Updates
Ruben’s entrepreneurial journey over the past 25 years has been processed by the Free University of Amsterdam under the auspices of Professor Enno Masurel to the Amsterdam Entrepreneurship Case: ‘You are more than the color of your skin’ - The story of Ruben Brave, successful tech entrepreneur and iconic fighter of racial discrimination. See https://entrepreneurshipcases.amsterdam/ruben-brave
Ruben Brave has been elected president of Internet Society Netherlands (ISOC NL), the Dutch Chapter of the NGO founded by the founding fathers of the Internet. In that respect, he is following in the footsteps of previous chairmen like Tom Kok (a.o. former chair of AVRO, General Association of Radio Broadcasting) and Koos Andriessen (a.o. former Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs). In the year 2022 ISOC NL celebrates its 25th anniversary, it is the first time in its 25-year history that a black chairman has been elected by its members (approximately 1000). See https://isoc.nl/over-ons/)
Recently Ruben was requested by the Director-General of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (EZK) to investigate how the Dutch start-up world can be made more diverse and inclusive. The collaboration with EZK involved an Exploration of innovative entrepreneurship (startups, scale-ups, corporate ventures) in which he personally spoke to more than 250 entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups (e.g. women, people with a migration background, LGBTQ+, neurodiversity, but also other diversity dimensions). This led to the Dutch New Narrative Lab Foundation (DNNL), an Inclusive Innovative Entrepreneurship initiative, supported by o.a. the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate. DNNL aims to foster the hidden gem of diversity and inclusion in startups, scale-ups and corporate ventures in the Benelux and Germany, with economic ties to the Dutch economy. Join this fresh and open-minded movement of 250+ underrepresented founders!
Recently, Ruben's community efforts have been appreciated by a broad, diverse and international community of entrepreneurs, academics and leaders in the field of inclusive entrepreneurship by receiving the Amplify DEI Inclusive Champion Leadership Award 2021
Ruben co-authored the scientific paper “Argument-Checking: A Critical Pedagogy Approach to Digital Literacy” with dr. Jean Wagemans and dr. Federica Russo, assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam.: “The digital revolution brought about unprecedented changes in people’s daily lives as well as in techno-scientific contexts. In this paper, we address the problem of information overload people experience in online media, news outlets, and social media. The problem is well-known for its negative influence on the quality of online information, with abundant discussion on the promise of fact-checking and the potential role of censorship and moderation by social media. We instead discuss the issue from the perspective of digital literacy; specifically, we advance the view that our procedure of argument-checking can enhance such literacy, as a form of critical pedagogy, thereby contributing to improving the quality of online information.” See the paper at the Social Science Research Network: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4016734