Nina Poxleitner

I studied international management. During an exchange semester in Sweden, I came across social entrepreneurship for the first time — through cross-university courses that mixed business thinking with social purpose. That combination stayed with me.

Before starting a career, I spent time working on projects in different countries — solar energy in India, a school in Peru, rural areas in China.

What brought me back was Teach For Austria. Two years teaching English and PE at a school in Vienna's 21st district, 30 minutes from where I was living, a world I had barely known existed. It changed how I saw inequality. And it made me want to do something about it.

That's where wirkt. started. First with MTOP, connecting highly qualified refugees with employers in Austria. Then with a bigger question: what if we built more ventures like this, systematically, under one roof? Ten years later, wirkt. is an impact venture builder with six social enterprises and a team of 26.