Michela Magas
Michela Magas is a designer, entrepreneur and innovation specialist, of Croatian-British nationality, and is the first woman from the Creative Industries to receive the European Woman Innovator of the Year award by the European Commission. She is the daughter of the architects Olga and Boris Magaš, and was raised in Rijeka, Croatia, where she was educated at Italian elementary and secondary schools, before graduating in design from the Royal College of Art in London. From 1995 until the end of 2000 she worked at the "Financial Times", as a designer, becoming Art Editor. She is the co -founder, with Peter Russell-Clarke, of the London-based design innovation lab Stromatolite, whose clients include Nike, Nokia and Apple. She is the founder of Music Tech Fest, and chairs the Industry Commons Foundation. In December 2019 she was recognised as an "Outstanding Peer Reviewer" by Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. In 2016 she was awarded Innovation Luminary for Creative Innovation by the European Commission. Since about 2015, she has lived in Umeå, Sweden, and works nomadically.