My name is Maria Nefeli Chatziioannidou and I am a social entrepreneur. I graduated from Bocconi University, with a Bachelor’s Degree in International Economics, Finance, and Management and from the University of Northampton with a Master’s Degree in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I founded my first social enterprise "Code it Like a Girl" (CLG) in 2013, aiming to solve the problem of gender inequality in STEM fields. In 2019, I created my second social venture called "Great Women" (Yperoxes Gynaikes), with a mission to educate, empower and motivate whoever identifies as women to participate, create and develop projects that have a positive impact in the communities they live in. Additionally, Great Women provide services to organizations and corporations that want to adjust and invest in Corporate Social Responsibility strategies in their business operations and increase their positive impact to society. Great Women is after two years, a community of more than 92.000 women.
I collaborate and provide consulting services on social innovation and entrepreneurship to several organizations and start-ups in Greece and I am a mentor in Prince’s Trust International- Be Your Own Boss, WOMENTORS at Lamprakis Foundation and Women on Top. I have participated in various conferences with proposals for the refugee crisis and I participated in “WOMEN INNOVATORS in SOCIAL ENTERPRISES” (WISE) Program, a program of the European Commission where I was awarded as one of the five Top Women Innovators of the Program. In March 2020 I became a member of Women Mediterranean Fund and in October I became one of the twenty female social entrepreneurs of Women Act Europe through its program Empow Her. I was in the European list of EuClid Network of the Top 100 Women in Social Enterprises 2021.