011 – Hamere Demissie

ETHIOS

http://www.ethiospodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/20161119_ETHIOS_HamereDemissie.mp3

Hamere Demissie, Founder and CEO of Actuel Urban Living is a designer with a passion for contemporary art forms particularly furniture, interiors, fashion and visual arts. She has a dichotomous professional background going back and forth between her two lifelong passions of design and development economics – sometimes managing to miraculously combine her two passions in a single job. Hamere has worked as a designer of apparel, furniture and home furnishings and jewelry with various companies in the US, Bangladesh and Ethiopia.

Her work with BRAC (Bangladesh), The Coffee Initiative (TechnoServe Ethiopia), and the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency involved developing and implementing strategies to support market-led sustainable value chains – strengthening high-value commodities such as coffee, silk, wool and cotton and improving smallholder and urban poor integration into modern value chains. She successfully managed international certification in coffee for 80+ coffee agricultural cooperatives in Ethiopia as well as supporting the setup and management of finance partnerships with local banks and international guaranteeing institutions. As Chief Innovation Officer at Eleni LLC, she led the xLab an innovation lab involved in testing and developing human-centered solutions for commodity markets in Africa.
Hamere has also spent 10+ years working as a business development consultant for a range of large multinational companies in France, including for companies such as Dior, Shiseido and L’Oréal, building capacity of executive level staff on new learnings on subjects such as supply chain management, product development and marketing. Hamere holds a degree in Apparel Design from the University of Maryland, College Park as well as a Master’s degree in International Policy and Comparative Development from the University of Bristol, UK.
Actuel Urban Living is a creative furniture design company based in Addis Ababa and is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream of starting up a company in her beloved home town doing what she loves the most, while contributing to skills development of artisans in the city.

Find out more about Azariah and about Enzi:

Website: ActuelInteriors.com

Twitter: @hamihamere

Facebook: hamere.demissie

Email: [e-mail]

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