About Lisa Jaspers, Founder and CEO of FOLKDAYS

Lisa started FOLKDAYS with her friend Kimon Haars to transform the image of fair trade in Germany, making it attractive to a younger, design-conscious audience. Before she started the company she worked for OXFAM and for a public sector consultancy. Lisa studied political sciences and development economics at the Freie Universität Berlin and the London School of Economics.

Lisa is not only an entrepreneur, but also an activist. Besides talking about ethical consumption and social entrepreneurship at events and panels, she started her #fairbylaw petition on Change.org which demanded the German government to pass a law that makes companies liable for what happens in their value chains. More than 175,000 people have signed the petition so far. 

In 2019 Lisa teamed up with her friend Naomi Ryland (co-founder of tbd*) to write the business book Starting a Revolution – What we can learn from female entrepreneurs about the future of business . Since founding their companies, Naomi and Lisa have been on the lookout for meaningful business advice but hardly any of the advice they heard from the startup world, and read in business books, seemed up to the challenges of our time, like climate change, deeply divided societies, growing inequality, and a disillusioned and burnt-out workforce. So they went on the lookout for new ideas and new role models, choosing to focus on a group of people who have been previously underrepresented in business (literature): women. After the successful self-publication in English, the business book was published in German translation by Econ (Ullstein Buchverlage) in August 2020. 



Photo: Lena Scherer