Founders
Damianos Vavanos
Co-Founder & CEO
Damianos’ background is in Digital Marketing and Operations and has taken the role of Director. He’s worked in different NGOs all his life and recently he was working with Solidarity Mission as a Digital Marketing Consultant. Right before embarking on the Social Hackers Academy project he was travelling the world while building his businesses.
Chris Owen
Co-Founder & CTO
Chris’s background is in Computer Science with several years professional experience working for start-ups, international companies and freelancing. Most recently he was working for The Guardian as part of their engineering team. Chris has taken on the role of CTO and deals more with the day to day running of the school.
Michael Thomas
Co-Founder & Investor
Michael is a US based entrepreneur and journalist who originally laid the groundwork that the organisation is built on. Having spent times in refugee camps as a journalist he gained vital knowledge for the project and developed the first concept for the code school as it exists today. In the past, Thomas has worked in San Francisco working on his own start-up. As a successful journalist and storyteller, Michael has written for Fast Company and The Atlantic.Human Resources
Maria Paliothodorou
Chief Love Officer
Maria Paliothodorou is an HR Professional and the Chief Love Officer at Social Hackers Academy. She has over 12 years of Professional experience in both Greek and Multinational Companies.With evident knowledge in Human Resources Management, Maria is running all HR Operations in our organization where at the same time she helps to spread the love internally and externally.
She holds an MBA in International Business and a Bachelor’s in Economics. Her personal Mission is to help the World become a safe place for all.
Fania Pallikarakis
Recruiter
Born in Belgium and based in Greece, Fania studied Communication and Organisational Psychology.With many years of experience in the fields of Culture, Communication and HR, she has been working, since 2011, as a Certified Coach (ICF) with individuals, teams and startups that seek to see change(s) happen in their performance, team spirit and soft skills.
Iosif Sofios
Admissions Super Hero
I was born in Sweden and reside in Pireus, Greece. My background is on Social Psychology which was the field of my master degree.The focus of my academic research has been placed on vulnerable social groups and minorities such as Muslims.
Having worked as a consulting psychologist and more recently as a technical support agent, I enjoy working in teams and to contribute on projects with social value.
Teachers
Kostas Minaidis
Javascript teacher
Kostas is a Software Developer with more than 10 years of experience with Web Technologies and System Administration.He currently works at PlethoraThemes as a WordPress developer.
Dimitris Michalakos
Javascript teacher
Dimitris is a senior software developer with 12+ years experience in web technologies.He is the founder of Yeep _RBAC-as-a-Service_ and is co-organizing GreeceJS.
Aristeidis Bampakos
Javascript teacher
I started my career as a .NET Developer in various small-medium sized companies and in the last 4 years I am mainly focused in Web development using Javascript, HTML and CSS, specializing in Angular framework. I am currently working as a Front End Web developer at Plexscape (https://plexearth.com/), and I am also a freelance contributor at UrboTour (www.urbotour.com/en/about-us-menu) online platform. As an active member in the open source community at various Github projects, I enjoy helping other people solve their problems. In my free time, I maintain a little farm of chickens and I am trying to improve my combat skills playing Assassins Creed!
John Tsevdos
Javascript teacher
I’m a front-end developer that hand-crafts usable, elegant and effective web sites. I’m currently working for tripsta / airtickets, an Online Travel Agency (OTA).I have over 9 years of experience in front-end technologies and love working with Javascript.
Kosmas Pouianou
Javascript teacher
Kosmas is a full stack developer with more than 7 years of professional JavaScript experience.He is currently working as a senior engineer at SlashData.
Vasilis Danias
Database teacher
I’m a front-end developer that hand-crafts usable, elegant and effective web sites. I’m currently working for tripsta / airtickets, an Online Travel Agency (OTA).I have over 9 years of experience in front-end technologies and love working with Javascript.
George Sisko
HTML:/CSS Teacher
IGeorge(Jkr) is a Full Stack .NET Web Developer with 3+ years experience as well as Banking Algorithm Developer for 2+ years, he will be glad to expand he’s journey for the passion of coding with new ambitious persons!Marketing
Ifigeneia Byrou
Marketing Manager
Ifigeneia has more than 10 years of marketing experience in startups and established companies. Creating opportunities and mitigating challenges online and offline is part of her daily routine.With a bachelor in International and European Studies and an MBA, she became a volunteer at SHA in order to give back to the community and be part of a movement, that aims to improve lives through education.
Matilda Spanou
Social Media Manager
Matthildi Spanou was born in Greece and resides in Athens. She is a post graduate student from the Department of Management Science and Technology, Athens University of Economics and Business. She is passionate about marketing, literature and making the world a better place!
Natalia Labrou
Community Manager
Natalia Labrou was born in Athens in 1991. She is a postgraduate student in Marketing and Communication of Athens University of Economics and Business.During her undergraduate studies, she completed an internship at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Book Centre. Her interests include music, painting and photography.
Ioanna Zigogianni
Crowdfunding Manager
Ioanna Zygogianni doesn’t like to talk about herself. She is a vegetarian by choice, Sagittarius by luck (disregard if you don’t believe in zodiac signs) and loves silly socks. She is a firm believer that the world would be a better place if everyone tried to be nice and helped their fellow human beings; hence her profile appears in this setting you are now visiting. If you are interested in her -rather peculiar- career path, have a look at her LinkedIn profile below. If not, it’s OK, I am sure she understands. Cute picture though, right?
Maro Verli
Videographer & Marketing Consultant
Born in Greece, Maro Verli is an international and awarded photographer focusing on humanitarian and cultural projects on the international scene. Building on her academic background with an MBA from the University of Kentucky (U.S.A.), and certified by the Irish Centre for Human Rights of the National University of Ireland, she works as a communication consultant in strategy and visibility with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her portfolio includes a wide range of works commissioned by reputable international organisations, magazines, and corporate assignments.“I believe that every human hides a Super Hero within and through my work I try to give voice to that hero and release the message that comes to disclose facts of the past and particularly through this project my aim is to empower all these Super Heroes.
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Apostolos Apostolakis
Apostolos is a serial entrepreneur turned investor in the internet/technology sector. He cofounded along with 2 friends e-shop.gr the first computer e-tailer in Greece and then was involved in Taxibeat.com where Apostolos served on the board until the sale of company to Daimler. Apostolos was also a cofounder at e-food.gr ,that exited to Delivery Hero group and at doctoranytime.gr an online service helping patients look for, a doctor. As an angel investor Apostolos has supported many startups in Greece and internationally and since Jan 2016 he is fully involved with Venturefriends.vc a 20 mil euro Venture capital fund where he is an advisor. VentureFriends has invested in 20 startups 16 of which have operations in Greece.
Panos Papadopoulos
Panos Papadopoulos is a partner at Marathon VC, an Athens based venture capital investing in tech startups. Prior to joining the finance world, he was a co-founder and CEO at BugSense, a mobile analytics company that was acquired by Splunk Inc. He has invested in more than 20 startups and loves crypto-currencies, IoT and open source infrastructure. He is passionate about change and breaking down existing thinking models.
Chris Jones
Chris grew up between Australia and New Zealand but in 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis, moved to Europe. Feeling strongly for those that are most vulnerable and dismayed by what he saw as a lack of opportunity for refugees in Greece, he decided to seek out a partner in helping refugees achieve their full potential.Supporters
Celia Wells
Consultant
Even though Celia is from the bottom of the world – New Zealand – she has always taken her responsibility as a global citizen seriously. With a diverse professional background working with refugees and in research, she leapt at the opportunity to utilise her work experience to identify opportunities to enable refugee autonomy in Greece. Celia is the first to laugh or cry at life and misses working directly with everyone in Greece, she is currently working in corporate responsibility and is supporting Social Hackers Academy from afar.
Areti Vassou
LinkedIn Consultant
Areti is an awarded Digital Marketing & Strategy Architect and a proficient Digital Copywriter. She has a passion for communication, business storytelling and brand building. She combines academic excellence in Web Design and a rich professional background in Social Media Marketing, in Digital Healthcare Industry and Digital Technology, in Europe, USA and Greece.
She is active in Digital Marketing Field since 2000, starting from Google. As the Digital Strategy Director of Grafimedia.eu and Ideadeco.co, she travels all over the planet for a variety of marketing projects. She loves books, cats, music and good food.
Her motto is: Everything is Doable!
Vicky Nikolaidou
Creative & Crowdfunding Junior Mentor
Copywriter? Marketing strategy consultant? Civil engineer? Journalist? Transcretor? Vicky can claim to be all of the above, but she mostly prefers her Voice-Over Artist persona. A natural born free-lancer, she loves to collaborate with emotionally intelligent doers. Beyond titles, she would like to be characterised as a problem-solver, good-people-collector and creative traveller. She is a 100% Everybody’s-Free-To-Wear-Sunscreen believer.