Charly Kleissner

Biographical Information
"Dr. Charly Kleissner is a philanthropic entrepreneur utilizing his high technology background in his venture philanthropy. He is co-founder of the KL Felicitas Foundation and the Social-Impact initiative, and serves on the Advisory Board of multiple not-for-profit companies like Acumen Fund, Global Social Benefit Incubator, Alliance for a New Humanity, and Global Philanthropy Forum.

"Charly has over twenty years of experience as a senior technology executive in Silicon Valley. He held executive and senior engineering management positions at Ariba Inc., RightPoint, NeXT Software Inc., Digital Equipment Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Company. Charly serves on the Advisory Board of multiple for-profit start-up companies like Papilia and Rearden Commerce Inc.

"Charly is now focusing on braking down the barrier between the for-profit sector and the not-for-profit sector by creating social enterprises as hybrid business structures, insisting that both vehicles can be effective for achieving social change. To that end, he has co-founded ‘Flowing Currents’, a for-profit entity in Sri Lanka as well as ‘Aspira’, a not-for-profit entity in Sri Lanka, both focused on providing biomass and other renewable energy solutions to the rural population.

"Charly earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science specializing in distributed databases from the University of Technology, Vienna. He authored two software patents and published numerous articles. In 2004, Charly received the ‘Distinguished Alumnus’ award from the University of Technology, Vienna."


 * Team, Conscious Business Institute