PEOPLE

Liu Yan

CEO and the co-founder of Xindanwei, is an advocate of cross-culture and cross discipline exchange, entrepreneur and community organizer. Her educational background is predominantly in Arts Management and Marketing with a breadth in cultural and creative entrepreneurial study and practices.
As an independent consultant and lecturer in the Netherlands and China from 2004-2007, she served as advisory board member on cultural entrepreneurship for the city municipal of Utrecht, and worked as the advisor of the China program of Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, an international and interdisciplinary biennial that focuses on art, technology and society. In 2007, she co-founded Da-Tong China Desk Creative Industry in Amsterdam, which is one of the nine founding members of International Creative Industry Alliance in Beijing. Da-Tong provides services to Dutch creative professionals, entrepreneurs and organizations to establish collaboration in China. It has organized the Creative Cross China & Europe conference for Picnic’07, Amsterdam’s leading annual international event, highlighting creativity and innovation. Upon to her return to China in 2008, she co-organized and chaired 3S ReUnion – an interdisciplinary monthly seminar for art, media technology and academic research, stimulate people from art, technology and academic fields to meet and share their knowledge.
She is a regular speaker at international forum on creative industry, social innovation, entrepreneurship and digital culture such as Skoll World Forum, TEDx and Getitlouder conference. She is nominated by girl 2.0 China as the “top female innovator” and serves as the jury member of Digital Community at the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica in 2011.

aaajiao (Xu Wenkai)

CTO and the co-founder of Xindanwei, is one of China’s foremost digital artists, bloggers and free culture developers. In 2003 he established the sound art website: cornersound.com and in 2006 he founded the Chinese take on the blog we-make-money-not-art: We-Need-Money-Not-Art.com He is devoted to Processing, an open source visual programming software and Dorkbot, a non-profit initiative for creative minds. His artwork can be seen at: http://eventstructure.com/

Chen Xu

COO and the co-founder of Xindanwei, M.A. in Cultural and Creative Industries, King’s College London (UK). Chen Xu has worked with the leading creative economist John Howkins as the Country Manager (China) since 2006 and later joined BOP Consulting (UK) to help to implement the company’s international research and consulting projects. She is now an associate of BOP Consulting. Chen Xu worked as a researcher on the revision of John Howkins’ famous book on the global Creative Economy. She has also worked with Film London (UK), Arts & Business (UK) and China Shanghai International Arts Festival.

Cozi (Ge Sheng-Zhen)

Ex Designer & Executive Manager at Xindanwei, MA in Management in Cultural Frame (Management des Evénements Culturels), L’Institut d’Etudes Supérieures des Arts, Paris. She has been actively involved in the creative and cultural industries, and is now focusing on new media communication. The PDF and iApp versions of the Coworking Manual are part of her works.

Susanna Wallqvist

Susanna Wallqvist from Sweden works as a Recruitment Manager for PAE Design Talent. She is one of the long-term coworker of Xindanwei, co-working space in Shanghai.
PAE Design Talent is a company focusing on recruitment for the design industry in China, helping companies in the design field to find designers from China or internationally. It locates its headquarter in Beijing where they have 18 people working in different teams divided by industries such as architecture, transportation design, product/industrial design and creative design and communication. Susanna leads the creative design and communication team and works mainly with advertising agencies, design consultancies, event companies and e-commerce, most of whom are based in Shanghai. In February 2011 Susanna moved to Shanghai working towards expanding PAE’s business, and has since then become Xindanwei’s long-term coworker.
Apart from working from the office space PAE and Xindanwei also collaborate on creating a platform for the creative industry in China and help bringing designers and companies together.

Sohrab Golsorkhi

Londoner Sohrab Golsorkhi works as art director for Tank. He’s one of the earliest long-term coworker of Shanghai coworking space Xindanwei.
Tank Magazine is an idependent quarterly magazine which positions itself at the apex between fashion, art, politics, and music whilst maintaining the highest production values. It was founded by Sohrab’s father, Masoud Golsorkhi, and Andreas Laeufer in 1998 and has been able to feature some of the leading photographers, artists, and journalists in its 13 years of existence without the backing of a major publishing house. More commercial work followed leading to the creation of our sister company Tank Form. Tank Form is our boutique creative agency dealing commercial cases, it works alongside Tank Magazine, the two sides of the business supporting and complementing each other.
Tank has worked with companies in China for a number of years on projects for Tank Form now they decided to set up a small office in Shanghai to pursue new opportunities for Tank Form and to search for and meet potential future contributors to Tank’s new website when it launches. With its open space and coworking concept, Xindanwei stands to be the perfect place for Sohrab.

Emlyn (WANG Li-Juan)

Emlyn is the founder of avant-garde fashion project C’est la Chine. She chose Xindanwei, a space unique and charming, open and flexible, that is just the right place for beginner entrepreneurs.
C’est la Chine is solely founded by Emlyn. Her initiative is to work out something inbetween the Art and Fashion – it is not any kind of the fast fashion, yet it stays close enough to the ordinary life. Before launching C’est la Chine, Emlyn worked as regional manager at Efunds after her graduation from MBA program at CEIBS. She was on such a broad highway that many people are just eager to reach. Emlyn followed her heart anyway. To be an entrepreneur means to give up the steady income and carry the risk of failure. “C’est la Chine, is especially a project that one can not be so sure about the result,” said, Emlyn. “I am mostly driven by my passion for art and fashion, however, I did take into concern carefully the possibility of the marketing. ”
Mostly like what Emlyn has bee n through, Xindanwei never stops wondering and exploring of its own way of surviving. For most of the entrepreneurs or startups, the future is not 100% sure, but what else can be more fascinating than devoting 100% of yourself to a career that is fueled by creation and innovation?

Rah Xu

Young Chinese entrepreneur Rah Xu quit his decent full-time job from a 4A advertising company and launched his own event management company named Côte-à-Côte and has since then started his long-term relationship with Xindanwei. For him, “the physical environment is appealing already, while what actually keeps me here are the people, which we call coworkers in a Xindanwei style term.”
The route Rah has picked up – getting away from the big company and starting up on his own – is not a rare case among young Chinese. They got bored from the repeating daily jobs, and came up with an ambition that they could work the job out more efficiently if they work independently. Rah is the kind of the guy that steps forward without hesitation when an idea comes to his mind. Côte-à-Côte was thus founded.

Gao Chaofan

Young Tech Entrepreneur Gao Chaofan is the founder and managing director of Meige Information Technology, a tech-firm focused on facial recognition technology, which is now the largest group of Xindanwei coworkers. Meige’s target customers are the young urban females who love using internet and cosmetic. For instance, you make a photo for yourself with your cell phone and upload it to the computer. their program would be able recognize your face and start to put on make-up through simple clicks. The system will tell you what makeup you wear and where you can buy them and how much.
For Gao Chaofan, finding the team is the most difficult part. “There is not a lack of funding in China, what we are in shortage of is good project and good team to implement the project. Idea is just the starting point. How to organize a stable, innovative and hard-working team to realize your idea is the most important part for a startup. If you have a good idea plus a good team, the investment will come to you.” He really likes the atmosphere at Xindanwei. The location is central and easy to reach and the cost is reasonable. He didn’t expect too much when just moved in, but thought it was just a workspace. On the long term, he sincerely wishes to be supported to find the right talents, foreign or Chinese as well as connections among national and local media, they would be love to be promoted through this platform.

Joshua Lange

Joshua Lange from the U.S. is the service coordinator – Shanghai of CWEF (Concordia Welfare & Education Foundation). CWEF is a Hong Kong based non-profit that works to improve the lives of the rural poor in China and Cambodia. CWEF focuses on two major issues that can help people pull themselves out of poverty: increasing educational opportunities and improving health conditions. To that end, CWEF provides scholarships and leadership training, funds libraries and teaching materials for local schools, builds clean water and biogas clean energy systems for rural villages, and conducts health and hygiene training. In Shanghai, CWEF is in the process of opening a representative office and has begun work to support the city’s migrant community, who have come to Shanghai from more rural communities all over China. CWEF is now working with two migrant schools in Shanghai to support education for these students whose families face a lot of challenges in their quest for a better life here in the city. In addition to supporting school fees for a number of students, CWEF is also partnering with the international community in Shanghai to provide supplemental educational activities at the schools. Xindanwei provides Joshua with not only a space to work, but also a platform to meet people and spread his vision of charity.

Christina Lamontagne

Christina LaMontagne is an early-stage investor at Physic Ventures, where she works across the firm’s interests in health and environmental sustainability and advises portfolio companies GoodGuide and Gazelle. . Christina began her career in China when she came to China to work on HIV/AIDS immediately following the SARS and Avian Flu epidemics in 2003. As a Fulbright Scholar, she helped design and finance the Chinese government’s $67M HIV/AIDS treatment program for southwest China. She is particularly interested in web and mobile-enabled solutions for changing environmental and health-related behaviors. Christina’s professional experience spans marketing, strategy, operations and public policy. The reason of choosing Xindanwei as her long-term workplace is the social aspect here. Through XDW, she hopes to meet more people who are passionate about international business. In Christina’s opinion, Shanghai has a lot of similarities to New York. She hopes to build business together with the new generations in these global cities.

Belen de la Ossa

Belen hails from the romantic city Madrid Spain. She is a Senior Fashion Designer and has worked internationally for ZARA, MANGO and other fashion houses. Currently, Belen is collaborating with an artist/entrepreneur from LA named Redic to create an exciting new art inspired clothing & life style brand RA (Redic Apparel). The international brand they are building is an east/west connection between the two great cites of Los Angeles & Shanghai.
They hope to promote a lifestyle brand that is creative and artistically draws from global inspirations. The clothing and products they provide are customized, creative, cutting edge while aiding humanitarian and philanthropic causes. Their values are spiritually rooted in purpose, celebrate diversity, built on integrity and simultaneously embrace maverick and avant-garde sensibilities. Their ultimate aim is to inspire & empower their patrons leaving them Looking Good, Feeling Good and Doing Good with every RA purchase.
“I find myself completely in love with Xindanwei during my first visit. People are different here. I like this space and open environment especially the New Mentor program that helps me to have a better local insight and much deeper understanding of how to pursue my dream in China. Xindanwei has generated many great leads and opportunity for me to get connected with amazing people and develop my idea. I am now acting as an ambassador to spread word for xindanwei among my fashion designer friends and networks.” Says Belen.