Martina Von Richter is the mother of 3 boys and a once-upon-a-time consultant for sustainable development to large businesses. However, she decided that in order to best live out her ideals, she would have to get even more proactive. From this came Imaginell , a Green toy manufacturer.

She came to the Hub due the fact that she did not have an office from which to launch this business. On the hunt for a workplace and a network, she found both in the Hub Brussels. She found it important and beneficial that she was surrounded by like-minded people who could help and encourage her efforts. There was a lot of knowledge exchange and upon the three different testings of her products, many members had enough knowledge and diversity to provide critical feedback and advice. For her, this was something that could have only occurred at the Hub.

Production of her first product has been launched sucessfully and is on sale, thanks to the help of fellow Hubbers.

In the end, Martina's main motivation was to be able to answer honestly and proudly when asked by the future generation: What did you do when you saw the polar ice caps melting? What did you do when faced with the challenge of poverty? She encourages everyone to think of how they can answer that question and then act on it.