Rahel Boon

Mother of five beautiful children, Mrs. Rahel Boon-Dejene is an Ethiopian born Dutch social entrepreneur who aims to bring positive impact by creating job opportunities, developing soft skills, and stimulating entrepreneurship mindset as to build condusive ecosystem for visionary young professionals. Mrs. Boon has enjoyed education in Spain, UK, Ireland and the Netherlands; she holds an honor MBA degree from the University of Wolverhampton (UK), post-master’s in social Entrepreneurship from the University of Amsterdam and BA in International Business Management from Arnhem Business School. During her MBA study, she conducted a structural research in how to setup successful social enterprises and designed models to create WIN-WIN-WIN situation for all involved stakeholders. Based on her research, she set up her first company in 2009, with the vision to be part of the social enterprise movement in The Netherlands. Being the pioneer in stimulating social enterprise, she has assisted several Dutch and Ethiopian diaspora entrepreneurs to set up their own social business in Ethiopia and has been a sparring partner for Dutch governmental bodies in how to stimulate the social sector. In 2010, she founded R&D Entrepreneurship and Outsourcing Centre plc, which is one of the first social enterprises in Ethiopia. The company serves international and local clients in (offshore) outsourcing and offers diverse business acceleration services for growth potential Small and Medium Enterprise. She is a pioneer in utilizing available resources to design sustainable business models for community driven social businesses. With focus on Human Capital optimization and IT integration, she conducted series of innovative initiatives to enforce policy change, to break taboo, to raise awareness about education, entrepreneurship, business development, sport and media. She connected +100 global professionals that are committed to be part of her movement in creating and developing future leaders. Mrs. Boon has so far created job opportunities for over 200 youngsters and work with 58 SMEs in Ethiopia. She has founded a Partners4Change, a platform for young professionals from all sector collaborate to seeking to improve sustainable development outcomes through smarter, more innovative, more effective public-private partnerships (PPPs). Committed to combating the spread of she inspires entrepreneurs and university students through mentoring, public Speaking and guest lecturing. She also acts as think-thank team around (inter)national private sector development. She has also setup an informal support system (Memar Mesrat – Learn Work) since 2015 as a pilot to gain practical experience in fostering education equality in Ethiopia. Currently 25 (from elementary to university) students sponsor’ the education of children and families of (former)employees and single mothers in Ethiopia. Based on this practical experience, the initiative is to be officially registered as to expand its services to more children, by creating an offline and online platform, to allow more children to enjoy ‘quality’ education carefree