Project Description
Laura Talsma
Holanda
The User’s Advocate
Laura is an impatient optimist – walking on the edge of technology, business, social science and design. Challenging the status quo with new systems, technology and products. Collaborating with pioneers of promising technology to succeed with the wisdom and insights of their future target market. While working in Indonesia, the idea originated to connect worlds – of different cultures, but also the makers of new products and their end users. The result of it: The User’s Advocate, a company that aims to create social enterprises that are engines of positive impact while creating a profit. Working with a global network of designers, engineers, inventors and end users – TUA has successfully brought user testing and insights into the R&D of both startups and large enterprises.
With experience in East and Southern Africa, Angola, Europe, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Colombia, Brazil, and North America, Laura’s boots are in the mud where new innovations are about to change the world.
Laura is helping R&D teams in Clean Tech to enter emerging markets worldwide, by organizing pilots in actual use context and lean business model validation. She is also co-founder of PayGo Energy, a company based in Kenya that provides households with clean cooking gas. By developing a smart meter and distribution chain, we can now offer access to a pay per use gas service which fits the budgets and needs of households living on a small budget. PayGo has recently won the Village Capital Hardware Africa competition and is one of the upcoming enterprises in sustainable energy provision.
Laura is an avid sailor, traveler, ice skater, hiker, happiest when joined by groups of free, inspiring thinkers from all over the world, or when challenged with a seemingly impossible, game changing business idea.
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