Veronica D’Souza

Entrepreneur · Advisor · Keynote Speaker · Artist

Veronica D’Souza is an award-winning entrepreneur, advisor, keynote speaker and artist exploring how we create value, who gets to participate, and what it takes to change the systems behind.

For more than fifteen years, she has built companies, advised leaders and created initiatives across business, design, technology and social impact in Europe, East Africa, Latin America, Asia and the United States.

She is the co-founder of CARCEL, the fashion company created with women in prison in Peru and Thailand. Between 2016 and 2021, CARCEL combined design, natural materials, paid employment and education to challenge conventional ideas of luxury, labour and value. The company won the Wessel & Vett Fashion Prize and opened Copenhagen Fashion Week in 2020 with a manifesto challenging the fashion industry. CARCEL was profiled internationally, including on the front page of The New York Times, and in Vogue, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Business of Fashion, WWD, AnOther and SHOWstudio, among others.

During her work with CARCEL, D’Souza drafted an international Code of Conduct for the Protection of Incarcerated People’s Labour Rights, with input from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the International Labour Organization, and presented the framework at the OECD in Paris.

Earlier, she co-founded Ruby Cup, a social enterprise that has expanded access to sustainable menstrual health products to more than 150,000 girls and women across East Africa.

Today, D’Souza advises founders, leadership teams, boards and organisations on strategy, brand positioning, innovation and governance. Through her agency GEIST, she has helped take a €20 million philanthropic foundation from vision to its first grants, advised ventures working in carbon capture and sustainable technology, and worked with companies across fashion, design, healthcare and lifestyle. She is also developing new retail infrastructure and co-initiated Meaningful Entrepreneurship, exploring models for founders beyond conventional growth economics.

As a keynote speaker, moderator and host, D’Souza brings together entrepreneurial experience, cultural analysis and storytelling to examine questions around capitalism, technology, design, creativity, equity and the future of work. In 2026 she co-curated and hosted the official symposium at 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen, in conversation with Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, the design critic Alice Rawsthorn, the artist Yinka Ilori and the architect Anupama Kundoo. She has spoken at the V&A in London, the OECD, the United Nations, the UBS Economy and Fashion Summit in Milan, NeueHouse Berlin and the Huiput Creative Festival in Helsinki.

She hosts the podcasts AI & Os, convened by the 8,000-member Connected Women in AI community, and What Shapes, made with 3daysofdesign.

D’Souza was named EY Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019. She serves on the boards of the Danish Design Council and The Soulfuls, a platform creating access, visibility and opportunities for underrepresented women in the creative industries, and is a jury member of the INDEX Award. She has also served on the S+T+ARTS Prize jury at Ars Electronica.

She is currently writing her first non-fiction book, exploring labour, power and capitalism through the human stories hidden inside systems of production.

Born and based in Copenhagen, D’Souza is of Indian, East African and Danish heritage and works across Danish, English, Italian and Spanish.

Alongside her work in business, D’Souza is an indepent artist and producer, releasing feminist, genre-fluid alt-pop.

AWARDS

EY Entrepreneur of the Year, Social Entrepreneurship, Denmark · Magasin du Nord Fashion Prize (now Wessel & Vett) · ELLE Style Awards CSR Prize · Creative Business Cup Denmark · Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition US · Venture Cup Denmark · Future Impact Award runner-up Switzerland · Join Our Core finalist Ben & Jerry's Europe · Sustainia100 Solution

BOARDS AND JURIES

Danish Design Council — Board ·

The Soulfuls — Board ·

The INDEX Award — Jury ·

S+T+ARTS Prize Ars Electronica — Jury 2025.

FELLOWSHIPS

World Economic Forum Global Shaper Alumni · Humanity in Action Senior Fellow · SoCap Global Entrepreneur · Ashoka Youth Venture Mentor

EDUCATION

Executive Education in Social Entrepreneurship, INSEAD Singapore · MSc International Business and Politics, CBS · BSc Business, Languages and Culture, CBS and UADE Argentina · Sustainable Business Operations, Columbia Business School · United World College of the Adriatic